How to Train Your Dragon is High Flying Excitement

There's no denying that the king of computer animation is Pixar. That juggernaut has released 10 movies and all have been good. Their track record truly is amazing. DreamWorks, on the other hand, hasn't fared so well. After two solid films in Antz and Shrek, they went downhill quickly, releasing junk like Shark Tale, Over the Hedge, Bee Movie and the two Madagascar pictures. They redeemed themselves a tad with Kung Fu Panda and Monsters Vs. Aliens, but their newest film, How to Train Your Dragon, may very well be their best. They still have a long way to go before they start nipping at the heels of the folks at Pixar, but this is a step in the right direction.

The film takes place in a village where Vikings rule. For hundreds of years, these Vikings have been at war with the local dragons who come to their land, burn down their houses and steal their livestock. To these people, dragon hunting is the most admirable thing you can do and those who do it earn the most respect. The leader of the warriors goes by the name of Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler), a man who finds shame in his puny son Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) because he has never amounted to anything. Hiccup desperately wants to be accepted and wants to kill a dragon to prove himself, but his weak stature doesn't allow him to. One day, however, he lands a hit on the most dangerous dragon of them all, a Night Fury, but can't bring himself to kill it. Instead, he lets it loose, but its tail is severely damaged and it loses the ability of flight. Hiccup bonds with the dragon, whom he names Toothless, and creates an artificial tail to help aid him. He quickly learns that dragons aren't dangerous creatures at all and, with the help of Toothless, tries to convince his village the same.

Story-wise, How to Train Your Dragon is DreamWorks most complete film to date. It hits a range of emotions they previously could have only hoped for. Like a Pixar film, this movie creates a distinct relationship between its two characters, in this case Hiccup and the dragon, and you come to appreciate their bonding. Toothless is like a stray dog who wants to be loved, but is wary of anybody offering it because he simply isn't used to it. He looks at Hiccup as he approaches him, all tied up in the projectile net, desperate and afraid. After Hiccup releases him, he attacks him based on the assumption that Hiccup means harm. It isn't until he spends time with him that he starts to let his guard down. It's truly amazing how much emotion seeps through this creature just by the way he looks at Hiccup. His character development rivals everybody else in the movie and you see him grow throughout.

The bond they create is the crutch of the film. You'll love them as soon as they start to love each other. Despite its colorful nature and appeal to children, its the drama that comes through the best. You'll care about the characters, sympathize with them and fear for their plight. It's the humor that doesn't necessarily work.

Much like most animated features, How to Train Your Dragon tries real hard to produce laughs, but it feels more strained here than in others. I wouldn't say this is a dark film, but it's not exactly happy-go-lucky either and deals with rejection, loneliness and crippling injury, both to humans and animals. However, it doesn't go all the way. Nobody dies in this movie. When the dragons shoot their fire, the humans jump out of the way and it passes right by. Due to what I assume is fear of excluding children, the film is toned down in every area, which includes its forced humor to lighten the tension. None of it works. Had it gone a more adult route and had the chutzpah to show the violence and drama unfold more naturally, this would be a modern day adult animated masterpiece.

It doesn't quite reach that height, but it's a solid tale nevertheless. The animation is beautiful, the close-to-being-overdone 3D works magic and the voice acting is wonderful. Despite a few too many recognizable voices from the likes of Jonah Hill, Butler and Baruchel, who just recently starred in She's Out of My League, they fit their characters well and by the time you reach the high flying, pulse pounding climax, you will have forgotten that there were actual people voicing these characters, though it does take a bit of time to get to that point.

I've always been a person fascinated with flight. Ask me who my favorite superhero is, I'll tell you Superman and I'm astonished when someone in a window seat on an airplane puts the cover down so they can't see out the window. Being up that high and being able to soar through the clouds holds a sense of wonder for me. It's a sight so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps this is why I loved How to Train Your Dragon, because it tells a story not always through dialogue, but through flight showing how their friendship develops while they are in mid-air swooping up and down and around. The beauty of these scenes is reason enough to buy a ticket. It may not be the next Wall-E or Finding Nemo, but it's a pleasurable diversion that promises a more promising future from DreamWorks.

How to Train Your Dragon receives 4/5

Interview with Ben Stiller, Noah Baumbach and James Murphy

Recently, I was lucky enough to participate in an interview with Ben Stiller, Noah Baumbach and James Murphy, the creative team behind the new film Greenberg. We discussed how the film came to be, what the process behind the music was and how different this role is for Stiller when compared to his wider known comedies. Greenberg opens today. This is the unedited transcript.

How was the dynamic behind the scenes for all of you and were there any moments you would like to discuss?

Stiller: Well, I feel that working with Noah is a very, very special experience because he just approaches movies in a very different way than I’ve experienced before. He wrote a very specific script and I think everybody working on the movie was really dedicated to it and wanted to do the best they could because they respected the script so much. There was a lot of camaraderie. There was a feeling that we were all connected and we were doing the best we could. It was a small production so we got to rehearse for a number of weeks and hang out a little bit. All the way down to the camera people and the crew, everybody was there because they wanted to be there so it had a much warmer, more intimate feeling that all came out of the atmosphere that was set for the movie.

James, how different was it writing, instead of from an emotion to a final product, from a final product to emphasize emotion? How was that transfer for you?

Murphy: Well, the way this kind of worked wasn’t quite so much like that, but I met with Noah before shooting started. We talked a lot about music and we talked about the characters and, what Ben said, there’s a lot of human camaraderie that made it very easy to kind of talk about what the movie needed. It wasn’t any less about my emotions than anything else. There was just something you were looking at and reacting to. But we also didn’t try to make a soundtrack that necessarily always accented the emotions. For me, after seeing the first footage, it was clear the actors were doing their job amazingly well and the stuff was there. We made songs that worked like a backdrop for what’s happening and let the emotions come through from the directing and the shooting and the acting.

Obviously, this is a very different role for Ben. Noah, what made you consider Ben for a role like this and Ben, what made you take a role like this as opposed to another comedy that you’re better known for?

Baumbach: Well, I’ve always wanted somebody with a sense of humor to play this part. There is a lot of humor in it, although it’s not played for laughs. It’s more authentically portrayed. Obviously, Ben is known for bigger comedies, but he’s done a lot of different stuff, so I never really saw it so much as a different role. It just seemed like Ben was the best person to play this.

Stiller: For me, I really have to say off the bat that I think there are four or five filmmakers that if you get a call from them as an actor, you basically would say yes no matter what it is and Noah is definitely one of those guys for me. What he was calling me with was something I felt very excited about too because it was so specifically written. We talked a little bit about it at the beginning, you know, about the age of the character and the issues he’s going through. Then it was just the chance to work on something that was really about the character and the chance to work on something that goes that deep in terms of the specificity of the writing was very exciting for me so I just felt very fortunate to have that opportunity.

Would you consider doing something like this again? Is this the way you want to take your career or do you want to leave it more open?

Stiller: First of all, I’d love to work with Noah again if he has anything.

Baumbach: Likewise.

Stiller: But yeah, sure, in terms of doing different roles and films, there are just very few filmmakers like Noah that have that sense of humor set in reality and are doing what he’s doing.

The letters that Greenberg writes in the movie are brilliant. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Baumbach: Well, in coming up with the character, Jennifer [co-writer] and I were exploring a lot of different professions and the story took different turns. I think, though, that very early on we came up with the letter writing. It seemed very apt for the character. It would be something that he pours a lot of energy into. There’s a lot of frustration and anger and in some ways it is his vocation. A lot of creative energy goes into it too, but it’s an energy that would be better used in other, more productive ways. I found it very funny, but also very moving that somebody would become so invested in letting these faceless corporations or people or journals or newspapers know how he felt about something after the fact. There’s something so self important about it because there’s the notion that nobody cares what you think and at the same time, there’s something totally futile about it because you’re spitting these things out to the ether. It was something structurally I wasn’t sure how the letters would play while we were shooting because I hadn’t written them as voiceover, but as we were doing it, I had Ben read them and it became a sort of score element in the movie.

James, what were the concepts going in creating the soundtrack and what goals did you have in mind?

Murphy: I think the goal for me was to make music that worked, that we liked, that seemed true to the character and true to the movie and that made Noah happy. It seemed pretty easy to do because we were able to talk about music pretty simply. I know I was very lucky to have that open line of communication. We were editing, I was making the soundtrack and Noah was editing the movie 100 feet from me, so it was very easy to have access and a lot of feedback, so I don’t know whether I ever really got self conscious about what the goals were other than deadlines and dates on the small level. I always just seemed to go with my instincts.

Baumbach: From my perspective, I wanted James to do something that worked for the movie, but to interpret it himself, to come at it from a personal standpoint. I think our relationship and friendship outside of work, or around the work, was very important because I think it helped support an environment where we both could talk freely and see what happened. Some of it is trial and error, in terms of some things you love, but when you put it against the picture it doesn’t work or it doesn’t feel right, but I think our track record was pretty good.

Murphy: I would give Noah music and he would just try it in different places if it didn’t work there, so he was very generous.

Noah: I loved everything James did, so I kept trying to find places for it which is good because I used music more in this movie than I have in previous movies and I was partly inspired by just trying to find places for his music that I really liked.

How did the story of an actively passive man finding his calling hood from his nothingness develop over time from pre-production to post-production?

Baumbach: Well, part of the experience is both interpreting the script when you shoot it and putting it together and rewriting it when you edit. That’s kind of a general way of looking at it, but because I’m so involved every step of the way, I think part of my job is being open to how it transforms and what other people bring that transform it. I really think that the character of Greenberg is in many ways a 50/50 collaboration between Ben and me. Ben didn’t improvise the dialogue, he did the dialogue I wrote, but he so inhabited the part and so transformed the character that I feel only part ownership of him now. I feel like Ben is just as responsible for it as I am and that’s true with many things. It’s true with the music too. I think the music is very specific and personal to James even though it was created to go with these pictures. Even in the post-production, the editing, I’m not precious about what I write. I tend to rewrite by cutting lines and moving things around and being open to what I have rather than what I anticipated having because it always becomes something different than what I started with.

Hot Tub Time Machine a Fun, Dopey Comedy

Back in January, I was invited to attend an early screening of a little film called Hot Tub Time Machine. It was a rough cut and it was, well, a little rough. The editing needed to be tighter and a few side story issues needed to be resolved. Now it has been completed and the finished product is, well, still a little rough. It's a shoddily structured, messily interpreted hour and a half trip through an unoriginal screenplay reminiscent of dozens of other time traveling films that simply replaces whatever time traveling device they used with a hot tub. Still, its goofy nature and fun, unabashed ridiculousness are hard to deny.

The story, as irrelevant as it may be, can be summarized in one sentence. After Lou, played by Rob Corddry, tries to kill himself, his friends Adam, Nick and Jacob, played by John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke, travel to their old vacation spot, a ski resort in the mountains, where they are transported back to the 80’s via hot tub and must travel in the same footsteps they did all those years ago, lest they disrupt the past and change the future for the worse.

Much like Snakes on a Plane or the more recent Ninja Assassin, Hot Tub Time Machine is a movie most will want to see based on the delightfully absurd title alone. Those people will not be disappointed. Like a good spoof movie, the film never stops with the jokes. It never bothers with heart or meaning or character development. It simply provides a constant string of gags that allow the four actors to play off each other.

Unfortunately, for every hilarious joke, there was one that fell flatter than an anorexic supermodel, including disgusting bodily fluid jokes that even the most juvenile of viewers will find degrading. Blood, urine, vomit, you name it, this movie has it. In the first 20 minutes alone, you get all of the above and then some, bringing to mind a scene where Nick digs out keys from the anus of an animal and throws them at someone. This type of lowbrow humor is to be expected, but that doesn't make it funny.

It's during the more perceptive scenes that Hot Tub Time Machine really shines. It knows what it is—over-the-top, tongue in cheek and very silly—and it takes its 80’s setting and capitalizes on it. Cusack, known for his seminal roles in 80’s films like Say Anything, is used to the fullest and the film puts him in situations that echo movies of that era, even going so far as to duplicate one of the most famous shots from Sixteen Candles, a film which he played a minor role in.

In a way, Hot Tub Time Machine is kind of smart in its stupidity. There is nothing going on behind the camera, but the comedic chemistry of the four actors is good and the witty script prove some thought went into it. It’s ironic, really. The film has brains, but you’ll have to turn yours off to enjoy it.

Hot Tub Time Machine receives 3/5

Interview with Clark Duke, Star of Hot Tub Time Machine

Starring alongside best friend Michael Cera in the Internet series Clark and Michael is only the beginning of Clark Duke’s story. With the underappreciated Sex Drive and hit television show Greek under his belt, not to mention the highly anticipated film Kick Ass on the horizon, Duke is proving himself as one of the most promising up and coming actors in Hollywood. I recently had a chance to chat with Duke about his new movie Hot Tub Time Machine and the difference between television and film.

What attracted you to the Hot Tub Time Machine script?

It was funny. I got involved with it because the guys who wrote Sex Drive had written the draft of Hot Tub and wanted me to play this part and I just said yeah because I really love those guys. They ended up not directing it, but I still stayed on because there was Corddry, Craig and then Cusack. I think Cusack being in it makes it really weird and meta because he’s such an 80’s icon himself. And in the movie, these guys go back to the 80’s and the whole thing seems like it’s coming out of him a little bit which is cool.

Since you mentioned your co-stars, after seeing the movie it seems like John Cusack is being billed to sell the movie.

John is sort of the straight man to some extent. He’s still the lead in the film, but Corddry has the wild character like the one I had in Sex Drive, the really fun one to play. So Johnny’s stuff is a little more understated, but he’s great. It was just really cool working with him because High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank are two of my favorite movies. And the guy who directed Hot Tub wrote those. Working with all of those guys was pretty amazing. Chevy Chase was my highlight because he’s my hero. All of our scenes were together pretty much and he was next to me at the hotel, so every night he would come knock on my door, call me and mumble things, so we’d go eat dinner and get drunk every night. It was the best week of my life. It was pretty surreal.

Would you like to continue doing comedy or break away and do more serious roles?

I don’t know. I like comedies. I guess if there was a really dramatic part that I thought I could do something interesting with or somebody asked me to do, but I don’t know, I like working on comedies for the most part because I mainly watch comedies.

Do you ever watch yourself? Is it weird seeing yourself onscreen?

The first time I saw Sex Drive in the theater, I had to leave. It was just unsettling. I couldn’t talk to anybody afterwards. I’m kind of used to it now, but at first it’s pretty jarring.

You’ve also done a lot of work on television, on the show Greek. I know this is a question you’ve heard a thousand times, but do you prefer the slower pace of film or the faster pace of television?

Film for sure. TV is brutal man. You’re going through eight pages a day and it’s rough. I mean it’s not rough, but compared to shooting a movie where you’re shooting one page a day, TV’s pace is just so much different.

So on average, how many takes does it take to get something done in movies and TV?

On TV you’re doing one or two takes because there’s just no time. On movies you can take all the time you want more or less because you’re shooting a page or two a day compared to six to eight pages, so it’s pretty bananas.

Besides Kick Ass, do you have any other films lined up right now?

I have this movie with Eddie Murphy called A Thousand Words that I think comes out at the end of this year.

Can you give us any details on that?

Eddie gets a curse put on him, so he only has a thousand words left to say before he dies and I play his assistant.

That’s a cool premise. It sounds better than Imagine That.

Let’s hope so. [Laughs] I didn’t see that one, but it didn’t do very well. He needs a hit.

The Bounty Hunter Should Turn Itself in for Stupidity

Meet Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston). She's a journalist who is on the beat attempting to uncover the mystery behind a recent man's alleged suicide. Oh, and she's also a felon. Not too long ago, she was arrested for assaulting a police officer and her court date is fast approaching, too fast it seems because she skips bail and finds herself on the lam from the cops. Now meet Milo (Gerard Butler), a bounty hunter who specializes in finding fugitives and taking them to jail. His newest assignment: capture Nicole. At first, he is ecstatic because Nicole is actually his ex-wife and really, who wouldn't want to drag their ex-wife to jail? However, somebody is out to take her life because she is getting too close to the truth behind the suicide and Milo finds himself way over his head. He must protect her and deal with her annoying eccentricities, but he can't help but begin to fall in love with her all over again.

And thus begins the abomination that is The Bounty Hunter. Like Cop Out before it, this film has a poor flow, an uninteresting story, bland enemies and annoying leads. It's funnier than Cop Out though, which is to say there's one good joke. The rest is a mind numbing rom-com that isn't worth the dried up gum underneath the seat you'll be watching it on.

When it comes to any type of movie like this, whether it be a buddy cop film or a romantic comedy, the lead characters must be likable. Spending your two hours with them should be fun. You should find yourself laughing at their jokes, enjoying their zany quirks and caring about them if they are in peril. I wanted, however, to kill these two characters myself. They are both loud, obnoxious and practically begging for us to like them. Their attempts to satisfy the audience come off as desperate and grating. Butler's character is merely throwaway, not in the way a less prominent character would be, but because I couldn't care less about what happened to him and the only interesting thing about Aniston's character is that you could occasionally see through her shirt when the lighting was right.

The saddest part of this debacle is that the premise is ripe for the picking, and I suspect is the sole reason it got greenlit to begin with. A bounty hunter male capturing his ex-wife and taking her to jail has so much potential, yet it would take a revamp of the entire movie--rewrites, reshoots, recasts--to make this thing tolerable.

Butler and Aniston produce no chemistry together because Aniston is only funny when supported by funny people and Butler is not one of them. He's an actor I have much respect for. I loved 300 and he even managed to convince me of his acting prowess in silly films like Law Abiding Citizen and Gamer, but for some reason he seems compelled to take roles in gag-inducing rom-com tripe, not the least of which includes last year's atrocious The Ugly Truth, and he simply isn't very good in any of them.

In a year that has thus far been unexceptional, The Bounty Hunter does little to turn the tide. It's shallow, predictable and it always takes the easy route, going for fast zingers, yet keeping it clean to keep its precious PG-13 rating (despite a trip to a topless strip club where the dancers are all, for some reason, fully covered). This thing has no gravitas, no guts, no redeeming factors and is unworthy of your time.

The Bounty Hunter receives 0.5/5

Repo Men a Guilty Pleasure

There's something avant-garde about Repo Men. It's not experimental or even particularly unique (Repo! The Genetic Opera tackled the same subject matter back in 2008), but it pushes the boundaries in that it's one of the only movies to gross me out to the point where I wanted to look away from the screen. It's like a disgusting, bloody My Winnipeg.

Set sometime in the near future, when Fast and the Furious X is about to be released, a company called The Union has emerged offering artificial organs to those in need of them. They can easily be bought with credit, yet the payments are so high that most who buy them cannot afford them. After a period of non-payments, a repo man is sent to take the organ back, thus killing the person in the process. Remy (Jude Law) is the best repo man in the business, but after a faulty defibrillator backfires on him, he is forced to sign his own contract on an artificial heart. However, he begins to realize that what he is doing is wrong and refuses to harvest any more organs. Without a job and no money flowing in, he begins to fall behind on his payments and is forced to go on the run with fellow artificial organ owner Beth (Alice Braga) while his former partner Jake (Forest Whitaker) hunts him down.

Repo Men is a movie that, as bloody as it is, seems like it wants to make a point. Similar to how last year's Saw VI made a statement on health care, Repo Men attempts to say something about financial corporations, loans and the debt they're practically forcing upon people, but it doesn't quite come through.

Part of the reason is because the film is as silly as they come. Although it does have a few tonal problems, making strange transitions from comedy to seriousness, the laughs always overpower its otherwise morbid spirit. While the more dramatic scenes, like one where Remy finds himself standing in the middle of a wasteland of dead bodies, don't work, the rest do in a sort of B-movie way. Nobody will sit through this and claim it as quality work, but many will still walk out with a strange appreciation for it.

On the other hand, many will find it revolting and end up hating it. It's a justifiable reaction because Repo Men is beyond violent. With so many scenes featuring repo men cutting into flesh and removing their victim's innards, it can, at times, be hard to find pleasure in it. In fact, I found none in the first act of the movie. Before Remy has his accident, you follow him and Jake around as they mercilessly kill the poor and innocent, never taking into account that their victims could be fathers, sons or brothers. But as the film goes on, the characters take a redemptive path and begin to right their wrongs. Sure, it doesn't quite make up for the assumable thousands of murders before it, but hey, nobody's perfect.

There's nothing to gather from Repo Men. There's no clear message. There's barely a story. There isn't any real reason for it to exist. It's incredibly stupid and the ending is a giant cop out, but I must admit, I had a good deal of fun with it. It may not be for everybody, but for me, it's the biggest guilty pleasure of 2010.

Repo Men receives 3/5

Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter Interview

It's not every day I get to sit down with two beautiful ladies and chit chat. Although my mother and sister would beg to differ, that hardly counts and is, frankly, a little weird. As part of the promotional tour for their new movie She's Out of My League, stars Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter stopped by Washington, DC to discuss what it was like working with a first time director, what they had playing on their iPods during shooting and what guys need to do to find their 10. They're two of the nicest girls I've ever met and yes, the interview began with Alice asking me if I wanted to do tequila shots. This is the unedited transcript.

Alice: You want to do tequila shots?

Let’s do it.

Krysten: I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Krysten: We’ve been touring incessantly and we haven’t been sleeping either. They give us about five hours off at night.

Alice: You can see how George Clooney ends up having those weird comebacks can’t you? Because he’s on it all the time.

Krysten: I can see now why people get hospitalized for exhaustion.

Alice: Totally.

[Both laugh]

Have either of you ever dated someone you’d consider out of your league or a guy that others would consider that you were out of his league?

Krysten: I’ve dated people who others have thought that maybe I was out of his league, but I didn’t think so and now I’m currently dating somebody who is out of my league. [Alice and her boyfriend] are on equal footing. They’re both really hot.

Alice: I think he’s out of my league. He’s cleverer than me.

So you’re both dating someone you’d both consider out of your league. That’s interesting. Is that something that drew you two to the movie, to live through the characters?

Alice: No because we both have to date down in the movie. [Laughs]

Krysten: Well, we both audition when things are around and they come to you and you audition for them. Hopefully you book them and they work with your schedule. That’s pretty much how the process was.

For this movie, you were working with a first time director and Jay Baruchel, who is usually relegated to supporting roles. Was there any hesitance going in knowing this or did you have faith in the material?

Alice: Oh, I love first time directors. I love first time directors because you never know what you’re going to get and if you were able to work with that director on his first outing and it turns out to be a star director, which I think Jim will be, then it’s great. New talent, that’s what I was until about 30 seconds ago, so you can’t be snooty about that, you know what I mean?

Krysten: It can go either way for first time directors.

Alice: But it can go either way for established directors too.

Krysten: Yeah, but I feel like with first time directors, sometimes they’re not confident and they’re worried about cast mutiny and they overcompensate.

Alice: Right, but any of those worries were left behind by the fact that we had a heavy hand with Dreamworks and Mosaic so we were protected if that ended up being a problem.

Krysten: And doing a big studio film with a first time director doesn’t matter as much as an indie film or TV because there are so many other voices. We were all in similar places in our careers and I think in the cast, you sort of recognize people, you’ve sort of seen them before, but it was pretty much like everybody was on equal footing which was cool.

You’ve both done dramatic roles, so what brought you to this romantic comedy?

Krysten: It seemed like a special script and it was funny. It’s nice to laugh at your job. [Turns to Alice] Are you going to make out with me? I feel like you’re uncomfortably close to my face. [Laughs]

You two are so giddy around each other.

Krysten: We have a good time. We’re real life friends.

And you could see that onscreen. Did you two connect right away or did it take some time?

Alice: She really pushed for it. [Laughs] Eventually it worked.

Krysten: Yeah, she’s really hard to get along with. She offends people all day long and you kind of want to walk away.

I’ve been offended this whole time. You two disgust me.

Alice: Oh God! [Laughs]

Krysten: No, we had a good time. She was already cast and I was brought in to chemistry read with her and that’s how it worked out.

Alice: You know, casting directors have a very specific and quite intricate job in casting whether it’s male/female leads or female/female, male/male leads now in these buddy comedies and their job is to imagine who would be friends and I think Allison Jones, who casted this movie, is excellent at her job. She cast all the Apatow movies.

Krysten: She cast Knocked Up and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Alice: I think that you would believe that all the boys in our movie had hung out for a decade. It’s hard to get a friendship thing between guys and she did that. They didn’t know each other either.

In their scenes together, like you were saying, they do gel well together. They seemed like they were improvising a lot. Was there a lot of that going on?

Krysten: Yeah, in pretty much every scene there is some improvising.

Alice: And also, we had two weeks rehearsal so there was a lot of kind of, “finding it,” during that period and then that was written into the script and then we improvised it on the day as well.

Krysten: And you do a lot of alternate takes. If you see a joke in the movie, you can pretty much bet there were six or seven other versions. I mean, you have to do the script version, but once you’ve got that then you do other versions.

So what about in the trailer when you say “Shut the hell up” as opposed to “Shut the fuck up” in the movie?

Krysten: Well, what we did was we shot an R rated version and a TV version. When we were making the movie, we didn’t know if it was going to be R rated or PG-13, so we had two versions.
Alice: There were a lot of conversations about that going on while we were making it.

Krysten: So we had to say “crap” and “shut up,” you know, really safe versions that aren’t that fun.

I’m glad you went with the R rating.

Alice: Yeah, I know, it makes such a difference. We love it. We’re so proud of it and that’s why we’re doing this. I think the fact that it’s an R movie is what makes it a good movie.

Alice, your parents in the movie were played by your actual parents. Have you ever acted with them before?

Alice: No, I haven’t. It was an honor and a privilege to be able to work with them because my dad is a great actor in England and my mom does a lot of theater. Dreamworks said, “Would you like your parents to play your parents?” I called my mom and I was like, “Do you want to play my mom?” She said yes, so I asked “Do you think dad does?” She said, “I’m going to work on it.” He has a busy schedule, but eventually he came around, he came out and we had a great time.

I read online that you’re in a band Krysten.

Krysten: Yeah, I’m in a band called Ex Vivian. I’ve been doing that for a while. In fact, when we were shooting this movie, I recorded four or five new songs in my hotel bathroom.

Alice: [Singing] I just go where the pretty girls go.

Are you in a certain genre? Are you inspired by any other bands?

Krysten: Well, I have my favorites like Jesus and Mary Chain and Cat Power I think are on the top of that list, but I also like country music so I think it’s all influenced by that. Mostly, I’m always influenced by my environment and the people around me.

You seem like a punk rock girl to me.

Krysten: Yeah, I know but I’m not really. I’m not really hardcore in any way. I’m punk rock in spirit, but not in sound.

What did you two have playing on your iPod’s during shooting?

Alice: The XX, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Neil Young…

Krysten: You’re just listing everything we listened to yesterday! [Laughs]

Alice: Well, we agreed!

Krysten: Yeah, we picked the same ones yesterday. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Kings of Leon.

Alice: A little bit of Jay-Z, a little bit of T.I., a little bit of Drake.

Krysten: Like I said, Cat Power, Jesus and Mary Chain, the Stone Roses, the Strokes, Interpol. You know, the basics.

I was told I had to ask you about the premature ejaculation scene and what the semen was made of.

Alice: It was pâté. What we did was we had the dog, and as you saw, the dog had to lick it, so in order to get the dog to lick it--and it was a big dog that had a temper--we had to keep putting this pâté on the patch.

Krysten: Like dog pâté?

Alice: No, human pâté. You know that duck pâté has a strong odor, so the smell of this dribbling, dog licking duck pâté was awful.

Krysten: How did he have a temper? I want to hear about that.

Alice: He was just grumpy, you know and he had moods. After a few takes, he’d be like [imitates a growling dog]. [Laughs]

Alice, your chemistry with Jay in the movie is really good. Considering that you’re the hard 10 hot girl and he’s the mediocre, skinny…

Alice: He’s not though. He’s not an unattractive guy.

No, I think he’s beautiful.

Alice: [Laughs] He’s tall, he’s nice, he’s charming, he’s clean.

Did that chemistry just naturally come through?

Alice: I guess so. We heard very early on that we had good chemistry. It’s sort of an ethereal thing. It’s not something you can control. You either have it or you don’t and I’m glad we had it.

How awkward was that scene where you and he had to strip down? I imagine that would be pretty intimidating for him.

Alice: You both have a job to make each other feel comfortable. His job is to not make me feel insecure and my job is to not make him feel insecure and I think we both did our best in that. You know, it is nerve-wracking to drop your dress in that kind of situation and I think we worked hard to make each other feel comfortable. He’s a good actor.

Do you think that chemistry also came as a result of casting?

Alice: We didn’t chemistry read interestingly enough. They just cast us. He was already cast and then they cast me and I guess we had a kind of boundary relationship off screen, so there was already an established connection between us.

What’s on the horizon for you two?

Alice: I have Sex and the City 2 coming out in May.

Krysten: I’ve got a new show called Gravity on Starz about suicide. I also have a movie coming out later this year called Killing Bono about the rise of U2 and the music scene in the 80’s in England. It’s totally rad. And I’m starring in Amy Heckerling’s next movie called Vamps. She did Clueless.

Well, being the two beautiful ladies that you are, what advice would you give all of the fives of the world if they want to find their 10?

Krysten: Be confident and funny. Show girls a good time.

Alice: Fix things when they break.

She's Out of My League Ignorant of Reality

My father once told me of a game he used to play with my uncle before I was born. Every year, my family would head to the beach and my dad would sit with beer in hand and rate passing women on their looks. He used a scale of 1-10 and would debate with my uncle over who was the best looking. My dad never was the classy type.

She’s Out of My League deconstructs this game, though perhaps “deconstruct” is not the right word, as that would imply the film has an air of intelligence around it. It does not.

You see, Kirk, played by Jay Baruchel, is a five. He is a lanky, skinny, nerdy type of guy that looks at a beautiful girl and immediately dismisses his chances with her. That is until Molly, played by the beautiful Alice Eve, accidentally stumbles into his life. She is, as his friends put it, “a hard 10,” and we all know a 10 like her could never find love with a five. Kirk is already pessimistic and self-conscious of himself and his friends only play into those fears, which could end up ruining his relationship with Alice.

There might not be much to recommend here, but I can say this. She’s Out of My League gives hope to all of the fives of the world. It tells them that they are tens in the eyes of the one that loves them, which is a nice change of pace regardless of how cheesy that message is. However, it also says that all men are womanizing meatheads that cannot function normally when a pretty girl is around.

When Molly walks in a room, every male in sight goes googly eyed and ogles her like a Thanksgiving turkey. While the actress certainly is a gorgeous woman, as a man, I found it kind of insulting that the movie insinuates our general lack of control when pretty women are around, suggesting that we have two heads and aren’t using the one with a brain in it.

Nevertheless, whatever analogous analyzation I may be finding here should be overshadowed by laughs. Unfortunately, this thing rarely elicits much from its tired premise. While Baruchel has been likable as a supporting role in movies such as Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, he isn't much of a leading man. He's hardly compelling and his nasally voice eventually proves grating on the nerves. It’s tough not to feel sympathy for his pathetic character, seeing as how, let’s face it, the majority of us are fives like him, but he doesn’t have enough charisma to work this movie through to its conclusion.

With contrived attempts at creating drama and the only laughs coming from a character nicknamed Stainer, who adopted the moniker due to his weak bladder as a child, She’s Out of My League is little more than another run-of-the-mill teen comedy that lives in a world where beautiful women actually look on the inside before they see the stained teeth, puss filled pimples and giant gut on the outside. What a world that must be.

She's Out of My League receives 1.5/5

Green Zone Another Bush Bash

I have a philosophy of not judging movies based on what they're about. Whether I agree or disagree with the subject matter, I try to look at it on its own artistic merit. With that said, I'm only human and am naturally drawn to things that reinforce my beliefs. But sometimes, a movie arrives too late to the party to have any real significance and I find myself distanced from the message despite my agreeance with it. Such is the case with Green Zone.

The film takes place in the early days of the Iraq war, in March of 2003. Matt Damon plays Miller, a soldier in charge of finding weapons of mass destruction. Despite the intel that tells them where to go, he and his squad have come up empty handed multiple times. He begins to get frustrated going on these wild goose chases that are putting him and his men in danger only to find nothing, so he confronts Clark Poundstone, played by Greg Kinnear, head of Pentagon Special Intelligence, who assures him that the weapons are indeed out there and they will find them. Nevertheless, something seems fishy and he begins to suspect the war in Iraq was started unjustifiably. With the help of CIA chief Brown, played by Brendan Gleeson, he hopes to uncover the true reason he is there.

Iraq war movies are no strangers to the film community. Stop Loss, In the Valley of Elah, and the recent Best Picture Oscar winner The Hurt Locker all have explored the war in different ways, some delving into the manipulative ways our government can keep our soldiers active despite their military term ending while others have explored the affects war has on those fighting. They are focused, meaningful and bring up important issues that the public may not be aware about. Green Zone is the opposite. It's a two hour Bush bash with the oft-heard message, "America entered into Iraq on false pretenses," thanks to our inability to find WMD's. Anyone familiar with the goings-on of the world already knows we were unable to find the weapons, so this becomes little more than an exercise in the blame game that tries to remind us how we got involved to begin with. I feel much about this the way I did about the economic downturn. Some blamed President Clinton, some blamed President Bush, but whose fault it was seemed unnecessary to me. Let's just fix it.

The message, however important it may be, is too late to the game. Had this been released three or four years ago, its impact would be hard to ignore, but now it seems like a childish indictment of a man many conservatives have even come to dislike. It is necessary to know how we got to Iraq, what mistakes we made along the way and how we can avoid them in the future, but dwelling on how we got there isn't as important right now as focusing on how to get out.

Director Paul Greengrass, the man behind The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, directs this in a similar style, the nauseating 'can-you-not-hold-still-for-one-second?' shaky cam style. As solid as his film's are, he has a tendency to go a little overboard with it and by the end, I was queasy and my head was pounding. It felt like somebody had been chipping away at my skull with a chisel for two hours. There's a fine line between using the shaky cam technique for realism and overdoing it to the point where you remind your audience they're watching a movie. When you cut to a man typing at a computer and the camera is still shaking back and forth like its mounted on somebody's shoulder, it's doing the opposite of its intended purpose.

I have many a problem with Green Zone, but in the end I'm still going to give it my seal of approval. Regardless of its relentless shakes and the message arriving a few years too late, it's often exciting, always entertaining and Matt Damon, as usual, is rock solid as the lead, giving another award worthy performance. Unfortunately, it's too worried about further crippling Bush's reputation to be bothered with saying something relevant.

Green Zone receives 2.5/5

Brooklyn's Finest an Evil Justifier

It's been eight years since director Antoine Fuqua brought us Training Day, the gritty crime drama that netted Denzel Washington his second Oscar. In between that terrific film, he has helmed a few pictures that have been hit and miss among fans and critics, Tears of the Sun and Shooter among them. Now it seems as if he's trying to strike gold twice with Brooklyn's Finest, which can only be described as Training Day-lite. While this movie deals with some similar issues (and even goes so far as to cast Denzel's counterpart in that film, Ethan Hawke), it's unfocused, meandering and it tries to justify evil if the end result is good, which I would hope any moral, upstanding citizen could see the hypocrisy in.

The film follows a number of cops as they deal with crime in Brooklyn. Hawke plays Sal, a dirty cop trying to pay for a new home for his family, Richard Gere plays Eddie, a suicidal police officer only a week away from retirement, and Don Cheadle plays Tango, an undercover cop who finds himself struggling with his allegiance because he has a duty to bring down the bad guys, but one of those bad men by the name of Caz, played by Wesley Snipes, previously saved his life and he refuses to bust him. A dirty cop, an undercover cop and a cop one week away from retirement. It's three cliches rolled into one.

The three stories do intersect at times, however rarely that may be, but I suspect the physical intersections are not the crutch of the movie, but rather the way each character's emotions get in the way of their true goals. In that regard, they all find themselves in the same boat, yet their stories play out so differently that that argument would be hard to make.

The most irksome part of Brooklyn's Finest, however, is its portrayal of these men as good men despite the evil things they have done or, in some cases, are doing. As previously mentioned, Sal can't afford a new home for his family. He has a wife and a couple of children and twins are on the way. The house they live in is encompassed with rotting wood and his wife's lungs are working three times the amount they should be due to her asthma and her breathing in mold. He needs to get them out of there. I understood this hardship and I felt for him, but the way he gets things done is inexcusable. He murders drug runners and steals their money. The film tries to make the case that there's nothing else this man can do and besides, he's killing bad guys so it's ok, right?

Eddie, on the other hand, is a cop who turns the other way when bad things go down. Early in the movie, he's on patrol with a rookie cop and the young man tries to break up a dispute between a feuding couple after the man slaps the woman. This is the right thing to do, but Eddie pulls him away and they drive off. He tells him to think nothing of it and just go home. Of course, Eddie has a change of heart by the end of the movie, but one good action does not forgive his years of neglection.

This happens with damn near every character. The film puts them on a pedestal and tries to rationalize their way of being. It doesn't work and instead of feeling for the hardships these characters are going through, I ended up loathing them all. None deserved my sympathy.

I suppose Brooklyn's Finest is technically a well made film. Fuqua directs it competently and the performances, though hit and miss at times, are far from bad, but its the twisted vindication the picture gives each character that really derails it. It tries to ask questions about what is considered right and wrong, but what's right and wrong doesn't change simply because the situation you're in calls for it to. Wrong is wrong no matter the predicament.

Brooklyn's Finest receives 2/5

Alice in Wonderland an Enchanting Treat

When director Tim Burton and Golden Globe award winner Johnny Depp team up for a film, the result is always magical. From 1990's Edward Scissorhands to the 2007 masterpiece Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the two have been more or less successful in every picture they've made together. Now uniting again for the seventh time, Depp and Burton have created an enchanting tale in Alice in Wonderland. Working more as a sequel to the title story (following the 1951 Disney animated feature closer than any other) rather than another iteration in itself, the film creates a fantastical world that feels alive and is brimming with imagination. It is a must see.

The film begins in the real world with Alice as a young girl (played by Mairi Ella Challen at this age). She tells her father that she thinks she's going mad because of a recurring dream she is having, but he tells her that some of the best people are mad. Flash forward thirteen years later and Alice is a young adult (played by Mia Wasikowska) and on her way to a party where she is asked for her hand in marriage by a gentleman she does not love. As he asks her, in front of seemingly hundreds of people no less, she spots a white rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) and she chases after it, only to fall down a hole into Wonderland. She quickly meets a colorful cast of characters including Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both played by Matt Lucas), Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry), and of course, the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp). She swears she's never been there before despite their insistence that she has. They believe she has come back to stop the evil Red Queen (played by Helena Bonham Carter) and take down her jabberwocky, a giant mythical beast, thus giving power of the land back to her sister, the kind White Queen (played by Anne Hathaway).

Alice in Wonderland is a timeless story and no matter whether you've read its source material, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," or seen one of the dozens of adaptations of it (including a 1976 porn version that, unfortunately, I've yet to get my hands on), you should be familiar with the gist of it, but you've never seen it like this. Alice's trip down the rabbit hole begins much like it usually does, with Alice growing taller and shrinking smaller before finally making it through the tiny door too little for her to crawl through, but Burton takes the rest of the film down a completely different path, one met with an unabashed amount of wonderment and a strong sense of peril, two things its previous Disney counterpart was missing.

That 1951 animated movie looked good, but was bogged down by poor musical numbers and a story that went nowhere. Alice's adventure never took a deeper meaning other than her desire to live in a more illusory world where she wouldn't succumb to boredom. This modern update--or more accurately labeled sequel--thankfully does more and you do feel like Alice has a purpose in this world. (Not to mention it does away with the singing.)

Still, I will admit that much like previous iterations, the story isn't as interesting as simply looking at the lush visuals on display. You may brush the story off as nonsense, but you'll still sit there in bewilderment at the film's artistry. It's bedazzling in a way that makes you feel like a kid again because the world you're looking at could only be realized by someone with a childlike sensibility, of which Burton, however dark it may be, has in spades. Every frame fills each corner of the screen with something remarkable to look at and the 3D makes it pop. The extra dimension gives added depth to an already stunning landscape, rarely resorting to the annoying things-flying-at-your-face gimmick too many 3D films employ.

Each character in the movie is wonderfully well rounded with distinct personalities and Burton juggles them perfectly, giving you enough time to meet and like (or hate) them. Depp, as great as an actor as he is, does not overpower the film because he's working with solid material (unlike Public Enemies where he was forced to work with mediocrity) and the actors around him do more than a capable job of playing against him. Wasikowska, who plays the titular character, does a particularly excellent job in her first starring role. I see big things on her horizon and much how Edward Scissorhands catapulted Depp into the spotlight, I expect Wasikowska to start gaining exposure after her star turn in this.

As better as this is when compared to the 1951 Disney animated version, it could have followed its footsteps in one regard. In that film, Alice quickly lands in Wonderland and when she finds her way out, the movie ends almost immediately. It never bothers with real world back story. This does a bit too much. I could have done without the real world affairs and found the whole engagement story to be a distraction. Although I like how she relates the people she knows in the real world to the zany creatures in Wonderland, it adds nothing in the way of depth.

That quibble aside, Alice in Wonderland is a real treat and will best be enjoyed by those still with the ability to dream and believe in the impossible.

Alice in Wonderland receives 4.5/5