Beaneball

I've just watched District B13 (the original French title is, apparently, "Banlieue 13", "banlieue" being a word of many meanings; Wikipedia informs me that a dictionary would say it means "outskirts," but it's commonly used in France today to refer specifically to those poor outskirts of the cities that Americans might, if our cities were structured the same way, call ghettos), and it's a little scary how prescient it was. (Note: I'm going to talk freely about plot, so stop reading if you plan to see the movie and haven't yet.) The titular district is troublesome to the government. It drains money and simply refuses to be "solved." The initial solution is to wall it off (clearly reminiscent of the Nazi creation of Jewish ghettos). The later solution is to set off a bomb in the heart of the district, which will, ideally, wipe out all two million people who live there (final solution). The Nazi parallels are far from subtexts. One character refuses to believe that the government could actually undertake to wipe out two million people just like that; the other reminds him that "they" did it to six million because they didn't have blond hair and blue eyes. The use of "they" is interesting, as, in the context, it would indicate French authorities. This is consistent with what might be described as a national French guilt over the Holocaust. The use of "six million" instead of a higher figure is striking in this respect, because that number represents only the number of Jews killed, leaving out the three to five million others. Perhaps more interesting is the way the movie foreshadowed the riots of the fall of 2005. The character not from Banlieue 13 asks the one that is whether burning cars is really an effective way of accomplishing anything. The other responds by asking whether he's got any better ideas for the moment. Burning cars were, I think, the major image reaching the U.S. during the 2005 riots, so that line struck a particular chord. Further, the expression of the frustration with not being able to get out, with having no recourse, is consistent with the feelings that bubbled forth in the riots. The point is driven home by the ethnic makeup of the inhabitants of the two zones - the gangsters, inhabitants of B13, who occupy the screen for most of the movie, are a mixed lot, but generally dark-skinned. The head gangster is a man named Taha. The name is ambiguous to my ears, but when I Google "Taha," the third result is the wikipedia entry for Rachid Taha, a French-Algerian musician. Who knows if he's famous, but I'd imagine that a French audience might immediately associate the name with Algerians. (There's not much on the actor's IMDB page; his brother, also an actor, was born in Paris, but played "Yassir" in the recent film about French Algerians fighting in World War II.) Furthermore, at least to my eyes, the governmental actors were played by some particularly pasty white men, emphasizing their difference from the residents of the banlieue.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 23:48 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Having just finished watching The Cincinnati Kid on DVD, I have to ask why nobody told me that Ben Affleck looks just like the young Rip Torn (who plays a local rich kid, Slade). The movie itself isn't great. Steve McQueen is the man, and Ann-Margret's certainly the wo, but it was too bad that you could kind of predict the entire course of the movie by watching the first ten minutes.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 23:10 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

I have no documentation of this, but I had both the Colts and Seahawks in yesterday's games (the Colts because they're a vastly better team than the Chiefs and the Seahawks because they were playing at home). I figured the Seahawks game would be close, but obviously you can't anticipate the craziness that ensued. I'll try to go 4-0 today as I pick Philadelphia and New England to win. Those aren't exactly controversial picks, although some people will get seduced by the Giants' offensive talent. The Patriots-Jets game is tough because while I'm not a Patriot-hater, they're not my favorite team to root for, and I really like Chad Pennington and Eric Mangini, so I'd like to root for the Jets, but I just don't think they're ready to beat Bill Belichick in the playoffs.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Books, Football, Law, Magazines, Movies, Non-Fiction, Reading at 12:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I saw King Kong last night with a group of friends in Seattle. It was entertaining, though it was really too long. Jack Black couldn't really do anything with what he had to work with, Jamie Bell was absolutely wasted, and even the special effects weren't, to my eyes, that great. There were a lot of moments where it really seemed to jump out, "Hey, those actors are just running in front of a green screen!" It would have to be better than Mad Hot Ballroom to crack my top ten, and it certainly wasn't. I've still got hopes for Munich, Brokeback Mountain, and, if I see it in time, Match Point.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 22:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

The pop culture news from the current (December 5) issue of New York magazine must be commented on. First, Demetri Martin is now a correspondent on The Daily Show? That's sort of stunning, actually. I saw him live once and I've come across him on TV once or twice. His humor just doesn't seem to fit the spastic Daily Show correspondent style. I mean, Rob Corddry? Ed Helms? Can you really see Martin's heroin-inflected style (to steal a line from Patrice O'Neal) while reporting on ... what exactly? I'm looking forward to it, certainly, but I'm also apprehensive. Second, Tony Leung has earned himself a retrospective at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). They'll screen twelve of his movies over 18 days in December. The show is titled "Hard Boiled & In the Mood: Tony Leung." Considering that there's significant overlap with exam season at the law school in those dates, I won't be heading out to Brooklyn to actually see anything, but it's awesome that he's being so widely recognized. (Yes, dear, I'm still straight.) Third, Trio has been cancelled (click now: it probably won't be there long). I never watched Trio much, but it always seemed like a solid choice when bored: the snarky yet loving nostalgia fits a lot of people in my generation really well, I think, so I'm sort of surprised it didn't get the ratings to make its corporate parents happy. Fourth and finally, apparently Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler have signed on for Reign O'er Me a post-9/11 movie about finding friendship or some such crap. According to IMDB, there's no writer or director (but according to this site, Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger) is developing it). I'm curious about what the tone of the movie will be. Will Sandler continue his Punch-Drunk Love (not that I saw it) / Spanglish descent (in a good way) into droopiness? Or will it be more manic, in his old style? Either way, I'm not convinced he'll play well with Cheadle. After a 2004 in which Cheadle appeared in five movies, including his star turn in Hotel Rwanda, it looks like he took a year off, because he's not appeared in a single movie in 2005. Tishomingo Blues, which is supposed to be his directorial debut, is still supposedly showing up in 2005, but considering it's still labled "pre-production" on IMDB and that it's the end of November, I guess we shouldn't count on it.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 10:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

It was Thanksgiving weekend, so I had a little more time than I often do. I used this time to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Pride and Prejudice in the theater. The former felt rushed and crammed with stuff. I haven't read the books, so I can't speak to the things they dropped out and rushed past. Despite that, it was quite clear how crunched the filmmakers felt. Nary a scene was left to just play out in a normal fashion. Rather, everything was in the manner of, "Here's what you need to get from this scene! Next! Here's what you need from this scene! Next!" I shouldn't say "nary," though, because the graveyard scene, the climax, was quite good. It was the one time where the movie just s l o w e d down for a while. The writers and director are really sort of stuck, though, because the books are only getting longer. Austen tells me there's (finally) a new screenwriter for the fifth movie, which could help things get better. In the end, I liked it, but it doesn't crack the list. What does crack the list is Pride and Prejudice. Talk about taking your time, not hurrying, just letting things unfold ... Perhaps the best feature of the movie was that it just moved in a straightforward way, letting the story and the characters carry the day. There was no need for fancy cinematography, quirky editing tricks, or bizarre structural innovations here. Austen tells me that Jane Austen has translated quite well to the screen (I haven't seen the other movies that have come from her books). I'm reminded of Matt and Ben, a little play that Austen's mom sent us to about the writing of Good Will Hunting. The point of the play, which is quite funny and features women playing the titual characters, is that the duo never wrote the script: it fell from the sky. The scene I remember, though, involves the attempt by the pair to adapt Catcher in the Rye for the screen. It basically involved Ben at the computer, typing the dialogue that Matt reads straight from the novel. My point? Maybe this works if you're adapting Jane Austen. So, on to the amended Top Ten, with the newly added Pride and Prejudice.

1. The Constant Gardener
2. Proof
3. Kung Fu Hustle
4. War of the Worlds
5. Pride and Prejudice
6. Grizzly Man
7. Capote
8. Rize
9. Bee Season
10. Mad Hot Ballroom

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 13:45 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I saw Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic last night with a teacher friend and her boyfriend. A lot of people didn't find it as funny as I did: a number of different groups walked out at various points. I'm not sure what they were thinking. It is, after all, a Sarah Silverman concert film. You've got to know what you're getting yourself into, right? She's rude, she's crude, she's edgy, she's regularly accused of racism; what did you expect? Probably the best joke, certainly one of those that makes you a little nervous, goes something like this: "My niece goes to Hebrew school. She called me the other day and was talking to me and said, 'Aunt Sarah, did you know that Adolf Hitler killed 60 million Jews?' And I told her, 'Honey, I think it's actually six million.' And she said, 'Yeah, you're right. But really, what's the difference?' What's the difference? There's a huge difference! I mean, really! Sixty million would be unforgiveable!" It doesn't make my Top Ten for the year. It's funny, but I think in order for an uninventive (not in terms of the comedy, but in terms of the filmmaking) concert movie to make the Top Ten, it's got to be better than, say, The Original Kings of Comedy or Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, and this wasn't. Better than the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, though? I'll be charitable and not answer that.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 20:15 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Having seen Bee Season this weekend, and being completely disappointed with the reviews it's getting, here's my newest edition of my Top Ten. The bottom of the list contains the only change. It's not consistent from last time because Austen ridiculed me for my #9 choice.

1. The Constant Gardener
2. Proof
3. Kung Fu Hustle
4. War of the Worlds
5. Grizzly Man
6. Capote
7. Rize
8. Bee Season
9. Mad Hot Ballroom
10. Good Night, and Good Luck

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 21:52 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

We saw The Squid and the Whale this weekend, and were mightily disappointed. I'll just quote Austen for you:

What an overrated movie. It was just straightout bad. It hit one note over and over, lacked focus, making it's "resolution" seem too easy and lacking. I don't know what all the fuss about it was. They had good actors and the performances were good and Jesse Eisenberg proved he could act yet again, and Kevin Kline's son is a better actor than his father, but other than that I was thoroughly disappointed.

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 20:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

With the power outage over, I can write about Green Street Hooligans, which we saw last night. I'd wanted to see the movie for a number of weeks. Frod ... er, Elijah Wood joins a soccer (oops, football) mob and gets into vicious fights? What could be better? Well, lots of things as it turns out. It's too bad, because Wood and Charlie Hunnam, particularly the latter here, are very watchable, but the movie was just too confused about what it wanted to do. Was it a moralistic story about the circle of violence? Was it just an "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" tale? Or maybe it just didn't care about the losing the eye, it's just fun to romp about and beat up some fans of a rival squad? The problem is, each of these possibilities is undermined by some element of the film. There's too much actual hurt, actual pain, actual loss of more than just limb for this to have been another Fight Club-type story. Conversely, there's too much fun to be had and too much change-for-the-better in Wood's character for this to be a pure morality play. As for the "... loses and eye" theory, without giving away too much, it turns out that eyes were lost long before we were dropped into the story, but the fun and games were still being had by plenty of folks. So the movie's not really about anything in particular. That's ok, maybe it could still be fun, or stylish, or at least have funny British dialogue. But, uh, nope, sorry. It was occasionally funny, though as with George Clooney directing Good Night, and Good Luck, I don't think Lexi Alexander displayed much of a directorial sense of comedic timing. In addition, funny doesn't really define fun, and there was way too much downer-ness for the movie to be much fun. (Do note that I'm saying movies shouldn't be downers; in fact, too many movies try to hard to come "up" at the end because they're afraid of the marketing disasters that could result. I am saying, however, that a movie that's a "downer" has to be good, because it's not going to be fun.) Stylish? I thought the second fight scene, if I'm remembering correctly (I'm no reviewer, so taking notes at the movie isn't really for me), was quite stylish, but the rest of the movie, the other fight scenes included, weren't all that visually interesting. Now, it's a stretch for me to say that I was hoping for funny British dialogue, but mentioning it is just an excuse to complain about Alexander's (and co-writers Dougie Brimson and Josh Shelov's) tin ear for dialogue, as displayed by many of the terribly movie-cliche lines that you'd never hear a real person actually utter. There was far too much unintentional comedy for any self-respecting indie film. Also, voice-over? Please, stop with the VO. I can probably count on one hand the number of movie I've seen that made good use of voice-over, and this film wasn't ever in danger of being added to the list. Finally, it's time for a little lesson on plant-and-payoff. You know those good movies and TV shows where you learn something, often in a somewhat indirect way, early in the movie and it "pays off" later on? That's a great way to write, and it produces results when used well, particularly when used over the course of multiple episodes on TV. Where it doesn't work is when you learn something five minutes before it's used! If you saw the movie, you probably know the lame-ass moment I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, and you decide to disregard my opinions and see it anyway, look for the moment. It'll be your little challenge. **** I think I've seen enough movies now to make a list. Best movies of the year so far?

1. The Constant Gardener
2. Proof
3. Kung Fu Hustle
4. War of the Worlds
5. Grizzly Man
6. Rize
7. Mad Hot Ballroom
8. Capote
9. Lords of Dogtown
10. Good Night, and Good Luck

Posted by Jason Wojciechowski in Movies at 21:50 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

A co-worker loaned me a DVD from Film Movement with six shorts on it, and I liked them so much, I thought I'd proselytize a little bit. Plus, it's a slow Sunday and it's hard to get excited about a last-place baseball team, so here it is. Listed first on the cover was Mt. Head (Atama-yama in Japanese), an animated Japanese movie about a "stingy man" who ends up having a cherry tree growing from the top of his head. It's as bizarre as it sounds, but the narration, by Takeharu Kunimoto, is fantastically weird. As the aforementioned co-worker pointed out, the nose of the "stingy man" bears too close a resemblance to a stereotypical Jewish nose for comfort, but if you can ignore that, it's a pretty trippy little film. Das Rad ("Rocks," in German) is also illustrated, though in a vastly different style. The idea is that rocks are watching us, having conversations, playing around and generally enjoying life, but on a vastly different time scale. The idea is fantastic, but nine minutes was a little too long for something that's essentially just a really neat idea. In the end, it ended up being cute, but not much more. Inja (which means "dog" in, I assume, Afrikaans) is about a black boy and a puppy in South Africa who are split up rather cruelly by a landowner. The landowner's methods come back to haunt him in the end, though. This was probably the best of the six films: it was quite beautiful and obviously poignant, but did not try to reach farther than a 17-minute film should. Also notable was Thandie Newton showing up in the "thanks" section of the credits. Sangam, the name of a spot of pilgrimage in India, is about a recent immigrant to New York who encounters a countryman on the subway. They reminisce, talk, sing, and then things get weird. Overall, I thought it was just okay, with two highlights: the editing and the performance of Sanjay Chandani as Vivek, the man the immigrant encounters on the subway. Chandani has had a minor TV and movie career, according to his IMDB credits, but I think he could be capable of more were he to be given the chance. I also caught Mira Nair's name in the "thanks" section of the credits. The First Three Lives of Stuart Hornsley is a time travel story starring Tunde Adebimpe, who is more famous as a member of the band TV on the Radio but who is also a graduate of NYU's film school. If this was a thesis film at NYU (it was produced under the auspices of Tisch, according to the credits), it appears to be one of those that benefits from a larger budget (and a longer runtime: at thirty minutes, it was easily the longest film in this collection) than its peers. That said, it's not a bad movie, but in the end, it was just sort of sweet. Adebimpe was pretty good as the title character, and I liked Isaac Bloch as his young protege Vitaliy, but if you've seen the Simpsons time travel episode, you've sort of seen this movie. Spike Lee earned a "thank you" in this film. Finally, the most superficially pleasing of the six was Deathdealer, a mockumentary starring Henry Rollins as a kind of door-to-door businessman dealing with a bit of a midlife crisis. I'm hesitant to say more about the story, though the title gives something away, but suffice it to say that I was greatly amused and thought the film quite clever. It wasn't trying for anything more than amusement, so we oughtn't fault it for not achieving more.

Posted by jason in Movies at 23:04 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

On Saturday, we went and saw Mad Hot Ballroom, a documentary about public schools in New York City that have ballroom dancing programs. It was a pretty straightforward film, but I couldn't help but be impressed with the footage of the actual dancing competitions the kids entered. The crowd got very into it, awwww-ing at all the appropriate moments. I don't know whether it's playing widely outside of New York, but the opportunity to see 10 year-olds doing an impressive merengue and rumba should not be passed up. Last night, as I mentioned, we saw Crash, the Paul Haggis (the writer of Million Dollar Baby) film that grew out of his experience being carjacked in L.A. It was as bad as all the reviews said, unfortunately. A lot of good talent, including Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Ryan Phillipe, Sandra Bullock, Terrence Howard, and Larenz Tate, went wasted. The theme of the movie, racism, would have been better approached in a much more subtle way. Modern incarnations of racism, after all, are more under-the-surface, more quietly insidious, than the view presented in the film, where everything, while mixed up and "not quite what it seems" (if the movie is going to traffic in so much cliche, then so will I), is quite overt: Matt Dillon is a blatantly racist cop; Sandra Bullock insists that her locks be changed again because a Latino man who she believes to be a gang-banger changed them the first time; a gun-shop owner calls an Iranian customer "Osama." We did get two great trailers, though: Hustle & Flow, also starring Terrence Howard as a pimp trying to make it as a rapper, which was all the rage at Sundance this year; and Rize, David LaChapelle's documentary about "krumping," a new dance form coming out of inner-city Los Angeles. The cinematography looks as fantastic as you'd expect out a renowned photographer and I expect that the dance moves will be as impressive as watching any extreme sports or And 1 video. Finally, I read the article in Sports Illustrated about online poker last night. As Wilson points out in this comment, it's really just an article saying, "College kids play poker online." It talks about people who made money, mentions a kid who's lost over $50k, and briefly says that colleges don't have gambling addiction programs, but that's really it. There's no real exploration of the issues of legality (that's relegated to a sidebar), no exploration of the addiction, no discussion of social and familial problems that are allowed to arise when money starts being lost hand over fist. Any or all of these themes would have made excellent articles on college kids playing online poker. Instead, we got something akin to Moneyball: a piece that was supposed to be about a larger point but devolved into a series of profiles of "interesting" people (the players were made much more intriguing in Moneyball).

Posted by jason in Magazines, Movies, Reading, The Blog at 18:09 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Thank goodness! Someone finally said it! Benicio Del Toro says in the current issue of Esquire (April 2005), "Researching a role isn't Method acting; it's common sense." Ever since I learned what Method acting really is (which is not so long ago, I'll admit; maybe a little over a year), I've noticed the complete lack of understanding in the press and even, perhaps, among actors, of what Method acting actually entails. When Viggo Mortensen wandered around New Zealand with a sword strapped on his hip, that wasn't Method; that was getting himself into a physical mode where he could convincingly play the character of Aragorn. When Nicole Kidman interviewed abused women for her role in The Human Stain, that wasn't Method; it was, as Del Toro alludes to, research that she would have been stupid not to conduct. Russell Crowe was quoted telling a story in the March 2005 issue of GQ:

Also, until I was 25, I had one tooth missing. When George Ogilvie cast me, he asked me about it, and I told him the story and that I thought it was very false of me to go and get a tooth cap. He was very nice about it, listened to it all, and said, “All right, well, let me put it this way, Russell. You’re playing the lead character in my film, right? The character of Johnny has two front teeth ...”

To reach this "believable truth," after years of research with actors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski began employing new and original methods, such as "emotional memory." He felt at that time that to work on a particular emotion in a role that involved fear, the actor might remember something that frightened him from his own life. Stanislavski believed that an actor needed to take his or her own personality onto the stage when he or she began to play a character. This innovation was a clear break from previous modes of acting that held that the actor's job was to become the character and leave his or her own emotions behind. Later, Stanislavski concerned himself with the creation of physical entries into these emotion