In Other Blogs: Sex and Slavery Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The blogosphere takes on Sex and the City this week, wrestling with the big questions like: Am I Neanderthal knuckledragger if I refuse to see this movie? And if I am, do I care? At Some Came Running Glenn Kenny made an offhand comment, expressing glee at having no professional obligation to see the film. This remark was taken by some as sexist snobbery, a charge Kenny responds to thusly: “When one puts it that way, it’s tough to answer, as the sexism charge only creates a feedback loop, as reverse-sexism charges are leveled at the movie’s depiction of its male characters, and nobody goes home happy. (Incidentally, I should point out here that as of this writing, I still have yet to see the Sex and the City movie.) It’s the snobbism charge, or rather my own personal reaction to the snobbism charge, that I found interesting. My own personal reaction being, ‘So what?’ Not only ‘so what,’ but ‘fuck that noise,’ because, I’m entitled to pull out the snob card every now and again, am I not? Just because something is a putative pop culture phenomenon I’m automatically expected to give it some respect?”

At Scanners, Jim Emerson offers no apologies. “Summer's here and the time is right for fart, diarrhea and masturbation jokes in the theaters. Not just in raunchy male-oriented comedies, but in so-called ‘chick flicks’ -- the ones groups of women attend after a few cocktails. I'm speaking, of course, about Sex and the City. Could it, perhaps, be the long-awaited Judd Apatow(ish) movie for gals? You know, the one about a group of friends who hang out and get drunk or stoned, complain about their relationships (or lack thereof), make dirty scatalogical jokes, and generally prefer one another's company to that of the opposite sex? You tell me. Because, sadly, nobody has enough money to pay me to go see Sex and the City. I am not the target audience and I know that. I have no objection to it, either. As Roger Ebert succinctly stated at the top of his review ‘I am not the person to review this movie.’ Me, too. I am also not that person.”

Mandingo is just out on DVD, and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule offers a reconsideration. “The reviews were so dismissive that by the time the movie resurfaced during the age of VHS it had developed a reputation as some sort of abomination, a camp classic, a shameful artistic disaster. I wasn’t even sure if I could rely on my own memories of the film to be accurate, shaded as they were by circumstances under which I first saw it (I was 15 years old and in the company of my paternal grandmother!) and my uncertainty as to whether those negative reviews might be right…I sincerely hope that with the release of Mandingo on DVD that some revisionism regarding its status as a “so-bad-it’s-good” camp classic will begin to take place. Those IMDb comments from viewers who have seen it recently certainly seem to suggest that there a movement in this direction already underway. When I saw the movie at the American Cinematheque early last year, it was easy to sense that the audience came primed to giggle at the antiquated, period-authentic dialogue, the impolitic slurs and the debased folk mythology that makes up the worldview of Mandingo’s white characters. But it was heartening to hear that nervous giggling die down after about 15 minutes when it became clear that the movie was no corny sex-and-slavery romp, was no easy candidate for Mystery Science Theater-type derision, but instead a serious and agonized attempt to grapple with a period in American history that it seemed was still too hot to handle.”

Adam Sandler: Republican Actor? That’s the contention of Eric Kohn at Cinematical. “Sandler's movies often embrace idealized notions of blue collar lifestyles. In Little Nicky, which Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman found ‘gross, but awash in family values,’ the devil's son is expected to replace his father, akin to the dilemma facing Billy Madison. The simplified correlation between family and work, a dated model of Norman Rockwell proportions, comes up in the blossoming fatherhood plot of Big Daddy and the stress of a demanding job in Click. The dynamic gets even more complicated with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a movie about two straight guys disgusted by homosexuality. You could say the film eventually approves of gay marriage, but it does so with notable reluctance.”

And finally this week in List-o-Mania, Cracked offers 8 Classic Movie Robots That Actually Suck at Their Job. We expect the inclusion of R2-D2 to spur great controversy. “Everyone loves good old R2. From the first time some witty scribe made a joke about him looking just like a garbage can back in the '70s, right up to today, he's one of cinema's favorite robots…On the other hand, we're not 100 percent sure what R2-D2 is good at.”

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "War, Inc."

Phil Nugent — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

John Cusack gets his smug on in War, Inc., a satiricial action comedy with a touch every bit as light and precise as its sledgehammer title. Cusack, who co-produced the movie with Grace Loh for his New Crime Productions, and splits the screenplay credit between himself, novelist Mark Leyner, and Bulworth scripter and Huffington Post blogger Jeremy Pikser, plays a hit man who is hired by Tamerlane, a Halliburton-like corporaton that is staffing America's first war that has been fully outsourced to the private sector. The movie intends an attack on how big business profits from, and may even influence, American foreign policy, but its ideas about how that's reshaping the world seem to have only gotten as far as slapping company logos on the sides of tanks and in smoking urban war zones, a device that mainly results in some really questionable product placement deals. (The Get Smart-style entrance to the lair of the American intelligence officers is through a Popeyes chicken joint, arguably the most prominent space that franchise has been awarded in a major Hollywood production since the Adam Sandler vehicle Little Nicky established that the denizens of Hell thought quite highly of their product.) The movie hits its targets only once in a great while, particularly when it goes after the gullibility and culpability of the media. There's a choice sequence about an imbedded group of reporters who get a taste of what it's like in a war-ravaged country by being treated to a Sensurround-style simulated ride through rough terrain. (They cheer with excitement, just like Geraldo every time he sees his name in the paper spelled right.)

War, Inc. positions itself as a sort-of-sequel to the 1997 New Crime Production Grosse Pointe Blank; it doesn't continue that movie's story or revive its characters, but it does reunite some if its key personnel while aiming for something similar in tone and approach. Cusack's emotionally confused master assassin with a streak of white in his dark hair is Martin Blank with ten years on him in all but name; Joan Cusack is once again his personal assistant (but this time, infuriatingly, is subjected to unflattering lighting and funhouse lenses and camera angles), and Dan Aykroyd turns up to do his Dick Cheney impression as the self-satisfied master of the universe dealing Cusack his orders. (They are joined by Marisa Tomei, who, as usual, pumps an incredible amount of sexiness and vitality into her corner of the vaccuum, and Ben Kingsley, who attempts what I think is meant to be a Texas accent, though it could just as easily have labeled his character as an Australian, a Venusian, or just a raving nut.) This is actually a clever approach--just as it was when the cast of A Fish Called Wanda did it in Fierce Creatures, a movie that didn't work either--but it mainly serves to highlight how opportunistic the difference between the two pictures feels. Grosse Pointe Blank, which came riding in on the last fumes of the Pulp Fiction bandwagon, treated murder as a hip slapstick joke. War, Inc. has the same kind of what-me-worry approach to violent chaos and the same admiring attitude towards its hero's murderous prowess, but it expects to be taken as being on a deeper, more meaningful level of smirking cynicism because Cusack has sunk to working for Republican CEOs. (In both films, Cusack is paired with a heroine--Minnie Driver in Grosse Pointe Blank, Marisa Tomei here--who expresses horror at his violent side until she needs rescuing.) War, Inc. is set to go straight to DVD after a non-victory lap of the festivals and a token New York/Los Angeles theatrical release, and Cusack and company are welcome to console themselves with the thought that their movie was punished for the sharpness of its bite. But its "satire" is the kind of thing that The Daily Show regularly makes fun of.

The Screengrab : little nicky

In Other Blogs: Sex and Slavery Edition

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "War, Inc."