The Screengrab : zach braff

DVD Digest for April 14, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Well folks, it looks like the studios are waiting until after the tax return deadline to release the good stuff. However, there are a few interesting titles on tap this week.

This week’s selection of recent releases can be more or less boiled down to a face-off between high-toned Oscar-bait and a lowbrow comic book adaptation full of cartoonish violence and scantily clad women. In one corner, wearing the drab grey trunks, Stephen Daldry’s The Reader (Weinstein, also Blu-Ray), which brought Kate Winslet a long-overdue Oscar and garnered its director his third Best Director nomination in three tries. In the opposing corner, wearing black and white trunks and a bright red tie, Frank Miller’s solo filmmaking debut, The Spirit (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray), an adaptation of the classic Will Eisner comic that got some of the most savage reviews of 2008. Of course, if you’re like me you could take or leave either of these movies, and I’d advise you to wait for next week when The Wrestler hits the streets.

Or if you just can’t wait, you might be better off with this week’s most interesting-looking classic, the 50th Anniversary Edition of Pillow Talk (Universal). Perhaps the most popular of Doris Day and Rock Hudson’s romantic comedies, the new DVD includes commentary, a doc about the two stars, and in some sets a bonus Mamma Mia magnetic picture frame. I know, I can’t wait either. And for you fans of poker and distractingly bad Russian accents, this week also brings the release of Rounders 10th Anniversary Edition (Disney, also Blu-Ray).

The big TV on DVD news this week is the release of the HBO miniseries House of Saddam. And in Blu-Ray only releases, this week’s slate includes: Eminem in 8 Mile (Universal); Zach Braff in The Last Kiss (Paramount); Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey in Mean Girls (Paramount); the Happy Madison production Strange Wilderness (Paramount); and the forgettable sci-fi double feature The Thirteenth Floor (Sony) and Universal Soldier: The Return (Sony). I guess that’s how you know the format is here to stay- when studios are done releasing their recent crap and start releasing crap from the vaults.

Finally, my selection for the Plot Synopsis of the Week is yet again from the Japanese animation circuit- this week choice being ADV Films’ release The Karma Saiyuki. Once again, I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m bagging on anime, but some of these plot summaries- yowza. Take a look:

“In a world where a broken robot is as cherished as month-old milk, sexually abused androids are tossed in the scrap pile and forgotten by all but three beautiful young girls with the power to bring the discarded 'droids back to life through the bedroom arts. But do robots--even super-realistic-looking ones--feel sad when their cruel owners defile and then chuck them in the recycle bin? In this adult-themed anime, the power of loving sex might be the link between a robot’s artificial intelligence and its heart--or maybe it's just another chance for hentai fans to enjoy some kinky robot nookie.”

To these eyes, what really puts it over the top is that final sentence, in which the copy writer teases us with the possible deeper implications of the film, then snatches them away again with a dig at the sexual proclivities of hentai fans. And to think that DVD Planet has this listed in the “Children’s” genre…

Trailer Review: 500 Days of Summer

Paul Clark — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Anyone else getting a Garden State vibe off this trailer? Sure, there’s that leaden voiceover, which sounds vaguely like the narrator was trying channel Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. But otherwise, there’s the offbeat-cute male lead pursuing the free-spirited woman, set against plenty of quirky backdrops. No doubt this vibe was intentional on the part of Fox Searchlight, looking to turn their latest Sundance title into an arthouse hit among the indie-rock set (which band will change the characters’ lives this time?). Of course, I’m willing to give anything with Zooey Deschanel a chance (I have to- it’s a condition in my Screengrab contract), and I’ll definitely take Joseph Gordon-Levitt over a mopey Zach Braff. But still, this looks like the sort of kinda-sorta romance that has turned the “Sundance movie” into a hidebound genre unto itself. And after a quick scan of IMDb revealed that the “Summer” of the title references Deschanel’s character’s name, I have no reason to believe that my early assessment of the movie is too far off base.

Forgotten Films: "Getting to Know You" (1999)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Heather Matarazzo turns 26 next month. Matarazzo was still in her early teens when she starred in Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse, in which she gave a brave, risky performance as the iconically dislikable high school nerd Dawn Weiner; in her most recent movie appearance, in Hostel II, she got to hang upside down while a naked woman split her open with a scythe. Whether her future roles will give her more of a chance to show what she can do as an actress, she's already confirmed the promise of her work in Dollhouse. She's never been more affecting than in Getting to Know You, a first feature directed by Lisanne Skyler from a screenplay she adapted from stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Matarazzo plays Judith, who arrives with her pissed-off, uncommunicative brother, Wesley (played by a not-yet-irritating Zach Braff) at the bus station where they'll be waiting to go their separate ways. Judith strikes up a conversation with Jimmy (Mark Weston), who seems to appear out of the ether as if in response to her yearning, lonely vibe. Jimmy claims to know her from school, but he also claims to know the back story to just about everyone in the station, as he spins yarns about how the weary-looking security guard (Bo Hopkins) came to be a haunted man in hiding from his past and a woman (played by the director's sister Tristine Skyler) got mixed up with a manic-depressive gamblin' man (Chris Noth), his glib tongue and honeyed smile are like a red flag alerting her to his untrustworthiness. But the possibility that he's a nut seems less important in a setting like this than whatever his fantasies can provide in the way of entertainment value.

A decade or so ago, following in the wake of Robert Altman's Raymond Carver tribute Short Cuts, there was a mini-trend of independent features--such as Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects, which drew on the writings of A. M. Homes--that mashed together story threads from an author's collected words and tried to shape them into a single movie. Getting to Know You is much more gracefully shaped than most of these; it weaves the character vignettes supplied by Hopkins, Lisanne Skyler, and the other members of a supporting cast that includes Mary McCormack, Sonja Sohn, and Leo Burmeister into a slowly percolating narrative that slowly closes in on the subject that has aroused Jimmy's curiosity, and that Judith is in no hurry to address: what are she and her brother running from, and how has it split them apart, both physically and maybe emotionally? (The answer involves Bebe Neuwirth and Mark Blum as the missing component of their family unit, a pair of self-involved failed ballroom dancers--I didn't even know that was a category--who would rank high on any list of the sorriest sets of parents in the history of independent movies.)Getting to Know You, which has its own look and a wistful emotional tone that stays with you, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the "Someone to Watch" prize at the Independent Spirit Awards. To date, it remains Skyler's only feature film; here's hoping she gets to give us something else to watch soon.