I've been watching season one of The Tick animated series. It's pretty cool to see how well that material holds up.

Finally saw BORAT recently, and lamented not having seen it on a big screen with a large group of people, which I have to imagine was a pretty cathartic experience. I was familiar with Da Ali G show and had seen a lot of the clips and sketches, so I knew what to expect from BORAT for the most part, and yet it still kind of blew my mind how fearless it is, both in the testing of the unwitting participants' boundaries and those of the audience itself. That Cohen found a way to so daintily package this all up as a mega-hit, mainstream film with such weirdly broad appeal -- kind of using its own wacky "lovable" novelty character as a deceptively harmless sort of bait -- makes it doubly remarkable, and while there isn't any contempt for the audience per se, there's a sinister sort of "got you now," audience-as-prisoner undertow to it all that gives it an unexpected, slightly disturbing sort of resonance.

I sometimes can't help but feel that Cohen's overall comedic sensibilities are actually a bit ho-hum -- but what makes him stick is his fearlessness. I found myself wondering if Cohen or his crew were arrested at all during the making of the film; certainly they seem to be risking it, along with possible physical harm, assuming that none of the participants are plants (Anderson aside.) I'd seen forms of this kind of thing before, more arbitrarily, in Jackass, some of Tom Green's wilder sketches, and similar reality and prank TV shows: but Cohen's pretty much on his own level. And the degree to which some of the pieces in this movie can make you squirm in empathic discomfort is insane. That's where most of the movie's much-lauded "hilarity" comes from -- you're almost forced to laugh constantly, not always because it's necessarily just that funny (though it often is), but as a pure tension-release mechanism.

It does feel, as you might expect, like a series of improv set pieces, like strung together bits for a TV show, although Larry Charles does what he can to give it all some loose semblance of narrative arc and dramatic cohesion. In a way it felt too brief to me, oddly, and I know I've seen bits and clips floating around that were -- to my disappointment -- not in the movie at all. I sort of found myself wishing it weren't edited as much as it is, and it's the kind of project whose behind-the-scenes extras have to be almost as tantalizing as the movie itself (though I didn't have a chance to watch them.)

K

That's a good take, Madget. It was a great experience to see it with a crowd while incredibly stoned.

I've been watching this PBS documentary, THE APPALACHIANS, which isn't a great doc, but interesting if you haven't read anything about the region. The Irish and German settlers pissed on the Cherokee after the latter were betrayed by the British., eventually leading to the Trail of Tears. The early coal industry stripped much of the land and pissed on the settlers' descendants. The amount of abuse heaped on the coalminers was brutal. It's a sign of true irony that such regions tend to be right-wing. Of course, all this oppression led to some great music.

And I saw I AM LEGEND this weekend.

"[Will Smith] has the chops to carry off the extended quiet scenes of a very lonely guy whose only companion is his dog, Sam, and a bunch of showroom dummies (a big surprise to me, I must admit, since I’ve never found him any more prone to nuance than Arnold)."

Have you seen SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION? One of his earlier films. It was because of his performance in that that I knew he could act if he had to.

Nah, haven't seen it. I'm not likely to go seeking out Will Smith movies after his latest, but I won't feel as obligated to avoid them in the future.

Forget Smith; it's Akiva Goldsman's check I don't want to contribute to.

K

Yeah! Me too. I hate his films. He's one of those writers who makes me wonder why I can't make a healthy living from scripting films, on a "if he can, surely I can" basis.

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION isn't really a Will Smith film, btw. In the sense that while he's a major character he's no more important than Stockard Channing's character (she is, ultimately, the film's protagonist), and it was before his simply being in the film made a difference - other than his performance. This is Will Smith pre-WILL SMITH: MOVIE STAR. Also, while reminding myself who else was in it apart from those two and Donald Sutherland & Ian McKellen, I found it featured: Heather Graham, Anthony Michael Hall (what ever happened to Molly Ringwald, Tony?), Bruce Davison (anti-mutant senator in X-Men), and JJ Abrams (LOST creator). I think Abrams played Will Smith's lover.

I just saw ATONEMENT earlier today.

The gist of the premise (without spoilers) is that Briony Tallis, a budding writer, is jealous of her older sister's relationship. Thanks in part to her fanciful ways, she does something bad that has serious consequences for her sister's relationship.

I haven’t read any Ian McKwen novels, but I have heard mostly very good things about them, and about this adaptation, so I guess I expected something more. It’s certainly not a bad film: it’s well crafted and well acted. It may suffer from looking so much like an award winning film – I imagine how THE HOURS would have seemed had I watched it.

It seems to be marketed, to a degree, as a romance (one of the ‘serious’ romances Working Title does inbetween their comedies), with the emphasis on the two publicised leads: Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

I’d call it a sophisticated tearjerker. I mean that in a (mostly) good way. As is often the case with these types of films, I didn’t find myself overly engaged with the couple at the centre of the romance. The film succeeds, however, because despite this distance, I felt a palpable sense of loss by the end. I could feel what was lost - what they missed out on, even though I didn’t really connect with them. This is the aspect of the film that resonated most with me: Loss. Waste. The fragility of relationships and of life. It also succeeded in making one of the woman I watched the film with cry (and the other two and I were a bit teary-eyed, frankly).

Also, the meta-narrative elements had me thinking some bizarre stuff about the nature of fiction. But I can't talk about that in any detail pre-spoilers, so I might come back to that later.

As I said, it contains good performances all round, and there’s a particularly good performance from Saoirse Ronan, as the younger Briony Tallis. She's an interesting character and I would have liked to have seen more of her in the film.

Oh, and it has an appearance by an old favourite, Vanessa Redgrave. This reminded me of my favourite quote from MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, which I watched not so long ago.

Poirot: “Forgive me, Miss Debenham, I must be brief. You met Colonel Arbuthnott and fell in love with each other in Baghdad. Why must the English conceal even their most impeccable emotions?’
Debenham: “To answer your observations in order: of course, yes, yes, and I don't know.”

Ahh, the English. So reserved. Still, I bet there were a few Blighty girls who cried at the end of Atonement.

Re: the MST Megalon movie--

Over on DVD Maniacs some people managed to get the season 10 comp of MST2K, plus Megalon, but evidently there's been a recall thanks to the reputed-to-be-incredibly-litigious Tohofilms. Some posters said that in place of MEGALON the MST folks have been forced to substitute GIANT GILA MONSTER. If you already snagged the set with Megalon, MST will sell you Gila Monster as a stand-alone.

Very interesting, Gene...

The Giant Gila Monster isn't as good, but still fairly fun. That's a bummer, though.

Here are some things I saw recently:

The Last Legion: They meant well, but it's a disappointing movie due to a lack of sufficient spectacle to go with all the good character stuff from Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley. Apparently, judging by how often the director mentioned budget problems on the commentary track, the De Laurentis family just weren't willing to spend the money it would take to make the movie really awesome. So, you have to settle for a great first forty minutes or so and then a so-so final battle.

Basically, it's a retelling of parts of the Arthurian matter. Even if the ad campaign hadn't spoiled that for me, I would have caught on right away because of all the references to the Ninth Legion, Hadrian's Wall and other historical stuff that gets mentioned in some of the more plausible Arthurian stories.

The director doesn't get us Americans enough credit. It's supposed to be a surprise when the story finally puts all the pieces together, but anyone who has ever read up on King Arthur a little should have figured that out the first time the name Vortigern comes up.

I was satisfied, but my relatives I watched it with thought it seemed kind of cheesy.

Aishwarya Rai is awesome as Mira, the female assassin. On top of being totally stunning, her movie kung fu is strong. Fans of the Simonson/Goodwin Manhunter may get a big kick out of the way she uses a katar (Bundi dagger) as a backup weapon.

Mildly recommended.

Samurai 7 volume one: The first four episodes don't even get around to introducing all the samurai in this weird science fiction "reimagining" of Seven Samurai... but the show is still a lot of fun. Every so often there will be a scene based on the Kurosawa film, but it's mostly new stuff that ups the wow factor. So, if things like cyborg samurai trashing buildings with their swords and flying battleships that resemble pagodas sound appealing, you can't really go wrong with this series. The storytelling is a little decompressed, but not in an annoying way. There seems to be legitimate reasons for stretching the plot out and adding new subplots and extra bad guys. Just accept that whatever metal they use for their swords is nigh indestructable and you'll be all right.

Highly recommended.