It almost seems like yesterday, doesn’t it, when the phenom indie pic known as The Blair Witch Project made horror film headlines. One of that film’s writer-directors, Daniel Myrick, went on to be a co-founder of a WB direct to video horror film arm known as Raw Feed. The other half of that team, Eduardo Sánchez, has been somewhat AWOL…until now. After watching (or should I say, trying damn hard to watch) Sánchez’s third film, Seventh Moon, I’m starting to think Blair Witch was a fluke and those behind it are one trick ponies.
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It’s a difficult tightrope to walk doing a film adaptation of a book, especially if the book is well loved. On one hand, if you change the book’s content too much, you run the risk of angering the fans who will turn on you for all the differences between the story in their heads and the one you’ve committed to film. On the other hand, if you don’t alter the story enough so that a few hundred pages worth of information gets crammed properly into 90 minutes worth of movie, those who have not read the books will not understand what is going on or why things are happening and thus will not be able to follow the story thoroughly. I am sorry to say that “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant”, does not walk that tightrope very well and, by the third act, tumbles clumsily into the safety net below.

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In 2003’s The Yes Men, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum set up a website mimicking and lampooning the World Trade Organization, a corporation they oppose. Their website, however, was mistaken for the real thing and they were invited to speak at important meetings and functions as representatives for WTO. They decided to use the opportunity to hold a mirror up and show the corporations their own greed and hopefully make a difference. Now, with The Yes Men Fix the World, a sequel of sorts, they have gotten much better at getting people to think they represent companies they do not.

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I stumbled across this news story this morning. Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle argues that lowering ticket prices will help fight movie piracy. While I agree that the cost of admission is fairly steep, I think Boyle is missing the point. From my experience, people don’t pirate movies to save a few bucks. They do it so they can see the film when, and where, they want. Just like with music piracy, it’s all about convenience.

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What is art? Can a thumbtack on an otherwise blank wall be a picture? Can someone kicking a bucket filled with chains be music? Most of us, with great reason, would say no. It takes more inherent talent to make art; more then just sticking a tack up on a wall or just making seemingly random noise. If that’s you, go listen to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Go on, we’ll wait. It was considered the 58th best album ever in Rolling Stone magazine’s “Top 500 albums of all time.” Listening to it you may think there’s lots of improvising going on. On the contrary, these songs were notated and practiced, in order to be played the exact same way every time. Crazy, huh? If that’s not enough, go into any modern art gallery and you will, more often then not, see an entire display of large white canvases with one red dot (or some variation thereof). It can’t be art if every single painting looks the same, right? Now go listen to Chuck Berry’s School Day and No Particular Place to Go. Pretty similar, huh? On the other hand, have you seen Monet’s haystack series? Different times of the day and year, but the same ol’ haystack. So what is art? Is art the thing itself or the idea of the thing? As musician Adrian Jacobs (played with a permanent scowl by Adam Goldberg) says in explaining the difference between music and noise, “Noise is unwanted.” In the same way, art is wherever we want to see or hear it.

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You can’t crush a man’s dreams, even if they are to be the best air drummer in the world. That’s the premise in this Rocky meets Napoleon Dynamite picture written, directed and starring Ari Gold as the titular Power. He looks like a dorky Spike Jonze with a Members Only jacket and a perpetual sweatband. For some inexplicable reason they refuse to begin the film’s title with some sort of definite article. I assume they were going for a play-on-words, but that feels a little high-minded for this film. This movie is so chock full of quirk that none of the characters are even remotely believable. It’s geared towards the youth – kids and teens who thought the aforementioned Dynamite was hilarious and quoted it incessantly. Plus it is a very clean film. The raciest thing in the entire film is the back of a topless woman and I don’t remember any swearing at all so parents can feel good about leaving their children to see this while they catch something a little more mature. Most people out of High School will have a couple of chuckles and that’s it. However, those younger or with a younger sensibility will find lots here to giggle about and new lines to quote incessantly.

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There are two things present in every Coen Bros film – crime and fools. It is usually the fools committing the crimes then trying and failing to get away with it. However, it never feels that the brothers have any sympathy towards their “heroes.” On the contrary, it often feels like they enjoy making up idiots so they can point and laugh at them. In this film, though, they seem to flip that and finally reach out a helping hand to Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), obscure as that help may be. The Coens are among the smartest writer/directors working today. Heck, they translated Homer’s Odyssey into a Depression era mid-western road trip. Their worldview finds humor in oddities and discomfort – a handshake that lasts a few seconds too long, an unwanted hug, an awkward silence after a bit of stupidity has been uttered. It is in the mundane that the Coens find their comic muse and, in this film, there is a lot of humor to be found.

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I consider it a small blessing that the Mutant Chronicles had an extra feature of the audio commentary featuring actor Ron Perlman and the film’s director Simon Hunter. After watching the film first without it, it’s just one of those times where I am compelled to wonder… just what in the world were they all thinking? It is my understanding before being briefly released in the US in theatres -and HD net- in the UK it was ‘unfinished’ the year before (2008). It seems to me that although Hunter and Perlman pat themselves on the back an awful lot, not much is made of it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the film was still unfinished.
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I’m not exactly sure why anyone in their right mind thinks that Matthew Perry could pass for an older version of Zac Efron, I would have thought Friend Matt LeBlanc might have been more inspired. For some reason, once the wish of re-inventing one’s life in high school comes to pass, I forgot all about “older” Mike O’Donnell (Perry) and kept grinning every time “young” Mike (Efron) got into a tight spot, or being ‘uncool’ while giving out well meaning advice. It then occurred to me that while hordes of out of control teen girls could probably like anything Efron does on camera- the rest of us would be skeptical. Efron seems to be one of the rising actors who does a film or two (most notably High School Musical) and runs a risk of being typecast as a result. It would appear that 17 Again is a step in the right direction.
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