The War on Terror Just Got a Bit More Terrifying

From the “better late than never” file, hey, we’re at war! We should make some films about it!

After years of workmanlike to middling to non-existent cinematic responses to the “war on terror” and the (entirely separate and mostly unrelated) war in Iraq, 2008 is finally seeing some more adventurous films on those subjects. There are, of course, some traditional films, including the soldiers’ stories of Stop Loss and Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib documentary Standard Operating Procedure.

But there’s also Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, a stoner comedy that has been polarizing critics with its political (or apolitical?) message. Super Size Me director and star Morgan Spurlock, who has a knack for clever film names, has returned with Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? and intends to answer just that question. Bulletproof Salesman, a documentary, is entirely devoted to a war profiteer selling armored cars to international forces in Iraq.

Regardless of their formats or politics, none of these films could easily be dismissed as cookie cutter approaches to the United States’ overseas conflicts. But one of the most distinctive yet may still be The Objective. It deals with a small Special Forces group that heads into the Afghan mountains and find that there are more than just Taliban hooligans waiting for them. More, as in freaky supernatural goings-on.

Will Ferrell Retroactively Flirts With Death…

… well, by way of his body-double, at least. I haven’t seen Semi-Pro, but I do not find it in the least bit surprising that a Will Ferrell film about basketball contains what in any other film would be an unnecessary bear-wrestling scene. My assumption is that in and of itself this scene hardly warrants discussion; that is, until last Thursday when that very same bear that wrestled with Ferrell’s body-double killed his trainer. What this means is that in a very indirect way, Will Ferrell put his own life on the line to make a film as disposable as Semi-Pro. I know what you’re thinking: while the bear presented a very real danger on the set, Ferrell himself was never in harm’s way. Well, suppose for a moment the bear’s pyschological breakdown took place on the set rather than months after shooting. It would follow that the bear would likely look to take out his aggression on the immediate object of his frustration (i.e., the jackass who keeps wrestling with him). Failing that, his next recourse might be to seek out someone very similar in appearance. Why that would have been no good for Mr. Ferrell, no?

Now, I don’t want to linger on the actual tragedy that occurred last week, so let’s leave behind that element of the situation and tackle this from a slightly different perspective: how Will Ferrell’s films are becoming an affront to nature and, in a greater sense, God. The universe has a funny way of encoding messages and I believe this recent tragedy can be read as follows: Mr. Ferrell, stop making the same film over and over or more will die! Yes, I’m sure the money is good. But he’s got to be set for life financially by now, it’s time to start exploring the concept of artistic integrity which, contrary to popular belief, does still exist in the comedy genre.

All That Glitters Is Not Golden

Right on cue, Jesus freaks flipped the fuck out last Christmas. But not over their (supposed) Lord and Savior. The Golden Compass, a film adaptation of Philip Pullman’s fantastic His Dark Materials book trilogy, hit theaters amidst huge fervor. See, the story’s set in a parallel universe in which people’s souls exist outside their body as animals who talk, and children are covered in mysterious particles called dust that some believe hold the key to opening doors to other dimensions, and this orphan girl has a magical compass thingy called an alethiometer that tells the future through…wait, slow down.

Er, actually, turns out the controversy (thanks Fox News—the most hilarious source I could find) was more about the book’s anti-religious themes. A church-like group called the Magisterium controls Europe in this fictional world, and they’ll stop at nothing to maintain power, even at the expense of soul-lobotomizing a few kids. Lyra, the series’ central character, finds herself in the midst of somewhat of a holy war as concerned citizens attempt to take down the Magisterium and, inevitably, God. It was such a problem that New Line was anticipating the anger long before the film went into production. They even went through a few scripts—the first by Tom Stoppard, the second by Chris Weitz—trying to get it right so they wouldn’t offend the Right. Weitz, who signed on as a director as well, couldn’t handle the pressure and resigned, but later returned saying he’s done a lot of “growing in the interim.” (I’m guessing the only thing that grew was his salary offer.)

A Conversation with Uwe Boll

With the recent proliferation of videogame adaptations laying siege on cinema, I thought it might be pertinent to take an in-depth look at the ramifications of this invasion. Who better to provide the most cutting insight into the matter than Uwe Boll, arguably the genre’s supreme chancellor? I got a chance to sit down this weekend with the feisty German in his posh Los Angeles loft for a candid and surprisingly levelheaded discussion on the past, present and future of videogame adaptations*

Dave Micevic: First of all, Mr. Boll, thank you for sacrificing time from your busy schedule to talk with me today. I know you must be overwhelmed with the advance publicity for your upcoming film Postal.

Uwe Boll: (laughs nervously) I assume you’re referring to that “Indiana Jones” ordeal, right? I know you’re being facetious, but see it as I do; you have a film as volatile as Postal and you have to sell it on that supposed volatility. It is aimed at a particular audience that responds to that level of indecency and it follows that stunts like this only further solidify the film’s potential cult reputation. Know your audience; play to their values and, in doing so, if you manage to scrounge up an occasional attendee based on irony as you yourself claim you will do, even better.

Best Case, Worst Case: Monsters, Epidemics, Adam Sandler

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (trailer)

Best case: Potentially incredible costumes, makeup, and effects in the same vein as Pan’s Labyrinth, and more scenes with the uniformly excellent Jeffrey Tambor. The trailer is loaded with monsters, and with some of the origins and introductions of the first film out of the way, this film should have a lot more room to breathe.

Worst case: Pan’s Labyrinth’s effective mixture of the real and surreal broke director Guillermo del Toro out of his genre confines, but it also set a high standard for his future films. Hellboy II appears to share a similar theme, with the real battling the mythical, but the more conventional action-based story may mean that Hellboy II garners unfavorable comparison to Pan’s Labyrinth. Even the preview features a creature with eyes in all the wrong places – look familiar? More generally, del Toro’s participation in bigger and bigger projects (including a commitment of as much as four years to The Hobbit) could prevent him from doing smaller, more novel fare.

Blindness (trailer)

Best case: The director of one of the best films of the past few years interprets a baffling, numbing, revelatory book. You do the math.

Worst case: An interesting or sort of good movie that can’t quite translate the distinctly subversive phrasing and punctuation at the heart of José Saramago’s book. The story has no character names and weaves its dialogue directly into its action and description – it doesn’t even use quotes. It’s difficult to read and thus presumably not at all easy to transpose into another medium. It also features several sequences that are so deeply disturbing that one wonders how they could possibly appear on a theater screen.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (trailer)

Best case: The new film from Adam Sandler, the king of the man-children. From the (relative) highs of films like Happy Gilmore, he has descended into the mindless depths in search of previously unknown lowest common denominators, and the marginal premise of this film (Israeli soldier becomes New York hairdresser) is not promising. But here, Sandler shares writing credits with Robert Smigel (Saturday Night Live and TV Funhouse) and Judd Apatow (the comedy guru with his fingers in basically every film coming out this year). Sandler was excellent in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, so it’s not as if he isn’t capable of good things if he’s working with the right people.

Worst case: Put the Apatow-bong down for a moment and think this over. Adam Sandler. Adam Sandler talking in a completely rubbish accent. Adam Sandler physical comedy. Adam Sandler. Ugh…

Lessons on Love and Beauty from Miss Hilton

I was fortunate enough to sit in on a recent viewing of the latest gem in the ever-evolving “career” of Paris Hilton: The Hottie and the Nottie. The film, as one can only expect, was laden with insights into the nature of beauty and the mystery of true romance. Needless to say, I walked away with a better understanding of what it takes to be attractive and I feel obligated to share these lessons with you. Looking over the box office returns for The Hottie, I feel confident that many of you aren’t privy to the magical observations covered in this film. No need to worry. I’ve got you covered with a few tips I gleaned from the whole experience. Pay attention, ladies. These are lessons you can’t avoid to overlook if you’re seeking true love.

Lesson 1: Inner beauty can exist in ugly people. It may even be their only virtue. But always remember that your inner beauty is still proportional to your outer beauty. Sure, it’s great to possess a wonderful personality, but in order to fully capitalize on it, you have to frame those indefinable traits within a clearly defined structure: generic good looks. Think of your inner beauty as a type of head-start over your competition, provided you aren’t — you know — too smart for your own good. To give you an example, when attempting to reel in a man at a bar, a conversation about recursive formulas and fugues in relation to Hofstadter’s GEB wouldn’t be a sufficiently sexy topic. That’s an example of smart in a bad way. However, a general and vague reference to being “into art” without going into any specifics concerning the discipline: that’s inner beauty gold.

Jason Statham to Play Against Type as Tough English Gangster

A movie is never just a movie in Hollywood. It is the beginning of an extended commercial assault on the country’s consciousness. That assault can take many forms, from viral Web campaigns to preposterous merchandising efforts. But it’s particularly evident in the form of unnecessary sequels. It’s true both for successful films that in no way need a sequel (The Blair Witch Project) and films that actively want a sequel but in no way financially warrant it (BloodRayne). I’m surprised the studios resisted the urge to make Passion of the Christ 2: Bloody Vengeance (Tagline: “They tortured, humiliated, and finally killed Him. Now it’s His turn to kick some ass.”)

But it’s no surprise that Crank 2: High Voltage begins filming at the end of the month and is set for a 2009 release. Groan.

Crank, for all of its faults, is a decent movie. It manipulates pacing very effectively to keep itself from ever becoming rudely farcical. The film’s ending doesn’t sensibly allow for a sequel, so there’s a pretty high risk that this one is going to go right over the top. Twisting the original’s concept – protagonist Chev Chelios (Statham) now needs regular electrical jolts instead of adrenaline – further raises the potential campiness. This could drift into Shoot ‘Em Up territory, and that is not where the Crank franchise needs to be.

And if there has to be a sequel, why such a dull name? This is clearly a film that would benefit from the 2 Fast 2 Furious verb/adjective sequel escalation rule. Crank 2? Garbage name. Crankier? Glorious golden garbage.

Although I’m not happy about the existence of a sequel at all, if there has to be one, the film’s original concept still had plenty of room for exploration. Chelios could have done any of the following things in Crank 2 to keep his adrenaline up:

Ride a roller coaster. While on fire.
Have people jump out from behind things and startle him a lot.
Bet his car that he can make a hook shot from half court so that his girlfriend can be a contestant on “Jeopardy!”
Take a stressfully difficult math test.
Explain to a mob of angry, defrauded film financers why he went along with In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.
Get strapped to a spinning wheel and have knives thrown at him, like in the circus. Catch: the knives are thrown by a bear, and the bear is drunk.

In the best-case scenario the franchise can right itself in the next decade or so. All audiences can look forward to Crank 5, in which Chelios will die if he can’t stop hiccuping.

An Open Letter To Sarah Marshall

Hey you-

Hi. We’ve never met, so this may be a bit presumptuous. But if you have a minute, I want to chat about something.

So Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the latest Judd Apatow flick, comes out this Friday. And this one’s not slipping through the cracks, as their marketing campaign, chronicled expertly in this previous COMACC post, has surpassed viral to become somewhat of an epidemic. Nary a bus, billboard or friendly sign-carrying hobo passes us by without proclaiming “I’m so over you Sarah Marshall,” “My mom always hated you, Sarah Marshall,” or “Sarah ‘Slut’ Marshall.” (Or something to that effect.) Yes, perhaps they’re mean, but it’s a film. It’s fiction. We’re all having a bit of fun.

Or so we thought. Apparently, you are offended. You’ve said “I’m starting to take it personally” and that “The name Sarah Marshall has been ruined for me.” The campaign has also motivated you to do things like sign up for extra, prohibitively expensive spinning classes and “worry about my hair and makeup every day.” You’ve also demanded the company take decisive action and “specify that it’s a movie.”

Documenting Death in The Bridge

In a time of live TV, webcams and picture messaging, society’s age of voyeurism is expansive. While the fascination of prying into the depths of human secrecy has its allure, sometimes the prospect of staring so intently into a stranger’s life seems unnecessarily invasive. This was how I felt about The Bridge, a documentary charged with paying tribute to the hundreds of souls who chose the grandiose arches of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge as the backdrop for their suicide.

Understandably, the purpose of a documentary film is to record events as they happen and then transport this knowledge to a larger audience. Though the genre is constantly evolving, typically these films attempt to enlighten viewers regarding a little known or intricately complex topic. However, in The Bridge, no such call to action existed. Instead, the audience simply watched stupefied as families poured their pain onto the screen to no evident avail.

The opening scene for this film is a jaw-dropping portrayal of a person who is enveloped among throngs of people. With effortless and ceaseless pacing, he breaks from the crowd, climbs over the gigantic gold railing and discretely dives off the cluttered walkway into the bay beneath. Business as usual, the people continue to mill about their daily lives, heading to and fro with such mindless determination that they almost fail to notice the suicide that occurred before their eyes.

Boll Declares War on Dr. Jones, Spielberg and America’s Dignity*

It’s reassuring to know that even during an off week in content due to a surprisingly hectic schedule, I can still count on a quick Google search for “Uwe Boll” to produce limitless results, allowing me to churn out a post in a crunch. The latest entry in the repertoire of insanity from the director of Alone in the Dark is his conscious, ill-advised and, well, curiously aggressive decision to release his 9/11 themed horror comedy Postal on the same day as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This will probably be old news for those of you who’ve been keeping tabs on the long and checkered Boll saga; but, seriously, is anyone really that passionate and up-to-date about the subject other than Boll himself or the film critics he has boxed to death?

You can’t count on Boll to make a competent film. However, you can count on him to make outrageous statements, and his latest should go down as some of his most priceless. The following apparently appeared in an email he sent out regarding his decision to release Postal on May 23rd:

”On the Indiana Jones weekend – May 23 – we will go out and destroy Indiana Jones in the Box Office! We all know that Harrison Ford is older as my grandpa and his time is up – would Michael Moore say! Spielberg gets sloppy. We saw that with War of the Worlds (why the fuck the older brother survived?) and also in parts of Jaws, E.T., Munich etc.! My performance in Postal as ‘Nazi Theme Park Owner’ outperforms easily Ben Kingsley in Schindler’s List!”

Ah, who could forget Micheal Moore’s famous confrontation with George Lucas in his notorious documentary This Film Does Not Exist in which he menacingly declared, “We all know that Harrison Ford is older as my grandpa and his time is up.” Man, Lucas was really put on the spot with that one. No wonder he struggled with his response. You could just imagine the sweat forming beneath that wookie beard of his. But still, you have to suspect, as usual, foul play on the part of Moore to tamper with reality through deceptive editing.

Honestly, I don’t know what Boll is referring to here and I guess neither does he, considering he makes the claim the he can out-act Ben Kingsley. I realize that Boll is attempting to be facetious, but I feel like sometimes he’s unable to discern between parody and insanity. Nonetheless, the idea of Uwe Boll out-acting Ben Kingsley is hilarious and juxtaposing his performance in Schindler’s List with a performance vaguely referred to as”Nazi Theme Park Owner” is perhaps a masterstroke for Boll. Ironically, the worst performance Kingsley ever put in was his role in an Uwe Boll movie (Bloodrayne) and I’d bet that he could still outduel Boll’s acting, whatever that may entail.

So, on May 23rd when you’re faced with the decision of seeing the first Indiana Jones film in over a decade or a comedy — about a recent national tragedy — that Gary Coleman allegedly turned down, I hope you can find the strength to make the right decision (and by right, I mean one not influenced by irony or some viciously anti-commercial sensibilities). As for me, I’m throwing caution to the wind and going with the underdog. Expect me front and center at the premier of what’s sure to be the worst film of the year. My prediction: Indiana Jones will top the box office that weekend. Postal will bring in exactly $10: my own.

*Author’s Note: Apparently WordPress has decided to randomly assign an author to this post. I feel like I deserve at least some credit for what I write and have therefore changed the author from Erick Bieritz back to myself. Sorry for the confusion, if there actually was any. —Dave Micevic