 |
|
|
 |
 Feel your speedAfter all, movies (and movie fans) have always had a soft spot for whining engines and screeching tires. But these days the deeper bond between auto racing and popular moviemaking lies in a shared passion for corporate sponsorship. The vehicles in “Talladega Nights” — which was made with the cooperation of Nascar — are covered with logos and brand names, and the movie itself may break new records for product placements per frame. It’s all in fun of course. As a good-hearted spoof of the folkways of stock-car racing, the movie is happy to mock the sport’s eagerness to sell prime uniform and chassis space to sponsors like Perrier, Wonder Bread and Old Spice. It also is tickled at the eating habits of its fast-driving characters, who wash down Domino’s Pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken with Coca-Cola and Budweiser and, when they want a high-end night out, head for the nearest Applebee’s. You can be sure that all these companies paid handsomely for the privilege of such lampooning, which even extends to the movie’s single funniest joke, a suppertime blessing brought to you by PowerAde. Really, though, the brand that powers this ragged, intermittently uproarious fusion of sketch-comedy goofing and driving around in circles is Will Ferrell, who wrote the screenplay (with Adam McKay, the director) and served as an executive producer, in addition to running around on a race track in his underpants. He does a lot more than that, needless to say, but Mr. Ferrell’s willingness to strip down to his skivvies is one of his trademarks. It is also a rare movie-star display of solidarity with those American men who, whether out of laziness or principle, disdain sunlight, proper nutrition, body-hair maintenance and abdominal exercise. Part of Mr. Ferrell’s appeal is surely that he is one of them. O.K., one of us. He also has a genius for sniffing out pop-cultural fixtures and embodying them in a way that goes beyond easy, obvious parody. Like Ron Burgundy, the hero of “Anchorman,” Ricky Bobby is at once a creature of pure, extravagant absurdity and a curiously vulnerable, sympathetic figure. The son of a “semi-professional stock car racer and amateur tattoo artist” played by Gary Cole, Ricky is born in the back seat of a speeding Chevelle and goes on to glory on the Nascar circuit. His sidekick and best buddy is Cal Naughton Jr. (John C. Reilly), a sweet, dim fellow content to come in second behind his pal. (Their motto, “shake and bake,” may be an honest homage to a popular product rather than a paid endorsement, but who really knows?) Ricky, by turns childlike and ferociously competitive, has some unresolved Daddy issues, which unfortunately weigh down the last third of “Talladega Nights” with perfunctory sentimentality. Ricky and Cal are from North Carolina, home of the stock car king Richard Petty, and it requires no sensitivity training to recognize that they are stereotypes of a certain kind of Southern manhood. Not that anyone is likely to be too offended; from the old “Dukes of Hazzard” TV show to the songs of Toby Keith, caricature and Rebel pride tend to keep close company. In any case the two good ol’ boys are soon confronted with a designated bad guy who incarnates an entirely antithetical stereotype — or, rather, invents a new one: the gay French Formula One driver. Jean Girard, as this nemesis is called, is played by Sacha Baron Cohen of “Ali G” fame with a demented sang-froid that suggests a synthesis of Peter Sellers and Pee-wee Herman. Mr. Cohen proves himself to be Mr. Ferrell’s equal and opposite, a comic dialectic sealed with the summer’s best on-screen kiss. Like most movies of this kind, “Talladega Nights” is as good as its craziest riffs, which aren’t quite strong or various enough to fill out a whole feature. The funniest scenes have some of the improvised, pseudo-vérité flavor of Christopher Guest’s “Best in Show,” but Mr. Ferrell and Mr. McKay are less rigorous than Mr. Guest and his collaborators, preferring easy laughs to carefully turned comic insights. Still, at the high points — when Mr. Ferrell and Mr. Reilly start jawboning, when Leslie Bibb slyly steals a scene as Ricky’s frosty, gold-digging wife, when Mr. Reilly and Michael Clarke Duncan try to remove a fork from Mr. Ferrell’s thigh, or whenever Mr. Cohen opens his mouth — laughs are hard to suppress. As a cultural artifact, “Talladega Nights” is both completely phony and, therefore, utterly authentic. Or, to put it differently: this movie is the real thing. It’s finger lickin’ good. It’s eatin’ good in the neighborhood. It’s the King of Beers. It’s Wonder Bread.
Animation WORLD
THE temptation to write about "Cars" using automotive metaphors may be unwise, but it's also irresistible. You could say, for instance, that the film — the first directed by the Pixar guru John Lasseter since the company's 1999 hit "Toy Story 2" — tools along at an easy clip, rather like a Volvo station wagon en route to another family vacation. At no point does it spin out of control, much less venture off-road. Instead, the film just putt, putt, putts along, a shining model of technological progress and consumer safety. But, as Ed (Big Daddy) Roth might say, chrome don't get you home and neither does 3D animation.
Mr. Roth was the creator of a delightfully unappetizing cartoon rodent called Rat Fink, a kind of anti-Mickey Mouse mascot for the hot-rod set. Given Pixar's carefully cultivated — and, for the most part, justified — reputation as a modestly maverick outfit, it would be nice to think that a decal of Rat Fink adorns the computers of at least a couple of the film's many, many animators. But both in its ingratiating vibe and bland execution, "Cars" is nothing if not totally, disappointingly new-age Disney, the story of a little cherry-red race car, Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), who can win the race of life only after he learns the value of friendship and the curvy appeal of Porsche Carrera (Bonnie Hunt).
Right off we know we're not in Kansas anymore or, for that matter, Monstropolis, home to the critters from "Monsters, Inc." or suburban Metroville, where the superheroic family in "The Incredibles" lives. The film opens at an enormous speedway, where some dozen candy-colored race cars, including Lightning McQueen, are whooshing around a track as thousands upon thousands of similarly polychromic jalopies cheer, wave flags and do the wave.
Welcome to Weirdsville, Cartoonland, where automobiles race — and rule — in a world that, save for a thicket of tall pines and an occasional scrubby bush, is freakishly absent any organic matter. Here, even the bugs singeing their wings on the porch light look like itty-bitty Volkswagen beetles.
That sounds like a slap and a tickle, and for a while it's both. As written by Mr. Lasseter, who shares screenwriting credit with Dan Fogelman, Joe Ranft, Kiel Murray, Phil Lorin and (whew) Jorgen Klubien, the film hinges on a premise older than the 1951 Hudson Hornet named Doc (Paul Newman), who gives the story its requisite geezer wisdom. After taking a wrong turn on his way to a race, McQueen lands in Radiator Springs, a town that time and the freeway forgot. There, on a derelict lick of asphalt, he meets a pileup of metal and ethnic clichés, including a tow truck with a deep-fried accent (Larry the Cable Guy as Mater) and a lowrider that apparently hopped in from East L.A. (Cheech Marin as Ramone).
This ethnic and cultural profiling is pretty much par for the animated film course, hence Jenifer Lewis, as a two-tone 1950's ride with big fins called Flo, provides the only identifiable "black" voice. Less wince-inducing are Luigi (Tony Shalhoub), a banana-yellow Italian-accented Fiat that runs the local tire store; Sarge (Paul Dooley), a World War II jeep as memorable and colorful as dung; and Fillmore (George Carlin), a VW bus who extols the virtues of organic fuel, mutters about conspiracies and raises the Stars and Stripes to the guitar squeals of Jimi Hendrix.
Given the film's regrettably retro attitude toward all things automotive (not a hybrid in sight!), it's no surprise that Fillmore, this desert outpost's most credible resident, is also its designated kook.
An animated fable about happy cars might have made sense before gas hit three bucks a gallon, but even an earlier sticker date couldn't shake the story's underlying creepiness, which comes down to the fact that there's nothing alive here: nada, zip. In this respect, the film can't help but bring to mind James Cameron's dystopic masterpiece, "The Terminator," which hinges on the violent war of the machine world on its human masters. To watch McQueen and the other cars motor along the film's highways and byways without running into or over a single creature is to realize that, in his cheerful way, Mr. Lasseter has done Mr. Cameron one better: instead of blowing the living world into smithereens, these machines have just gassed it with carbon monoxide.
Rendering plausible human forms remains one of 3D animation's biggest hurdles, something that Pixar directors like Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") have readily admitted. As if realizing that they can't (yet) compete with nature, Pixar filmmakers tend to avoid the human form or create caricatures that, by virtue of their very exaggeration (think of the middle-age spread bedeviling Mr. Incredible's wife), are wonderfully lifelike.
With his machine world, however, Mr. Lasseter appears to have tried to do an end run around the vexing problem of the human body with cars that might as well have come out of a Chevron advertisement. Even stranger, the film turns Detroit's paving over of America into an occasion for some nostalgic historical revisionism. Surreal isn't the word.
Over the last two decades Pixar has invigorated American mainstream animation with charming stories and sterling technique, reaching a company best with the consecutively released "Monsters, Inc.," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles." The age of Pixar may not be as golden as that of 1930's and 40's Disney, but it's an estimable run, especially since each new Pixar feature has reached deeper and higher in thematic and aesthetic preoccupations.
Like classic Disney, Pixar films are invariably traditionalist, with stories of familial and social retrenchment, but they're also witty and playful, fresh in both graphic and written line. One clunker won't shut down or even threaten the factory line, but here's hoping that as this onetime scrapper becomes increasingly entrenched and establishment, it keeps its geeks-and-freaks flag flying.
 Reality of businessProlific director Sidney Lumet, now 81, is in top form with his latest, superbly made and raucously entertaining new film, “Find Me Guilty.” He sure knows how to make a movie, from spinning a riveting story and perfection in casting to creating a visually compelling ambiance. I use his book “Making Movies” in film classes that I teach because Lumet lucidly examines each aspect of doing a movie and illustrates the know-how with examples from his own work. “Find Me Guilty” is a prime illustration of how to do everything right. The film is based on real characters and the real 1987-88 trial in New Jersey involving the Lucchese crime family. The trial lasted nearly two years. If you don’t know the outcome, I won’t spoil the film’s suspense by ratting. Central to the cast was a colorful criminal named Giacomo “Jackie Dee” DiNorscio who, already serving a 30-year-sentence involving drugs, decided to handle his own defense and turned the proceedings upside down and inside out. He described himself a gagster, not a gangster. (The real Jackie died during the filming.) A major part of the good news is that Lumet cast Vin Diesel in the role of Jackie, and the director, known for his great work with actors, gets a performance out of Diesel that deserves to loom as one of the best of the year when we head into to the next awards period. Diesel rises to the occasion in a challenging, unusual part and gives a commanding, colorful performance that becomes the film’s center. The rest of the film is also cast astutely, down to the most minor role. Excellent actor Peter Dinklage (“The Station Agent” on film and “Richard III” on stage) is suave and forceful as a defense attorney, making an impact beyond his size (he’s a dwarf), and it is a wonderful touch every time a court attendant has to wheel a special podium up for him to mount. Annabella Sciorra has a sizzling scene as Jackie’s wife, angrily rebellious but still with a flash of loyalty after he has cheated on her so many times. Ron Silver as the judge is measured but firm in the face of the difficulty in keeping his courtroom under control. Linus Roache is a bit over the edge as the prosecutor who has so much riding on the case, but it may be justified in view of how frustrated he is at not being able to get Jackie to become an informer and running into so many problems while pursuing the most important case of his career. Inevitably, some may think of “The Sopranos” but this is a story with far more scope. It does include elements of mob life, but the real issues involve a face off with the government in a boisterous trial. Those in the dock are not Mr. Nice Guys, and yet the sleaziness of the government witnesses and the nerve of Jackie, who is shunned by other defendants worrying about his antics, results in a dilemma for the viewer. There is the temptation to root for the defense over the prosecution. It’s a tribute to the filmmaking that one can get so caught up in the drama, its cast of characters and the courtroom atmosphere. The screenplay by T. J. Mancini and Robert McCrea uses actual testimony from the trial as part of the fictionalization. In order to accommodate the size of the trial in terms suitable for filming,--20 defendants, 20 defense attorneys and eight jury alternates—a specially wide courtroom was built in a warehouse in Bayonne, N.J. The success of the film lies partly in the details, and everything clicks brilliantly into place. “Find Me Guilty” is another important addition to Lumet’s work, encompassing such memorable films as “The Pawnbroker,” “12 Angry Men,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network,” “The Verdict,” “Serpico,” “Fail Safe,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “Daniel,” to list but a few of his achievements. It is interesting to note that Lumet keeps up with the latest technology; he shot this film on high-definition video. A Yari Film Group Releasing release.
 Revival of a life High on the list of the year's corniest symbolic acts in a Hollywood movie is the freeing of a grizzly bear from its cage in the contemporary western "An Unfinished Life." And what exactly does the liberation of the beast from a makeshift rural zoo signify? In this solemn, sentimental bore of a movie that suffocates in its own predictability and watered-down psychobabble, it presages Oprah-worthy healing and imminent family togetherness after years of strife. If nothing else, the arrival of "An Unfinished Life" close on the heels of Werner Herzog's documentary "Grizzly Man" certifies 2005 as the year of the bear in Hollywood animal fashion. With all due compliments to Mr. Herzog's incisive portrait of a narcissistic nature boy out of touch with the natural world, "An Unfinished Life" suggests that the time has come to impose an immediate cinematic moratorium on these creatures, symbolic or otherwise, real or computerized. (This one, sometimes played by Bart the Bear, is both.) Before its capture and release, the bear in question lurks on the Wyoming ranch where Einar Gilkyson (Robert Redford), a farmer and recovering alcoholic, has been stewing in bitterness over the death of his son, Griffin, 12 years earlier. Einar, who regularly visits Griffin's grave to mumble sweet nothings into the hereafter, shares the property with Mitch Bradley (Morgan Freeman), his farm hand of four decades who was seriously mauled by the animal a year before the story begins. Einar waits on Mitch hand and foot, massages his painful but fake-looking scars and administers his daily shots of morphine. Mitch, in turn, gently tries to rouse Einar from his funk. This is the latest film in which Mr. Freeman plays a saintly African-American sage, and the stereotype has become as grating as Sidney Poitier's Perfect Negro of the 1960's. "An Unfinished Life" begins in Iowa, where Einar's daughter-in-law, Jean (Jennifer Lopez), beaten up by her abusive boyfriend, Gary (Damian Lewis), flees for Wyoming with her 11-year-old daughter, Griff (Becca Gardner). When she shows up on the Gilkyson homestead, she is less than welcome. Einar blames Jean for his son's death because she drove the car in the accident that killed him. But until Jean appears, Einar doesn't know he has a granddaughter. During the rest of the movie, Einar's heart slowly thaws as he forms an attachment to Griff, whom he teaches how to throw a rope and to drive his battered pickup truck. Can a happy, bugs-in-a-rug family be far behind? An adaptation of Mark Spragg's novel of the same title, "An Unfinished Life" was directed by Lasse Hallstrom from a screenplay Mr. Spragg wrote with his wife, Virginia Korus Spragg. It is the latest Miramax film to be dumped into the marketplace as the studio empties its back catalog after the departure of the Weinstein brothers from the helm. It also signifies the final descent into ponderous, cliché-ridden pseudo-profundity by a filmmaker who became the studio's go-to guy to direct Oscar-seeking middlebrow kitsch ("Chocolat," "The Shipping News"). His gradual softening into a director of Hallmark-style sentimentality offers a cautionary case study of an artist succumbing to the bottom-line mentality of Hollywood. That mentality must account for the presence of Ms. Lopez, who plays the same battered woman she did three years ago in "Enough," but under a different name. In both movies, she finds an identical (and phony) balance of vulnerability and toughness. After an initial skirmish with her ratty boyfriend, Jean walks around with a nasty wound on her chin. But a couple of scenes later, it has all but disappeared, the better to allow Ms. Lopez to slink about in a sexy peasant blouse and be a Hollywood babe with perfect hair, creamy makeup and a rustic wardrobe. Gary tracks Jean down to the Gilkyson homestead, and in the movie's most poorly written scenes explodes within seconds of seeing her. But the film provides Jean with a buffer and handy antidote to her suspicion of men in the person of the hunky local sheriff, Crane Curtis (Josh Lucas), who seems to have been hanging around all these years just waiting for her to show up. It also grants her sisterhood as she bonds with Nina (Camryn Manheim), a local waitress, who offers her shelter after a row with Einar. Mr. Redford appears to have recovered from whatever happened to his face several years ago, when it looked as if a bad eye job had turned his expression into a sinister squint. He gives a careful, measured performance that avoids making Einar, at his worst, the sort of crazed misanthrope the character would be if viewed without rose-colored glasses. But we've also seen this performance before. "An Unfinished Life" is further undermined by Christopher Young's relentless, folksy soundtrack. The musical equivalent of synthetic gingham (yards of it) strung up on a plastic clothesline, it brings you as close to the spirit of the West as a visit to a Ralph Lauren store. "An Unfinished Life" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language and mild violence.
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
Feel your speed
