I don't normally blog via text, but I heard something today I just had to share. While on hold with the cable company the voice message was attempting to sell me on a movie by describing Ghosts of Girlfriends Past as "A Christmas Carrol + a traditional romantic comedy + Matthew McConaughey = 2 hours of movie magic"! I almost threw up from laughing so hard.

Love Happens - So Does Hate

The nice thing about being an independent film critic is that you aren't working for any entity. Therefore you aren't on a schedule, you don't have deadlines to meet, and generally you get to pick the movies you watch. You don't have to go see anything that you think is going to suck. I love it that I get to choose what films I will see and which ones to pass on.

Occasionally, however, I get suckered into seeing something I have no interest in. This almost happened this weekend. I had to fend my children off. They were pressuring me to take them to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". Instead I showed them the trailers for "Fantastic Mr Fox" and "Where the Wild Things Are" and I told them I would take them to see both those movies on opening night. Both are movies I am very interested anyways. Win - Win.

This was not the case last weekend. I fought valiantly but lost out to a female friend of mine who wanted to take me (her treat) to go see the new Jenifer Aniston / Arron Eckheart vehicle Love Happens. It was her birthday and my present to her was my presence at her side during the film.

Normally this is the point in my review where I review the critics take on the film and give you my review on their critique. This week I am in aggreeance with almost all the critics. So I am going to cheat and just give you my rundown on the film.

It is set in Seattle. How do I know this you ask? Because 20 minutes of the movie was dedicated to images of The Space Needle and QWest field. Great movies make the setting a living, breathing character. Bad movies rely on photos of recognizable landmarks in order to stir up an emotional connection with its audience.

As I said earlier, the movie stars Aniston and Eckheart. Both of whom have acting talent. Not that it was on display in this sappy, uneven, mess of a movie. There is absolutely no chemistry between them throughout the entire film. I blame new comer director Brandon Camp for this. The story is a mess of confusion and depends on every romantic comedy clique there is. I blame the writer for this. Who is also Brandon Camp. There was actually a "slow clap" at the revelation moment in the movie. A f-ing slow clap. This movie was one long "slow clap".

The music was about as subtle as a 2X4 to the face. There were moments where I was supposed to feel conflicted about a decision that was being made. How do I know? Because the music would swell to a fevered, apex. At just the moment boy looses girl I was supposed to be longing for them to "make it work". How do I know? The music would crescendo with violins and oboes trying as hard as they could to make this crazy couple get together.

This was also the whitest movie I have seen in a while. The only actors of color were cab drivers, busboys, hangs outs at a hookah bar. That's right, there is a scene in a hookah bar. Apparently these squares occasionally like to let their hair down and get "funky".

I apologize for all the "quotes" in this review, but I haven't found a way to describe this movie without paraphrasing my sarcasm. How else is one supposed to discuss a movie with characters like: The Quirky Assistant, The Flannel Clad Butch Contractor with A Soft Spot, The Over-The-Top A-Hole Agent (with a soft spot), A Former Marine Step Father, and A Parrot?

Everything about this movie didn't work. There wasn't one genuine emotion on display. All in all though, it was a good thing I attended the movie with my friend. Someone needed to wake her up during the closing credits.

Extract - Office Space for 2009?

In Mike Judge's new film Extract, Jason Bateman plays the owner of a small flavor extract manufacturing plant. He is accompanied by JK Simmons as a disconcerting foreman, Mila Kunis as a super sexy small time con artist, Ben Affleck as a stoner bartender, and Kiresten Wiig as his bored housewife. This is easily the biggest name cast of any Judge film to date. While occasionally all the characters weren't given enough to do, or didn't fully envelope the roles, Extract is a success. This is mainly due to Judge's skill in writing parts for blue collar workers without coming off demeaning or judgemental (no pun intended).

This point of view does not coincide with Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly. Now I will say of the two main film reviewers at EW, I tend to agree with Mr. Gleiberman more than the other. With a 5 paragraph review of Extract Mr. Gleiberman dedicates the final 2 paragraphs to a different movie all together. Robert Siegel's Big Fan. Which he claims is the better movie. Owen spends the first paragraph of his review mostly quoting Thoreau, and again comparing the two movies. Then he opens his 3rd paragraph complaining of the banality of the title "Extract". He then goes on to criticize Judge's writing and his spontaneity as a filmmaker. I find it interesting that someone complaining of stale writing only gave a synopsis of the plot and about 3 sentences of actual review withing 5 paragraphs. Then when he did write his clever critique is read like this:

But didn't Judge realize that Extract, with its plastic setups and one-dimensional harpies, plays like Kevin Smith remaking a bad George Segal comedy from 1978? ~ Owen Gleiberman

Does anyone even know what this means? George Segal only released 1 movie in 1978. Who is killing all the Great Chefs of Europe? If Kevin Smith directed that, what would happen?

Mr. Gleiberman also made it a note to mention that Ben Affleck is the only one having fun. I found Ben Affleck to be painfully unfunny in virtually ever scene he was in. It is main ingredient I would have changed in the film. He was out acted by Gene Simmons of KISS fame as an obnoxious prosecuting attorney.

On a similar spectrum Peter Travers of Rolling Stone found Affleck to be...

A goofball delight hiding behind a beard. ~ Peter Travers

Maybe I am just missing it. One other scene both critics agreed on was where Affleck and Bateman smoke pot together. Both critics raved on this scene, and to me it almost brought all the comedic timing to a halt. But again, maybe weed jokes are wasted (again, no pun intended) on me. To Mr. Travers credit he did point out a few other positive points.

He (Judge) can anchor laughs to the rhythms of life not sitcom. ~ Peter Travers

Extract reminds us of how little a damn Hollywood gives for the workplace where most Americans spend their lives. ~ Peter Travers

As an employee of a factory for several years in many different positions, I have seen all of the one note characters Judge put in front of us and I can say that he hit the nail on the head on all of them. His research must have been as diligent as Aronofsky's was for The Wrestler. It reminded me very much of the 1941 classic Sullivan's Travels in which a director of fluff films wants to make a movie with a social conscience. So he dresses in hobo clothing and joins the lowest class only to learn the lesson of his life. I better stop now, I wouldn't want this review to ramble on too much about a second film.

Recast Contest

Are you tired of Hollywood remaking the movies of your childhood just for a quick buck? Haven't you had enough of them putting the latest teen hunk, or sultry vixen in place of the icons you grew up watching? (I'm talking to you Tim Burton!) If Hollywood is going to continue to remake every classic film, don't you wish you had a say in who could play the parts of your favorite characters?

Critics Critic is here to ease your pain. We are now offering our first contest. It will be a monthly Recasting Contest. Here's how it works:

I will post the name a classic film, and the major characters of the film. I will also provide the names of the actors that originally played those roles.

You will then email us at movierabble@gmail.com and provide us your recasting ideas.

I will review all the entries and the person will the most clever, original, entertaining, or just best placed actors/actresses will win a free movie ticket to a theater near them. They will also win the privilege of naming the next months Recasting Movie.

Lets get things started! The inaugural Recasting Movie is: The KARATE KID

Ralph Macchio - Daniel Larusso
Pat Morita - Mr. Miyagi
Elisabeth Shue - Ali Mills
William Zabka - Johhny Lawrence
Martin Kove - John Kreese

A typical response might be:

Zach Efron - Daniel-san
Jet Li - Mr. Miyagi
Anna Farris - Ali
Dane Cook - Johhny
John C. Riley - John Kreese

Be original! I encourage you to explain your picks.

If you think your picks can stand up to everyone else, then please share your picks with other followers and viewers of Critics Critic by posting them as comments to this message.

This contest is only available to public followers of Critics Critic, so be sure to click on the link and sign up! It only takes a minute and it is completely secure. This will be the first go around for this contest, and there might be a few bugs to work out, but we are excited to see what you come up with.

Again, the email address is movierabble@gmail.com. Have fun recasting.

Walk The Earth

500 Days of Summer. You should know up front, this is not a negative review.

The Romantic Comedy. What fresh perspective can be placed upon this tired genre. What can I possibly say that brings new life to a cinematic movement that is as stale as the writing in most of the films themselves. How can a cinephile such as myself defend a trope of movies (all released this year) who's titles include: The Proposal, The Ugly Truth, New in Town, He's Just not That into You, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and Confessions of a Shopaholic? Fortunately for me there are Rom-Coms being made like, first time director, Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer that transcends the stereotypes and provide their own perspectives on love and dating in the 00's.

The Podcast. A wonderful invention. Audio/video recordings, generally brief, that anyone can record and place online for the world to consume. It's like talk radio chopped into tiny pieces then injected with steroids. Unfortunately the podcast movement hasn't really taken off like the juggernaut it appeared it was going to be. There are however a number of successes. I am a subscriber to several. My most beloved is Filmspotting. A weekly film review podcast of a Chicago Public Radio show. Its hosts are Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson. The Filmspotting format is to review 1-2 movies currently in theaters. There is then a contest called Massacre Theater in which the hosts recite lines from films and listeners email in to win a DVD. Then there is a recap of what DVD's came out that week, then a quick announcement of monetary contributors to the show. At this point they usually review a film that is part of a marathon they are having that listeners are encouraged to follow. Marathon topics have included the works of classic directors, silent movies, foreign films, etc. Then the show is closed out with a weekly Top 5. The Top 5 generally ties in with a topic that has been discussed on the show.

Top 5 lists. Filmspotting has them, so did High Fidelity. Another great romantic comedy, and a major influence on 500 Days of Summer. Generally I agree with the Filmspotting guys takes on movies, even when they don't agree with each other. That is to say that I know what they are saying, but sometimes they can be completely wrong. Sadly, that is the case with their review of this great film. 500 Days is a story about a boy that meets girl of his dreams. There is only one problem, she doesn't believe in love and doesn't want to be any one's "girlfriend". They do spark a relationship, but after some time she ends it. He becomes depressed. But wait! They have a chance meeting on a train. Right as he was starting to get over her and now it looks like there might be the possibility they can make it work. That is before she shatters his life in a twist that I didn't see coming at all. He is reduced to ashes. Scratch that. He is reduced to ashes, then the ashes are soaked in urine. He is reduced to a gray gelatinous urine soaked blob. But as things go he begins to pull himself out of yet another funk and maybe this time things might go his way.

I normally don't provide a synopsis of movies, but to explain the comments made on Filmspotting, I thought a basic understand of the plot would be helpful. Adam, sometimes referred to as "Art House Adam", his negative comments centered around the movie being cliche.

Overly cute in its self reflectivity....It's really everything and the kitchen sink. ~ Adam Kempenarr

Matty, or "Mainstream Matty Ballgame", complaints were about the film being unoriginal and having too many unnecessary moments.

Too much filler and fluff....This is Benson humor. ~ Matty Robinson

It should be said that both Adam and Matty thought the film was good, just not great. What I like about Filmspotting is that no matter weather they are providing positive or negative reviews, it is the thought and manner they put into their critiques that set them apart. They rarely come out and say a film is "good or not good". Generally they will provide explanations of what they thought did or didn't work and why. With 500 Days they go on to make brilliant insights like...

It all pays off in a scene later where you get some insight to the true nature of their relationship, and you realize the the entire relationship has been built on a charade of cinema... Tom has been projecting all his fantasizes from movies onto her. ~ Adam Kempenarr

This is a sharp observation and possibly the reason I was sucked into this movie like it was a jet engine. The first time I saw it I almost had a panic attack in the theater. The emotions that Tom, played pitch perfect by Joseph Gordon Levitt, were emitting were so familiar. I thought I had exhausted and repressed all of those memories from a very similar relationship with my own "manic-pixie-dream girl". I decided to wait a few weeks and see it again to make sure my opinion wasn't based on familiarity. I was rewarded upon a second viewing. I begin to see deeper into the film and realize the careful construction Marc Webb used in order to pull those emotions from his audience without manipulating them. Perhaps it is more honest to say that the entire relationship is a manipulation. One where the hints and clues of what to come are displayed right in front of the viewers face. Webb disperses this info like a romantic-comedy version of The Usual Suspects.

Zooey Deschanel manages her finest performance to date. A sharply crafted anti-hero. A woman strong and vulnerable, sharp, witty, fiercely independent and tender. She was tasked with delivering the line "What I was never sure of with you". Her vocalizing this line pushed her just slightly ahead of the Wicked Witch of the West on my Top 5 All Time Villains List. But if her character, Summer, called tonight I would drop what I'm doing and run to her. Being a movie nerd I see the world at 24 frames per second. I quote movie lines all day long, most of my references come from films to the point that I drive most of my friends crazy. I am Tom.

500 Days of Summer is a nonlinear movie about the 500 days of a relationship. It is a movie about wanting something so bad that you try to make it into something it's not. It is a movie about how movies, music, and pop culture can skew our take reality. Am I miserable because I listen to Filmspotting, or do I listen to Filmspotting because I am miserable?

Inglourious Basterds - Incorrectly Spelled on Purpose This Time

This was the weekend I have been waiting for all summer. It's fair to say that this is the weekend that I have been waiting on for the past 10 years. After seeing Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and reading everything I could about this revolutionary director I found out that he was scribing a Dirty Dozen-esque WWII movie. I was intrigued to say the least. Then after seeing how he could warp the blaxploitation genre with Jackie Brown, combine the Kung Fu and Spaghetti Western films with Kill Bill and make an homage to B movie slasher films with Death Proof I was salivating at the thought of his take on the war film.

So right off the bat I had huge expectations for his newest film Inglourious Basterds (IB). If you followed my blog this weekend you might have seen that in order to "beat the crowd" I slept in the cab of my truck in the theaters parking lot. I wanted to be the first one in the theater, and I wanted to get "my seat" (I love to sit in the center of a theater using the X,Y,and Z axis). I know that inflated expectations are a dangerous thing for a critic. After the Coen Brothers released the best film of the 00's, No Country For Old Men, I held the bar sky high for their next film Burn After Reading. I got burnt on that one.

While I was camping in my truck I took some time to read the reviews of IB. The two I want to focus on are Michael Sragow's from the Baltimore Sun, and Richard Corliss's of Time Magazine. Sragow has the film as a 38 on Metacritic. Corliss is a 100.

This is usually the point in the review where I point out the consistencies of the different reviewers and make my snide comments with anything I disagree with. Problem is these 2 critics have virtually nothing to compare. Sragow despised IB and really didn't have much if any positive things to say.

The only hope for "Inglourious Basterds" is that audiences will embrace it the way the Broadway crowd did "Springtime for Hitler": because it's so bad they think it's good. ~ Michael Sragow

I really can't comment too much on Mr. Sragow's review. I disagree with almost everything he has to say about the film. He refers to the movie as being "soporific", "killingly repetitive", "hollow and protracted".

Corliss however was quite gushing with his comments.

Tarantino shows how to achieve drama through whispers and forced smiles...the pot simmers, then the lid blows off it's the artful mix of subtlety and surprise. ~ Michael Corliss

My problem with this review is that I absolutely loved the movie, but I agree with Sragow on SOME of his criticisms, and I disagree with Corliss on some of the elements he enjoyed.

Sragow points out the the weakest element of IB is The Basterds themselves. This is true. Brad Pitt just doesn't have the chops to pull of a Tarantino anti-hero. He never gets beyond a cartoon characterization of Aldo Raine. The biggesst distraction in the movie has to be Eli Roth as a baseball wielding Jewish solider called "The Bear Jew". Roth directed "Pride of the Nation" A Nazi propaganda film that plays within IB, but his acting skills are nonexistent.

Corliss makes it a point that Tarantino fans will be let down by the absence of his cinematic footwork. He then mentions a few cut away scenes like a couple seconds of a German officer and his interpreter having sex, The cut away to explain one of the Basterds back story, and shots where high ranking Nazi's have there name scribbled over their heads with arrows pointing to them. These were some of the most pointless and frustrating elements of the movie to me. They didn't add anything to the story nor did they ever tie into anything. This was movie making masturbation.

Where Corliss got it right was in mentioning the female characters. Nobody writes better for women than Tarantino. The female leads were beautiful, cunning, and deadly. It is worth mentioning that this is a war movie without any battle scenes. There isn't a tank, bomber, or bunker to be seen. Mr Sragow believes this is because, in his opinion, Tarantino "couldn't stage a sweeping war scene". I believe it is because he is subverting the genre. He is using words as weapons. The tension in this movie doesn't come from the brutal acts being performed (don't worry,there are plenty of those to go around), it comes from the delicate delivery of lines sharper than any of the bastards scalping knives. The violence is mearly the payoff.

A few quick notes to finish out. 75% of this movie is n sub-titles, so if you are opposed to reading at the theater I might think twice before you buy your ticket. Also some other acting standouts beyond the female leads (Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger) are the Best Actor winner at Cannes, Christopher Waltz as "The Jew Hunter". My issue with him is that they tried to act some comedic elements to his persona that for me just fell flat. The male character that stood out the most for me was Dennis Menochet as a French dairy farmer that may be hiding Jew in his home. I hope he gets tons of work after his performance.

IB is far from over taking PF as my all-time favorite film, but it is a continuation in the career of America's bravest and boldest filmmaker working today. My only problem now is the IMDB doesn't have any new projects listed for Quentin Tarantino. Oh well, there is always another Coen Brother movie later this year. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Grindhouse was as awesome as I remembered it. The fake trailers provide the perfect pallet cleansing between features. What a weekend. I didn't get home until 6:00am this morning. I'm looking forward to a relaxing evening at home. Watching a Sam Fuller twofer on DVD!