|
|
Media Whore
The summer movie season is upon us. Can I have my winter back?
We had to see Shrek--we being the lesbian roommate and I. It seems that we had spent enough green at Ralph's supermarket in the preceding month to qualify for free tickets. Yes, we buy groceries out of a common household budget. Yes, the people in our lives think that's weird. Yes, it probably keeps us both from establishing intimate, gender-correct relationships. Nevertheless, we were given tickets and by God we were going to use them.
We make our way through the heat of the San Fernando Valley, a sprawling suburb of Los Angeles that takes on furnace-like qualities during the summer due to a firewall of hills that stymies any cooling oceanic breezes. We enter the Burbank Media Center and choose, at random, one of the seven multistory parking garages that dot this charming hamlet of chain eateries and national retailers. It's full, so we try another, which is also full. The third structure yields a space on the top level.
Shrek is sold out. All night. Did I mention this was Memorial Day weekend? We've foolishly chosen a theater that is also showing Pearl Harbor, which opened only the day before. Since every red-blooded American and his Vietnam-vet uncle want to see Pearl Harbor, and the theater can only accomodate a fraction of them, many will opt to mourn their nation's war dead by seeing Shrek.
Oh, good God, it's Memorial Day weekend! Holiday weekends inhabit a mythical place in the American imagination and are so rarely capable of delivering the hopes, dreams and promises with which we imbue them. We starve ourselves of rest and recreation for months, subsuming our worldly desires beneath our workaday trials. But all it takes is a supersized weekend to scratch through our thin veneer of civilized behavior and expose the rangy beast who must be entertained! We will not see a movie this weekend. We cannot compete.
It's no coincidence that Memorial Day weekend traditionally kicks off the summer movie season, a three-month long intellectual drought during which film studios market quasi-naughty pabulum to bored teenagers. Summer is not a time for films that may contend for Academy Awards or Golden Globes. It is, however, an excellent time to release MTV Movie Award hopefuls, since the majority of the MTV voting bloc has to go back to school in September.
This leaves adults in a difficult place. We want to be entertained as well. The broiling behemoth of summer beckons us outside and almost as quickly chases us back indoors to overly air-conditioned spaces like supermarket freezer aisles and movie theaters. But what do we do with a 2001 summer movie schedule that includes Scary Movie 2, American Pie 2, Dr. Dolittle 2, Rush Hour 2 and Jurassic Park III? Are there no new stories to tell? Apparently, very few. Remakes on tap include Planet of the Apes, Rollerball and Rat Race (a loose remake of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World).
The good news about the remakes is that two of them might be good. Tim Burton has promised that his Planet of the Apes will be a reimagining of the classic Pierre Boulle novel rather than a nod to the 1968 Franklin J. Schaffner film. Mark Wahlberg inhabits the Charlton Heston role while Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Clarke Duncan inhabit monkey suits.
And if anyone can direct a compelling remake of Rollerball, it's John McTiernan. Sure, he directed 1993's bomb célèbre Last Action Hero, but he also directed 1999's smart and sexy The Thomas Crown Affair, an stunningly classy remake of the squarely mediocre 1968 original. Hey, both The Thomas Crown Affair and Rollerball were originally directed by Norman Jewison. Is McTiernan setting himself on course to remake Jewison's entire oeuvre? And if so, is that a compliment or an insult? Jewison is listed as a producer on McTiernan's Rollerball, so I'm guessing he recognizes that McTiernan's work is a loving homage.
Another summer movie trend is the translation of phantasmagoric video game landscapes to the big screen. This season's offerings include Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Tomb Raider television commercials that pretend to be film trailers but eventually reveal themselves to be product-placement vignettes must be stopped! Even if I were anxious to see Angelina Jolie run around in caves and shoot things, those commercials have snuffed any such desire well ahead of opening day. Other reasons to stay away from Tomb Raider: Jolie is the only actor in the film whose name or face you'll recognize other than that of her father, Jon Voight; it's directed by Simon West (Con Air, The General's Daughter), an industry professional whose reputation apparently depends largely upon popcorn receipts; I've seen six writers (so far) attached to the screenplay, four of whom have no previous writing credits. As a rule, I think a film is in trouble when more than two writers are credited. Be afraid.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within will please gamers simply because it avoids a couple of the more obvious pitfalls of its genre. First, it's directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi. His name may not ring a bell to us, but the man's been churning out Final Fantasy movies in Japan since 1987! Would the film be getting more publicity if it were directed by a Hollywood darling? Absolutely. But if I were intent on seeing a solid film interpretation of the video counterpart, I'd certainly want Sakaguchi at the helm. Second, the powers behind Final Fantasy have resisted the urge to turn it into a live action movie. Fantastic and surreal landscapes are best left fantastic and surreal. Don't you agree? Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within stars the vocal talents of Ming-Na, James Woods and Alec Baldwin.
So much for the chaff. There are a few films that have a shot at piercing the soft white underbelly of bland American consumerism this summer. This weekend sees the wide release of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. Luhrmann's body of work includes Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, both of which employ unexpected movement and language to engage the audience in an experience that seems out of sync with the modern world. With Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann collapses the time-space continuum entirely by marrying elements from turn of the century Paris with turn of the millennium New York. Into this dangerous and fascinating underworld, he plunges poetic hero Christian (Ewan McGregor). In the tradition of Orpheus, Christian's quest for the love of Satine (Nicole Kidman) will either destroy him or make him stronger. Intriguing, no?
I'm also champing at the bit to see The Anniversary Party, written, directed and produced by Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Why am I so excited about this film? Because it's written, directed and produced by Cumming and Leigh! How freakish is that? Cumming and Leigh star as a married couple celebrating their anniversary among Hollywood's walking wounded. The movie is, amazingly, shot entirely on digital video, and those who have seen it report that its medium is almost indistinguishable from standard (and far more expensive) film. The impressive supporting cast includes Jennifer Beals, Phoebe Cates, John Benjamin Hickey, Kevin Kline, Gwyneth Paltrow, Parker Posey and John C. Reilly. I couldn't stay away if I tried.
Finally, I promised myself that I would not be seeing Jurassic Park III approximately 45 minutes into Jurassic Park II, so that's out. But Steven Spielberg is providing some non-dinosaur oriented entertainment this summer in the form of A.I. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be terribly interested in a human drama about a little robot boy who feels love. But when the little robot boy is Haley Joel Osment (who is either animatronic himself or is a 50-year-old man in a startlingly realistic kid suit), and yummy Jude Law is his counselor, I'm buying. Law is apparently a literal love machine, an android who exists only to bring physical pleasure to humans. Says Law of his character, "He's very good at his job." Where can I get one?
And even if none of these films pan out, we can always take heart in the fact that the Writers Guild didn't go on strike. I'm hoping that the prolonged unrest and threat of unemployment was enough to inspire a few scribes to resist hackdom and imagine a few new stories. If all goes well, we should begin seeing a truly inventive crop of Academy Award contenders come September. Anyway, you can't deny a guy his fantasies.
Come back for more exclusively.net features at Unzipped.net.
|
![[2] - Hot Male Couples!](http://www.unzipped.net/images/logos/2mag.gif)
