Snap Judgment: Wooden Farrell, Animated Cage

Happy Friday, wallabies! (That's probably what they say in Australia.) (To the wallabies, not the people. I assume people are addressed the same way they are here.)

Yeah, that southern hemisphere humor just doesn't play north of the equator. Anyway.



John Tucker Must Die (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Betty Thomas, written by Jeff Lowell)

Ah, we finally have this year's high school murder comedy. It's about time. I wonder how they'll kill this Tucker fellow. May I refer them to the list of ten deadliest poisons recently published by Wired? Lots of good choices there. Can you believe cyanide is only #6? Didn't you always have the impression that that was like by far the deadliest thing in the world, and you could die just by thinking about it, or even just by thinking about the color cyan and then mentioning the Ides of March in the next sentence? No, turns out botulinum is the most lethal of them all! Which, of course, is what they use in botox. Why, that's perfect. Just have one of these "high-school aged" girls get John Tucker to kiss them on their foreheads, and voila! Rapid death via nervous system failure!


Scoop (comedy/mystery, rated R, written/directed by Woody Allen)

ScarJo's back, and this time she's neurotic! But it's not that surprising; I'm sure after Match Point, Woody could only hold out for so long before his typewriter burst forth with scene after scene of people fretting hilariously about hors d'ouevres and being late for the opera. Oh, I kid, but we know I'll probably still Netflix it; if I could endure Curse of the Jade Scorpion (though just barely, and mainly because I was on a plane), then I should be able to put up with anything else (except, of course, the actual movie Anything Else, which I'm quite sure I'll never see). Moving on...


The Ant Bully (animated, rated PG, written/directed by John A. Davis, from the book by John Nickle)

Eek. The picture of a scantily clad boy under a creepy-looking guy with his arms out didn't raise any red flags, Social Services-wise? No, the MPAA was probably too busy censoring boobs to notice. Meanwhile, the star-studded cast list at the bottom is a comforting indicator of the fact that no matter how much artistry and effort an animation studio can put into one of its films, it'll still never sell without a bunch of famous people doing the voices. Remember when the biggest star in Beauty and the Beast was Angela Lansbury, and she had to do her own singing too? Me too, sort of. Then again, I can't argue with using Nic Cage in a cartoon, seeing as his voice already sounds like it's coming out of an animated zebra.


Miami Vice (action, rated R, written/directed by Michael Mann, based on the series created by Anthony Yerkovich)

Well, this just seems wrong to begin with. Sure, it's a movie based on a 20-year old TV drama that mainly retains camp value, but where's McG? More to the point, WHERE THE HELL IS OWEN WILSON? Has the man not proven his worth already? Was the 1-2 punch of I Spy and Starsky & Hutch not enough to cement his standing as the go-to actor for this type of film? Plus, Colin Farrell isn't from Miami. He's not even American! He's from Castleknock, Dublin! Was I in the bathroom when they changed the movie to Castleknock Vice? This is all just very, very wrong. Owen Wilson and Will Smith. That's the cast for this movie. (And all sarcasm aside, I'll eat both of my socks if none of the Universal executives suggested that in earnest.)

M. Night Shyamalan's Snap Judgment

Well, the studios have finally popped their heads out from under their blankets to see if the scary Pirate's still there, and that means a whopping four actual movies with which I must dispense. So let's get the dispensing started, shall we?



Lady in the Water (fantasy, sort of, I guess, rated PG-13, written/directed by M. Night Shyamalan)

Yeah, I had to use this poster, even though it's an older one, because of the sheer awesomeness of "A BEDTIME STORY WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN." You know why it's awesome? Because I totally bet this poster is not the first time he's used that. I bet when M. Night sits down on his kids' beds to tell them stories every night, he uses the exact same phrasing ("Hey Saleka, are you tucked in with your teeth brushed yet? Want to hear a bedtime story WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN?"). I bet his bedtime stories have digital surround sound, murky opening credits, and surgically precise ad campaigns. And before the kids can even hear them, they have to sit through crazy schizophrenic Sprite ads and trailers for John Tucker Must Die. Also, if Saleka walks down the hall and reveals to her sister the shocking twist ending to the bedtime story ("...and they all lived happily ever after!"), then that kid is OUT OF THE FUCKING FAMILY! But come to think of it, I do wonder what kind of bedtime stories Ron Howard told his daughter when she was of a young impressionable age. I would've thought he'd told her the one where the up-and-coming actress hitches her star to the hottest up-and-coming director so the two of them can share in the joy of killer box office and stupendous paychecks, but instead he seems to have told her the story about the up-and-coming actress signing on to the first really shitty movie by said up-and-coming director, then being lured into an even shittier one with the promise of top billing and a permanent space in the hearts of all mermaid fetishists. Oh, and Paul Giamatti? Well, I'm guessing his excuse is that he saw The Sixth Sense, fell into a 6-year long coma, and was finally awoken by a call from his agent offering him the lead in the new Shyamalan movie. "Holy shit, the I-see-dead-people dude? I'm so fucking there!" Apparently his stupor lasted long enough to film the entire movie and do publicity for it, but I have to assume that if nothing else, this story should alert him to the fact that it's a long time since 1999.



Clerks II (comedy, rated R, written/directed by Kevin Smith)

I kind of have nothing to say about this, except that I do remember a time when you had to be fairly hip to even know who Kevin Smith was. But it's not like I was one of the first people to see Clerks at Sundance or anything, so I can't really play the in-on-the-ground-floor card here. I saw it on video, in a friend's dorm room, sometime in late 1996. Naturally, I thought it was genius. By now I'm more of the mind that Kevin Smith's career is genius, since he's been able to elevate himself to the status of a sort of dick-joke Hitchcock, wherein his personality alone sells the movies. Really, he's got the status that Indian-Pennsylvanian fellow we were talking about before wishes he had and probably could have if he didn't keep shooting himself in the foot.



Monster House (animated, rated PG, directed by Gil Kenan, written by Dan Harmon, Rob Schrab, Pamela Pettler)

Oddly enough, I hear this is really good. And I say "oddly enough" because right smack dab in the middle of the poster are the words "Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis present...", and in this day and age that's bound to make anyone a bit suspicious. Sure, in the 80's, if Spielberg made a movie it was E.T. or Indiana Jones and if he "presented" a movie it was Goonies or Back to the Future. These days, he's fighting an uphill battle to throw enough Minority Reports and Munichs out there so no one notices that (seriously) he's a producer on Transformers. And Zemeckis? Well, he was last seen basking in his coup of making Harrison Ford into a psycho killer (and SHOWING THAT TWIST IN THE FREAKING TRAILER), then moving on to turn one of my beloved childhood books into some kind of bizarre digitized robot freakshow. So, to sum up, if this movie came out 20 years ago, the words "Spielberg and Zemeckis Present" would be enough to sell out the opening weekend even if it turned out to be a documentary on pink highlighter ink. Today it's a harder sell. However, no matter who's attached to it (or who's putting their names on it in return for being owed a lifetime of favors up to and including a kidney), it is a movie about a living house terrorizing some kids. And that sounds kind of cool.



My Super Ex-Girlfriend (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Ivan Reitman, written by Don Payne)

Yeah, I don't blame Uma for smashing that car with her foot. I'm guessing she was promised Owen Wilson, then showed up to set to find the inferior one waiting for her with a copy of her binding contract. He's just lucky she didn't have any leftover Hattori Hanzo swords handy. Could've gotten ugly.

Snap Judgment: Arrrrrr the studios scared to release anything good now?

Well, since that Pirate movie is still doing killer business (even beating out made-up James Cameron movies), this isn't exactly a weekend of major new releases. But I'll do my best to deflect what there is so you can feel good about going back and seeing a barnacle-clad Stellen Skarsgård again.

You, Me and Dupree (comedy, rated PG-13, directed by Anthony & Joe Russo, written by Mike LeSieur)

How does the Owen Wilson who co-wrote Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums reconcile himself with the Owen Wilson who does stuff like this? Does he have a spiked whip in his linen closet that he uses to self-flagellate after cashing his 8-figure checks (perhaps donating a reasonable portion thereof to, say, Cure Autism Now or another equivalently chic and non-Scientology-based charity)? Does he IMDB his kid brother to remind himself that at least he's steered clear of any McG-tainted enterprises thus far? Does he schedule a night out with Vince Vaughn so he can go to sleep satisified in his continued evasion of The Bloat? Does he give his cook the day off and make his own grilled cheese sandwich just to feel like a regular guy? I don't know, but somehow he does it.


The Groomsmen (comedy, rated R, written/directed by Ed Burns)

Sure, 10 years ago Ed Burns didn't mind when his movies flew under the radar and only got noticed by the hip, urban Hefeweizen-drinking crowd; but now that he's put in his time acting in big studio flicks to pay the bills and get noticed, I'd think he'd be a little put off that even a relatively star-studded affair like this one is still being marginalized into an LA/NY-only release. Or maybe not! Maybe he wants this level of cachet. Perhaps he fancies the directing career of, say, John Sayles, except without the occasional uncredited rewrites of Schwarzenegger movies. Although it remains to be seen if Sayles would ever work with Matthew "Always brings his own script" Lillard or John "Oh crap, I left my subtlety in the car" Leguizamo.



Little Man ("comedy", rated PG-13, directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, written by Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Marlon Wayans)

You might think this is the kind of movie for which I started Snap Judgment in the first place. You might think I anticipate the release of movies like this with bated breath for weeks in advance, drooling over the trashing potential they're destined to have. You would be horribly, horribly wrong. I take no more pleasure in the release (not just the release, the existence) of this film than I do in biting my tongue hard enough to draw blood while I'm eating a zucchini walnut muffin. Sure, I might make some kind of joke about that after the fact, but do I in any way hope that it will happen before it does? N. O. So all I will say about this, before I turn away from it and do my best to forget about it forever, is that HE DOESN'T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE A FUCKING BABY!

Snap Judgment: Arrrrrrr, junkies!

Can a double espresso counteract my post-awesome-Hollywood-Bowl-show tiredness enough to do a decent whaling on this week's movies? I guess we'll find out soon enough.


A Scanner Darkly (sci-fi, rated R, written/directed by Richard Linklater, from the novel by Philip K. Dick)

So this movie uses the rotoscope animation process, previously used by Linklater a few years ago in Waking Life. Except nobody saw that (including me, though Eti has the DVD I think), so let me rephrase the statement slightly: This movie uses the rotoscope animation process, previously used in the totally awesome video for "Take On Me." Yeah! Now we're making progress. Unfortunately, I must now break the news that, as far as I know, a-ha is featured nowhere in this particular film. In fact, I think it's unlikely that the movie contains any Norwegians at all: it was all filmed in Texas over the summer, and that kind of weather just isn't friendly to anyone with Scandinavian-derived skin. Too bad. Because quite frankly, a drugged-out Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. don't even come close to the entertainment value of a bunch of freaky-looking mechanic guys with goggles and wrenches. Also, the music in Scanner was apparently composed by some guy named Graham Reynolds, who probably has all kinds of pretentious artistic-music-guy aspirations and would never even dream of using, say, a slightly fuzzy drum machine layered over a dozen or so keyboard tracks. Anyway, to close on a more interesting note, I'll paste in a helpful passage from the Wikipedia entry on a-ha. "The origin of the name a-ha comes from the title of an early song (The Juicyfruit Song). After checking dictionaries in several languages, they found out that "a-ha" was an international way of expressing recognition, with positive connotations. It was short, easy to say and unusual."



Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (big-budget scurvy, rated PG-13, directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio)

I want to know whose idea it was to put Keira Knightley in a pirate outfit. Because, while I adore this person, I also fear that he or she might have enough other ideas like that to slowly relieve me of all the money I have. Sure, this one's only $10, but like a good drug dealer they'll charge me more and more as their confidence in my repeat business increases. By the time they come out with the "Evan Rachel Wood in an all-girls prep school in the winter" product, I'll be forced to pawn my computer, TV, and probably a kidney or two to afford the $1500 ticket. But that's a long way off, so in the meantime I'll do my best to enjoy this movie, even as I continue to stand in disbelief over how giving Jerry Bruckheimer even more money than usual could ever result in something remotely watchable.

That's it! Sorry, I can't really say anything about Strangers With Candy, except that I'm sure it's very funny if you're into that sort of thing.