Aw hell no, Kung Fu Panda!

It's very gratifying that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's latest cinematic monstrosity Disaster Movie has failed to do well at all. Like their previous masterpieces, this one has dropped off the box office radar after a week. Unlike those, though, this one didn't rocket straight to number one - it landed seventh in its opening weekend, still not coming close to making back its modest budget. Good. The reviews probably didn't help too much (my fave being "a movie so bad that it’s almost avant-garde" from The Times). But those guys will always have a viewer in me - I don't know why, but I'll watch all their flicks. Here's what's passing for funny this time around (I suppose there are spoilers, but that'd imply that there was a plot):

• More so than previously, this time they're relying heavily on not-really lookalikes. They're so unconvincing that the main characters need to spell everything out. "Amy Winehouse?!" "Hannah Montana?!"
• Their Dr. Phil, fortunately, introduced himself.
  
• Far too many people put "Bitch" at the end of every sentence.
  
• There's a priest molestation joke.
• Still funny: Michael Jackson, myspace, facebook.
• Did enough people really see 10,000 BC, Beowulf, Prince Caspian, Speed Racer or Jumper to make them parody worthy?
  
• The plot is loosely themed around Cloverfield - too high of a reference for the eight year olds that'll watch this?
  
• Still funny: "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" - this time, adapted at the end to incorporate EVERY character that had been in the film. With "Dating" in place of "Fucking" because the PG-13 rating was more important than it being funny.
• One of the cast is called G-Thang. Really.
  
• Only one fake commercial in the middle of this one, for HEAD ON. I guess that's an improvement over 'Meet the Spartans', which had like three.
• But this one still had plenty of musical breakdowns. Including a medley from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Also, they sang a death metal song. Also also, they had rabies.
• I thought it was interesting how a lot of their spoofs, and I'm using that word loosely, were based on the trailers for summer hits. They won't have seen The Dark Knight or Hancock or The Hulk or Hellboy 2 before making this, and it's so lazy to do the slightest riff on those.
• Still funny: "Brangelina"
• In Spartans, a Happy Feet penguin started beating the shit out of one of the characters. Here, it's Kung Fu Panda. Why?
• Being gay is still the worst thing ever ever ever.
  
• Still funny: prissy white people talking 'street'. Also, breakdancing.
• It just looked very cheap.
  
• One of the last jokes is a shoutout to the Love Guru.

I've gotta say, this one was worse than 'Meet the Spartans'. That had, at least, a direction. This was literally a journey with "someone made to look like someone from a movie / oh, they've got hit by a cow" repeated over and again.

Which, as a metaphor, describes these guys' films pretty damn appropriately.

I'm Bill Murray, you're everyone else

I've seen quite a few films lately. Here, I'll write about them.

Michael Clayton: Finally! A film that tells the truth, that the legal industry - my destination of choice - may be actually quite shady! But seriously, Tony Gilroy, a man who can probably make my daily walk to the mailbox seem tense and dangerous (this is a compliment) wrote and directed a solid, if unremarkable thriller in which George Clooney didn't come off as smug. The plot keeps ticking along nicely, though I imagine that non-law-students may have been a little lost/bored at times. Tilda Swinton won the Oscar, but I wish Tom Wilkinson had too, because he was great in it. Which leads us nicely into...

Dedication: I have real trouble with films in which the main character is entirely unlikeable. This indie stars T-Wilks, briefly, along with Billy Crudup and Mandy Moore. A pretty standard socially-awkward-guy meets free-spirited-pretty-girl-with-her-own-skeletons story, except this socially awkward guy is a rampant misanthrope who's angry at everything. There really wasn't much to like in the film, so stay away.

Persepolis: I've been getting through the graphic novels very slowly (thank goodness for boring classes), so I was glad to finally see the film. And it was terrific! The main thing to note here is that it's far funnier than you'd expect for a first person account of the Iranian Revolution. There's an "Eye of the Tiger" montage in there, and some Bee Gees dissing, which I am fine with. All that, and the animation is swish. Check it.

La Vie en Rose: Marion Cottilard is great, and definitely was a worthy winner of the Oscar. That aside, I didn't care for the film at all. Another pretty interesting real-life story was lost in a very run-of-the-mill drugs/sing/yell at everyone/cry/sing some more/yell at everyone/be old/repent cycle. Also, following Basil Fawlty's instructions, they completely failed to mention the War at all, which was a really odd and conspicuous omission.



The Savages: This film was really heavy, but not heavy in the way a good funk song is heavy. Caring for a parent who's in the throws of dementia is terrifying, and Hoffman and Linney were great and the script really got across their fears and vulnerabilities well. It was just so dark that I had trouble getting much enjoyment out of it. Sorry.



Great World of Sound: Nice idea, low key indie film. It didn't really do much for me, I've got to say, but the dynamic between the two leads was pretty good. The musicians in the film didn't know they were being filmed for a movie, and so all the auditions are completely natural, which is a nice touch. Here's the trailer - worth keeping an eye out if you're a fan of producer David Gordon Green.



Meet the Spartans: Well, I promised I'd see it. No real shocker to say that it wasn't very good, but I was disappointed to see at least two jokes recycled from Epic Movie. This time they throw in "parodies" of television commercials as well as just movies/tv shows, etc. There's an Anna Nicole Smith joke toward the beginning, which I thought was in poor taste, and it didn't get much better for the remaining hour. At least it was really, really short. Tegs, what happened to you?



Be Kind, Rewind: As you may have seen, white people really like Mos Def and Michel Gondry, and I do too. But I found this one mostly unsatisfying. The heart of the film, where they recreate old movies, is pretty neat, because Gondry has a great flair for stuff looking amazing. Unfortunately, the set-up and the ending are really clunky. Check out the Sweded films on their site - especially Gondry's own reworking of the movie trailer, and that's most of the joy of the flick. Better luck next time. Oh, and it's always worth giving a shout-out to Adam and Joe, who did similar stuff years ago. Only, they did it with toys.



The Good Night: I don't know what to tell you. This one was all over the place. Terrible, despite the fact that the first voice you hear, and the first face you see, belong to this man. The characters are all whiny and unlikeable, the plot is so muddled and baffling as to make me furious, and nothing good happens at all. There are people involved here that I like - Martin Freeman, Simon Pegg, Penelope Cruz - but it's a train wreck. Avoid like schoolteachers at bus stops.