Culture Surfing

THE HORSE BOY: Rupert Isaacson (from left), Rowan and Ghoste in Mongolia

Medical narratives often depict ordinary people who turn to alternative healing methods when traditional Western health care fails. Seldom can you find families that go to the lengths of Rupert Isaacson and Kristen Neff, who traveled from Austin, Texas, to the steppes of Mongolia with the hopes of improving their son Rowan’s autistic condition.

Narrating the documentary The Horse Boy, Isaacson justifies the trip early in the film. At his worst, 5-year-old Rowan’s cognitive problems make him the equivalent of “a giant 18-month-old” with poor social skills, incomplete toilet training, and seemingly endless, inexplicable tantrums. Isaacson’s research into shamanism and Rowan’s affinity for animals, especially horses, inspire the father to see if the two in combination could have therapeutic value. He discovers that Mongolia combines shamanic traditions with horsemanship, so he, Neff and Rowan embark on a journey a world away.

Continue reading “Family goes to extremes to alleviate autism in The Horse Boy” »

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THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON: Thrill-seeking Bella (Kristen Stewart) receives warmth and support from Jacob (Taylor Lautner) after a failed cliff-jumping encounter.

GENRE: Supernatural teenage drama

THE PITCH: To prevent a frenzy for Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) blood, the Cullens, including her soulmate Edward (Robert Pattinson), cut all ties and leave Forks, Wash. Devastated Bella eventually turns to longtime friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) to mend her broken heart, unintentionally stoking Jacob’s fiery passion for her and uncovering his true nature. Unable to forget her first love, Bella sets off a reckless chain of events that ultimately sends her on a mission to save a lovelorn Edward.

MONEY SHOTS: Jacob’s lycanthropic nature is revealed when he morphs into his wolven form to protect Bella from an attack by friend and packmate Paul (Alex Meraz). A savage, snarly, teeth-gnarling fight ensues between the two werewolves.

BEST LINES: Almost anything from classmate Jessica (Anna Kendrick) when talking to dazed Bella during a girl’s night out. As Jessica compares zombies to lepers, she notes, “My cousin had leprosy, so it’s not funny.” Best friend Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene) declares, “I have never known anyone more prone to life-threatening idiocy” when she comes to check up on Bella after a tragic prophetic vision.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: The Twilight Saga: New Moon“

(Photo Courtesy Summit Entertainment)

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CL’s Chante LaGon and Curt Holman discuss movies opening this holiday season, including Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Road, Red Cliff and The Messenger.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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SPORTS AUTHORITY: Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock, right) coaches Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron)

The prologue to the warm-n-fuzzy sports story The Blind Side plays so well, it’s like seeing a team return an opening kickoff to score a touchdown. A Southern-accented Sandra Bullock narrates an insider’s perspective on the five fateful seconds that cost the Washington Redskins’ Joe Theismann his career. Michael Lewis’ book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game provides the film with tasty tidbits about football machinations on and off the field, but director John Lee Hancock fumbles the rags-to-riches story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron).

The film’s early scenes find mountainous Michael adrift in the impoverished corners of Memphis with a crack-addicted mother and no real home. When a Christian school bends the rules to enroll him, Michael attracts the notice of Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock), the take-charge socialite wife of a fast-food mogul (Tim McGraw). Leigh Anne whisks Michael to the family McMansion and offers him clothes, a Thanksgiving invitation, and even a strategy for success on the gridiron.

Continue Reading “Sandra Bullock Blind Sides Atlanta”

(Photo Courtesy Ralph Nelson/Warner Bros. Picture)

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THE MESSENGERS: Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson, from left) and Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) deliver the news.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) receives new orders in the first scenes of The Messenger. Will endured injuries to his eye and leg in an Iraqi firefight, and has the wounds and decorations to prove it, but his latest assignment will leave its own kind of scars.

Will finds that becoming part of the U.S. Army’s casualty notification team is the toughest job he’ll ever loathe. Will joins the soldiers tasked to regretfully inform the closest relatives of their loved ones’ deaths during military service. Many movies feature iconic scenes of formally dressed officials bearing ill tidings on the front stoops of heartland homes. Director/co-writer Oren Moverman finds a rich, original premise by presenting the perspective of these “angels of death,” and critiques war in general without taking sides over current military conflicts. At times, however, The Messenger proves derelict in its duties as a screen narrative.

Continue Reading “The Messenger delivers stark lesson about casualties of war”

(Photo Courtesy Courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories)

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Do you really need an excuse to watch a Muppets skit inspired by David Lynch? This will heal your Monday morning blues.

(H/T to FF)

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The Plaza Theatre joins with ASIFA-Atlanta to present Mary and Max,the Claymation comedy of mismatched pen pals. Director Adam Elliott, who won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for “Harvie Krumpet” (narrated by Geoffrey Rush) explores the 18-year friendship between a lonely Australian girl (Toni Collette) and an obese New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). The opening film of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Mary and Max screens at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16.

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BURN BABY BURN: Lily Morgan (left) and John Cusack

GENRE: Disaster movie on a planetary scale

THE PITCH: Technobabble about solar flares plus mumbo-jumbo about Mayan predictions equals catastrophes that could destroy all life on Earth, even movie stars. A White House science advisor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a novelist/limo driver (John Cusack), his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), and a shaggy conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson) all try to keep ahead of the fireballs and falling skyscrapers.

MONEY SHOTS: Director Roland Emmerich remains the John Holmes of disaster porn. Highlights include the heroes out-driving a Los Angeles earthquake; a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone; a tidal wave crashing over a Tibetan mountain range; and the Sistine Chapel ceiling cracking between God and Adam’s fingers. (Oh, burn!) A tsunami flattens the White House with the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, proving what you’ve always suspected: Bad weather has a sense of irony.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: 2012“

(Photo Courtesy 2009 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc.)

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BLAZE OF GLORY: Murder becomes reality-TV fodder in Five Minutes of Heaven.

Even if you’ve never heard the name Oliver Hirschbiegel, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen his work. The German filmmaker directed Downfall, the superb 2004 drama about the Third Reich’s final days. Last year, a clip of Bruno Ganz’s Hitler chewing out his underlings became a YouTube hit when an online prankster rewrote the subtitles so the scene depicted then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raging against her campaign staff. Now you can find dozens of remixes that show Adolf hating on, say, the Avatar trailer.

Hirschbiegel can’t claim credit or blame for the pop appropriation of Downfall, but the original scene’s dramatic power no doubt supports its viral following. Downfall’s depiction of the besieged Nazis combined epic battle scenes with more soft-spoken moments that illuminated Hitler’s historical legacy, such as Frau Goebbels quietly killing her own children rather than have them see an Allied victory. Hirschbiegel’s latest film, Five Minutes of Heaven, treats a confrontation between two men as another kind of microcosm for a historic event: the violence in Northern Ireland.

Continue Reading “Five Minutes of Heaven goes mano a mano with Northern Ireland conflict”

(Photo Courtesy Reconciliation Limited 2009/An IFC Films release)

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The “Dexter” Season 4 episode reviews have been shrink-wrapped to an autopsy table in an unknown location, and will have to be postponed indefinitely. Let’s kill time before the rescue with the new hardback Dexter By Design (Doubleday, $25) and consider how Michael C. Hall’s secret serial killer resembles the original creation of writer Jeff Lindsay.

The author introduced the perfectly-assimilated predatory sociopath in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Published in 2004, the award-winning mystery served, rather loosely, as the basis for the 12 episodes of the Showtime series’ first season. Since then, the show’s continuity has diverged dramatically from the books. Sgt. Doakes, Dexter’s Javert-like police nemesis, was killed in the show’s second season but still lives on the page, if in a horribly maimed fashion. From Dexter’s perspective as the first-person narrator, his homicidal impulses, nicknamed “The Dark Passenger” manifests more like a secondary personality who keeps watch on Dexter’s consciousness.

The fourth book, like the show’s fourth season, begins with Dexter married to Rita, only Dexter by Design first finds the couple as newlyweds in Paris, not as sleep-deprived parents of a new infant. Dexter by Design sees our antihero thoroughly pwned by a pranksterish nutjob with a grisly artistic bent. Miami’s latest human butcher puts dead bodies on display in ghastly parody of South Florida tourist behavior. (Lindsay makes a passing nod to Carl Hiassen’s Tourist Season, which features a home-grown terrorist cell with similar anti-tourist motivations.) Staying one step ahead, the killer discovers Dexter’s true identity and targets his loved ones.

Continue reading “‘Dexter’ vs. Dexter” »

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LOOSE ROPE: Rope 'em, cowboy.

Following on the hooves of The Men Who Stare at Goats, the Iranian culture-clash dramedy Loose Rope depicts young fellows transfixed by other kinds of livestock.

Part of the High Museum’s 12th annual Iranian Film Today series, Loose Rope gets a lot of mileage from the easy interplay of Mikhail and Asgar (Babak Hamidian, Keramat Roudsaz), two pals who deliver animals in the rural outskirts of Tehran. With Mikhail as a mature, ambitious man of few words and Asgar as an impulsive motormouth, they maintain the dynamic of a classic comedy team. Despite Mikhail’s wish to start a new business, the pair falls behind on payments for their truck, which their creditor threatens to repossess unless they bring him a 450-pound cow.

Before the bovine adventure takes hold, Loose Rope follows another subplot involving sheep. Mikhail and Asgar discover a sneak who digs up recently deceased sheep that he sells to an unscrupulous restaurateur in violation of halal practices (and basic sanitation), which prohibit even sick animals from being served as food. Mikhail establishes himself as a decent fellow by putting an end to the sheep “grave-robbing,” while director Mehrshad Karkhani entices the viewer with quiet action scenes and occasional animal-based sight gags.

Continue Reading “Seriocomic Loose Rope seeks bovine intervention”

(Photo Courtesy High Museum)

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Ted Danson takes a dive in the boxing ring as magazine editor George Christopher in the Bored to Death season finale. Photo: Esquire

It’s rumble time between two magazines on Bored to Death tonight.

GQ editor Richard, book critic Lewis, and a lowly cartoonist are taking on the Edition team. George, Jonathan, and Ames are working out at a downtown boxing gym with a surly trainer named Sal. Between beating on tires with sledgehammers, hitting the heavy bag, and tossing the medicine ball, they’re getting in pretty good shape. They just might kick GQ’s ass, but women keep getting in the way.

Jonathan is falling for Stella, the co-op worker he met last week while tracking down the lesbian black market sperm thieves. They’re getting together to smoke pot but he hasn’t made any moves on her yet. “What are you, in the fifth grade?” Ray asks.

“Yeah, I lost my virginity in the fifth grade,” Sal says.

“What was his name?” Ray asks.

“Father Francis,” Sal says.

Continue reading “Bored to Death episode 8 recap – season finale” »

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Starting this weekend, uninhibited Hispanic stand-up comedian George Lopez and equally controversial African-American comedian Wanda Sykes make their late night debut challenging the status quo of what Jay Leno refers to as “the parade of nine white men.”

On Saturday, November 7, FOX will premiere The Wanda Sykes Show making Sykes the first black woman since Whoppi Goldberg to have a late night show on network television. Similarly, on Monday, Nov. 9, TBS will air Lopez Tonight that establishes Lopez as America’s first Hispanic late show host.

Late night talk has had its share of minority hosts however. The Arsenio Hall Show, The Chris Rock Show, The Keenan Ivory Wayans Show, The Magic Hour added color to the talk circuit on and off from the mid ‘90s until the untimely cancellation of Rock’s show in 2000. Recently BET put Blacks back on the late hour schedule with the launch of actress/comedian Mo’Nique’s late night show in early October.

The Wanda Sykes Show format resembles that of her former boss’  – HBO’s The Chris Rock Show a combination of skits, on-the-street segments and spirited panel discussions. It’s no surprise Sykes chose this format considering she won an Emmy award as a writer on the show. Always busy, audiences may best know her from the canceled Fox series, Wanda at Large and sidekick roles as Barb and herself in The Old Adventures of Christine and Curb Your Enthusiasm respectively.

Yet Sykes is no stranger to controversy. She became both the first African-American woman and openly LGBT person to perform as entertainment at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner earlier this year. Her set garnered national attention when she responded to Rush Limbaugh’s comment of hopes the Obama administration fails, with “I hope his [Limbaugh] kidney’s fail.”

Fox’s Saturday night slots have rarely had a stronghold in major late night programming. Their previous shows – the long running sketch comedy show, Mad TV and quirky TalkShow with Spike Feresten’s garnered consistently low ratings that resulted in their cancellation this year. Sykes’ show replaces the 11pm to midnight time slot previously held by MadTV, making Sykes’ major competition NBC’s long-standing and popular Saturday Night Live. Therefore the likelihood of Skyes’ show grabbing a significant hold on late night audiences could be a challenge.

Crediting late night maverick Arsenio Hall, George Lopez says he wants to bring the party back to late night. According to TBS, Lopez Tonight is an informal, casual environment for guest to engage with the audience and experience. “It’s time to get back to the kind of show that is fun for everybody to watch,” says Lopez. “There are enough heavy things going on every day that you should be able to sit down late at night, have a drink, relax and enjoy a party on television.”

Lopez who is probably America’s leading Hispanic comedian is known for his every man style of humor. With three HBO comedy specials under his belt including his most recent Tall, Dark and Chicago, he made history creating and starring in the sitcom George Lopez that ran for six seasons on ABC.

Lopez was lucky enough to land a 4-night-a-week spot, giving him a stronger possibility to compete with the majors and minors of late night; but his biggest upcoming barrier may be his time slot as well. Lopez is set to premier Nov. 9 on TBS at 11 p.m., a slot that vies with popular late night Comedy Central programs The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Colbert Report as well as the cult favorite The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.

All things considered, it’s impossible to applaud the network’s courage to air these new shows without examining how race could affect their success. The scrutiny against and lack of diversity among Sykes, Lopez, and also Mo’Nique are also possible obstructions that may prevent them from breaking big. Either way  – whether set up for failure or bound for glory, Sykes and Lopez will go down in television history and could possibly be the ratings booster their networks are hoping for to combat recent decline in ratings for late night viewing.

The Wanda Sykes Show. Premieres Sat., Nov. 7, 11pm – 12 Midnight (EST) on FOX.

Lopez Tonight. Premieres Mon., Nov. 9, 11pm – 12 Midnight (EST) on TBS

(Sykes photo courtesy of Fox Television, Lopez photo courtesy of Turner Broadcasting)

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THE FOURTH KIND: Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) recalls in detail her alien abduction experience under hypnosis.

GENRE: Supernatural docudrama

THE PITCH: Director Olatunde Osunsanmi reenacts a mysterious tale of alien abduction told by Dr. Abigail Tyler through interviews and recorded footage of close encounters in Nome, Alaska. Shot as a hybrid between a documentary and a feature film, viewers follow Tyler’s (Milla Jovovich) desperate search to uncover the truth about strange coincidences occurring to her family and the residents of Nome.

MONEY SHOTS: Dr. Tyler and her colleague Dr. Campos (Elias Koteas) reluctantly hypnotize her patient Scott Stracinsky (Enzo Cilenti) again in his bedroom after he starts to exhibit abnormal behavior. As he begins to retrace what happened to him, he springs forward, sitting straight up before hovering over the bed and speaking in ancient Sumerian.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: The Fourth Kind“

(Photo Courtesy of Universal Pictures)

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