Daily Loaf

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in New Moon

I’d like to begin by saying that when it comes to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, all faculties go down the drain. I like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent, slightly nerdy and only rarely socially inept twenty-something, which, to my mind, means that my obsessive — nay, rabid — devotion to a mediocre teen romance novel (about freaking vampires) is somewhat out of the ordinary. But millions of ladies (and dudes) of myriad ages and backgrounds can’t be wrong.

Which is why I should have been prepared for the onslaught of hysteria and hormones that accompanied last night’s pre-screening of New Moon, the anticipated sequel to Twilight that has had fans jonesing for another dose of Edward, Bella and Jacob for 12 long months (Which isn’t all that long I guess; I never had the fortitude to be a Star Wars fan.)

I know, I know; my fellow Twihards are itching to hear about the actual movie (and Taylor Lautner’s abs. I’ll save you the suspense: they’re amazing.) But I have to set up the scene. I arrived to a half-full theater of mostly women — and a few husbands and boyfriends (mine included) who had clearly been dragged along against their wills and better judgment.

Amidst unbearably high-pitched shrieks and screeches (mostly) from the audience’s younger members, the usual gaggle of TV and radio promotion people bestowed precious merch to the ultimate Twifans: she who knows the most trivia wins. By the time the movie actually began, I was thanking my lucky stars that my eardrums had somehow been spared. Boy, was I wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a sports snob. I strongly believe there’s only a handful of truly great sports movies. It’s just too difficult for filmmakers to recreate the drama that takes place on the field. So when the Creative Loafers asked me to review The Blind Side, a sports movie I would never see starring an actress I really don’t like, I was skeptical.

I fell into my comfy leather chair at the Cobb Theater Cinebistro in Wesley Chapel, fully expecting to pan everything about the movie. Then a strange thing happened. The film turned out to be pretty good.

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When you strip away all the pomp and circumstance from rock ’n’ roll — the fashion and politics and drugs and groupies and stardom and burnout — what’s usually left is a few simple chords and a tune you can hum. In the 50-plus years since Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. created an art form, rock ’n’ roll music has morphed from a powerful expression of freedom and rebellion into a multi-billion-dollar commodity to be packaged and sold by record company soul-suckers that view artists as cattle and the audience as ignorant rabble worthy only of being led around by the nose or dragged to court. It didn’t used to be this way.

The new film Pirate Radio remembers a time when the music was king. Well, OK, the music and a small handful of outlaw DJs floating just off the coast of Britain, pumping their pirate signal to millions of the Queen’s subjects while royally pissing off the authorities in the process. Pirate Radio isn’t a true story, per se, but elements of it are inspired by real events in 1960s Britain, when a legal loophole allowed unlicensed broadcasters to drop anchor within spitting distance of the mainland and thrill the masses with records by The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Who.

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Walking out of 2012, the latest disaster epic by Independence Day directer Roland Emmerich, I couldn’t help but feel that the Hollywood Industrial Complex has painted itself into a corner. Make no mistake: 2012 is the disaster movie to end all disaster movies. In the film, almost all of Earth’s continents are destroyed by a combination of massive earthquakes, explosions and huge fireballs that can only be extinguished by massive tsunamis. Cars are flung around like confetti, skyscrapers crumble into dust, and famous landmarks are crushed beneath overturned aircraft carriers. Give credit to Emmerich and his special effects team; 2012 looks terrific. If all you’re looking for is some mindless, high-testosterone action on a Saturday night, I highly recommend this movie.

But for the non-adrenaline junkies in the audience, 2012 suffers from all the same flaws as most of the disaster genre: weak characterizations, preposterous plot and story, and a length (2 hours, 40 minutes) that makes the film ideal for screening on flights to Australia.

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I’m embarrassed to confess that I had no idea who Gertrude Berg was before I watched You-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, an enlightening if somewhat stock documentary from director Aviva Kempner (The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg). A radio and television pioneer, Berg enjoyed a long career playing signature character Molly Goldberg, a stereotype-shattering Jewish matriarch who maintained a decades-long run in the public eye. Berg starred in and wrote every episode of the radio and TV incarnations of The Goldbergs (and we’re talking thousands of shows), in the process inventing the sitcom and many of the tropes we find commonplace today.

Read more of Joe Bardi’s review after the jump …
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Under Mira Nair’s direction, Amelia is pretty enough to look at, but its lack of dramatic momentum and episodic nature are deficits the film’s handsome production values can’t overcome. As a biopic, Amelia falls short in two critical areas: It fails to sufficiently illuminate its protagonist, and it is unable to convey the weight of her accomplishments. For this, the script by Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan must also shoulder a considerable part of the blame. Perhaps because the writers seem to take for granted that their story has an automatically compelling subject at its center, they eschew illumination for melodrama. As a result, its title character remains a rather opaque figure dutifully hitting her marks in the story of her life — or, more accurately, its final 10 years.

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[Editor's Note: This review is by CL Atlanta's Curt Holman. You can check out more of his work here.]

Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers’ Where the Wild Things Are remembers something most adults have forgotten: A huge gulf lies between the simplicity of children’s entertainment and the complexity of actual childhood. Growing up may be a time of pure delight, but it also features stretches of agonizing boredom, sudden fright, occasional sorrow and general perplexity at the arbitrary nature of adult rules.

Most artwork aimed at children, even some of the great ones, grabs for the pleasure and maybe a pinch of terror, but seldom attempts to evoke the tangled youthful feelings that go hand-in-hand with the sense of the wonder. Where the Wild Things Are serves as a remarkable exception that grounds its visual splendors in bittersweet realism.

Being John Malkovich director Jonze and co-writer Eggers retain many images from Maurice Sendak’s archetypal picture book. Rambunctious young Max (played by a talented young actor named Max Records — really) wears an off-white wolf suit reminiscent of Ralphie’s bunny outfit from A Christmas Story and chases the family dog with a fork in an early scene. Jonze and Eggers provide the requisite feature film backstory with admirable economy. Max grows up as an imaginative, latch-key son of divorce with a working mother (Catherine Keener) and a neglectful teenage sister.

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[Editor's Note: This review is by CL Atlanta's Curt Holman, part of his Hollywood Product series. To see more reviews by Curt, go here.]

GENRE: Frat-pack vacation.

THE PITCH: Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell play spouses contemplating divorce who convince three couples to join them at a tropical resort that requires a mandatory “skill-building” session. Other pairs include Vince Vaughn and Watchmen’s Malin Akerman, Jon Favreau and Sex and the City’s Kristin Davis, and Faizon Love and Kali Hawk.

MONEY SHOTS: Bateman and Bell pitch their friends the trip idea with a Power Point presentation that enumerates their marital problems. A bucket of chum splashes Vaughn in shark-infested waters. A barely clad Adonis (Carlos Ponce) practically humps the characters — male and female — during a yoga lesson. Vaughn has a video game showdown with the resort’s supercilious major domo, “Sctanley” (Peter Serafinowicz).

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Who knew the zombie-filled apocalypse would be this much fun? Mixing comedy, horror, road movie and coming-of-age story, Zombieland manages to be gross, hilarious and — dare I say it — heartwarming.

Read more of Sal’s review of Zombieland after the jump …

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Mike Judge’s Extract is an annoying movie instead of a funny one. Pitched as a return by the director to the workplace comedy of Office Space, Extract instead suffers from the same faults as Judge’s last film, the Luke Wilson flop Idiocracy. Both flicks have appealing casts and hint at good movies that could be made from the same material, but they are ultimately ruined by silly plot devices and lame characterizations. In the 10 years since Office Space, Judge has regressed as a film maker.

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Ed. Note: This is the first post by new film contributor Alex Czysz. For more reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

There’s always a problem with time travel. It isn’t the disruption of the space-time continuum, or the existential questions posed by our entering and exiting the chronological confines of which we are bound, or even the very question of what time is in and of itself. Ultimately, the problem is whether or not we can accept the very concept of time travel. If so, there’s no turning back, and no questioning the structure of internal logic posed by the author. It is — as the saying goes — what it is.

All things considered, the chronological mechanics in Robert Schwentke’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (based on the recent bestselling novel by Audrey Niffenegger) are coherent enough. Eric Bana (sporting a rather distracting mullet for a good portion of the film) stars as Henry, a librarian afflicted with a rare genetic disorder called Chrono-Displacement which causes his involuntary disappearance from the present and subsequent reappearance in another segment of his life-line.

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For more reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

What’s often missed about the sense of humor is that it’s a defense mechanism. Behind every biting joke, taunt or put-down is a kernel of fear or hurt. Maybe if we keep laughing, all that pain and uncertainty hiding just behind the smile will stay contained. Judd Apatow’s excellent Funny People is a hysterical, profane, entertaining, challenging, honest, touching, sentimental, overwrought jokeathon of a movie. It’s loaded with great performances and wants to make Big points about Big topics. Life and death literally hang in the balance. This is a movie that stares into the abyss and sees a dick joke staring back.

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For more reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, be sure and visit CL’s Movies & Television site.

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. It’s a formula as old as drama, but it’s also sort of fanciful. In real life, the boy who loses the girl often sits brooding on the sidelines for months while his lost love lives it up with a new paramour. Enter (500) Days Of Summer, a movie that wants you to know up front that it’s not some silly love story. Instead, Summer is a movie about love and all its messy fallout — hurt feelings, confusion, resentment, etc. The film is also an assured directorial debut from music video director Marc Webb, and he gives his tale a clever structure and playful visual style that helps separate it from the standard rom-com pack.

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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Living with the land: Florida’s first Earthship (video) – Eric Stewart gives a firsthand look at Florida’s first Earthship in Manatee County, and gets his hands dirty while helping out.

Not getting a million-dollar bonus this year? Think local stimulus- Scott Milinder shows us a real stimulus package that will work for us: we all commit to “Buying Local First.” According to recent economic studies, shifting your buying habits to locally owned businesses creates more circulation of money, more economic activity and more jobs in the local economy.

Eco-friendly summertime fashion accessories- Are you searching for a unique and beautiful purse to enhance your summer wardrobe? Then why not consider one of these recycled handbags that are made from recycled items that help to promote a cleaner and healthier world, reports Jen Meier.
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For the past year, I have read and re-read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which is basically about where out foods comes from and how it gets to our tables. Having grown up in my parent’s grocery store – slicing lunchmeat for our customers standing next to my father’s butcher block – I have had an intimate relationship with our food choices. At the age of 16, I rebelled against veal and so began my food activism. 

Pollan’s writing so well describes our dilemma. In his most recent book, In Defense of Food, he provides the simplistic of advice: eat whole foods, eat mostly plants, and don’t overeat. There are so many questions to sort out, like, ‘How slow is my own personal slow food movement?’ ’Is something labeled “organic” really organic?’ As I try to squeeze some more production from my backyard garden, I wonder how far away can a food source be to still be considered “local” and what are the conditions? What impact do my food choices have on this planet? Is raw really better than cooked? So many issues go into our choices. Can we sit down to a meal content with our decisions, and for that matter, can we afford what we philosophically know is best? 
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For more news and reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

Screening information: Outrage is screening exactly once, Wed., July 15 at 7 p.m. at Tampa Pitcher Show, 14416 N. Dale Mabry, Tampa, 813-963-0578. The film carries no MPAA rating.

If there’s a central message to Kirby Dick’s Outrage, it’s that living life denying one’s sexual orientation is an awful existence. Not only is the closeted person lying to their family and friends — often at great emotional cost to everyone involved — they are lying to themselves. There’s a lot of self-hatred hanging in the closet, and it’s an old saw that the most homophobic folks are the most in denial. Still, a person’s choice to keep their preference private is their own. But what about politicians living in the closet who work to advance anti-gay-rights legislation? Don’t they deserve to be exposed?
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For more news and reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

I’ve never been smacked in the face with a dick, but I imagine the experience is a lot like watching Brüno. The first 15 minutes of the movie is a penis shock-and-awe campaign, with a pink bunny-costume dick, a dick on the end of a stick and a talking dick that shouts “Brüno!” out of its peehole. That’s in addition to the many items — dicks, dildos, champagne bottles, etc. — going in and out of assholes obscured only by a little black dot. If there is one word to describe Brüno, it’s Cocktastic.

(Listen to Joe and Joran break down the movie in this week’s Reel Projections podcast after the jump)

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For news and reviews of this summers biggest releases, be sure to check out CL’s Movies & Television site.

The central mysteries of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad still baffle critics and audiences to this day. The film is a fixture on most critics’ greatest-movies lists and maintains a strong cult status among cinephiles. Marienbad has just been released as a Criterion Collection special edition DVD & Blu-ray, enabling a new generation of film lovers to ponder how this film could be so loved and be such a cultural touchstone when it can also seem like such a tedious experience.

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For more news on the summer’s biggest releases, please check out CL’s Movies & Television site.

You have to hand it to the producers of Public Enemies; their timing is impeccable. After months of watching the banks loot the nation’s treasury of billions under the guise of the TARP bailout, the public is bound to be receptive to heartthrob Johnny Depp as charismatic bank robber John Dillinger. It helps that Depp is stellar here, his Dillinger a smooth cat who’s quick to give a lady his coat or his word. As directed by Michael Mann (The Insider, Heat), Public Enemies is a gripping gangster flick that works both as a Depression-era period piece and a throwback to the films of that era.

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[Ed. Note: We've got plenty of Transformers stuff going on on Daily Loaf. In addition to my review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, we've got more posts about Megan Fox than you can shake your wank at. Enjoy.]

My worst fears have come to pass. The God-awful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has opened with a huge $16 million take from Tuesday night’s midnight screenings. That’s not a record-breaker for a midnight opening, as The Dark Knight cleared $18 million in its late-night bow, but TDK debuted on a weekend-kickoff Friday and not a lame, non-holiday hump day. The $55 million the film grossed on Wednesday is a new high for an opening on that day of the week, besting Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which grossed $44 million on a Wednesday way back in 2007. The conventional wisdom has the film grossing at least $160 million over the five-day weekend. (The news isn’t all bad: Director Michael Bay has said he won’t make a third Transformers film. Woo hoo!)

What a crock of shit! This would be a national embarrassment, were it not for the fact that the movie is already doing huge business overseas as well. I guess that makes this an embarrassment for the entire human race. In case you’re on the fence about hitting the multiplex this weekend, here’s a sampling of the critical reaction to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

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For more news and reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, go to the CL Movies & Television site.

The only things for sure in this life are death, taxes and that any movie starring John Travolta as the villain will suck. Swordfish, Battlefield Earth, Face/Off, Broken Arrow, The Punisher — the list goes on. If Travolta’s playing the heavy, the movie’s going to sink like a stone. Until now: With The Taking of Pelham 123, this rule finally has its exception.
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[Ed. note: Each week I'll be breaking down the big summer blockbuster movie releases. If you're curious about what's coming out in future weeks, be sure to check out the Summer Movie Preview. For more info on this week's releases, please check out our full length reviews of Land of the Lost, The Hangover and Every Little Step. And for all things film, please visit our movie site.]

FRIDAY, JUNE 5TH
Box office Gold: Land of the Lost
Worth seeing? Only if you’re a big Will Ferrell fan, or if you fondly remember catching episodes of the early ’70s TV version of Land of the Lost produced by puppet-masters Sid and Marty Krofft. The show was ambitious in scope but low in budget, while the big-screen edition sports star power (Ferrell, up-and-comer Danny McBride), an experienced director (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Brad Silberling) and mountains of pricy CGI. Despite the glossy exterior, the most endearing elements of the TV show — rampaging dinosaurs, monkey people, the alien-looking Sleestaks, even the white-water rafting intro — have made it into the movie. With much of the draw of the 1970s TV show wrapped up in its no-budget production values, it’ll be interesting to see if this high-tech reboot manages to retain the charm of the original.
Counter-programming: If Land of the Lost is a little too goofy or kid-targeted for your sensibilities, there’s also Nia Vardalos, Richard Dreyfuss and Rachel Dratch in the set-in-Greece romantic comedy My Life in Ruins. If that’s not bangin’ your baklava, perhaps you’ll like The Hangover, the latest from Road Trip director Todd Philips about three guys retracing their steps after a Vegas bachelor party gone wrong ends with the groom M.I.A. And there’s always Every Little Step at the Tampa Theatre. Step is like crack for theater geeks, but it’s also a damn fine movie for anyone who’s ever dreamed of something better for themselves.

Previews after the break.

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[Ed. note: Each week I'll be breaking down the big summer blockbuster movie releases. If you're curious about what's coming out in future weeks, be sure to check out the Summer Movie Preview. And for all things film, please check out our movie site.]

FRIDAY, MAY 29TH
Box office gold: Up
Worth seeing? You’re going to skip Pixar’s follow-up to WALL-E? The plot is simple: An old coot ties thousands of brilliantly animated balloons to his house, and takes off for adventure with a stow-away boy scout on board. The directors — Pete Docter, the director of Monsters, Inc., and Bob Peterson, the writer of Finding Nemo — are two Pixar vets who could pull this off in their sleep. To top it off, Up has already passed the snooty French smell test by being selected to open the Cannes Film Festival, the first time an animated film has enjoyed the time slot. Up should finish in the top three at the summer box office.
Counter-programming: Up’s brand of cute and cuddly Disney fun isn’t your bag? Check out Drag Me to Hell instead. Sam Raimi (Spider-Man) returns to his horror-movie roots with this tale of a loan officer (Alison Lohman) who is seriously cursed after she forecloses on old lady with a creepy eye to impress her boss. A warning to those hoping Hell matches the low-fi brilliance of Raimi’s Evil Dead movies: The preview is as glossy as it gets.

Previews after the jump …

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