Merrick wonders if there's a Bibeca. If so, is she hot?
Hey folks…
Here’s another look at some movies screened at Tribeca a few weeks back. We’d like to offer a huge thanks to everyone who took the time to send in reviews from the fest. Well done all, and most appreciated.
With that, here’s are some looks at BLUE BLOOD, I’M REED FISH, SNOW CAKE, and THE T.V. SET.
We’ll start with MiraJeff…
Greetings AICN, MiraJeff here with a pair of reviews from Tribeca.
To kick things off today, I want to apologize to my loyal readers who have been waiting on these reviews for a while now. I’ve been at home in Boston resting and catching up on last week’s 24 and Prison Break (which rocked) because I wasted last Monday graduating college. I am now officially a real person.
So where to begin? I guess I’ll begin with a positive review to stave off that “case of the Mondays” some of you might have. And there’s no better place to start than with the Oscar Wilde quote that Blue Blood begins with. “Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can even be taught.”
BLUE BLOOD
“For more than 900 years the world’s two finest universities have waged a bitter war of academics. But one night each year Oxford and Cambridge settle matters with fists. The chosen few who fight that night are known as Blues.”
Director Stevan Riley’s winning boxing documentary follows five Oxford University students, which run the gamut from muscular, overachieving alpha-male to scrawny but determined wanker. All in all there are over 40 students training to fight but only nine will be make the cut on Varsity Fight Night and Oxford’s demanding coach, Des, has four months to decide who. To weed out the posers, he puts them through a rigorous training program involving a shitload of sit-ups, pushups, leg lifts, jumping rope, running for miles, and eating right for months, not to mention Oxford-level schoolwork. Where do they manage to find the time to sleep and pencil in the lovely ladies? “Eight hours a day, six months a year” might sound like fun to you, but I can barely get myself to exercise for more than ten minutes these days.
Kavanaugh is a lanky philosophy student who punches like a girl and dreams of kicking someone’s ass. Classic geek, right? He reminded me of Danger in Million Dollar Baby. Fred is a lightweight and biochemistry major whose roommate describe him a “the stupidest person I’ve ever encountered. He’s a college retard. He doesn’t even understand fire.” Fred has a deadbeat dad and looks to take his frustrations out in the ring. Charlie is a horny, golden-boy painter and middleweight. Boiler is a mathematician who’s angry that “some people don’t rate me at all as a person,” although Des certainly has confidence in him. Justin is a welterweight who studies astrophysics and has two speeds, “hard and harder. If I’m on, I’m on all the way,” he says as he kicks ass all the way to a PHD. Justin is one of those extreme guys who scuba dives with great white sharks and sky dives onto the 50-yard line. When he says, “You learn so much about yourself by doing these things,” I believe him.
In the ring, they know they have to fend for themselves, that not even God can help them. They have to take punches to the face and get right back up. Quitting is not an option for these gluttons for punishment. “Getting in that ring, win or lose, that’s what it’s all about,” one of them says. “But,” Des barks back, “I’m not throwin’ you in the ring so you can lose.” These kids are supposed to have one goal in life, to beat the enemy, which has guys with ten bouts under the belt. On the flip side, Oxford doesn’t have a single returning Blue. They can only get better with experience, the one thing they haven’t got. The one thing that no one can say these kids are missing is guts. Even when they’re up against bigger opponents, they think to themselves, “Is he gonna be better than me if I break his rib or get a good shot at his chin?” No one wants to embarrass themselves out there, but will risk losing to feel that adrenaline surge through their body when the ref puts up their hand. And in the end, we learn that “It’s not what you’ve achieved it’s what you’ve gone through. It’s the struggle. It’s how you do that that’s more important than the actual result.”
One criticism I do have is that while I found the final fight scenes to be thoroughly entertaining, they are scored pretty much solely to music, and it would’ve been nice to have heard the coaches yelling and the punches landing to amp up the intensity. However, by all standards, the soundtrack is packs a solid punch and boasts a bevy of recognizable songs from the Beastie Boys, Metallica, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, plus the last Moby song in Any Given Sunday, and that “Damn it feels good to be a gangster” song from Office Space.
It’s fun watching these underdogs give their all and show what their hearts are made of. By the end, I found myself actually yelling at my laptop, rooting for the Oxford guys to lay the smackdown. Today, the students have grown into scholars and coach Des is still on the lookout for young hopefuls who are ready to beat other kids to a pulp. By the end of this documentary, you’ll be looking for a fight. Kudos to Riley and the rest of his crew; Blue Blood might have gone under-the-radar at Tribeca, but it won by a knockout on my scorecard.
I’M REED FISH
I’m not quite sure what to say about I’m Reed Fish. I liked it. It was certainly, OK. Like Jesse Spano in Showgirls, it went down easy. But as funny as I think Jay Baruchel is, the funniest thing all night was during the Q+A after the movie when he compared it to a John Hughes film. Reed Fish isn’t half as interesting or complex as any of The Breakfast Club kids. But that’s not Baruchel’s fault. The blame lies with the screenwriter, Reed Fish. Who the hell is Reed Fish, you ask? Exactly. Would you wanna see a movie called I’m MiraJeff? Unless you’re my mother, chances are probably not.
I’m Reed Fish is a light, sweet, coming-of-age story set in Mud Meadows, a very small, peaceful community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Reed Fish hosts a radio show called The Fish where he solves the town’s problem with the help of his mother the town mayor (Katey Segal) and his loyal best friend Frank (Victor Rasuk, stealing the show yet again). Reed is engaged to local hottie Katie (Alexis Bledel). Everything is pretty straight-forward and innocent until about a half an hour into the movie when the audio cuts out and the film starts to burn up. We pull back to reveal that yes, we’re watching a movie within a movie. Wow. What the !#$@? Why? This is where we’re forced to make a decision as an audience member. We can either go with this “gee, that’s really cool” twist and see where it takes us, or we can be deem it completely unnecessary and drag our heels throughout the remainder of the running time. Unfortunately, I found myself in the latter group.
The entire film feels negated because really, the characters aren’t who we think they are, and everyone is “acting” the whole time. There’s a love triangle in the character Reed Fish’s movie, between Baruchel, Bledel, and Schuyler Fisk. In the reality of the movie, which is only given about ten minutes of screen time, the love triangle is between Baruchel, Shiri Applebee, and some hot blonde girl. Yes, I understand that Reed’s art, his film, is his way of expressing his feelings to both the women who he loved, but if that’s the story the real Reed Fish wanted to tell, why didn’t he just tell it? In case any doubt remains, no I cannot get past this point. The whole movie feels like a missed opportunity.
Besides the aforementioned Rasuk, the strong points include the always hilarious Chris Parnell as an awkward bartender and DJ Qualls as a karate-obsessed guy who constantly looks directly into the camera. Actual red-haired singer-songwriter Fisk, who is beautiful in person, also proves she’s one of the few actresses who can carry a tune. But the bad outweighs the good, and this includes Segal’s thinly-written mother and the quirky Zorse (a striped Horse, duh!) story which reeks of Napoleon Dynamite even though I’m sure it was written before that came out, even though I’m also sure I still don’t care. And also, the film relies on a lame indie soundtrack when the going gets tough and actual drama is supposed to occur.
To be honest, I’m Reed Fish works best when it’s being subtle, like Reed’s traffic report which involves a guy who got a flat tire and needs a lift. That sums up Mud Meadows in one clever joke, but unfortunately I’m Reed Fish tries to be too clever for its own good. As for Baruchel, hey, I wouldn’t pass up the chance to kiss Rory Gilmore either, but he’s better than this and I’m counting on the guy to come through in the clutch for Fanboys. Reed might end this review with “have a marvelous day in the meadows,” but I gotta tell you, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Its talented cast aside, I’m Reed Fish probably should have been a home movie.
That’ll do it for me, folks. I’ve got some j-o-b interviews this week but have no fear, MiraJeff is here, and I’ll be back with reviews of Over the Hedge, Lonely Hearts, and Al Gore’s fascinating big screen science lecture, An Inconvenient Truth, as well as a bunch more looks from Tribeca. ‘Til next time, this is MiraJeff, signing off…
Now, here’s Flycollar – who saw SNOW CAKE…
SNOW CAKE
Ripley goes Rain Man.
I hate seeing an obvious labor of love go down in flames.
I'll keep it short and sweet. Saw north american premiere of SNOW CAKE last night in Tribeca. Character drama set in a snowy atom-esk canadian town. Alan Rickman, as always, is brilliant... Carrie Anne Moss plays his unlikely love interest. Sigourney Weaver, dressed down in Mickey Mouse sweats, plays an autistic woman. This could go two ways, right? Oscar time or... I hate to say this because I think she has been so great in so many diverse roles. This is a train wreck of a performance. Cartoonish, labored, uneven, and funny for all the wrong reasons. In an otherwise grounded and somber piece she stands out as a rough acting exercise. She spends most of her endless screen time on the ground stuffing her face with snow or throwing tantrums. This makes THE OTHER SISTER look like... the better "retard" performance.
It's not entirely her fault either. Weaver has earned the right to fail every once and awhile. The movie credits among it's producers Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan. A very humble movie despite it's well of talent... A first feature from it's director Marc Evans. I went in Looking for something like Truly, Madly, Deeply. Came out with a creature far scarier than Alien. I believe this is being distributed with Revolution... so it goes. I wouldn't be surprised if this little movie disappears entirely.
Faithfully yours,
Flycollar
Finally, Eli Cross sent in a look at THE T.V. SET – starring David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver.
Welcome to another Tribeca chapter and another positive chapter in an evolving filmmaking career:
THE TV SET (2.35:1)
The time is Pilot Season, where many television shows are developed with some shows going further into a full fledged series and some which remain unseen. One such show looks great on paper for some of the executives of the PANDA network but it's after the casting of this pilot that complications start along with the struggles of the showrunner (David Duchovny) who sees his creation steer away from it's original intentions.
Since the film goes through the casting, shooting and the final results, this viewer would like to note the same for this film starting with the casting.
Every cast member is superb from the semi-crazy network boss of Sigourney Weaver to the achy creator of David Duchovny and each of the side characters appear to have a small contribution but in fact they have an even bigger role as the film progresses whether it's Judy Greer and her quick best fix answers or Ioan Gruffund's loyalty and the sacrifices that play a key role in all the main players.
The film is well shot in wide scope (a first for director Jake Kasdan) and it varies from wide inside shots to the handheld look of the outside world of shooting a TV pilot right down to the product placement set of the pilot and it's use of color on the lineup boards of the network. In the film's opening explanation of Pilot Season, there's an effective animated sequence involving the color bar test pattern, as well as the lack of any main title credits, which this viewer hopes will remain during the time it's widely released.
The film reminded this viewer in part of an early Rod Serling drama teleplay entitled The Velvet Alley about the trappings of a television writer and his product. Where that was dramatically well-written, The TV Set's added to it's final results being a lot more comical, serious (for the right amount of time), very well shot and a great flow that makes the short running time fly by smoothly (with enough to stay during the end credits for one surprise).
The TV Set is in tune with a great balance of comedy and tragedy dealing with the sacrifices made with key characters and the smaller characters in between in the world before the fall season and another winning job by director Jake Kasdan and company delving into a world he knows very well.
And to all that have crossed Eli's path, thank you for the company...
