Opening Weekend: Tripping with Carrey, Clooney and Hana

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 5:14 PM - 4 Comments

Now that the November winds are blowing and the nights are getting longer, it’s time to fly away. To go anywhere, as long as it’s elsewhere and there’s a glow of magic to warm the heart. Magic—in Hollywood, they like to think they can manufacture the stuff. But it’s not that simple. This week I’m looking at three very different films that deal in magic. But only one of them really makes me believe it. It’s also the smallest of the three and, believe it or not,  it’s a documentary—Inside Hana’s Suitcase, which is beautifully directed by Canadian filmmaker Larry Weinstein, is a real-life fable about lost child of the Holocaust, a miraculous film that draws  hope and inspiration from horrific tragedy. The other two movies are the A Christmas Carol, a 3D opus starring Jim Carrey as virtually every character in the cast, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, an off-kilter comedy starring George Clooney as a U.S. solider trained in para-normal powers.  A Christmas Carol, directed by Robert Zemeckis is the weekend’s designated blockbuster, and although it has some of my colleagues dancing an early Xmas jig, it left me cold. But then I wasn’t especially fond of Forrest Gump either. My humbug response to A Christmas Carol appears in this week’s magazine, and you can read it by clicking on: Everybody wants a piece of Scrooge.

George Clooney meets his match in 'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

The Men Who Stare at Goats

This may be a George Clooney movie. But it’s not the George Clooney movie. Because this fall there are two, both having premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The other is Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which is not out until December. And there are also two George Clooneys, at least. There’s Serious George, the shrewd professional who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. You find him movies like  The Good German and Michael Clayton. Then there’s Uncurious George,  the know-it-all goofball who pops up in Coen brothers pictures like O Brother Where Art Thou and Burn After Reading—an idiot who thinks he’s a rocket surgeon.  Both of Clooney’s new movies are comedies, up to a point, and both are based on books. The Goats picture is an outlandish zany farce about guy trying to walk through walls, although it’s inspired by a true story;  Up in the Air is a serious comedy about the world we live in, although it’s fiction.

And here’s the thing. If you’re going to see just one George Clooney movie this fall, you should wait for Up in the Air. It’s by far the better film; and it’s the one for which he’s guaranteed to get an  Oscar nomination. Which doesn’t mean Men Who Stare at Goats isn’t worth a look, if you’ve some free time, and free money, and you don’t want to wait for the video. Hmmm. Talk about damning with faint praise. Continue…

Everyone wants a piece of Scrooge

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 3 Comments

He did it for the money. An indebted Charles Dickens dashed off A Christmas Carol in six weeks and saw it published, with opportune timing, six days before Christmas, in 1843. The first 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve and the book has never been out of print. With his blockbuster novella, Dickens founded a franchise and reinvented the Christmas spirit, making a plea for joy and generosity in dour industrial England. But had he been visited by the Ghost of Xmas 2009, he would be shocked to see what’s become of his creation—a monstrous, half-human Ebenezer Scrooge who glowers from 3-D movie screens, heralding a Yuletide blitz of getting and spending more than six weeks before Christmas Day. And in Jim Carrey, the star of Disney’s A Christmas Carol, he’d see an actor who out-Scrooges Scrooge by hoarding five of the story’s roles—Ebenezer as an old man and a young boy, plus all three Christmas ghosts.

Tis the season to be tight-fisted, and Scrooge has never been bigger. Tailor-made for these penny-pinching times, he’s the original bipolar capitalist—the boss from hell who turns into a bailout benefactor. Everyone wants a piece of him. As Margaret Atwood writes in her introduction to a new Dickens anthology, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books, “Scrooge is one of those characters—like Hamlet—who has become detached from the story in which he had his birth, and has become instantly recognizable, even by those who have never read the book.” Recalling her childhood affection for Disney’s Scrooge McDuck, who splashed in a giant vault of coins, Atwood calls him “a sort of anti-Santa Claus—Santa Claus’s dark twin.” Continue…

Mel Gibson's hand puppet, Dave Carroll's broken guitar, and "Shannon Tweed Day" in Oshawa

By Lianne George - Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment

Kim Jong Ill?
So much mystery attends North Korea, Asia’s only Communist dynasty, and so fraught are the geopolitics of the region, that the merest sign of health trouble for its Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, sets off international alarms. So it was this week when South Korea’s YTN television, citing Korean and Chinese intelligence sources, reported that the 67-year-old has pancreatic cancer and, at best, five years to live. In his recent appearances, Kim has looked gaunt, with thinning hair, a limp and an asymmetrical bent to his mouth, indications he’s not entirely recovered from a stroke last year. Renewed fear that Kim is not long for this world caused Seoul’s main stock index to plummet, so vexed are the markets by what his death could mean. Though he is said to have named his youngest son, the Swiss-educated Kim Jong Un, as his successor, there’s concern the installation of a weak leader still in his mid-20s will destabilize the regime and the region.

What’s wrong with being sexy?
Shannon Tweed, the Canadian adult-film star, has been denied recognition for such contributions to world cinema as Hard Vice and Indecent Behavior 3. But the acting mayor of Ottawa, Doug Thompson, issued a proclamation that this Wednesday would be “Shannon Tweed Day,” to celebrate the blond bombshell’s visit to the city where she lived in the 1970s. He soon rescinded the proclamation, however, admitting sheepishly that he “spoke to the media before the item had been fully vetted.” Tweed told the Ottawa Citizen that she had “no hard feelings” about the rejection, but bristled at a councilwoman’s suggestion that she is a porn actress: “I’ve done movies with love scenes,” said the star of Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, “but I’ve never had real sex on camera.” Oshawa, which recently finished first in an online contest hosted by KISS, doesn’t care either way. Oshawa city councillor Robert Lutczyk, who headed up the spring contest effort, promised a “Shannon Tweed Day” in Oshawa if she and the band come through town this fall. “I’ll be there,” said Tweed. “I’ll be there.” Continue…

From Cannes: Up, Up and Away

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 9:42 AM - 2 Comments

'Up' inflates hype on the Carlton pier; Charles Aznavour voices Ed Asner's role in the French version/ photos by BDJ

On its opening day, the Cannes Film Festival lived up to its reputation for extremes. Last night the quite delightful Disney-Pixar movie Up became the first animated feature to open the festival in its 62-year history, not to mention the first 3D movie to open Cannes—presenting the bizarre sight of the Lumiere theatre filled with people in tuxedoes and dark glasses. Up is playing out of competition. But the same day, we saw the first competition entry, China’s Spring Fever, which also set a precedent of sorts. A bleak tale of a young man who betrays his wife for a homosexual romance, it has to be the first movie we’ve ever seen from China that’s loaded with explicit gay sex scenes. And this morning, as I sat down to watch Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, the opening film of the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, a fellow critic pointed out that “humping is big” in the Fortnight, especially of the gay variety—notably in I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, and a perky comedy called Humpday.

This is my 14th year at Cannes. For professional lovers of film, the May pilgrimage to French Riviera is a rite of spring. We come hoping to be surprised, provoked and, if we’re lucky, blown away by a film that shows up out of the blue and takes cinema to the next level. And each year, those of us who take part in this rite wonder if we”ll make it back here for another year. Well, the ranks are thinning. As media companies reel from the recession, film criticism is under assault wherever you look. Some North American newspapers have axed their critics. Others have decided that sending them to Cannes, the world’s cinephile summit, is a luxury they can no longer afford. This year both the Globe and Mail and the National Post have not sent their critics (although The Globe‘s London correspondent, Liz Renzetti, will be on hand for a few days.) This should not go unnoticed. It’s the first time the Globe has not sent its film critic since the 1970s, when the late Jay Scott first began coming here—and helped put Canadian cinema on the map, as Cannes discovered the likes of Denys Arcand, Atom Egoyan, Jean-Claude Lauzon and Patricia Rozema. Meanwhile, the U.S. presence is also severely reduced. Entertainment Weekly‘s presence is cut from three to one writer. People doesn’t have a staffer here. Vanity Fair is not holding its usual bash.

So I feel lucky. It’s s good to be back, even on a recessionary shoestring. Continue…