Necessity is the mother of invention. I just didn’t make it to the multiplex this week, but, fearing reprimand by my masters here at Popdose, figured I had to come up with something. Salvation arrived on Monday, via press release. “Wayne Wang’s The Princess of Nebraska Enjoys Record-Setting Debut on YouTube,” it read. “165,000+ views in a two-day period is the biggest online opening ever for a feature-length studio film.” My razor-sharp journalistic instincts sniffed a story, a thankfully easy-to-get story I could put together between diaper changes (my daughter’s, not my own).

It got better: Beyond the headline, the release said that had the movie opened in theaters, it would have ranked No. 15 for the weekend, ahead of City of Ember, Religulous, and Lakeview Terrace. And, most important, it was free. Hell, yeah: I could sit in front of my MacBook and enjoy the 15th-ranked movie, for free (I wouldn’t pay 50 cents to watch City of Ember), pop out a few comments, and invite you to watch it, too, giving the whole experience a little of that crazy new-media interactivity the kids are always talking about. Stop reading (assuming you started reading, when you realized Saw V would not be on today’s menu) and click on over to YouTube’s Screening Room, “a new channel dedicated to premium film content,” at http://www.youtube.com/ytscreeningroom. Then tune in, and wait for those red heels to start pacing in the big box on the left side of the screen. Those boots are made for walking, and The Princess of Nebraska is gonna walk all over you.

But, whoa, hit pause, or stop. The main event can wait. Let’s look around. I like the clean, red-draped look, very “theatrical” and less busy than the hectic funhouse that is the rest of YouTube. There’s an archive of short films to explore at the bottom, including an expanded (but still short) version of the 2002 Oscar winner in the live-action category, Thoth. Spend 42 minutes on that one if you’d like—it won an Academy Award, after all—then come back. Or multitask, and read and watch at the same time. (more…)

This week, something new for the column: I invited my fellow TV critic, Shaun Hamid, to sit in and discuss the highly acclaimed Mad Men.   I hope that our discussion will draw more comments from you readers and start a discussion about this celebrated show.  Consider it a sort-of Siskel & Ebert type of exchange, if you will.

Scott: Last month. AMC’s Mad Men became the first basic cable show to win the Emmy for best dramatic series.  This was quite a feat for a show that airs on the little-watched AMC. Created by Matthew Weiner (an executive producer for The Sopranos), Mad Men (the show derives its name from what the Madison Avenue ad men used to call themselves) is set in the early 1960s, when postwar conservative ‘50s values carried over into the new decade.  Men were the breadwinners, women stayed at home and raised the children, and anything outside of this “norm” was seen as controversial and scandalous. 

Mad Men does a remarkable job of capturing the tone and look of that era in the way the characters speak and act, as well as the meticulous attention to detail. The clothes, the sets, everything is pretty much pitch perfect. The main character is Don Draper, played by actor Jon Hamm. Draper is a rising star in the advertising world and a partner in the firm of Sterling/Cooper. When he isn’t gulping scotch, smoking endless cigarettes and proving that he has an undeniable gift for selling things to consumers, Draper is on his way to becoming a captain of industry and a member of the elite class. Yet, Draper isn’t all that he seems. He doesn’t lead just a double life, this guy harbors so many secrets he carries on a triple and quadruple life.  Born Dick Whitman, he’s the bastard child of a prostitute and grew up poor on a farm.  He fought in the Korean war and when his commanding officer was killed in the line of duty, assumed the fallen soldier’s identity to escape his miserable past.  By age 19, Draper began harboring the first of his many secrets.  That he has been able to rise to the top of the advertising world is a mystery, but it’s a good mystery and one that has kept the cult like fan base watching for over two seasons.

As Draper demonstrates, Mad Men is a show about secrets.  Marital affairs, hidden sexuality, children out of wedlock, discreet alcoholism, and most of all, secret identities — everyone is keeping something locked away. (more…)

So, we’ve already discussed one of my favorite John Cusack movies, Better Off Dead. This week I thought we’d talk about the other film he did with director “Savage” Steve Holland: One Crazy Summer (1986). It’s a wacky, offbeat comedy starring Cusack as Hoops McCann, a wannabe basketball star who isn’t any good at the game, though he is a pretty decent cartoonist. He decides to channel his basketball frustrations into illustrating the perfect love story.

To help Hoops get some perspective, his good friend George (Joel Murray) takes him to Nantucket for the summer. Hoops meets all kinds of interesting characters, including the Stork twins (Bobcat Goldthwait and Tom Villard), who are mechanics; Ack-Ack (Curtis Armstrong), a marine’s son who just can’t please his father; and Cassandra (Demi Moore), a cornrow-sporting musician trying to save her grandfather’s house from a family of greedy land developers. As Hoops spends more time with this group, he begins to figure out more about himself and how to create his perfect love story.

As with many of my favorite ’80s films, the soundtrack doesn’t seem to be available for purchase, which is a shame. There are so many songs featured in One Crazy Summer that I associate with the film and many of its characters no matter when or where I hear them (”Down on the Corner” is a prime example). I managed to track down almost everything, though none of Demi Moore’s songs could be located, I’m sad to say. As always, if you have something that I couldn’t get my hands on, share it! Now, I’m off to watch a John Cusack movie marathon.

(more…)

George W. Bush says he is content to let history judge him. But he misunderestimated Oliver Stone, whose W. puts our departing president on the cinematic cutting board just weeks before the next election. I was concerned over the timing: Stone’s throwing red meat to Bill O’Reilly and the “base” is just the kind of diversion flop-sweating right-wingers are hoping for as the McCain campaign lumbers on. True, conservatives will carp over the more broadly satirical sections, and the distortions to the record as they see them. (The very idea of Oliver Stone, a Vietnam veteran resistant to swift boating, dipped in Oscar gold, and beloved by segments of the liberal media, is infuriating to the right.) But with so many noted Republicans, Republican incumbents, and Maverick himself running away from Bush’s meager achievements, it will be no easy task for pundits to prove that Stone is the only one kicking Shrub when he’s down. Besides, the movie picks him up from the gutter, and dusts him off a little bit. It’s a portrait Joe the Plumber might endorse, at least in part, if he had that tax cut he needs to afford movie night again.

W. is fitfully entertaining, but Stone’s slash-and-sympathy tactics make for a schizophrenic experience. He is a coarse filmmaker, largely adverse to nuance, and that bludgeoning quality gives his best pictures their lifeforce vitality. When brain matches brawn, you get a Salvador or a Platoon, and I’m partial to the time capsule called Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Any Given Sunday besides. But he overreaches, as with Natural Born Killers and Alexander, and played it safe with World Trade Center, as if he had lost his nerve. He hedges here, more skillfully. W. is a cheekily timed broadside, more sober-minded than Comedy Central’s “That’s My Bush!” (which despite a dead-on interpreter in Timothy Bottoms came and went pre-9/11, before its subject was better defined) and what for some was the wish fulfillment of 2006’s briefly controversial fake documentary Death of a President. We get a recreation of Bush choking on a potato chip as he watches a football game in the White House, but this is treated semi-solemnly, and leads to a flashback. (more…)

Has this ever happened to you?

You’ve bought a new album. You put it on and hit “play,” and as it’s playing, you find that you’re enjoying it well enough, but it’s not really grabbing you…until, suddenly, the album hits a particular song, and - bam! - you’re in love. You play the song again. Damn, that’s good. And now that your ears are open, you find yourself wondering if the remainder of the album is just as good, so you let it continue playing…and you find that, yes, it is! Then, you realize that you need to go back and start the record over from the beginning, since you weren’t really paying enough attention when it first started….and, holy crap, you must’ve been drunk or something, because it’s so obvious to you now that this entire album is brilliant!

That, in a nutshell, is what I experienced when I first heard The Devlins’ “Alone in the Dark,” and it’s how their debut album, Drift, became one of my favorite albums of 1993.

“Alone in the Dark” is, for my money, one of the sexiest and most sensual songs ever written. It has been included on many a mix tape over the years…though, of course, the only one that matters is the one I made for my wife when we first started dating, and any claims to the contrary are damned dirty lies. (Today is our seventh wedding anniversary, as it happens. Happy anniversary, sweetheart!)

It’s a song which begs to be on the soundtrack to a romantic movie, playing as the couple you’ve been rooting for throughout the entire film finally comes together, and if you don’t believe me, just read these lyrics:

I feel the storm, but it’s so strange
To feel desire without the pain
And I feel your eyes search my soul
For sometime sacred, for something more than you need

So tell me what you feel
Tell me every little thing
Tell me all that you are now
And tell me what it’s like to see
From your own heart
Now I’ve got you…alone in the dark

Goosebumps, I tells ya. Goosebumps!

(more…)

BOTTOM LINE: I would’ve really liked this musical when I was 13.

13 is one of this season’s new, big-budget Broadway musicals. It’s the story of 12-year-old Evan, who’s forced to move to small-town Indiana from Manhattan when his parents get divorced. As his bar mitzvah nears, he has to get the popular kids to come to his awesome party, thereby solidifying his cool-kid status through his high school years. The music and lyrics, by Jason Robert Brown (he also wrote the score to The Last Five Years, one of my favorites), are energetic and sometimes funny. But the book, by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, couldn’t be more contrived if it were an episode of Saved by the Bell.

Luckily, the ensemble of 13 are quite good, and all of them are on track for tremendous success in adulthood. I actually spent a little too much time in my head casting them in future productions of Hairspray and Grease, and if reality is anything like my imagination, they’ll grow into dynamite performers. These teenagers are well cast: talented enough to pull off the show and awkward enough to be completely age appropriate. They’re also bursting with energy and sheer joy for the opportunity they’ve been given. As a result, they’re fun to watch.

There are some good components to 13, though ultimately it falls flat. I laughed out loud on a number of occasions; for example, the kids attend Dan Quayle Middle School. And some of the music rocks pretty hard — the opening number, appropriately called “13/Becoming a Man,” has been stuck in my head all day. The stage band is surprisingly solid, considering that all five members are teenagers themselves. But all in all the play’s creativity is sparse at the expense of telling a simple, obvious story with a simple, obvious resolution. 13 lacks the “wow” moments that make live theatre so incredibly powerful, which is a disservice to both the audience and the performers. The kids onstage need something deeper to play, the kids in the audience can handle a more sincere story, and the adults who came with them deserve something to grab onto.

(more…)

“Fair is fair!” I don’t think that’s the official tagline of The Legend of Billie Jean (1985), but it’s certainly the favorite quote of anyone I know who loves the movie as much as I do. My brother and I often said it to our parents when we were getting in trouble as children, to which one of them would usually reply, “Do you want your $608?” I’ve been known to randomly text the phrase to friends on late drunken nights, though it’s much more effective when said in person, complete with double fist pump. And it’s through this quote that I bonded with a now very good friend as we reminisced about our favorite ’80s movies.

I wasn’t lucky enough to see The Legend of Billie Jean when it was in theaters, but it was a staple in my household via many, many airings on cable. I even still have the original videocassette we used to tape the movie off of HBO back in the day (believe it or not, the next movie on the tape is Supergirl). It’s a movie I never get sick of watching, and it’s a travesty that it still hasn’t been released on DVD.

(more…)

Body of Lies didn’t have to do much to impress me. It’s the first movie I’ve seen since becoming a dad, and the switch from explosive poops to plain old explosions was a comfort. But I must have gotten rusty over the last two months. It is my duty to tell you the plot of this movie, and I confess I can only start at about the 90-minute mark, when after a great deal of strenuous editing the movie caught its breath and became a post-9/11 version of The Sting. As far as I could make out, Leonardo DiCaprio’s conflicted CIA operative flim-flammed a Mideast businessman, a minor cog in Al-Qaeda’s wheel, into a big fish, to draw out the bigger fish that his untrustworthy boss, Russell Crowe, was interested in. Part of this ruse involved DiCaprio pretending to be an average Mideast citizen, but Leo dressed as an average Mideast citizen looks like Leo dressed as an average Mideast citizen, and neither the terrorist bigwigs he’s after nor I were born yesterday.

I’m not really knocking Leo, or Body of Lies, which cuts a few corners in the logic department to get the job done but is more efficiently locked and loaded than Ridley Scott’s last picture, the draggy and morally distasteful American Gangster. That one smacked you upside the head with its posturing, and embalmed period recreation; this one takes place in our fubar world, with DiCaprio, last seen slogging through Sierra Leone circa 1999 in Blood Diamond, dispatched to the fresher hells of Iraq and Jordan to atone once more for the West’s hypocritical sins. Like Jake Gyllenhaal’s pained CIA analyst in last fall’s war-on-terror flop Rendition, DiCaprio’s Roger Ferris is about the only standup guy in the movie—which is rather difficult to reconcile with what we know of the agency’s egregious involvement in our present regional difficulties. The notion of a “good” CIA agent is hard to swallow, even in a potboiler like this one. (more…)

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, in a whole new style: the classic video for a-ha’s “Take On Me,” redone literally. What does that mean, you ask? Watch and learn, friends. Watch and learn.

There’s a phrase made famous by Thomas Hobbes, used to great effect in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, and that is: Homo homini lupus. That Latin phrase roughly translates to “Man is a wolf to man,” and strikes the keynote to part of the powerful film War/Dance.

The film, exquisitely shot by Sean Fine and directed by Andrea Nix Fine, tells the story of a group of Ugandan children who live in a government camp that offers 60,000 refugees a semi-safe haven from 20-year war between the Ugandan government and the Christian terrorist group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.  The leader of the LRA is Joseph Kony, and his overt aims are to build a Christian theocracy in the northern region of Uganda — which is home to the Acholi tribe.  However, what the LRA is really doing is abducting children (who often have to kill their own parents) and forcing them to fill many roles (i.e., soldiers, sex slaves, and torturers) as the LRA attempts to build their utopia.  Kony claims to be creating a society based on the Ten Commandments, but, as it’s been pointed out by many human rights organizations, the LRA routinely violates many of the commandments they claim to uphold (the first, obviously, is not to kill.)

In this war-torn environment, we meet three children (Rose, Dominic and Nancy) who live in the camp and have had to witness horrors no one should.  Nancy’s father and mother were abducted by the LRA one day while working in the fields, and Nancy and her siblings had to hide for three days in the bush before fleeing to the safety of the government camp.  Nancy’s mother eventually escaped from her captors and was able to briefly stay with the kids before moving to another city to find work.  Nancy’s father didn’t survive.  He was killed almost immediately upon capture (hacked into pieces by a group of kids wielding machetes) and his wife was ordered to pick up the pieces of her dead spouse and bury him.

Rose’s parents were also killed by the LRA and their bodies were displayed in a gruesome way.  She recounted a harrowing story of a time when she was brought to the place where rows of pots were boiling with human remains, and shown the head of her mother. Throughout much of the film, there’s an emotionless shield Rose and Nancy use to protect themselves, but it certainly cracks when the girls recount their tragic loss and the alienation they feel. (more…)