Filled with Lower-East Side indie music, characters who shuttle back and forth in a stale-banana colored Yugo, and that old "meet cute" device, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is nonetheless completely, utterly, and excitingly modern. Told in the course of one night, the film is enchanting in its fresh take on all the old tricks—romantic conventions aren't so much trashed as merely discarded in favor for deeper, more vividly domestic (and thereby more sincere) views of our characters. Nick & Norah is a trip, a joy ride, a plug-in-and-let-go existential experience that is, I'm entirely too certain, one of those rarest of cinematic treasures: the once-in-a-decade-or-two romantic comedy that is so clever and bright and new as to not just represent those feelings on screen, but also the feelings of an entire era. What's important, though, isn't how well everything fits into the old, if high-standard, mold. What matters is how refreshingly un- it all can be; the details of courtship and love and life in this city-that-never-sleeps are fleshed out with the deftest of touches, and so their world we visit is also subtly but continually opened up—blossoming right before our eyes.
The boy: Nick (Michael Cera, who's quickly becoming the quietest of indie triumphs). He's a senior in high school, from the suburbs of Jersey, and the only straight member in a very hardcore rock band: The Jerk-Offs. Plus, his girl—Tris (Alexis Dziena)—just kinda, sorta, broke up with him…a while ago. He can't quite get over it (and is, in fact, still sending her mixes from his wounded heart). And then his friends/band-mates, Dev (Rafi Gavron) and Thom (Aaron Yoo), pull out into NYC night-life to play a gig…
The girl: Norah (Kat Dennings). She, too, is a senior (maybe attending Brown in the fall, maybe getting a job), but she's from Englewood, Jewish, and apparently has more influence in the club scene than just about anyone save Jesus. That's why she happens to be in a club one night with her friend Caroline (Ari Gaynor, who—if she's not the heart—is the comedic engine continually at work in the background, churning out consistent laughs) when Nick's band takes the stage…and Nick sees Tris…and Norah needs someone to pose as her boyfriend.
The meet-cute: you already saw coming. But it's the sole conventional element in a staging that prepares us not in the slightest for a very period ("period" being The Now) narrative, filled with subplots about looking for your drunk-buddies, supporting your "uni-boob" with the correct bra, and finding clues as to the location of the super-secret show by the super-cult band Where's Fluffy? Once Nick and Norah have become acquainted, they're far from gaga over the other. (For one, he still finds every moment an opportunity to pump Norah about her frenemy's feelings over the break-up.) But we watch them find that connection, and—as directed by Peter Sollett from a wisely urban script by Lorene Scafaria based on the titular novel—the search is done in just the perfect way: through shared smiles, jokes that went bad half-way through (but it's the attempt that matters, anyway), and moments shared in the oddest of places, made homely and yours through the sheer power of being there. In short, Nick and Norah find each other in Nick & Norah as if they were every teenager in the world, crammed into two symbolic bodies—flirting and bantering and letting silence flow out awkwardly in perfect imitation of the real thing, so as to make it real. There's derivation in the concept, but triumph in its staging.
"I just want to hold your hand," Dev tells Nick, in one of the many inspired moments in the movie, and that same easy-going whimsy of love and lust and everything-in-between just sort of happening carries over to the treatment of the film's every character. Dev and Thom (and the no-name beefy pick-up that starts tagging along with them after The Jerk-Offs' first gig) are gay, but their no one's flamboyant anything, just as Norah is Jewish—but you'd only know it when she brings up one of her favorite philosophies from said religion (which lets Nick put his own funky little, completely sincere spin on it). This is the New York City of the new millennium, and it belongs to these people, the movie tells us, who find life and love in the moments when no one is looking, and everything just comes rushing up to meet you. Say "Hello" and dive right in.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
30 Rock: The Complete First Season: B+
The Rural Juror; "Muffin Top"; dating your distant cousin (accidently); "Vice President of East Coast Television-and-Microwave Programming"; Fat Bitch I & II; The Black Crusaders—this is 30 Rock: Tina Fey's irreducibly insane, incandescently clever show-within-a-show sitcom. Such moments as those above are the reason her show first hit the radar, why it won over critics and (small but fanatical) audiences alike; and it's obvious why: 30 Rock has an admirable spirit of loony iconoclasm, it's a stalwart of left-brain/right-brain/no-brain bubbly wit. Built like the drunken, one-night-stand bastard of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (but far more entertaining) and fleshed out by mind-bogglingly quick zings between the Smart and the Dumb, the High and the Low, Fey's brain-child is a bit like doping up on laughing gas for thirty-minute intervals—the drug hits quick and stays, sizzling pleasantly in the back of your head, driving you to laugh spontaneously, constantly.
That's not to say everything works. A lot doesn't. Or didn't—see, the opening four episodes of Rock seem counterintuitive to what should be happening: they sink steadily downward, becoming almost impishly ridiculous; hollow and quirky: Scrubs Zero. The "Pilot" is more the tasteful precursor, though it too has some bumps. And then "The Aftermath," "Blind Date," and "Jack the Writer" become increasingly, almost imperceptibly, difficult. One can see, in Fey's writing and producing, the thread-bare work of her vision. And then the uptick, and stuff starts shifting for the better.
Leaving objectivity at the door, the concept is this: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the creator and head-writer of The Girlie Show, a mildly-hot sketch show on NBC with a crackpot star (Jane Krakowski). In comes a new executive, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who recruits fallen-movie-star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) to boosts the show's ratings. Lemon, already a frazzled career-woman in the greatest of clichéd traditions, now has to contend with her paranoid best-friend being replaced with a loose cannon…and the new boss who really wants to mentor her.
For several reasons, this would never happen. Like, in a million-billion-'till the end of time years never. But with a loopy conceit comes an even loopier product—and 30 Rock delivers pretty uniformly. The punch-lines are written as confessions; the action is sliced up into an ironic mélange; and the cast is such a phenomenal support (excluding Mr. Baldwin, who we'll get to in a moment) as to make even the weakest moments fresh. Even "The Head and the Hair" is infectiously goofy. And "Up All Night," "Cleveland," and "The Fighting Irish" are about all the necessary prove of Rock's crystallization as a comedy fount.
…Now: Alec Baldwin. Frequent-SNL host, movie star, Baldwin Brother—but funny, funny, man? Yes, yes, a 1,000 times yes. Delivering his lines a silken purr, squaring his physical presence into a box of imposing dexterity, and centering even those jokes that fly off the screen, the actor isn't just the heart of the show, but also its breakout show. He does something almost transcendent, and he does it in the context of a lesser, if very loose and very witty show. He makes the impossible possible, and turns the alt-NYC of Fey's world not just into a fanciful place, but also a state-of-mind: where sketch shows can have the name "Girlie" in their title and still air; where NBC is just a subsidiary of the Sheindhart Wig Company; and where in Cleveland, everyone's a model.
That's not to say everything works. A lot doesn't. Or didn't—see, the opening four episodes of Rock seem counterintuitive to what should be happening: they sink steadily downward, becoming almost impishly ridiculous; hollow and quirky: Scrubs Zero. The "Pilot" is more the tasteful precursor, though it too has some bumps. And then "The Aftermath," "Blind Date," and "Jack the Writer" become increasingly, almost imperceptibly, difficult. One can see, in Fey's writing and producing, the thread-bare work of her vision. And then the uptick, and stuff starts shifting for the better.
Leaving objectivity at the door, the concept is this: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the creator and head-writer of The Girlie Show, a mildly-hot sketch show on NBC with a crackpot star (Jane Krakowski). In comes a new executive, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who recruits fallen-movie-star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) to boosts the show's ratings. Lemon, already a frazzled career-woman in the greatest of clichéd traditions, now has to contend with her paranoid best-friend being replaced with a loose cannon…and the new boss who really wants to mentor her.
For several reasons, this would never happen. Like, in a million-billion-'till the end of time years never. But with a loopy conceit comes an even loopier product—and 30 Rock delivers pretty uniformly. The punch-lines are written as confessions; the action is sliced up into an ironic mélange; and the cast is such a phenomenal support (excluding Mr. Baldwin, who we'll get to in a moment) as to make even the weakest moments fresh. Even "The Head and the Hair" is infectiously goofy. And "Up All Night," "Cleveland," and "The Fighting Irish" are about all the necessary prove of Rock's crystallization as a comedy fount.
…Now: Alec Baldwin. Frequent-SNL host, movie star, Baldwin Brother—but funny, funny, man? Yes, yes, a 1,000 times yes. Delivering his lines a silken purr, squaring his physical presence into a box of imposing dexterity, and centering even those jokes that fly off the screen, the actor isn't just the heart of the show, but also its breakout show. He does something almost transcendent, and he does it in the context of a lesser, if very loose and very witty show. He makes the impossible possible, and turns the alt-NYC of Fey's world not just into a fanciful place, but also a state-of-mind: where sketch shows can have the name "Girlie" in their title and still air; where NBC is just a subsidiary of the Sheindhart Wig Company; and where in Cleveland, everyone's a model.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Eagle Eye: C
It's 2008—so why do movies like this keep getting made? We live in an age of hyper-awareness and literacy; and yet, when confronted with the possibility of creating a thriller gussied up as an allegory for our modern-1984 times, director DJ Caruso makes…this? This—Eagle Eye—that is like some dusty-retro relic from yesteryear, dug up and cleaned with spit-shine, then plopped before us as an audience and beamed directly onto our retinas—its mediocrity made "relevant" for a culture now long past being fooled by the old as the new. It's the kind of movie where the enemy is (spoiler!) a giant supercomputer; where the heroes are struggling, pretty, Americans With Issues who still find time to spark some sexual chemistry; and where the government always seems to get in its own way until—everyone together now—the maverick of the bunch realizes the hero is in the right. Sheesh, what is this: Tron?
It isn't as though Eagle Eye is entirely incompetent; and it's in no way not quite a thrill ride. In fact, the first 45-minutes are about as engaging as one could have hoped for. Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) is down on his luck, his brother just died, when he begins to receive mysterious phone calls, shipments of terrorist contraband, and money. Soon the FBI is involved, and he's running for his life—the omnipotent Voice on the other end of the line always directing him. Rachel (Michelle Monahan) is in a similar predicament, except that on her end, it's her son the Voice is holding hostage.
What's going on? Who is this "they"? And why are on Earth are such nice-looking young people like Jerry and Rachel being put through so much insanity?
Sad news: the propulsion of the first act runs dry quick, as answers become apparent (the most stultifying of which I've already revealed for you). And without that source of fuel, first you realize how banal the script is. And then you realize how completely and incompetently absurd is the craft presented to you as coherence and entertainment. Yes, stuff blows up and people are thrilled and scared and put in life-or-death situations. But why, exactly? Anyone?
I didn't think so.
Written by John Glenn & Travis Wright, and then Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, Eagle Eye is a hollow trifle—a curio of pop entertainment that seems to have wandered in from a far dustier set. Reportedly, the idea was conceived by executive-producer Steven Spielberg, but in whatever iteration he may have originally seen it, none remains. There is, instead, cliché after disconnected cliché. Even the extraordinarily well-cast actors—among whom, as no one should be shocked to learn, Mr. LaBeouf is the stand-out (his funeral sequence early on is the sole moment that actually reaches out and grabs you)—struggle and stumble under the weight of so much bull. And Mr. Caruso…well, after being given the bigger-budgetary reins after last year's Disturbia, he seems mostly content to let stuff get larger and more impossible, until it all spirals out of control—an '80s plot, meets '90s star-power, layered thick with '00 Michael Bay technical sensibilities. Welcome to the future, folks.
It isn't as though Eagle Eye is entirely incompetent; and it's in no way not quite a thrill ride. In fact, the first 45-minutes are about as engaging as one could have hoped for. Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) is down on his luck, his brother just died, when he begins to receive mysterious phone calls, shipments of terrorist contraband, and money. Soon the FBI is involved, and he's running for his life—the omnipotent Voice on the other end of the line always directing him. Rachel (Michelle Monahan) is in a similar predicament, except that on her end, it's her son the Voice is holding hostage.
What's going on? Who is this "they"? And why are on Earth are such nice-looking young people like Jerry and Rachel being put through so much insanity?
Sad news: the propulsion of the first act runs dry quick, as answers become apparent (the most stultifying of which I've already revealed for you). And without that source of fuel, first you realize how banal the script is. And then you realize how completely and incompetently absurd is the craft presented to you as coherence and entertainment. Yes, stuff blows up and people are thrilled and scared and put in life-or-death situations. But why, exactly? Anyone?
I didn't think so.
Written by John Glenn & Travis Wright, and then Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott, Eagle Eye is a hollow trifle—a curio of pop entertainment that seems to have wandered in from a far dustier set. Reportedly, the idea was conceived by executive-producer Steven Spielberg, but in whatever iteration he may have originally seen it, none remains. There is, instead, cliché after disconnected cliché. Even the extraordinarily well-cast actors—among whom, as no one should be shocked to learn, Mr. LaBeouf is the stand-out (his funeral sequence early on is the sole moment that actually reaches out and grabs you)—struggle and stumble under the weight of so much bull. And Mr. Caruso…well, after being given the bigger-budgetary reins after last year's Disturbia, he seems mostly content to let stuff get larger and more impossible, until it all spirals out of control—an '80s plot, meets '90s star-power, layered thick with '00 Michael Bay technical sensibilities. Welcome to the future, folks.
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