Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2006 > June > 26
Monday, June 26, 2006
DeLay doc in Austin on Tuesday
“The Big Buy: Tom Delay’s Stolen Congress” is getting an Austin screening Tuesday.
The film will be shown for free at 7 p.m. at the AFL-CIO hall auditorium (capacity is about 150) at 11th and Lavaca streets. Tom “Smitty” Smith of Public Citizen and Suzy Woodford of Common Cause will lead a discussion after the film. The screening is sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and Common Cause.
According to the Web site for the film, “The Big Buy” is screening at house parties around the country Tuesday for “Clean Money Day,” to promote public-financed political campaigns.
“The Big Buy” has already had theatrical runs in other cities, including Dallas and Houston. You can read Chris Garcia’s interview with the filmmakers here.
For more information on Tuesday’s screening, call Smith at 477-1155 or 797-8468, or Suzy Woodford, 474-2374 or 971-4839.
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Locals at L.A. film fest
SXSW’s Matt Dentler, who’s attending the Los Angeles Film Festival, was nice enough to send us a list of Austin-connected filmmakers who are there:
“There’s Steve Collins and John Merriman from ‘Gretchen.’ Mike Akel and Angie Alvarez and the whole gang from the film ‘Chalk.’ There’s Leah Marino here with Brad Beesley’s new doc, ‘The Creek Runs Red.’ There’s Alan Berg, 88, who has a new film here called **’A Place to Dance.’ And then, of course, Rick Linklater is here with ‘Scanner Darkly.’ “
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Girls on film
Girl power is the theme of Mary Celeste Kearney’s new book “Girls Make Media,” which casts a clear, intellectual light on young creative (and female) minds and the stuff they’re making in our tech-driven world, be it movies, Web sites or zines. Kearney knows from what she writes: She’s an assistant professor in UT’s radio-television-film department and the director of Cinemakids, a filmmaking program for youths.
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Peek at ‘Pirates’
— Now you can have Johnny Depp for breakfast. Delicious and prevents scurvy!
Meanwhile, get a sneak peek at “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” Although the prose will provoke “arrggghs” …
— Dear Steve Carell: We’re not too sure about this “Evan Almighty” business, but will give you the benefit of the doubt.
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‘Devil’ is stylish fun
Future fashion journalists of America, take note: Your dream jobs are waiting.
Sure the positions might first be filled by boring Midwesterners like me, but gals like us, well, we don’t know couture from poly-cotton blend, so heck, we won’t last long.
Your dream will come true in no time. And us? Well, shucks, we’ll find a nice little newspaper and follow our dreams, too.
That’s the world of journalism according to “The Devil Wears Prada,” a film adaptation of the 2003 novel of same name. It opens Friday.
There’s little in “Prada” that hasn’t been covered in any other working-girl-chick-lit-turned-movie, but the delivery of some witty one-line zingers and a few priceless sneers by the “Devil” herself are tiny gems in an otherwise flat coming-of-age tale.
It’s the story of Andrea Sachs, one of those dull Midwestern gals (they always are) who moves to New York City (they always do) to become a journalist and change the world.
When The New Yorker doesn’t want her, Andrea (an uglified Anne Hathaway) interviews for a position as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway magazine played by a soft-spoken yet intensely intimidating Meryl Streep.
Your dream job is Andrea’s nightmare.
From day one, Andrea (Andy) is nothing more than a note-taking, dog-walking, skirt-fetching, purse-holding doormat for her boss.
It doesn’t help that Andy is fashionably challenged (She asks, “Can you spell Gab-ba-na?”) and, dare I say, a size 6.
Streep is stunningly scary as she manages to bark Miranda’s devilish demands barely louder than a whisper, punctuating each page-long list of orders with an almost sweet-sounding yet condescending “That’s all.”
These orders of Miranda’s are nothing short of impossible tasks, like tracking down the unpublished manuscript of the new Harry Potter book for the editor’s twin brats. But Andy digs in her heels, doing her best for the Cruella DeVille of fashion editors, hoping her good deeds won’t go unnoticed when it’s time to get a real job.
Hathaway is adorable to watch as she remains an idealist, telling everyone that her job as Miranda’s dutiful servent is only temporary and how she dreams of one day writing about politics and foreign affairs.
It’s when the head of the art department Nigel (a pink shirt-wearing Stanley Tucci) helps Andy with a makeover, that she finally realizes happiness does come in the form of Marc Jacobs handbags and Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals. Who knew?
That’s naturally when Andy and her dream-chasing boyfriend Nate (“Entourage’s” Adrian Grenier) get all “I don’t even know who you are anymore!” (Cue tears, now a sappy pop song … and, scene.)
When a trip to a Paris fashion show is dangled in front of her eyes, Andy faces a conundrum: Stay in fashion and get free Hermes scarves for life or quit and follow her dreams of exposing the injustices of janitors’ unions?
“Wow, I’m like, totally gonna be her,” journalism undergrads everywhere will coo as they exit theaters. Yeah, and I’m the next Helen Thomas.
But I must confess I was rooting for Andy the whole way, hoping she would see the light and get out of the Vogue-like offices and start pounding the pavement and chasing ambulances for a city newspaper.
My only question for director David Frankel is, where was the scene of Andy running between taxis and gleefully tossing a Chanel cap into the air a la Mary Tyler Moore?
Isn’t that exactly what dull Midwestern girls do when they realize they’ve made it, after all?
Three stars.
Sarah Frank is a summer intern at the Austin American-Statesman, where she has not been asked to hunt down “Harry Potter” manuscripts or wear designer clothes. (Darn!)
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‘Superman Returns’ doesn’t quite fly
Superman’s a super drag. You think Clark Kent is a tedious milquetoast, try talking to the Man of Stone — that is, Steel. He’s a cold, witless young man with pronounced pecs and a foppish cowlick curling just-so down the middle of his blemishless forehead. We’ll allow that he’s rescued the world on numerous occasions (yawn, stretch), and that he has an intriguing spandexy fashion sense. But his presence is that of a slab of granite chiseled into a Platonic ideal of truth, justice, virtue. He’s the Barbie doll of superheroes, stolid and emasculated, sheer plastic perfection.
Yes, Superman is supposed to be perfect, yet he’s also supposed to be flesh and blood, charming, disarming, pumped by his need to do good, surging with passion when saving the day and poignantly troubled by the Earth’s ambient evil. No matter his interplanetary origins, Superman feels our pain.
In the serviceable but rarely fun “Superman Returns,” Superman returns, limply. We don’t blame former soap star Brandon Routh for this one-note figure, though the actor is something of a blank. Fingers point at director Bryan Singer, who reveres the old-school rudiments of the Christopher Reeve “Superman” (1978), while hoping to reinvent the franchise with computer-animated overkill and big ideas sunk by the absence of logic. He wants his Superman pure and manicured, and curiously sexless.
Approaching the task like a world-on-shoulders burden, Singer’s missteps are clear. To achieve an epic texture, he’s inflated the film with gassy longueurs and slowed the pace; he’s miscast his Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth); doesn’t give Kevin Spacey’s sparkling Lex Luthor enough screen time; and plays up Superman and Lane’s romance without recognizing they have as much chemistry as an overtrained Labrador (Superman) and a spayed, fixed-eyed terrier (Lois).
With the zooming blue credit titles and John Williams’ hummable theme from the ’78 film, “Superman Returns” begins with a flourish. And then it promptly slogs. Superman has left Earth for five years, revisiting his destroyed home planet Krypton. This also means Clark Kent has been gone for five years. Still, no one seems to notice the odd synchronicity of Superman and Kent returning to Metropolis on the same day.
Another tidy coincidence: He returns the same week Lane is receiving the Pulitzer Prize for her nicely loaded editorial in the Daily Planet, “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” Why did she write this so many years after he vanished? We don’t know what the essay says, but the title suggests a passive-aggressive retort by a lover scorned. (Recall, Superman, like Spider-Man, cannot commit to the woman he quietly loves for a complex of reasons.)
So he’s back. So is Lex Luthor, played bald and with the film’s only organic zest by Spacey, who, when not stuck in the script’s Bad Guy banalities, gets off some spittling histrionics that make you grin. Suffering an incurable God complex, Luthor’s big plan is to steal Superman’s “crystal technology” from the Fortress of Solitude — Superman’s bachelor pad, a cavernous ice palace totally unfurnished except for a big screen TV from which the late Marlon Brando intones oracular solemnities. (Never mind.) Luther gets the goods and goes forth with his convoluted, totally illogical scheme.
Singer saw in Routh a calming likeness to Reeve, who died in 2004. When he smiles, Routh shows an eerie resemblance to Reeve, with the razor lips and dimpled chin. His features also bring to mind Jason Schwartzman, although Routh, at 6-feet 3-inches, has about a foot on the “Rushmore” star.
If Routh isn’t commanding as the all-American savior — he’s supposed to be lost in brooding, but comes off more as an egoless vault — Bosworth is simply dull. She plays Lane uptight and humorless. Unlike Margot Kidder’s ’78 Lane, a sort of screwball ditz who could toss a one-liner (“You’ve got me? Who’s got you?”), Bosworth’s is a sober career woman with an out-of-wedlock little boy (cutely annoying Tristan Leabu), who could be the link to the inevitable sequel.
Singer prefers making spectacle over making sense, but at this point some of us are suffering CGI fatigue. The soft edges of digital animation are an upgrade from the hard lines of blue-screen effects in the original movie, and now we can hear the shower-curtainy rustle of Superman’s cape.
What hasn’t evolved is airtight storytelling. Logic holes riddle the movie, not the least of which is why Superman keeps busy with house fires and deli holdups while the world is being riven by famine, war and terrorism.
“Superman Returns” has been compared to the recharged “Spider-Man” and “Batman” franchises, wrongly. The movie isn’t nearly as thoughtful and moving as “Batman Begins” or as darkly exhilarating as “Spider-Man 2.” Let’s tiptoe on a limb and say it’s also not as interesting or intense as Ang Lee’s underrated “Hulk.”
Singer is an avowed comic book fan — his “X-Men” films strike an exemplary balance of action, gravitas and wit — but his resolve not to tinker with the basic recipe creates a stuffy, self-conscious air that muzzles playfulness.
Not only is joy and fun lacking in this superhero tale, but so is toughness, a dramatic urgency for the stakes on screen. It feels flabby and toothless. I hardly buy into the subtext of America needing a superhero for these imperiled times. That’s silly. What America really needs is a good summer movie, a layered divertissement with grit and life and wholly new excitements. We need to laugh and be thrilled. This Superman doesn’t quite come to the rescue.
Two stars
“Superman Returns” opens Wednesday at Westgate 11, Tinseltown Austin, Alamo South, Barton Creek Square, Alamo Village, Gateway, Tinseltown Pflugerville and Lakeline Mall.
