Will Ferrell's over-the-top comedy gives the movie its moments and Nicole Kidman proves she's just as capable of playing light-hearted fluff as she is at drama, but credit to this movie goes mainly to Nora Ephron. With Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail and now Bewitched, the director and co-writer has further solidified herself as one of the few consistently good writers of romantic comedy films.
I read a negative review of this film by the Washington Post that called the movie outdated saying, "Nicole Kidman plays a role ordinary reserved for Meg Ryan, that Meg Ryan herself even stopped playing long ago." On the contrary, I think Nora Ephron makes such solid movies because she is so acutely attuned to the latest trend. You've Got Mail, a movie about two people falling in love over the internet, came out in 1998, well before widespread e-dating. Similarly, Sleepless in Seattle's star-crossed pair find each other through a call-in radio show. Sound familiar? Dr. Laura or the fictional Frasier Crane, maybe?
Considering that this own film's release date is sandwiched between remakes of the Longest Yard, Batman, the Honeymooners, and the Bad News Bears, the Pink Panther, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the other end, it seems pretty far-fetched to call this picture outdated with all this hysterical nostalgia going on around us.
Ephron's story lines are also well-written and have a screwball comedy sense of fun, this one being no different. In particular, she has a lot of fun playing with her life-imitates-art theme here in her story about a has-been actor trying to reboot his career with a remake of Bewitched casts Nicole Kidman as his costar, who turns out to be an actual witch.
As mentioned previously, Will Ferrell's hilarious ad-libs make their way into the movie and while he's slightly miscast, it isn't too big of an obstacle. Nicole Kidman is excellent as well. Shirley MacLaine makes the most of her small role, especially the scenes she shares with Michael Caine in their romantic subplot
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Sunday, May 06, 2007
And the summer season is off: Spiderman breaks all the records
Well, the summer season has started (and I have yet to fully discuss that in another post that I had planned to post up) and it was a bang with the new Spiderman sequel. The critics gave it "mixed reviews" while the public saw it in record numbers. Early Sunday projections come to the tune of $149 million and all I can say is that I saw both these trends coming. It seemed obvious that the critics wouldn't like the 3rd part of a trilogy because they rarely do. The expectations are so high, that they're usually expecting the next Citizen Kane and this is usually more the case when the film directors like the 2nd half of the trilogy better. Roger Ebert called X-Men 2 the best superhero movie he'd ever seen until the year after that when he proclaimed Spiderman 2 the best superhero movie ever again, so again the expectations are going to be high.
My city paper's film critic, Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post, went on to express this self-fullfilling prophecy in her review of the film. She basically said, "Spiderman 3 cements the rule that the third leg of a trilogy will always be a massive disappointment, just like Batman Forever and X-Men 3." As I constantly try to remind people, it wasn't until Batman & Robin that the Batman series took a real dive. Batman Forever remains one of my favorite superhero films and I have yet to hear a rational argument for why X-Men 3 was not a good film. Maybe slightly less effective than the first two films, but the level of acting, plot complexity, and special effects are still way up there. By no means do I equate Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer as directors (I think much higher of the latter), but without seeing the opening credits, I would openly challenge many of the film critics who bashed X-Men 3 to identify whether it was a Singer or a Rattner movie.
I also expected Spiderman 3 to do tremendously well, but duh. The harder question is why. I much prefer the X-Men series and tried to show it to my dad once, but for some reason he has a habit of running in the opposite direction of anything that appears sci-fi and about halfway through, he felt it was just unappealling and walked away.
It was too complex for him and in that respect, Spiderman with only one hero (Peter Parker), one villain (Doc Ock or the Green Goblin), one girl (MJ), and one variable who shifts in between (Harry Osborn), it's superhero/supervillain entertainment watered down enough so that anyone can partake. That's kind of the way I see it, at least. Magneto is a villain of Shakesperean proportions and he plays games of chess with his biggest arch rival. Despite Alfred Molina and Willhem Dafoe being serviceable actors, they played one-dimenstional villains. In Spiderman 1, the Peter Parker-MJ relationship is so cliche of the girl-next-door type story, that she's even literally next door. I also didn't feel that any of the key relationships evolved organically from Spiderman 1 to Spiderman 2. Harry and Peter Parker are "best friends" but that is merely a plot point. Do we ever see the two actually canoodling as friends? Despite the cliche factor, I might say that it was a somewhat effective progression from boy having a crush on girl to the two falling in love in Spiderman 1, but in Spiderman 2, there's an awkward stability between the two and they act as if they're lifelong friends. MJ is expecting things of him as "her best friend" such as being on time to the play. It's merely a relationship established at the start of the picture to move it along from one end of the spectrum to another.
Nevertheless, I do like the Spiderman Series and would give both movies thumbs up. I think that they do a great job of intermixing the superhero within the mundane world and that's another reason why this superhero trilogy has become such a mega force at the box office. Because it attracts the comic book nerds in droves while it attracts the people who aren't drawn to comic book storytelling. I think Tobey MaGuire is cast extremely against type and it plays off especially well. I just don't think it's on the level of really great movie making
Nevertheless, I will probably see Spiderman 3, mainly because when something's this big, you've gotta jump in and see what it's all about. I'm also extremely curious to see what they've done with Thomas Haden Church
My city paper's film critic, Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post, went on to express this self-fullfilling prophecy in her review of the film. She basically said, "Spiderman 3 cements the rule that the third leg of a trilogy will always be a massive disappointment, just like Batman Forever and X-Men 3." As I constantly try to remind people, it wasn't until Batman & Robin that the Batman series took a real dive. Batman Forever remains one of my favorite superhero films and I have yet to hear a rational argument for why X-Men 3 was not a good film. Maybe slightly less effective than the first two films, but the level of acting, plot complexity, and special effects are still way up there. By no means do I equate Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer as directors (I think much higher of the latter), but without seeing the opening credits, I would openly challenge many of the film critics who bashed X-Men 3 to identify whether it was a Singer or a Rattner movie.
I also expected Spiderman 3 to do tremendously well, but duh. The harder question is why. I much prefer the X-Men series and tried to show it to my dad once, but for some reason he has a habit of running in the opposite direction of anything that appears sci-fi and about halfway through, he felt it was just unappealling and walked away.
It was too complex for him and in that respect, Spiderman with only one hero (Peter Parker), one villain (Doc Ock or the Green Goblin), one girl (MJ), and one variable who shifts in between (Harry Osborn), it's superhero/supervillain entertainment watered down enough so that anyone can partake. That's kind of the way I see it, at least. Magneto is a villain of Shakesperean proportions and he plays games of chess with his biggest arch rival. Despite Alfred Molina and Willhem Dafoe being serviceable actors, they played one-dimenstional villains. In Spiderman 1, the Peter Parker-MJ relationship is so cliche of the girl-next-door type story, that she's even literally next door. I also didn't feel that any of the key relationships evolved organically from Spiderman 1 to Spiderman 2. Harry and Peter Parker are "best friends" but that is merely a plot point. Do we ever see the two actually canoodling as friends? Despite the cliche factor, I might say that it was a somewhat effective progression from boy having a crush on girl to the two falling in love in Spiderman 1, but in Spiderman 2, there's an awkward stability between the two and they act as if they're lifelong friends. MJ is expecting things of him as "her best friend" such as being on time to the play. It's merely a relationship established at the start of the picture to move it along from one end of the spectrum to another.
Nevertheless, I do like the Spiderman Series and would give both movies thumbs up. I think that they do a great job of intermixing the superhero within the mundane world and that's another reason why this superhero trilogy has become such a mega force at the box office. Because it attracts the comic book nerds in droves while it attracts the people who aren't drawn to comic book storytelling. I think Tobey MaGuire is cast extremely against type and it plays off especially well. I just don't think it's on the level of really great movie making
Nevertheless, I will probably see Spiderman 3, mainly because when something's this big, you've gotta jump in and see what it's all about. I'm also extremely curious to see what they've done with Thomas Haden Church
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The bias behind a bias
I'm sick and tired of people accusing various media outlets of having a "liberal bias" or a "conservative bias."
I'm tired of conservatives using the argument that news stations or newspapers operate under a bias. In this way they seek to invalidate the opinions of those who oppose them rather than engage in a constructive argument. It's true that Washington Post has more liberal opinions ono their editorial section but most of the staff writers and journalists are professional reporters who operate under a set of standards. I don't think people appreciate how good of a job the vast majority of reporters in this world do at abiding by those standards. The way conservatives portray the news media who disagrees with them, they'd have us believe that people take on careers in journalism out of a desire to massively influence public policy through distortions of the truth. In fact, the people doing those are mostly conservative radio pundits. There are probably a few biased liberal pundits too.
The true bias comes from belonging to a party. Liberal and conservative are entirely abstract words that only make sense in the context of American politics within this certain period of American history. They don't really mean anything in absolute terms, but they mean a lot to a lot of people. It ties them to a certain set of principles to fight for, so that's their bias and distortion.
The set of principles I like to abide by is what's good for America and me as a voter. I belong to the "good government" party if that exists. I also am all for the "truth" party. I'd like honest information, and the people who get closest to that are reporters. They're trained in truth-seeking and it's true, us journalists have biases but those have to do with meeting deadlines, making their leads abnormally flashy, making boring people interesting. Maybe in some cases, that produces a distortion, I'll admit but that's so much smaller than the pundits will have you believe.
The truth is that if the vast majority of news agencies are saying things like "War on Iraq is bad" and the pundits are arguing that their all distorted, then pundits and everyone else who cries foul, needs to accept the possibility that the only thing that's distorted is the truth in relation to their own views. I'm not even arguing for or against the war on Iraq. I'm arguing against the innocent smearing of a journalist's name by a pundit for political gain.
I'm tired of conservatives using the argument that news stations or newspapers operate under a bias. In this way they seek to invalidate the opinions of those who oppose them rather than engage in a constructive argument. It's true that Washington Post has more liberal opinions ono their editorial section but most of the staff writers and journalists are professional reporters who operate under a set of standards. I don't think people appreciate how good of a job the vast majority of reporters in this world do at abiding by those standards. The way conservatives portray the news media who disagrees with them, they'd have us believe that people take on careers in journalism out of a desire to massively influence public policy through distortions of the truth. In fact, the people doing those are mostly conservative radio pundits. There are probably a few biased liberal pundits too.
The true bias comes from belonging to a party. Liberal and conservative are entirely abstract words that only make sense in the context of American politics within this certain period of American history. They don't really mean anything in absolute terms, but they mean a lot to a lot of people. It ties them to a certain set of principles to fight for, so that's their bias and distortion.
The set of principles I like to abide by is what's good for America and me as a voter. I belong to the "good government" party if that exists. I also am all for the "truth" party. I'd like honest information, and the people who get closest to that are reporters. They're trained in truth-seeking and it's true, us journalists have biases but those have to do with meeting deadlines, making their leads abnormally flashy, making boring people interesting. Maybe in some cases, that produces a distortion, I'll admit but that's so much smaller than the pundits will have you believe.
The truth is that if the vast majority of news agencies are saying things like "War on Iraq is bad" and the pundits are arguing that their all distorted, then pundits and everyone else who cries foul, needs to accept the possibility that the only thing that's distorted is the truth in relation to their own views. I'm not even arguing for or against the war on Iraq. I'm arguing against the innocent smearing of a journalist's name by a pundit for political gain.
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