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KPBS Film Club of the Air - May 31, 2007

May 31st, 2007 by Scott Marks

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Appearing monthly on These Days, the Film Club of the Air features local film critics Beth Accomando and Scott Marks discussing films in San Diego theaters.

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audio_mp3_button.jpgPaprika, Chalk, Knocked Up and Once
May 31, 2007
While the third “Spiderman” and “Pirates of the Carribean” break box office records, we explore some of early summer’s smaller releases. We talk about a modern-day musical from a former member of The Frames, an adult-oriented anime movie called “Paprika,” and we’ll see if the comedies “Chalk” and “Knocked Up” make us laugh.
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LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD / Albert Brooks (2005)

May 31st, 2007 by Scott Marks

Albert Brooks & Danny in LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005)

Directed by: Albert Brooks

Written by: Albert Brooks

Cast: Albert Brooks, Fred Dalton Thompson, Penny Marshall, Victoria Burrows, Paul Eric Jerome, B.J. Ward, Lynda Berg, Steve Kramer, Vipin Kumar, Avinash Kaur, Rima Laham, Sanjeev Johrai, Imran Mashkoor Kahn, Kavita Ashok, Sandhya Bhatia

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Genres: Comedy

Rating: ★★★★★

Even though Match Point has less laughs than Shadows and Fog and September combined, it is essential to celebrate the fact that the two most superb, trustworthy and knee-slappingest comedic voices of 70’s and 80’s cinema (Albert Brooks and Woody Allen) both have films opening this week

Along with Jerry Lewis and Howard Stern, I have spent the greater portion of my adult life defending the comic (and at times cosmic) genius of Albert Brooks. The reasons why most Americans shun spastic Jerry and gamy Howard are fairly obvious: people either dislike them or they hate them. Certainly Albert doesn’t provoke the same sense of disregard. From the start, he was branded an “acquired taste.” Didn’t they catch-on to his hip-before-its-time “Danny and Dave” routine (an unashamedly lip-moving ventriloquist) on Ed Sullivan? What about The Albert Brooks’ School of Comedy on PBS’s Great American Dream Machine or his sublime shorts for SNL? It seemed the harder Albert tried, the faster the general public sought asylum in another multiplex.

Had the “comedian’s comedian” stuck to supper clubs and the small screen, he still would have earned a spot right alongside Ernie Kovacs in the comedic Pantheon. With Real Life, Modern Romance and Lost in America, Brooks forged a vision and persona that heralded a mastery of cinematic form and elevated him to the ranks of comic auteurs Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and, gulp, Jerry Lewis.

As in all classic film comedies, the set-up of LFCITMW is a simple one: In order to bring about peace and understanding through laughter, Brooks is asked by the government to travel to Pakistan to compile an ominous 500 page report on what makes the locals laugh. With the possible exception of the SCTV gang, no one understands, and, in an insanitary way, enjoys old (ancient?) school showbiz superficiality more than Albert. LFCITMW could be the finest Bob Hope vehicle that the violently unfunny Ski-nose never made. With feet firmly planted at the altar of The Jack Benny Program, Albert plays an ostensibly autobiographical character, well-versed in the art of rehearsed showbiz spontaneity, named Albert Brooks. The ersatz Albert has a wife and daughter, and while Brooks (nee: Einstein) is married, he has yet to produce an off-screen offspring.

It’s not just the passing generations of sincerely insincere comics that Brooks revels in ripping apart. He obviously knows what a perfect target Penny Marshall is. (Does she?) Anybody could (and did) direct Big. Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Brooks contemptuously displays the poster) and particularly Awakenings are abominations of cinema and the notion that A League of Their Own probably grossed more than all of Albert’s directorial efforts combined is sick-making. It is the talent-free Ms. Marshall’s refusal to “see” Albert in the Jimmy Stewart role for a remake of Harvey (compounded by a boatload of self-deprecating The In-Laws barbs) that sets Brooks on the road to Pakistan.

Unlike Woody who constantly relies on verbal and visual digressions (surprisingly there are few of either in Match Point), Brooks employs an unobstructed point-of-view and straightforward structure. With a pair of Government foils (John Carroll Lynch and Tony Montero) to guide him, we rationally observe every step of Albert’s two-month pilgrimage. He secures an assistant (the doe-eyed, effervescent Sheetal Sheth), sets up shop in a ramshackle building and reasons that the surest way to gauge a culture’s sense of humor is to put on a show, hit them with everything you’ve got and see where the laughs fall.

Brooks’ on-screen persona was never really all that likable. In order to add drama to his reality-TV forerunner Real Life, Brooks decides to burn down his subjects’ home. There is nothing even remotely cute, cuddly or Alvy Singer-like in his hilariously unflattering Modern Romance and his egocentric yearnings to “touch an Indian” in Lost in America prove as illusory as they are amusing. This time around Brooks presents a self-eviscerating overview of his career and no one is more aware of their ‘Q’ rating (the measure of a celebrity’s name recognition) than Albert. Hindis might not place the face, but everyone knows the voice of Nemo’s father!

To discuss the film any further would result in revealing too many gags and laugh-lines. It’s been ages since filmmakers took comedy seriously enough to actually attempt a breakdown of just what makes us laugh. Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels was one of the first films to put laughter under a microscope and Jerry Lewis continues to explain comical humoressness every Labor Day. Last year’s The Aristocrats renewed the trend and leave it to Albert, the most intelligent comedy mind currently at work behind a camera, to up the ante.

Don’t let the title deter you as it did Sony Pictures who refused to release it under its current name. At a time when movie comedy has coarsened to the point where wedding crashers and 40-year old virgins are as good as it gets, God bless Albert Brooks (and Warner Independent) for bringing logic back to laughter.

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Scent of a Stooge

May 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks

GIVE YOUR PERSONAL SPACE THAT UNMISTAKABLE STENCH OF STOOGE!

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Three Stooges Air Freshener: Larry Fine
In Stock
Item Number: OU812
Price: $4.49 QTY: 41144

Why you! One whiff of this and you’ll think of Curly at a chili festival or Shemp waking up in a pool of his own waste. P. U.! Make you car, boat, bathroom, office, Clay Department, Nazy bomber, suite at the Hotel Costa Plente, mikpah, or home smell like a 4-foot yiddeshe-kup with filthy frizz who probably hasn’t bathed in a week. I’m warning you, stock up before these scram off the shelves.

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HOLLYWOOD DREAMS / Henry Jaglom (2007)

May 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks

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Hollywood Dreams (2006)

Directed by: Henry Jaglom

Written by: Henry Jaglom

Genres: Self-indulgent narcissism

Cast: Tanna Frederick, Justin Kirk, Zack Norman, David Proval, Karen Black, Melissa Leo, Jon Robin Baitz, Mariah Bess, Eric Roberts, Sally Kirkland

Henry Jaglom is a talentless hack who built a career around making sure that everyone knew he once directed Orson Welles.

The Big ‘O’ gave him a role in the never released The Other Side of the Wind and in return, acted in Henry’s first feature, A Safe Place. Over the years, both Welles’ daughter Beatrice and his former lover Oja Kodar have penned numerous cease and desist letters. How they allow Jaglom to get away with using Orson’s image in his Rainbow Films logo defies common sense. It’s like putting a Dom Perignon label on a urine sample.

As in all of his home movies, there is no gold at the end of this Rainbow. Henry’s newest discovery is Tanna Frederick, a grating presence who combines the worst elements of Lucy, Carol Burnett and Carol (not Margo) Channing.

After an opening audition tape, the fear that shrill Tanna is going to be the focus of the film instantly becomes a tormenting reality. Wanting to emulate Altman, Jaglom gives his cast room to improvise. It didn’t take much time or celluloid rope for Ms. Frederick to hang herself.

Her roommates kick her out and a gay producer played by Zack Norman finds her wandering on the beach. Fans of Mr. Norman (are there any aside from Henry Jaglom?) probably remember him less for his acting chops and more for the endless self-aggrandizing ads he took out in Variety.

Zack takes the increasingly annoying Tanna under his wing by moving her into his spacious Hollywood Hills home. You know it’s the Hollywood Hills by the dozen or so jerky pans up from the freeway to Norman’s patio.

Under the rubble there is a seed of a decent story. Justin Kirk plays a heterosexual actor passing for gay. He falls for Frederick and his handlers fear that once he comes out, his flirtatious gay backers will withdraw their support. Instead of expanding this storyline, Jaglom cuts to Ms. Frederick and removes her leash.

The cast reads like a Who’s Who of has-beens and never-were’s. David Proval, the lion-loving Tony in Mean Streets, plays Norman’s lifemate. Cockeyed Karen Black pops up as a bisexual talent agent who has the hots for both Ms. Frederick and Mr. Kirk. Eric Roberts flashes his tan. And what debacle would be complete without a cameo by perpetually delusional Sally Kirkland?

Jaglom has been called an “actor’s director,” but if he really cared about his players, he never would have let Ms. Frederick make such a fool of herself. It’s certain that Mr. Henry intended the scene in which his ingénue is photographed masturbating through a prism of mirrors as a tribute to Welles’ Lady from Shanghai.

It’s been almost two decades since I last stepped into a pile of Jaglom. It was astounding to see how much the director forgot over the years.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆



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MR. BROOKS / Bruce A. Evans (2007)

May 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks

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Mr. Brooks (2007)

Directed by: Bruce A. Evans

Written by: Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon

Cast: Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Danielle Panabaker

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Running Time: 120 min.

Genres: Drama, Serial Killer, Black Comedy

Rating: ★★½☆☆

The first five minutes slather on the irony. Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner), a respected businessman and generous philanthropist, graciously accepts Portland’s Man of the Year award. Nice guy Earl even stops in mid- speech to blow his adoring wife (Marg Helgenberger) a kiss.

Not a bad cover for an insatiable serial killer, so proficient at his work that he hasn’t left the police as much as one clue to his identity.

Earl’s inner backseat driver emerges on the car ride home. Marshall (William Hurt) plays a cheerleading Hyde to Mr. Brooks’ reluctant Dr. Jekyll. One look at Marshall’s demonic grin in the rearview assures us that Portland’s Thumbprint Killer will soon strike again.

Earl has been stalking a pair of dancers and he vows that their execution willbring down the curtain on his killing ways. Unfortunately, the normally meticulous Brooks fails to notice the lustful couples’ habit of keeping the curtains open.

This doesn’t stop a neighboring shutterbug (Dane Cook, known only as “Mr. Smith”) from bringing a stack of incriminating photos to Brooks’ office. Blackmail is his name, but money is not the game. The would-be assassin wants to accompany Brooks on his next rampage.
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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END / Gore Verbinski (2007)

May 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks

VOMIT!!!

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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)

Directed by: Gore Verbinski

Written by: Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio

Cast: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport, Bill Nighy, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Kevin McNally, David Bailie, Stellan Skarsgård, Tom Hollander, Naomie Harris, Martin Klebba

Aspect Ratio: cinemascope3.jpg

Running Time: 168 min.

Genres: Theme Park Ride

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Still more uninspired and unrelenting giddiness: a digitized series of unrelated set pieces strung together with spit that left me at wit’s end.

Comedic watermarks included penis jokes, a band of pirates looking up women’s skirts through a slatted floor and a midget recoiling through the air after firing a big gun.

After 75 of the film’s obscenely bloated 168 minute running time the exit door proved a better afternoon’s escape.

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