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Review: HOUSE OF D / David Duchovny (2004)

July 28th, 2008 by Scott Marks

The House of D (2004)
Written and Directed by David Duchovny
Starring: David Duchovny, Robin Williams, Anton Yelchin, Tea Leoni and Erykah Badu
Running Time: 97 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating: ★★★★☆ for unintentional laughs

Having never watched an episode of The X-Files, I steered clear of the screening. Instead I offer up a review of a David Duchovny film that I can wholeheartedly endorse!

For the duration of the opening credits there was promise. We open on movement. Cut to: a sketchpad painting of a bicycle in front of the Eiffel tower that gracefully transitions to a shot of David Duchovny bringing the watercolor to life. All under the skilled eye of ace cinematographer Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull). Promise soon gave way to satirical contemptuousness.

On the occasion of his son’s thirteenth birthday, an American in Paris (Duchovny) decides to finally unload his personal backstory on his wife and kid. Flashback to: 1973 Greenwich Village. Stepping up to play the young Duchovny is thirteen-year-old Anton Yelchin, As Tommy Warshaw, Yelchin is an untrained child actor hampered by a droning nasal delivery better suited for commercial voiceovers.

Tommy’s home life is on pause. His recently widowed mother (Tea Leoni) is a disillusioned, chain-smoking emotional wreck. His school life is more painstakingly nuanced than a VH1 I Love the Seventies special. It’s all clacker-balls, loose-leaf Origami fortune tellers and a stick shift, banana seat Schwinn Apple-Crate bicycle (renamed “The Green Goddess”). Why fuss with character development and structural layering when it’s easier to hire a design team with good memories?

The film is not without moments of inspired perversity. While Tommy is showering, mom enters to take use of the toilet. She punctuates her ablutions by dropping a lit cigarette between her legs. Later, Tommy pissbombs his mom’s floating butts with a yellow downpour, drenching the four filter-tipped rafts. Pretty bold stuff for the X-Files ex. It should have stopped there. We do not need to revisit the porcelain ashtray another six or seven times before mom goes brain dead, leaving Tommy to wistfully scoop cigs out of the water and lovingly preserves them in Charmin.

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Annie Leibovitz criticized for snapping racy Miley Cyrus photo

May 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

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It’s not the fault of an underage bimbette wanting desperately to be like her celebrity role models. Nor are the young superstar’s redneck parents to blame for their daughter’s scandalous Vanity Fair photoshoot. When denial fails, blame the photographer.

Legendary celebrity shooter Annie Leibovitz has come under fire for pushing stars to go too far.

The prestigious photographer topped the headlines earlier this week when provocative shots she took of 15-year-old Miley Cyrus for Vanity Fair magazine first hit the internet.

The teenager, Leibovitz and Vanity Fair bosses have been blasted by the media and family values groups for one shot in particular, in which Cyrus poses topless, wrapped in a satin sheet.

Make that satan’s sheet!

Both Leibovitz and Cyrus have since stated the photos have been misinterpreted in the media, with the snapper calling the “beautiful” satin sheet photo “a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup.”

Now stars clamoring for the spotlight are coming out to expose Leibovitz’s techniques.

Former teen icon and Mormon hasbeen Donny Osmond, who has already criticized Cyrus for posing seductively, has now taken aim at Leibovitz, recalling one of the first times he met her for a Rolling Stone magazine photoshoot.

He says, “I was about 14 or 15… It’s always, `Push it a little farther.’ She went a little too far with that picture of Miley.”

What’s the matter, Donny, did your magic Mormon underpants get a little tight when looking at Miley’s photo? And who aside from the president of NAMBLA wants to see topless photos of an underage Donny Osmond?

I suppose that Liebovitz was also the one who took control of Miley’s webcam and masterminded the scandalous “green bra” photos. If Svengali Leibovitz wields that much power, let’s see her coax an Academy Award winning performance out of young Cyrus.

Even loud-mouthed character-breaker Robin Williams had to add his two cents. Speaking on The Tonight Show on Thursday, funnyman Williams confessed, “(Leibovitz) will get you to do anything. She’ll (be) like, `Put a rogue flare in your ass, go out in that field, let’s shoot it!’ She had a picture she wanted to do with Eddie Murphy and I, where she wanted Eddie to be in white face (makeup) and me to be in black face, and I said, `Listen, there’s not a lot of mimes that are going to kick Eddie’s ass, but the painted black face may not go so well for me.’”

For a goof, someone should coat Williams with burnt cork and deposit him in Harlem.

Links:
Miley Cyrus told by Disney to skip tonight’s media party
Miley Cyrus: Jamie Lee Curtis blames her parents for topless photo
Miley Cyrus flashes her bra in new Disney photo scandal

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ROBOTS / Chris Wedge (2005)

January 19th, 2008 by Scott Marks

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Robots (2005)
Directed by Chris Wedge
Screenplay by: Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel from a story by Jim McClain & Ron Mita
Running Time: 91 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating: ★★★☆☆

“We’re cartoon characters. We can do whatever we want!” – Heckle…or was it Jeckle?

Hanna & Barbara’s The Flintstones transformed The Honeymooners into primitive cartoon characters in just about every sense of the word. Since then, the majority of animated TV shows and features have transgressed into little more than dialogue-driven sitcoms. Instead of logic-defying lunacy or surrealism squashed-and-stretched, we were left with upright (and uptight) characters exchanging set-ups and punch lines. It was the anthropomorphic equivalent of reverse angles and zoom lenses.

Even less thought went into the creation of a cartoon universe. Look at the cost-cutting rock/tree/house backgrounds behind Fred and Wilma next time you see them driving. Was this what Chuck Jones meant by “limited animation” when he coined the term for his groundbreaking 1942 The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall? The cheapening was a long time coming and cost-effective cyclical drawings were destined to endlessly repeat themselves.

With the exception of their prehistoric inventions, The Flintstones really didn’t need to be animated. Watch Brian Levant’s live-action update and you will see there isn’t much Fred and Barney do that Goodman and Moranis weren’t able to recreate on the Universal backlot. Imagination took a back seat to necessity. Network and cable outlets starved for filler sparked a resurgence in televised animation. No matter how funny you may find The Simpsons, it is still animated dialogue; radio with pictures. Character movement and animation had all but ceased. By comparison, South Park makes Clutch Cargo and Gumby look like Fantasia. What point is there to movement-less moving pictures?

Theatrical animation hasn’t fared much better. Disney was still on top, but the period between The Jungle Book, Walt’s final project, and The Little Mermaid reveal a marked loss in quality. Of the eight features released between 1970 and 1989 only The Black Cauldron came close to upholding the studio’s legacy. The cartoon powerhouse, forever capable of easily overcoming all competitors, was about to encounter a few spitballs.

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LICENSE TO WED / Ken Kwapis (2007)

July 16th, 2007 by Scott Marks

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LICENSE TO WED

Directed by Ken Kwapis

Written by Kim Barker, Tim Rasmussen & Vince Di Meglio

Starring: Robin Williams, John Krasinski, Mandy Moore & Josh Flitter

Running Time: 90 min.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Ken Kwapis will always be a legend in my eyes. Not so much for the films he makes, but for the ones he showed.

In the 70s, Ken was in charge of Northwestern University’s film society and it was he who gave me my first chance to see Frank “Apogee” Tashlin films projected on a screen. It was tantamount to pulling a sequoia from my paw.

With the exception of one avalanche gag involving an unhinged set of coffee shop stanchion belts, the spirit of Mr. Tashlin remains obscured by Robin Williams.

On sitcoms or delivering stand up, Robin Williams’s freewheeling improvisation is capable of inducing fits of laughter. In films like One Hour Photo and Insomnia he proved to be a more than capable crackpot.

Even if one were to forgive well-intentioned message bombers like Jakob the Liar and Patch Adams, there are still a slew of loathsome “comedies” to contend with and License to Wed earns a deserved place near the bottom. It will leave you longing for RV.

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