Thighs Wide Shut

Sleuth (2007)
Shoo To These Gumshoes
Trailers & Mo

Jude Law certainly loves himself some movie remakes, and each of the ones he’s appeared in, however well intentioned, are complete duds when compared to the originals. I guess he felt guilty for stepping into Michael Caine’s big shoes for the ‘004 take on Alfie, and again in this new Kenneth Branagh directed Sleuth, which he’s also co-producing, that he decided to threw the knighted Maurice Micklewhite a bone and let him play the Laurence Olivier part. Clever idea indeedy-do, but even without ever seeing the ’72 original (damn those OOP DVDs!) you can tell that this new version juss doesn’t quite work. Caine and Law are in love with the same women, whom we never get to see, and the two cocky cockneys go mano-a-mano over her from start to finish. While this acting exercise sounds all dine and fandy, the believability of it all is tossed right out the window in the second act, when Law returns to Caine’s house in disguise, as a policeman. Law didn’t fool me, and for a character supposedly as smart and crafty as Caine’s, he shouldn’t have been either. Everything else that happens after that is not worth investigating. Case closed

Without A Clue: apparently remaking Michael Caine movies are the innnnest things to do in Hollywurst. Ever hear of The Italian Job or Get Carter? Maybe if we keep playin our cards wrong, we’ll be mistreated to an updated Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Jude Law can naturally take on Caine’s role, and as for Steve Martin’s Freddy Benson, we see Dane Cook failing again, for the dumpteenth thyme

Rude Boys: probably the single greatest song named after an actor, where the actor sez his own name in the song haz gotz to be ‘Michael Caine‘ by Madness [d|vid]

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Sleuth opens in NY & LA today and elsewhere elsewhen

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
The Great Time Robbery
Trailers & Mo

If you think that the title is too f%cking long, you can’t even begin to imagine the torture that awaits if you dare to sit thru this 2 hour and 40 minutededed film! Sometimes a film is so rich with character and story that a lengthy runtime is not only eggceptable, but necessary. TAoJJbtCRF is not one of those films. You’d be better off sneaking into the gripping final 20 minutes, where the title action takes place, then napping thru the first 2 hours and 20 minutes, where a bunch of pointless sitting around and cigar smoking unfolds (see Good Night, And Good Luck [TWS review] for more smoke and snooze inducing cinema). This is easily one of the mos boringestest films of the year. I wish someone assassinated me before I went to see this. Sometimes being dead is better than wasting your time when you’re alive

Still Picture: here’s a way to save 2 hours and 38 minutes of your time… look at these snaps of a dead Jesse James and some other famous peeps

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges Bordering On Sewing My Eyes Shut Repoooopulous!

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Good Night
The Stuff That Dreams Are Sorta Made Of
Trailer

I pity poor Jake Paltrow. His sister and mother are both top notch actresses and his deceased father left behind a purty nice resume of his own, includin giving the world The White Shadow. So what’s a boy to do when entertain’ the masses is your birthright? I guess you would have no other choice eggcept to give filmmaking the old college try, and with Jake’s directorial debut, The Good Night, he does just that, putting on display how much of a freshman he truly is. Jake’s simple student project about escaping the real world in dreams is equipped with the best tools in the shed, by way of a blue ribbon cast any Hollywood director would cream over: the aforementioned sibling Gwyneth, Penélope Cruz, Danny DeVito (who may not exactly be cream worthy, but…) and two of England’s brightest comedic talents, Martin Freeman and Simon Pegg. The tools aren’t rusty, but the house they’re building is a starter home, not somewhere you’d want to hang your hat forever. OK, I promise I’ll stop with the analogies. Btw, did you ever notice that you can’t spell ‘analogies’ without the word ‘anal’? That’s edward james almost as cool as ‘assassination’ having two asses! Anywho, I wouldn’t say that the film was a total loss, as some of the dream sequences were beautifully constructed, but Jake, after watchin’ your pedestrian Good Night, I wish you good luck

Direct Snap: Gwyneth has also taken a stab at directing, with a short called Dealbreaker that may actually turn into a feature length film

Netflux Capacitor: also not perfect, but much more dreamy and still worth the peepage is Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep [TWS review|Trailer]

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Night opens today in limited theaters

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Darjeeling Limited
Train In Vain
Trailer & Mo

We’ll start this review exactly like we did with our Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou one: Tsk, tsk, tsk Mr Anderson. Come to think of it, we’ll continue to plagiarize ourselves, as a lot of what we said then, applies to his equally underwhelming new joint, The Darjeeling Limited: ‘All the Wes Anderson touches and comforts that we all know and love are well in place, but it’s basically all surface, and nothing underneath. A lot of stuff ‘happens’, but basically nothing happens. You don’t ever develop a relationship with the characters like you do in his previous films. You can’t cause he’s too busy showing us how cool [everything] is. This [film] is a step backwards, not forwards in [Wes’s] career‘

Seriously Wes, what the funkhouser is going on here? We all know how superfly you is, but your magic is slowly fizzling out. Zissou‘s boat sunk, and Darjeeling‘s train needs to be derailed, so where are you going to go from here? You’re running out of modes of transportation to hip-a-fy. Maybe it’s time to stop trying to be so original, cause this cinematic world that you keep on creating is no longer unique. In fact it’s tiring and you have little left to show, cept how amazing yer record collection is and the best ways to employ the Futura font. Maybe your stop-motion animated take on Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox is the cure to my ills, but from this day fwd, I will no longer be in any more of a rush (get it?) to see your American Empirical Pictures

Room Disservice: Wes’ short preface to Darjeeling, Hotel Chevalier, was supposed to play before it, but Fox cut it lose. They actually did us a favor, as the only redeeming thing about the 12 minute snoozefest is seeing some of Natalie Portman’s a$$

You Say Tomato: one of the more apt quotes from a review found on Rotten Tomatoes… ‘It’s telling that his funniest and liveliest recent work was a commercial for American Express.‘

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Limited is currently playing in limited theaters

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

December Boys
Australia’s Least Wanted
Trailers

For better or worse, December Boys will always be known as Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Potter flick. And he’s mos certainly miles away from Hogwarts here, playing the cigarette-smoking, puberty-horny, spectacle-free Maps (sounds like his uber-breastness appearance on Extras). Maps is the eldest of four boys (each with similarly odd names: Misty, Sparks and Spit), who get a summer holiday away from the church orphanage on a remote Australian coast (dat’s right, December is a summer month for those south of the equator, ya big dummies). While the younger trio dream and dream of being adopted, and even more so when a rumor flies that a childless couple at this seaside retreat is interested in such a thing, Maps’ accepts the bad hand he’s been dealt and tries his damnedest to hurry up his maturation process. A few trips to a cave with a randy young girl seem to help temporarily, but what about in the long run? Have no fear, as the fond reflecting narration of that one great summer unravels, you juss know that every thing’s going to end up a-ight. December Boys is kinda like Stand By Me, yet with no Ray Brauer‘s body drama to keep you glued to your seat. Sure, this flick may be a lil on the vanilla side, but by the end, yer gonna wanna adopt all four of these lil buggers!

Tatooine You: why does Jack Thompson look so darn familiar? Cause he totally was banging Anakin’s mom as Cliegg ‘Father of Owen’ Lars in Attack of The Clones

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Great World of Sound
Con Hot Air
Trailer

I really really wanted to like this no-budget film, but as it dragged on and on, I kept getting angrier and angrier with it. Maybe that was its intention, but I’d rather be friends with a film than an enemy of it. So what got me so flustered? There’s two cons games constantly being played, and for all those involved, it’s juss too darn aggravating that they can’t see they’re being tricked. Our two main novice A&R characters travel the country selling dreams of stardom to ungifted musicians, but in the process, it’s their own legs that are being pulled by the home office, who are more interested in securing dollars than talent. To make my depression worse, the musicians endlessly auditioning before our eyes aren’t actors, but real people, who actually responded to vague newspaper ads that they hoped would fufill their dreams. So not only are they being conned in the movie, but for the movie. Sure, it makes for a more realistic film, but to me, that reality bites

For The Record: director Craig Zobel is a co-founder of Homestar Runner, and the mos excellent Kene Holliday was not only Matlock‘s boy, but the voice of GI Joe‘s Roadblock!!!!!! Yo!

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…