Let's Not Listen: Film and TV reviews

Top 10 -o- Rama, 2007

 

Enchanted, the live-action Disney fairy tale that gave a twist to the usual royals-in-love cliche, was a surprise hit with critics, myself included. But in my favorite films of 2007, men weren't exactly princes. Most remarkable was all the violence theaters threw down: Blood, buckets of it, was shed, whether graphically or suggestively, with caps being busted in all manner of asses, the West especially proving wild whether it was the 1880s or 1980s. Police were corrupt. Gangsters were unabashed. And you didn't even have to sell drugs to be one – turn on a man's family and watch how fast that gentleman gets dirty.

The bad behavior wasn't exclusive to testosterone-heavy movies, however. Some of the year's most endearing heroines were knocked up, knocked around, or both. Affairs were had. Even Harry Potter copped a 'tude.

Like Potter's latest adventure, many of these stories came into the world as literature. A source that didn't deliver as reliably was politics: A few exceptions, most notably the excellent, eye-widening documentary No End in Sight, war- and terrorism-themed projects such as Rendition, Redacted, A Mighty Heart, and The Kingdom tanked. Some of them weren't very good, but mostly, audiences just didn't seem to care.

In nearly all of my picks, though, a greater theme is moral ambiguity. White hats, black hats, they all were removed, often not-so-kindly, as characters shed one-note descriptions and trafficked in a lot of gray. It's still not difficult to pinpoint the good guys of 2007, though. They're the talent who made these 10 films, which I've listed in no particular order: 

 

1) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Based on a novel by Ron Hansen, this adaptation by writer-director Andrew Dominik was lyrical, mesmerizing, and boasts a stellar ensemble, with Casey Affleck in particular delivering an astonishing performance as the titular coward. All the kid wanted to do is hang with his idol, Jesse (whom Brad Pitt lends the requisite outlaw charm). But there was evil behind James' grin, and a hint of condescension, too. And when his hero went truly unhinged, suddenly a life of crime didn't seem so glamorous. Ford found out, though, that sometimes those Wanted Dead or Alive posters are merely decorative, and there's a difference between taking down a thief and murdering a legend.

 

2) No Country for Old Men: Joel and Ethan Coen interpretation of Cormac McCarthy's book about a generally decent hunter who decides to make off with a haul of drug-deal-gone-wrong cash is jaw-dropping in its powerful simplicity. Uncomfortably quiet, the tension is palpable as Javier Bardem's Dutch Boy-bobbed villain, who maintains his own warped set of standards, hunts Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss, who does what he has to do to protect the money and himself. The movie's excellence is inarguable, though you'd have to find gripping your armrest and wishing for Rolaids fun to really label this entertainment.

 

3) Gone Baby Gone: Another novel, this one by Mystic River writer Dennis Lehane, brought to the screen – by Ben Affleck. Yes, it's now apparent that the Oscar-winning co-screenwriter of Good Will Hunting wasn't merely the contributer who typed. He directs his brother, Casey, to another solid performance as an investigator whose rigid ideas of right and wrong are challenged when a little girl is kidnapped. Taking place mainly in a seedy Boston underworld, the film is honest, shocking, and a hell of a conversation-starter.

 

4) Waitress: Let's interrupt the heinousness with a little uplift...albeit one with a side of sadness. Waitress was written and directed by Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered before the film was released. A lovely thing, then, that her final project is a beauty. Keri Russell gives her first fully formed, grown-up performance as Jenna, a diner waitress who's thinking about leaving her abusive husband when she finds out she's pregnant. Touches of surrealism, a sweet flirtation, and lots of pie mark Waitress as a confection, but an undercurrent of melancholy and Jenna's difficult choices keep it from floating away once the credits roll.

 

5) 3:10 to Yuma: Elmore Leonard is better known for his snappy crime novels, but he sketched this Western as a short story. Like No Country for Old Men, the plot's a simple one: Trigger-happy outlaw (Russell Crowe) gets caught, and an upstanding fella (Christian Bale) helps escort him to a train outta Dodge for some much-needed cash. But the remake isn't only similar to The Assassination of Jesse James because of its milieu, instead offering complex characters who can vacillate between righteousness and amorality even by the minute.

 

6) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: Sidney Lumet treads A Simple Plan territory in this story about a seemingly easy money-grab gone bad. This time, the transgression is within an actual family, notably brothers played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke who plan to rob their parents' jewelry store, reasoning that insurance will make this crime victimless. Albert Finney completes the trio of right-on portrayals of characters who do wrong.

 

7) La Vie en Rose: Marion Cotillard is the year's best actress as Edith Piaf, the French singer who spent her childhood on the streets, was saved by her transporting voice, and died lonely, addicted, and cancer-ridden at 47. Piaf was quite the pillar, often listening only to her gut. Still, she was a victim to her love of a married man and carried a double burden when she lost him in a plane crash, even though she already knew he would never truly be hers.

 

8) American Gangster: Russell Crowe is on the other side of the law here, and as far as he can get – his Richie Roberts, a real-life cop who ends up specializing in drug enforcement, becomes as well-known for turning in nearly a million dollars' of unmarked bills as he does for his methodical nab of also very real Harlem kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). Based on a New York Magazine article by Mark Jacobson, Ridley Scott's epic is a superior Scarface with unsurprisingly first-class performances by two of Hollywood's aces.

 

9), 10), and 10a): In terms of comedy, it was the Year of Apatow. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was co-written by King Judd and offers a note-perfect parody of the troubled-musician biopic that mashes together elements of Ray and Walk the Line. John C. Reilly was a brilliant choice to play Cox, but the script's the thing, and this one's full of half-ribald, all-goofy humor that's unmistakenly Apatow. Superbad was only produced by Apatow but was perhaps 2007's biggest gut-buster, unrelenting in its lightning delivery of gags so hilariously filthy you sometimes couldn't catch your breath. An honorable mention goes to Knocked Up, the surprisingly balanced comedy penned solely by Apatow that took a simple premise – one-night stand between a schlub and a professional woman who knows better results in pregnancy – and turned it into something realistic and touching, The 40-Year-Old Virgin style. With the onslaught of Oscar-baiters now drowning screens and bringing down audiences, keep these three in mind to reignite your harshed buzz.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

This looks familiar.

Don't find it too surprising that Helen Mirren signed on for National Treasure: Book of Secrets. The gal probably suffered, as we all did, from Queen overload by the time this opportunity for a little follow-up fun presented itself. And she no doubt was hoodwinked, as many of us were, by the notables peppering the cast of 2004's rather stupid original. Jon Voight. Harvey Keitel. And Nicolas Cage – well, he once was an interesting actor who chose solid films, and the plots of this series are driven by American history, so perhaps this is a higher-minded blockbuster, his atonement for Next?

Oh, Helen. You can at least be proud that you look fabulous as Emily, a University of Maryland professor and mother to Ben Gates (Cage), treasure hunter, hair dyer, trivia-spewing piece of cardboard. Voight is Ben's father – doddering, awkward – and whereas the first hunt was spurred by generations of Gates family conspiring and code-breaking, this one has something to do with a smear campaign against Ben's great-great-granddaddy, whom one Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris – yep, the same, only trying on a Southern-by-way-of-Brooklyn accent) accused of being involved in the Lincoln assassination. But Ben's new goal isn't just PR-oriented: It has something to do with a lost city of gold, though by the time all the requisite clues are solved, lives are risked, and romances rekindled, the connection is tenuous at best.

Ultimately, Book of Secrets – oh yes! a tres hush-hush presidential tome of all our country's dirty laundry is also involved – is an embarrassingly by-the-numbers rehash of the first National Treasure, lighter on the swirly, emotion-cuing music but still well-trafficked in ridiculous feats and worse dialogue. Diane Kruger is back to help class up the joint as documents expert/love interest Abigail; so too, unfortunately, is Justin Bartha as Ben's sidekick Riley, who's as WAH-wah irritating as brilliant-but-bumbling sidekicks come.

I won't be unfair – there's one cool set-piece, a floating floor that requires the hunters to do a balancing act to keep them from falling to their deaths. But I won't lie, either – they each could have slipped and screamed 'til the thud, and I probably would have found it more thrilling than any of the Mission: Impossible ripoffs that came before it.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Walk Hard - Sweeney Todd (hypenates ditched)

Thank you, Judd, thank you very much.

Recent disasters such as Date Movie and Epic Movie strongly suggested that parody is dead. Perhaps devolution's to blame: After all, it's been a long time since the heydays of Mel Brooks and Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Maybe Mother Nature decided that this particular talent gene was so increasingly underused, humans really didn't need it anymore.

 

But here's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Who knew that Judd Apatow, the newly anointed master of sex comedies, also spoke jive? Apatow co-wrote Walk Hard with director Jake Kasdan (who negotiated some fine, if little-seen, satire of his own with this year's The TV Set), with John C. Reilly starring as Cox. For years Reilly was best known as "that guy"—he spent the early part of his career doing character work in dramas until he got the chance to upstage Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Casting Reilly as a comedic lead in a hugely anticipated holiday opener may have seemed like a risk, but doubters need only glance at Reilly's goofy mug on the film's poster to get that this was an inspired choice.

 

Walk Hard is a sendup of the musician biopic in general, but mostly it sews together the scenes and storylines of Ray and Walk the Line. It begins as Cox is about to give his final performance, with a young producer trying to rush the singer, whom he finds facing a wall with arm outstretched and head down. "Give him a minute, son," says Cox's bandmate, Sam (Tim Meadows). "Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays." Indeed, there's a lot to think about: Young Dewey (Conner Rayburn) wasn't as gifted as his brother when it came to music but decided to dedicate his life to it anyway after accidentally slicing little Nate (Chip Hormess) in half in 1946. He later causes a riot at his Alabama high school with a gentle pop song, "Take My Hand." ("You know whose got hands?" a preacher yells. "The devil!") Eventually, Dewey becomes a janitor at an all-black nightclub and gets his break when the headliner (The Office's Craig Robinson) is sick.

 

One performance of "(Mama) You Got to Love Your Negro Man" later, and Dewey is hip-thrusting his way to stardom, complete with the attendant drugs, sex, and desperate late-stage career reinventions. This life might have been tough for Dewey—at one point, he cries, "Goddammit, this is a dark fuckin' period!" while jackhammering a blonde—but Walk Hard delivers a pretty steady stream of fine moments. The humor gets naughty, but in general it's more Simpsons than Superbad. Anyone who was rightfully appalled at August Rush, the recent film about a musical prodigy, for instance, will laugh their asses off when Dewey becomes a blues virtuoso the first time he picks up a guitar, with Sam Jackson's Black Snake Moan voice coming out of Dewey's baby face.

 

With a great script and South Park-­worthy songs supporting him—try to get "Let's Duet," a June & Johnny spoof with Jenna Fischer, out of your head—Reilly could have gone through the motions and still gotten laughs. But he's brilliant in Cox's various periods, from slick-haired teenybopper (Reilly plays a 14-year-old, an apparent nod to Kevin Spacey's misguided self-casting in Beyond the Sea) to Cash-esque country star to curly-haired, logorrheic Bob Dylan (easily outdoing Cate Blanchett's ballyhooed I'm Not There turn). The supporting cast deftly handles the silliness as well, especially Raymond J. Barry as Cox's dad and Kristen Wiig as his harried first wife, and, in one of the movie's best scenes, cameos by Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman, and Justin Long as…the Beatles. Turns out that parody wasn't dead after all. It just went through a dark fuckin' period.

I don't have a clever caption. (Not that the Walk Hard one is clever.)
This just looks cool.

Musicals are so off-putting to some that it's likely even the ­blackest-souled fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp might hesitate before buying a ticket to their latest collaboration, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. How many throat-slittings would provide adequate compensation for sitting through a nearly two-hour film driven by Stephen Sondheim songs? The pairing of the murder-and-meat-pies Broadway hit and Hollywood's go-to Goths seems natural, but a few picky pallids may find cannibalism a bit distasteful when accompanied by a tune.

 

Unfortunately, more than the score sinks Sweeney Todd. It's not a bad film—grading on a curve, it's actually rather enjoyable. Burton-Depp devotees salivating for a bleak holiday blockbuster need to dial down their expectations, though. Screenwriter John Logan pared down the Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler stage version but hewed closely to the story: It's 19th-century London, and Benjamin Barker (Depp) has just returned from Australia, where he was imprisoned for 15 years by a judge named Turpin (the always terrifically oily Alan Rickman), who was in love with Barker's wife. Barker, now calling himself Sweeney Todd, discovers that his wife killed herself, but his daughter, Johanna (Jayne Wisener), has been living as a virtual prisoner of Turpin's. Todd wants revenge, but first he sets up a barber shop above a desolate meat-pie store run by a bad cook named Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter).

 

Todd's first homicide was unplanned, provoked by a customer who saw past the bride-of-Frankenstein hair and recognized the barber as Benjamin. But what Todd and Lovett lack in melanin, they make up for in brains: Murder is really just a bad shave waiting to happen, and meat prices being what they are, grinding the fresh corpses into pies might just save Lovett money and face. (Carter's introductory song, "The Worst Pies in London," is one of the production's best, uptempo and funny.) It'd only be a matter of time before Todd has Turpin in his chair. Meanwhile, Todd encourages a young sailor (Jamie Campbell Bower) with eyes for Johanna to help rescue her.

 

Sweeney Todd's cinematography has a fitting shades-of-gray palette that evokes poverty, oppression, and death. The opening is particularly Burton-esque, with a swirling, urgent, cartoonish string score accompanying images of meat grinders and blood so acrylic-red it could be leftover candy from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory set. The bizarro-world kid-friendliness doesn't last, of course—there are quite graphic, torturously slow throat-slicings and, well, the singing. None of the majors have terrible voices, but many of Sondheim's tunes aren't very memorable, which makes several segments of the film drag. (Edward Sanders, however, as a boy who helps around the shop, destroys his co-stars whenever he uses his Broadway-ready pipes.)

 

Worse, Depp seems confined. He glowers and offs his clientele with verve, but otherwise he doesn't bring much notable to the character. (Exceptions: His eye-rolling reactions during "By the Sea," Lovett's pondering of a potential romantic relationship, are amusing, as is the anomalous Crayola-colored picnic scene as a whole.) Carter and Rickman are similarly solid but unspectacular; the most entertaining performance by far is Sacha Baron Cohen's brief appearance as an outrageously dressed and accented Italian con man. Of all the musicals in all the world, Sweeney Todd was undoubtedly the perfect choice for this filmmaking team. But fans of both the stage version and the Burton crew may find the adaptation too by-the-numbers to really slay 'em.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Interview With Juno's Diablo Cody and Ellen Page

Cody and Page, current queens of the world


 

This year, a quip-quick pregnant teen is the new pudgy beauty-pageant contestant. The recently announced Independent Spirit Awards nominations have confirmed what fawning and inescapable press has been telling filmgoers for the better part of 2007: If you liked Little Miss Sunshine, you’re going to love Juno, a comedy about a 16-year-old girl who develops a relationship with the couple she picks to adopt her unplanned child. It’s up for best picture, as well as director (Jason Reitman), actress (Ellen Page), and screenplay, by first-timer Diablo Cody.

Cody’s previous publications include her blog, The Pussy Ranch, which has made her a most unusual Hollywood hyphenate: stripper-screenwriter. The 29-year-old Minnesotan was dulling her brain cells at an office job when she decided to sign up for a dive bar’s amateur pole-working night. The erstwhile Catholic not only fell in love with a new profession, she also began chronicling her experiences. A literary manager helped Cody turn her scribblings into a memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, and when he suggested she write a screenplay, she sent him Juno, which she modestly describes as “a random original idea I had.”

The story in Juno is unpredictable and touching. But Cody’s dialogue is exceptional, a flurry of hip, witty words that snap and dissipate before you can accuse them of being too stylized. (“That ain’t no Etch-a-Sketch,” a clerk tells Juno as she shakes a newly taken pregnancy test. “This is one doodle that can’t be undid, home skillet.”) Juno is 16 going on 40, a Gilmore Girl who’s got a thing for ‘70s punk and references Soupy Sales. She’s imperfect, too. You believe in her.

Cody admits that Juno is partly autobiographical, and when she and Page talked to PopMatters, it was apparent the casting was right on. There’s a nine-year age difference between the two, and while Cody rocks jet-black hair and a leopard-print coat, the most notable aspect of Page’s style this afternoon is a floppy beret. But they’re relaxed together, laugh at the same things, talk music. Clearly, they dig each other. It’s a fateful pairing that might never have materialized had showing the greater Minneapolis area her body not prompted Cody to show the world her mind.

Diablo, is this what you wanted to do with your life?
I always wanted to be a writer, but I never thought from a practical standpoint that it was something I’d do for a living. I was always encouraged by my teachers and discouraged by my parents. That’s not what they had in mind. Of course, now they think it’s a fabulous idea.

I know you worked at an alt-weekly for a while.
Actually, the alt-weekly [Minneapolis/St. Paul’s City Pages] contacted me while I was still stripping. First they did a profile on me because they thought it was interesting that they had this stripper/blogger in town who was becoming kind of high-profile. Then after they did the piece on me, they asked if I wanted to start writing TV reviews. I wrote about TV frequently on my blog. I had very strong opinions, which I now somewhat regret. I had a lot of bile as a critic, let’s put it that way. Instead I worked as an editor for a while, and then all this stuff started coming together.

Ellen, what was your first response to the script?
Blown away. It was like the greatest thing I’d ever read. I became literally obsessed, you know? It wasn’t just, wow, I’m really interested in pursuing this. It thought, this has to happen. [It was] so refreshing to meet a teenage female character that’s never existed before. Incredibly unique, but the screenplay didn’t overdo the uniqueness, you know what I mean? Completely genuine. I look for roles that are whole, and honest, and that I’m going to be challenged by. If it’s stereotypical and boring and there’s no dimension it, then I’m just not going to be passionate about it and I’m going to suck.

Were you comfortable with the dialogue?
Like in any process, at first I was really excited, and then I was really anxious and scared because I didn’t want to screw up her brilliance. I’d never really done a comedic lead. But I think the dialogue was one of the most amazing things [about the script]. It felt organic, it felt fluid and rhythmic, and it was just about owning it and not forcing it. And luckily I got to work with Jason Reitman, who’s so good at establishing tone.

Did you know who Soupy Sales was?
CODY: I always wonder about that line because I think, no way would any teenager reference Soupy Sales. But it always gets a laugh. I’m always aware of my own failings as a writer. I’m not even quite sure who Soupy Sales is… he’s like an old vaudevillian comic, right? Ellen, did you have to look that up, or did you just go with it?

PAGE: I had no idea it was even someone. Sorry.

Diablo, where do you pick up your slang? I mean, I think I talk like a 15-year-old, but there were phrases in this movie I’ve never heard before.
I just make it up. I felt very free writing the script because I’d never written one before. So I thought, you know, I’m not even going to bother writing something formulaic. I want to be noticed, I wanted to do something fresh and new, so I’m just going to go crazy with the language.

How long did you work on it?

A couple months. I tend to write pretty quickly. I don’t write frequently; I write in bursts. I’ll sit down and write a script in two months and then I won’t pick up a pen for six months. I write every day, but I don’t work on screenplays. I’m not super-prolific, I’m just fast. If that makes any sense.

[This was, quite frankly, stunning. Forget about Cody’s seemingly offhand decision not to write a script that sucks. (Can you imagine a world in which it were just that easy for every scripter, from television to movies to plays, to “not even bother writing something formulaic?”) She already has other projects in development, including Jennifer’s Body, a horror-comedy with Reitman;  a “response to Superbad” entitled Girly Style; and a television series, The United States of Tara, that’s being produced by Steven Spielberg. Cody also found time to do a rewrite on a Steven Antin-directed film called Burlesque. Consider that her book came out only two years ago: I’d call that super-prolific.]

Will the writers’ strike affect any of your projects?
CODY: The Writer’s Guild has allowed me to promote [Juno], which is great. [Reitman and I] wanted to start Jennifer’s Body soon, in February or March. The strike complicates things. The script is finished, so technically they could go shoot it, but I don’t know. I feel like I would rather not be on strike when the movie’s filming. Wait, I could be misquoted there. I’m completely in favor of the strike. Absolutely. I just meant that it’s an awkward position for a writer if they went and filmed one of my scripts and I was not able to contribute at all because of the terms of the strike. That’s a weird situation.

Did you have input as Juno was filming?
Yes. That’s not typical. But I’m working with a lot of the same people on Jennifer’s Body, so I feel like they would allow me that freedom again.

Diablo, you recently moved to Los Angeles. Do you feel it’s changed you?
I’ve been there about six months or so. Very weird place, and it has affected me. It didn’t initially. Initially I was just an outsider and I was enjoying myself, enjoying the sunshine and the excitement. And I still do enjoy those things, but I feel it’s very difficult to sustain a sense of normalcy living there.

Ellen, do you live in L.A.?
No, I live in Halifax. I’m away a lot, but that’s where I have my pillow… I don’t really want to be in a car, so why would I live there? Good sushi, and I have lots of friends down there, but not for me.

You’ve been doing a hell of a lot of promotion for this film.
CODY: I’ve enjoyed it. [But] it’s difficult to bring something fresh to all the interviews.

PAGE: Of course, you hit points when you’re [exhausted], but, boo-hoo, you know? We made a film that people like. I’m just grateful that I get to be an actor and pay my electric bill. It’s pretty ridiculous.

Diablo, have you been asked, “Who are you wearing?”
Oh yeah. It’s actually like pulling teeth with us. Neither of us likes getting dressed up. I really hate it, actually. The last event I went to, a friend of mine bought a dress and a purse for me because she knew that I would just re-wear something, or put on something at the last minute from Forever 21. And so I put it on and I got asked what I was wearing, and I was like, “I don’t know. My friend bought this for me.” People worry.

Are you a big movie fan?
CODY: I love horror movies. I love big comedies. Those are usually the two things that I gravitate to. Lately I’m becoming a little more of a cinephile. I’m watching stuff that challenges me. I’ve always loved movies, but I love movies. I took a film class in college when I was like 19 and I thought it was the most boring thing ever. Which is funny in retrospect, because now I’m fascinated by that stuff. Now I want to see 8 1/2. When I was 19, I was like, What the hell? I thought we were going to watch Jaws. This is a film class. We should be watching great films!

PAGE: I’m the same.

CODY: You like that stuff, though. Your favorite movie is 400 Blows!

PAGE: I mean, I love Truffaut, but I don’t like Godard, and I’m not going to pretend I like Godard. I also love Snakes on a Plane. That was one of the best movie-watching experiences I’ve had in a long time.

CODY: Juno, in a way, is Snakes on a Plane meets Truffaut.

Do people in the movie business want to engage you in lengthy discussions about “cinema”?
CODY: People don’t actually want to talk film with me, because they assume I know nothing. And they’re fairly accurate. People seem to think I know more about music.

The music in Juno was great. I thought it fit the character.
[Cody points at Page, who reportedly recommended the movie’s main artist, the Moldy Peaches, for the soundtrack.]

CODY: I looked up CocoRosie last night.

PAGE: Did you like it?

CODY: I did like it, it’s a little: deet, dee dee deet… kind of cute and quirky.

PAGE: Yeah, but they have one song called “Honey or Tar,” and it’s this soft, beautiful song. But when you listen to the lyrics, it’s about this girl raping her boyfriend in her mind.

CODY: Okay. I’m going to download that one.

 

Juno

Loose shorts: The ultimate key to fertility.

The 16-year-old title character of Juno pees on three sticks before accepting that she’s pregnant “for shizz.” Juno is no slutty cheerleader or latchkey kid who doesn’t know better. Instead, she’s a wise-beyond-her-years tomboy whose defining characteristics are a love of ’70s punk, a limp ponytail, and gallons of Gilmore Girls–speed sassback. And the ’tude has her a bit conflicted about her babydaddy crush, a meek, Tic Tac–addicted track-clubber from whom no parent would think to shield his or her daughter.

Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) reacts to the situation by trying to hang herself with a licorice whip, then calls her best friend, Leah (Olivia Thirlby), to sardonically announce that she’s a suicide risk. Really, though, hers is a low-boil panic as they discuss the seemingly only reasonable option, abortion. The next day, Juno waits outside the house of her not-really-a-boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), to let him know, saying that she’s planning to “nip it in the bud, before it gets worse. Because they were talking about in health class how pregnancy can often lead to…an infant.” Paulie, standing in nerdy runner’s short-shorts and a headband, agrees to her plan, though he looks too shell-shocked and terrified to have fully absorbed the news.

Neither Juno the character nor Juno the film is perfect, but last year’s Little Miss Sunshine explosion indicates that Little Miss Expecting will be—correction, will continue to be—slobbered over anyway. There are plenty of fine reasons for that, chief among them Diablo Cody’s debut script. It’s hyperstylized in parts, yes—Cody, an instant “it” writer who already has several other projects in production, admits that she invents her own slang in the film. But her Minnesota-set screenplay also offers a sweet, unpredictable story and a heroine who’s a smarter and more admirable role model than the common sort of movie teen who, say, discovers her inner beauty with the help of a lot of makeup or becomes self-confident after tripping into a dreamboat’s arms.

Juno heads to an abortion clinic as planned, only slightly deterred by a picketing Asian classmate who chants, “All babies want to get borned” and tells Juno that her fetus probably already has fingernails. While filling out the requisite paperwork, fingernails are suddenly all Juno can see. So she bolts, complaining to Leah that the receptionist was weird, the magazines had water stains, and that maybe she could give the baby away “to someone who totally needs it, like a woman with a bum ovary, or a couple of nice lesbos.” Leah, who’s a cheerleader but one who prefers bearded professors to chiseled jocks, suggests they search the Penny Saver. And that’s where Juno finds Vanessa and Mark (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), a barren upper-middle-class couple who live in a nearby wealthy suburb. Vanessa is an A-type whose wardrobe is as crisp and immaculate as her huge, spacious home. She’s pleasant enough, but Juno really bonds with Mark, a professional composer whose inner child is still too preoccupied with thoughts of rock stardom to be ready to take on a real baby. A closed adoption is arranged.

Director Jason Reitman repeats the same approach to levity that he used in 2005’s Thank You for Smoking; for instance, he’ll occasionally interrupt the narrative with surrealistic visuals to illustrate Juno’s voiceover. His only misstep, and it’s just a quibble, is adding preciousness, particularly with the quivering-animation opening credits and a soundtrack that goes a bit too often to the Moldy Peaches’ simple, nearly spoken-word odes to love and friendship and, probably, puppies. Sometimes the tunes feel just right, but combined with the film’s already hipper-than-thou base aesthetic, the package teeters on cloying.

Juno ultimately rescues itself from too-cool damnation, though. The cast is terrifically understated: Page follows her breakthrough performance in 2005’s Hard Candy with another impressive turn, delivering even Cody’s cleverest one-liners naturally and, above all, making you believe that a teen who references Soupy Sales in 2007 could actually exist. Cera pretty much re-creates his George-Michael Bluth character from Arrested Development, but this docile naiveté is exactly what’s called for, and Garner has never been more radiant or subtle; a moment in which Vanessa tries to feel the baby kicking is a marvel of expression. Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons are wryly entertaining as Juno’s father and stepmom as well.

But even a great ensemble wouldn’t be able to save a faulty script, and Cody is careful to make sure that, for instance, Juno doesn’t always say the right thing (in one case, a too-quick, unthinking retort is downright cruel) and that the story goes in directions you can’t guess from the opening chapters. Juno’s buzz will likely become tiring in the coming months, but there’s no denying that the film itself is remarkably fresh.

Atonement

Yes, Mrs. Henrietta Smith from Dayton, I was terribly good in this, wasn't I?

Atonement is about a tattletale, a precocious, imaginative kid who says the darnedest thing: “I saw him. I saw him with my own eyes.” But this 13-year-old girl, Briony, isn’t merely singing on her big brother for taking a puff on his friend’s cigarette. She’s flinging a rape accusation at the housekeeper’s choirboy son, Robbie, who has ambitions bigger than his humble background. Robbie is also the lover of Briony’s sister, and he’s just declared his feelings for her. Briony likes the young man, too. But she did not see him commit the crime with her own eyes.

Based on Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel, Atonement opens in 1935 England, and the picture of privilege and dark polished wood it offers in the first chapter is immediately captivating. Director Joe Wright, who nailed the look and feel of Pride & Prejudice (if nothing else) in his 2005 adaptation, introduces us to Briony (Saoirse Ronan) with the clack of a typewriter providing the soundtrack as she finishes her first play. Briony stares intently—we’ll soon learn that’s pretty much her standard expression—as she types out “The End,” then speed-walks through her halls of her glorious home with the ramrod posture of a headmistress—in contrast to the femininity of her loose white dress—to show her mother the manuscript. Briony then consults with her older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), on the lawn (impossible expanse, stunning green) before returning inside (high ceilings, creamy, flower-patterned décor that’s repeated in the characters’ clothes) to cast her cousins, including hopeless 9-year-old twin boys who, though bratty, still use words like “amenable.” Ahhhh, you think.

Briony is tart-tongued and beyond her years, but she doesn’t quite understand the world as thoroughly as she believes she does. She doesn’t know, for instance, what she’s spying through a window when she watches an encounter between Cecilia and Robbie (James McAvoy), which ends with Cecilia diving into and then emerging from a fountain, her wet, light-colored dress leaving little to the imagination. It’s hard to tell if the two are being antagonistic. But Briony knows a bad word when she sees it: When Robbie mistakenly has the girl deliver the wrong apology letter to Cecilia—a jokey confessional, dashed off during a bout of writer’s block—Briony deduces from his lurid vocabulary that he’s a “sex maniac.” Cecilia, though shocked at the letter herself, isn’t quite as concerned, though, and the couple end up consummating their crush quite spontaneously in the family library, Cecilia pinned against the wall. Which, yes, Briony also witnesses. So when, after dinner, the sisters’ 15-year-old cousin, Lola (Juno Temple), is attacked on the dark grounds, naturally Briony points the finger at Robbie. Lola goes along.

Though there’s already drama aplenty by then—which Wright nicely highlights by employing tiny time shifts to repeat scenes from different perspectives—Atonement is really about what happens after the accusation. Robbie gets sent off to jail and then war, while Cecilia becomes a nurse. They see each other sporadically, but the magic of that night in the library is lost, along with any sense of their previously genteel life. Robbie didn’t do it, and Briony—whether immediately or after a time, it’s not clear—knows it but is too cowardly to speak up. Instead, she, too, becomes a nurse when she turns 18, scrubbing bedpans and sitting with dying soldiers as acts of penance while she solicits the couple’s forgiveness through letters.

This is Briony’s story, so it’s not surprising that Atonement lags during its middle chapters, when the focus shifts to Robbie’s ordeals. The scenes are intended to drive home how horribly the girl’s mistake cost him, but paradoxically, they’re among the film’s dullest despite being visually inventive. The script places him, for example, at the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940, and Wright takes a long, single pan of a beach teeming with half-crazy soldiers, ships with tattered sails, and general chaos to capture the terrors of Robbie’s new reality. But the shift is too sudden, and we’ve had little time to get to know Robbie by this point. As the camera whirls on and on and on, you’re more likely to yawn instead of cry. Cecilia, too, is mostly an afterthought, and though Knightley’s wrenlike features make her acceptable decoration for a period piece, her calls to “act” aren’t quite as believable. (The fault, though, likely falls more heavily on Wright’s shoulders, who directed Knightley’s Elizabeth Bennett to appallingly uncharacteristic giggliness in Pride & Prejudice.)

Briony is played by three actresses—Ronan at 13, Romola Garai at 18, and Vanessa Redgrave as a senior—and all are enchanting. (Ronan in particular has a remarkably self-possessed, haunted quality that would be impressive for any newcomer, not to mention one her age.) Garai’s contribution is thankless, though, because of the wan scripting of the film’s middle section: Composer Dario Marianelli offers the urgent music of a thriller, but Briony’s guilt—expressed mainly by a camera trained on Garai’s sullen face—just isn’t all that gripping. Redgrave’s appearance, though, reawakens the film, both because of the actress’ exquisite ability with subtle emotion and a plot turn that reframes much of what you’ve just watched. For both the character and the filmmakers, atonement is achieved.

No, It's Because You're a Moron

A little late, but this IMDB blurb on Wesley Snipes made me so angry:

Snipes: "I'm a Victim of Racism"

                  Actor Wesley Snipes has slammed the media for portraying him as a "bad guy" after he was charged with tax fraud, claiming he is a victim of racism. Snipes, 45, is due to stand trial next month in Florida on charges he fraudulently claimed tax refunds of almost $12 million in 1996 and 1997. He is also accused of failing to file tax returns from 1999 to 2004. But the star has blamed the press and its racial prejudice for over-exaggerating the scandal, and depicting him as a villain. He says, "It was easy for people to jump on the 'Wesley's the bad guy' bandwagon. That's where I think the systematic racism comes in. We're conditioned in this country to believe that if there's a problem, the black man is the culprit." Snipes also blames discrimination for the box office failure of his 2004 movie Blade: Trinity. He adds, "There are so few guys who do action and do it well. Even fewer who are African-American. Even fewer who have classical-theater training. So a cat like me coming in, I'm bringing all of that to an action movie. Since there are so few people that do this and have that pedigree, people disregard their contribution."


Yeah. Heard of Willie Nelson? Will Smith? The former got openly busted and ridiculed for the same crime as you, dude, and the latter is a black action star who not only can act, he brings in the benjamins. Your skin color has nothing to do with your career tank and the feds knocking on your door, sorry. (Blade: Trinity? Are you serious?)

Finally, New Line Uses Its Hobbit-Size Brain

Final hurdle: Now looks too cool for such projects

Now, I'm no Lord of the Rings freak. (For the record, yes, I concede the trilogy's excellence. But Frodo and medieval gayness is not for me.)

But even I'm excited about this piece of news:

Los Angeles, CA (Tuesday, December 18, 2007) Academy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson; Harry Sloan, Chairman and CEO, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM); Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs of New Line Cinema have jointly announced today that they have entered into the following series of agreements:

 
*       MGM and New Line will co-finance and co-distribute two films, “The Hobbit” and a sequel to “The Hobbit.”  New Line will distribute in North America and MGM will distribute internationally.

 
*       Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will serve as Executive Producers of two films based on “The Hobbit.”  New Line will manage the production of the films, which will be shot simultaneously.

*       Peter Jackson and New Line have settled all litigation relating to the “Lord of the Rings” (LOTR) Trilogy.
 
Said Peter Jackson, “I’m very pleased that we’ve been able to put our differences behind us, so that we may begin a new chapter with our old friends at New Line.  ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a legacy we proudly share with Bob and Michael, and together, we share that legacy with millions of loyal fans all over the world.  We are delighted to continue our journey through Middle Earth.  I also want to thank Harry Sloan and our new friends at MGM for helping us find the common ground necessary to continue that journey.”

 
“Peter Jackson has proven himself as the filmmaker who can bring the extraordinary imagination of Tolkien to life and we full heartedly agree with the fans worldwide who know he should be making ‘The Hobbit,’” said Sloan, MGM’s Chairman and CEO.  "Now that we are all in agreement on 'The Hobbit,' we can focus on assembling the production team that will capture this phenomenal tale on film."

 
Bob Shaye, New Line Co-Chairman and Co-CEO comments, “We are very pleased we have been able to resolve our differences, and that Peter and Fran will be actively and creatively involved with ‘The Hobbit’ movies.  We know they will bring the same passion, care and talent to these films that they so ably accomplished with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy.”

 
“Peter is a visionary filmmaker, and he broke new ground with ‘The Lord of the Rings,’” notes Michael Lynne, New Line Co-Chairman and Co-CEO.  “We’re delighted he’s back for ‘The Hobbit’ films and that the Tolkien saga will continue with his imprint.   We greatly appreciate the efforts of Harry Sloan, who has been instrumental in helping us reach our new accord.”

 
The two “Hobbit” films – “The Hobbit” and its sequel – are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, with pre-production beginning as soon as possible. Principal photography is tentatively set for a 2009 start, with the intention of “The Hobbit” release slated for 2010 and its sequel the following year, in 2011.

 
The Oscar-winning, critically-acclaimed LOTR Trilogy grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide at the box-office.  In 2003, “Return of the King” swept the Academy Awards, winning all of the eleven categories in which it was nominated, including Best Picture – the first ever Best Picture win for a fantasy film.  The Trilogy’s production was also unprecedented at the time.

 
For more information about “The Hobbit” films, please visit www.TheHobbitBlog.com.