DVD, Movies

Batman Returns

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He's waiting for youApologies for the late post, but it’s been a busy day. There’s really only one title to focus my Sympatico/MSN DVD column upon this week — and it’s “The Dark Knight”.

I say it in the column, but I’m going to say it again, just for emphasis: You really should see this in high definition. Whether that means you buy the Blu-ray disc or you wait until next summer and catch it on pay-cable, that’s up to you … but along with Disney’s “WALL*E”, Warner’s “Dark Knight” BD presentation sets a new state of the art for HD content.

If you’ve been on the fence about the format, it’s time to get off, and get yourself to a major electronics retailer; you can find players for as little as $250, or pick up a PS3 — still the best Blu-ray player on the market — for $400.

That flatscreen HDTV you bought a couple of years ago? This is what it’s been waiting for.

Movies

Roger Getting Excessive

... now with extra enthusiasm!Roger Ebert has tallied up his Best of 2008 list, and found a plethora of prize-worthy pictures — not ten, but twenty, and that’s just the dramatic features. Then there are the five top documentaries, and a “Special Jury Award” for Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg”, which is neither fish nor fowl.

That’s twenty-six movies that make Roger Ebert’s best list. I know he’s an easier mark of late, but … well, any Best-Of list that finds room for “Happy-Go-Lucky”, “Iron Man”, “Milk” and “W.” could use some trimming.

In his defense, I believe that Roger actually does believe in the films that made his list, as opposed to the obvious calculations that went into the National Board of Review’s top ten. I mean, full props for setting “Slumdog Millionaire” apart as the year’s best picture — it’s near the top of my list as well — but the NBR’s actual top ten reads like a list of failed Oscar bait. “Burn After Reading”, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, “Changeling”, “Defiance”, “Frost/Nixon”, “”Gran Torino” … really, did they just write down the names of the first screeners that arrived in their mailbox?

Oh, “WALL-E” is on there, too, but at this point if “WALL-E” doesn’t appear on a critic’s year-end list, that critic has to go away for a while.

Don’t worry, Roger included it too.

Movies

What’s Wrong with People?

Maybe the jokes are in the box, honeySeriously? “Four Christmases” topped the box office for a second straight week? I figured the “Punisher” movie would at least give it a run for its money …

I guess not all comic-book movies are a license to print money. And I guess you can get a lot of mileage out of those baby-barf TV spots. Oh, and “Twilight” is still doing well.

Just a bad weekend all around, then. I hope you at least got some shopping in.

Culture Shock

“Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise is Just Part of the Conspiracy.”

An obvious forgery -- it's made up of ones and zeroes!Over at Salon.com, Alex Koppleman has an interesting story about the still-bubbling controversy over Barack Obama’s birth certificate — and why it doesn’t matter that said controversy was debunked months ago.

See, Obama was born in Hawaii, but a very persistent subset of right-wing lunatics insists he wasn’t — the truth, they claim, is that he was actually born in Kenya as part of some elaborate Manchurian Candidate scheme to install a secret Muslim in the White House nearly five decades later. (Which worked out spectacularly well, I have to say.)

You can disprove that story pretty easily, but as Koppleman points out, it doesn’t matter — actual, factual evidence won’t do a thing to change people’s minds on something like this:

“There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, and who holds an undergraduate and a master’s degree in psychology. “The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it … Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.”

I mean, I think these people are just plain nuts — driven by a combination of unacknowledged racism and open rage to reject the results of the election by any means available. The validity of said means is pretty much irrelevant; as we’ve seen in recent years, if you say something often enough, and loudly enough … well, you can get a lot of people to believe it.

Movies

In Your Face, Nixon!

I will jam this finger right through your neck, FrostyIt’s another busy, end-of-the-year kind of day for me, so here’s a quick breakdown of this week’s new releases:

“Adam’s Wall”: Michael MacKenzie’s low-key drama finds a Jewish teen living in Montreal falling for an Orthodox Christian girl from Lebanon in one of those Romeo-Juliet situations. Rad found it awfully calculating; Damian found a little more to like.

“Confessions of a Porn Addict”: I haven’t really been able to enjoy Spencer Rice’s self-conscious performances ever since he and Kenny Hotz first painted themselves as struggling hucksters in 1997’s “Pitch”. And now he’s playing a compulsive masturbator or something. Andrew and Jason both say it’s okay; I believe them, but I’m still gonna wait for the DVD.

“Down in the Dirt“: I loathed Justin Simms’ posturing tale of a grubby-artist woe at TIFF, and don’t like it any more now. But there are a lot of Bukowski wannabes out there who’ll dismiss my complaints as sour grapes and see it anyway. I just hope they can afford to blow the $13.

“Frost/Nixon“: The screen version of Peter Morgan’s stage play has everything you’d expect from a Ron Howard movie — glossy production values, top-tier casting, and professional construction. It also has that weird neediness that distinguishes most of Howard’s movies — SEE HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS!!! — but Frank Langella and Michael Sheen pull it together in the gripping final act. Langella’s totally gonna land that Oscar nomination this year.

“A Touch of Spice”: The formative childhood experiences of a Greek astronomer (Georges Corraface) are illustrated through flashbacks in Tassos Boulmetis’ … hey, hang on, this movie is five years old! Barrett and Damian find it hasn’t gotten any better with age.

Also opening today: “Punisher: War Zone”, which brings back crazy ol’ Frank Castle for another round of shooting them up, and “Nobel Son”, which appears to be the movie Randall Miller and the cast of “Bottle Shock” made on their off-days. Umm … those DVDs will be out soon, too, right?

Culture Shock

On the Edge of 143 Seats

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I stay in power, the kitten gets to liveNever let it be said that Stephen Harper went down whining. (I mean, that’s pretty much what he’s doing, but let it never be said.)

After attempting to do the one thing capable of uniting the nation’s fragmented opposition parties — taking away public funding for political campaigns, thus ensuring that only the very wealthy would be able to have their voices heard in future elections — Harper stood slack-jawed as his opponents formed a workable coalition and called his bluff: You know, you’re just a minority government. We can take you, little man.

In a very short while, Harper will trek up to the Governor-General’s mansion and ask her to suspend this Parliamentary session for a month or so — as the Star puts it, he’s basically asking for a “time out” to figure out how to crawl back from the brink of revolt.

But here’s the rub: The Governor-General doesn’t have to do that. It’s entirely within her power to declare the coalition valid; constitutionally, that’s how Canada is able to deal with the defeat of a minority government without holding an election. And given the urgency with which Parliament needs to deal with this whole economic crisis, it seems to me that it’d be a lot more responsible to let the coalition get to that immediately, rather than giving Harper’s Conservatives a month to sit on their hands, officially prevented from acting.

But wait, I can hear my non-Canadian readers saying. What the hell is going on up there? Well, it’s a little tough to explain in a few sentences, but the knitblogger who calls herself the Yarn Harlot has put together an excellent summary of the situation without ever using the words “big baby” in reference to Harper. Pretty sure I couldn’t have pulled that off.

Hang on, Canada. It’s gonna be an interesting Christmas.

Movies

Remember When I Went to Vienna?

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What was it that Tolstoy fellow said?It’s taken a full month, but the FIPRESCI website has finally posted my jury’s Vienna reports; the main page can be found here, and my review of Morgan Dews’ outstanding documentary “Must Read After My Death” is here.

If any Canadian distributors happen to be reading, this would be a hell of a picture to book into the Royal for a limited run. Just, you know, if that might be something you’d like to do.

Movies

The Long and the Short of It

In the quiet time, before the rise of Lord HumungusCome on, people: “Four Christmases” topped the Thanksgiving box-office weekend? I mean, sure, at 88 minutes it’s the shortest of all the new releases — even “Bolt” is longer — and can therefore have the most performance, but there’s the other thing: It’s terrible.

Of course, quality is never an issue at the ticket counter. But I’m still surprised that “Australia” placed above “Transporter 3”, coming in with $14.8 million to action sequel’s $12.3 million gross: The first two “Transporter” films did reasonably well, and “Australia” comes in at nearly three hours, which means even fewer shows per day.

I guess people still love their epic historical romances. Which is handy, actually, since they’re the subject of my latest Sympatico/MSN gallery — movies built around the collision of passion and history. And no, the “Lord of the Rings” movies are definitively not eligible.

Movies

In Case It’s Been Bothering You

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Hang on, lads, he's got a great ideaYou know the ending of “The Italian Job”? The original, not the remake.

It’s a literal cliff-hanger, with Michael Caine and his merry band of thieves literally balanced on the edge of disaster — their stolen gold bars in one end of a recreational vehicle, the gang on the other, as the RV teeters over the edge of a cliff.

If the thieves move toward the gold, the van will tip over the side. If they move toward safety, the gold will shift, and the van will tip over the side. If they do pretty much anything rash or stupid, the van will tip over the side. So the movie just leaves them — and us — hanging.

Well, England has had enough. Last week, the Royal Society of Chemistry challenged the nation to find a scientifically legitimate solution to the problem, based on the evidence provided by the film (and rejecting “the employment of a helicopter” as a possible fix).

But wait! In a recent BBC interview, Michael Caine says he’s had the answer all along, and even claims they’d shot it back in 1969:

The star says he would have saved them by “switching on the engine”, burning off petrol until it righted itself.

“I crawl up, switch on the engine and stay there for four hours until all the petrol runs out,” he said.

“The van bounces back up so we can all get out, but then the gold goes over.”

“There are a load of Corsican Mafia at the bottom watching the whole thing with binoculars. They grab the gold, and then the sequel is us chasing it.”

I have my doubts about the practicality of this solution — it’s kind of anticlimactic after the intentional anti-climax of the cliff-hanger, which is presented with surprising grace when compared to the freneticism of the action that leads up to it. It very much feels like the movie’s supposed to stop there.

On the other hand, should that inevitable 40th anniversary DVD of “The Italian Job” should include the alternate ending, I will make with the shrugging and simply say that, you know, they were right to go with what they did.

My other other gig.