FDR: American Badass; A Pre-Review

I just watched the Redband trailer for the upcoming movie FDR: American Badass and I must say this has the potential to be one of the worst movies that will come out in the next year.

View the Trailer and we'll continue from there.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hTnL8XBKk&w=640&h=360]

Saying that this could be one of the worst movies to come out this year may be a bit of an understatement but there's one thing I must also say. There is no amount of money you could pay me to NOT watch this movie. Not only does it feature Barry Bostwick as FDR, but it also stars a hodge podge of some of the greatest comedy actors to grace, in many occasions, the small screen through TV movies and sitcoms including but not limited to; Ed Metzger, Paul Wilson, Lin Shaye, Kevin 'Hercules' Sorbo, Bruce McGill and Ray Wise.

The thing that is appealing to me about FDR is it's obvious grasp of the campy movies from the 70s and 80s that it's embracing all too well. This is a prime example of what grindhouse films used to be; bad makeup, worse acting, terrible writing and a boat load of fun. Movies like this can't be, or are extremely hard to take seriously. Compare the poster for FDR:



Against the poster for the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter:



The two don't even come close to eachother. But based on poster alone, which are you more likely to see? A dark semi-vague movie that you assume is about Honest Abe hunting down Vampires (Please don't let them sparkle!) or would you rather see some movie that features a guy in a freaking wheelchair weilding a Tommy gun?

I'll take the Tommy gun please. From everything floating around the internet Abe is going to take a bit more heat since it's based on a book. It always seems that people get in a fuss over book adaptations, with FDR, you've got nothing to worry about. It's straight up new material.

FDR has the potential to take over a spot in my heart that has up to this point been filled with a love for the fake movie trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS which was made by Rob Zombie as a teaser trailer shown with the Grindhouse Double Feature presented by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez in 2007.

I always hoped Werewolf Women of the SS would get made but now I think I may be able to be happy with FDR: American Badass. Regardless of the ridiculous plot that FDR has, Nazi werewolves spreading the polio virus, it is exactly what you would expect from a film that appears to take a lot of lead from the films of Russ Meyer through the 60s to early 70s.

I will always have a soft spot for films like this in my heart, campy films are super enjoyable as long as you aren't expecting to get much out of it. I'll see you in the theaters on release day for this one for sure.

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

Last night, as I ate a healthy (ish) dinner of Crispix, a hard boiled egg, a piece of beef jerky, and pineapple, I was struck with the idea of a new old review of Jim Jarmusch's 2003 sleeper Coffee and Cigarettes.



I call it a sleeper because it's a great movie that didn't get the recognition it deserved. Even now it has a small cult following as do most of Jarmusch's other works including; Ghost Dog (1999) Dead Man (1995) and Stranger Than Paradise (1983).

Coffee and Cigarettes is a unique film in that it is a film made up of 11 short stories. All separate but connected only by the theme of Coffee and Cigarettes. Each vignette usually has two to three people sitting in a diner somewhere smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

Here's the Trailer:

http://vimeo.com/6423267

You'd think it would be boring, but when you've got the cast that C&C has, it's really quite interesting to see. Some of the duo's/trios are as follows;

Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, Jack and Meg White, Joie and Cinque Lee (Brother and sister of director Spike Lee) served by Steve Buscemi, Cate Blanchette in dual roles conversing with herself, Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan, and my favorite scene consisted of The RZA sitting in a diner with The GZA being served by actor Bill Murray who's doing research for a new role.



It's normally hard to make a vignette film that doesn't lose steam but Jarmusch has suceeded hands down. It's a dialogue driven film but each scene never lasts more than 10 minutes so you've got enough of a change up that it continually seems fresh as you're watching.

One other thing that I really enjoy about Jim Jarmusch is the fact that he worked with analogue film and it shows in his films. The picture has a grainy quality to it, and it's presented in black and white making contrast very important. It's not a glossed over film like all the HD movies that come out anymore, it's gritty and causes the viewer to listen to the dialogue even more because you aren't distracted by something in the background.



Coffee and Cigarettes doesn't rely on fancy sets or camera work either, most of the time the scenes are viewed from maybe three or four different angles, this makes the filming process easy and enjoyable for the actors and the director alike. I think that really shines through with this film.

The interesting thing about Coffee and Cigarettes is the fact that it was a work in progress for 17 years before the feature film was released. Jarmusch started the Coffee and Cigarettes series as three shorts, the first released in 1986, the second in 89, and the third in 95. In 2003 he finished his project which combined the first three shorts with 8 new ones. The impressive thing about this is that you can't really tell which three are the old ones. They fit together with such precision that you are led to believe they were all shot in 2003.

I highly recommend Coffee and Cigarettes to anyone who's a fan of well written dialogue that feels natural. Natural and awkward all at the same time. Just the way a cup of coffee and a cigarette should be.

The only thing I regret is the fact that this film could not be made today, every cafe that these scenes take place in are now smoke free. I would love to go into a small cafe like many of these duos and just have a long conversation with someone over a pack of cigarettes and four or five pots of coffee, and I'm not even a smoker.

Melancholia (2011)

*There is a good chance there will be a couple of SPOILERS in this review.

The other day I posted my preview of Upside Down starring Kirsten Dunst. In that post I'd mentioned she hasn't really been in anything of merit for the past few years. Nothing has changed with seeing Lars von Trier's Melancholia last night.

This movie is not for everyone. Myself included. I've been called a snob about film and cinema before, and I embrace that. I enjoy being a bit of a snob, I like being able to enjoy a film for reasons like acting abilities, scenery, set design, costuming, etc. and being able to explain myself for said reasons. But as beautiful as moments in this film were, nothing was able to drag me out of the depression that Melancholia forces upon the viewer.

When I saw the preview for Melancholia last week when my friend asked if I'd like to see it, I thought it seemed interesting enough. Check it;

Melancholia (2011)

When you view the trailer it doesn't seem like it's a 'End of the World Movie' But it is. It is a blatant, albeit, creative-(ish) re-imagining of such films as Armageddon and Deep Impact only there's no blowing up a planet that is taking stars out of major constellations in some of the space scenes. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention there's lot of space scenes? They distract from the sadness, only by giving you more stuff to be sad about. Also, Melancholia is the name of the aforementioned planet that's smashing through the galaxy, not just a clever play on the title on how you're going to feel for hours after seeing the film.

A brief synopses of Melancholia is this, a horribly dysfunctional family gathers to celebrate the marriage of a really nice guy and a seemingly nice girl. During the party the bride sees a star in the sky she hadn't seen before. She starts going nuts, sleeps with a different guy instead of her husband on her wedding day, the groom and his parents leave, there is much sadness and mopeyness on the part of the bride. Daddy issues and Mommy issues abound and we see part two. There is no definite expose on how much time has passed between part one (the horribleness) and part two (the horribleness part 2). You have to assume it's been at least a couple of weeks because the once blushing bride (Kirsten Dunst) is now pallid and run down to a degree of depression I haven't seen since Atonement. Then you see Dunst get nursed back to health by her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) while we learn that the star is actually a planet that has been hiding from us behind the sun is on a course that will bring it in to do a 'pass by' of Earth. And then you just get more and more depressed as Kirsten now 'knows things' like how many beans were in a jar at the wedding as part of a raffle that no one actually won. Weird. And the spiral never ends, you just get more and more and more depressed and then the movie ends.

I wouldn't say I hated this movie. There are many things I disliked about it though. For one, what can only be described as the prologue was 15 minutes of footage that would have been more appealing at the end of the film. So it was long, and it was also devoid of dialogue, and it was accompanied by this awful violin driven fugue ripe with transitions from Major to Minor keys with a shotgun blast of tri-tones thrown in to make the listener cringe.

The second major problem was the fact that the entire movie was shot in shaky-cam style. There was a sign posted outside of the auditorium stating that if you're prone to motion sickness, Melancholia may not be the right choice to see. There were few reprieves from the shaky-cam and when we did get breaks it was during scenes with little to no action thus making you more bored than you were sick.

The third major issue was the dialogue. Directed and Written by Copenhagen, Denmark native Lars von Trier, the film doesn't translate well. Had it been presented in Dutch it probably would have been fantastic. There are few foreign writers that make it big writing English screenplays. There's a reason they say English is the hardest language to learn and even harder to write. There are too many nuances that come easily for native English speakers that people who learn English as a second language don't always grasp. Many lines were ill-suited to the scenarios in which they were presented.

A final thought on Melancholia is this, aside from the bad, this is a very impressive new look at an imminent doom story. It's beautiful in all the right places, including a scene of Kirsten Dunst bathing in the light of Melancholia as it draws close enough to shed more light than our own moon. As well as almost every shot where Trier shows the Moon, the Sun, and Melancholia all lined up across the sky.

I fell in love with a number of the scenes in this film, but beauty alone won't keep me interested enough to recommend this movie to too many people. If you have a chance, and if you want to spend two hours watching a film that makes you feel like you've been watching for 7 hours. . . See Melancholia.

Melancholia (2011) Directed and Written: Lars von Trier. Starring; Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling, Alexander Skarsgard, Brady Corbet, Cameron Spurr, John Hurt, Stellan Skarsgard, Udo Kier.