Monthly Archives: August 2011

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: It was worth the wait

Here’s a case study of how everything can wrong for a movie that should have zero problems hitting theaters.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil premiered at Sundance 2010 to overwhelming praise. When I say “overwhelming praise” I don’t mean that most people liked it or pretty much everyone thought it was good. I mean I have never heard a bad word said about this movie. It has a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. When I say “overwhelming praise” I mean exactly that. It’s a tsunami of love for this low-budget horror parody. So why did it take 18 months to reach an audience? Well, to be fair, anything that comes out within 2 years of being lensed isn’t that a big of a problem. There are a lot of decisions that go into when a movie is released—something can be in the can and ready to go but marketing says it’ll float better in six months so you wait. Or, if it’s a festival prospect and it’s finished after September, it’s waiting until the festival season begins again the following year. So partly the delay isn’t a huge thing because 18 months from filming to viewing isn’t too bad.Continue reading “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: It was worth the wait”

Our Idiot Brother, or Paul Rudd can ACT

Our Idiot Brother is an okay movie, a pretty good comedy, and a stellar vehicle for star Paul Rudd. He’s so funny, and the last decade has been spent largely in the comedy world (he co-created and wrote Party Down, thus earning him Platinum Status in the Comedy Club), so it’s easy to forget that Rudd is a good actor, not just a good comedian. Our Idiot Brother is a testament to Rudd’s acting chops, though it’s also a showcase for his timing and delivery skills (look for the way he catches himself and backs up to the hand sanitizer in the ballet studio scene). If you’re a Rudd fan, this movie is a must. But if you’re not a Rudd fan, I’m not going to break your arm to make you see this movie. It’s sweet and keeps it mild insights limited to things we know—we should believe in each other more, let kids be kids and accept our siblings for who they are.Continue reading “Our Idiot Brother, or Paul Rudd can ACT”

Arthouse Audit: The Guard and The Whistleblower

The Guard

Did you like In Bruges? I loved In Bruges. Written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, In Bruges is my favorite kind of comedy—dark dark dark. The Guard is the directorial debut of screenwriter John Michael McDonagh, Martin’s brother. It has a lot in common in with In Bruges—clearly the brothers share similar taste. Though the tone is similar, The Guard is slower-paced than In Bruges, and less slick. The story centers on Sergeant Boyle (Brendan “Mad Eye Moody” Gleeson), a small-town police officer, or “Garda”, in Connemara, Ireland. Sergeant Boyle is a Columbo-type. His sense of humor is inappropriate, and he’s openly racist and consorts with hookers. But he also takes his dying mother (Fionnula Flanagan, The Others and one of my all time favorite comedies, Waking Ned Devine) out for a night on the town.Continue reading “Arthouse Audit: The Guard and The Whistleblower”

A lesson in comedy-movie making

Or, what was wrong with 30 Minutes or Less.

Depending on how familiar you are with improv and/or sketch comedy, you may be aware that all scene comedy is based on “games”. As a stand-up, these games didn’t have much to do with my act, but knowing them and being good at them definitely made me a better comedy writer (especially “the rule of three” and “topper”, which you can see applied to my writing all over this blog). These games are basically formulas for creating a scene and the problem with knowing the formula for anything is once you know how to make something, all you ever see is the formula, not the end product. Which means that something has to be really, really good in order to transcend the formula.Continue reading “A lesson in comedy-movie making”

Talking about The Help is going to be complicated

Let’s start with just talking about The Help as a movie. It translated well to screen, adapted from Kathryn Stockett’s wildly popular book by writer/direcotr Tate Taylor (Pretty Ugly People). I wasn’t a huge fan of the book—not only did it not live up to the hype but I found it kind of offensive—but the movie was a more enjoyable experience to me. This story definitely worked better with the benefit of a top-notch cast. Like X-Men: First Class before it, The Help is a study in how good actors can elevate mediocre material. The Help is about twenty minutes too long and parts of it drag, giving it some awkward pacing issues. The movie worked better and was more interesting when it focused on the home lives of Aibilene (Viola Davis, Doubt, in a performance sure to be in the mix come Oscar season) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer, Peep World, in a breakout role). I could’ve used more Aibilene and Minnie at home and less Skeeter going on dates.Continue reading “Talking about The Help is going to be complicated”

They’re wrong about Rise of the Planet of the Apes

That is a lot of prepositional phrases for one title. Makes it awkward to say. From here on out, we’re calling it Apes, which should have been the title of the movie. Because it was only about the apes. Apes received an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Avatar registered at 83%. This is an important correlation because it says that everyone liked Apes and Avatar and I did not. I am in the minority on this. I know I am. I know you will all be like, “Oh, I loved Apes!” And I’ll go, “Good for you—you’re wrong, too” I disliked Apes for the same reason that I disliked Avatar, which is chiefly…

SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE NOT A MOVIE.Continue reading “They’re wrong about Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Crazy Stupid Lovjkanhfkjasnflkzvn

I used to have this conversation about Ryan Gosling’s voluntary withdrawal from acting when The Gos was on his “break”, diddling around with a band (the unbearably hipster but not half-bad Dead Man’s Bones), and people were like, “Has he abandoned us? Were we not enough? Why isn’t he calling? He said he would call! WHY DOESN’T HE LOVE US ANYMORE?” You could feel the desperation whenever he came up in a conversation during this time. Hollywood was afraid that Ryan Gosling, arguably one of the greatest talents under forty, didn’t want it anymore. Also during this time, on the waning end of his break, right before he emerged from his fortress of solitude, I saw The Gos for myself.Continue reading “Crazy Stupid Lovjkanhfkjasnflkzvn”