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Monday, January 19th, 2009Today's Links (Shanghaiist)
Photo by Jeremy Barwick . A man and a woman have been killed by a carbon monoxide leak in a downtown Shanghai apartment yesterday morning while two of theirr roommates remain in a coma. Taiwan is coordinating with mainland authorities on the possibility of increasing the number of charter flights to and from Shanghai for the convenience of Taiwanese residents looking to go …
Source: shanghaiist.com
Movie Review: 'Marley & Me' is more than a dog's tale
Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston star in "Marley & Me." Numerous Labrador retrievers play Marley.
"Marley & Me," the story of an unruly, 100-pound yellow Labrador retriever and the people who love him, offers far more than scenes of a dog running amok.
Don't panic: There are still plenty of funny shots of the pup gnawing furniture or trying to escape a moving car. But beyond the high jinks lies a moving, realistic story of a couple (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) trying to balance work and children along with that big dog.
As such, this PG-rated film, based on the memoir by former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter John Grogan, might test the patience of younger kids. And the picture's mature themes might also inspire some questions for parents.
Wilson, as gentle and soulful as he is funny, plays Grogan as a good-natured guy surprised by his own professional ambitions and slightly wary of the growing responsibilities of life at home.
Aniston doesn't get as many light moments as Wilson, since Jenny Grogan is the one shouldering most of the household responsibilities. The often-serious nature of the role suits Aniston, still nimble with comedy but less frothy than she was during her "Friends" days.
When Jenny quits her job as a reporter to stay home with the children and then resists the constraints of her life, you see why John complains she's never happy. By the same token, you can see Jenny's frustration with a husband who spends several minutes each evening sitting in the car in the driveway, dreading the pressures of family life after a long day at work.
They're both right and they're both wrong, and the film, refreshingly, doesn't judge either. "Marley & Me" allows its human as well as its canine characters flaws while delivering a nice message that dogs, like children and marriages, require commitment and work.
When John and Jenny, newly wed and just arrived in Florida from chilly Michigan, decide to adopt a pup, they don't question why the woman at the adoption place offers Marley at a discount. Jenny just calls him her "clearance puppy," and she and John adore the dog even as he chews through drywall and ingests things he really shouldn't.
Director David Frankel and the film's animal trainers used many dogs to play Marley at various ages. Yet the "character" of Marley, always highly affectionate as well as rambunctious, maintains a behavioral consistency throughout.
"Marley & Me" lasts about 20 minutes too long, with Frankel and screenwriters Scott Frank and Don Roos seemingly intent on giving Wilson, Aniston and the dog their due while also highlighting supporting players Alan Arkin and Eric Dane.
Arkin is wry as ever as John's smile-phobic boss, and Dane carries his twinkle from his "Grey's Anatomy" character, Mark Sloan, over to another womanizer – John's single newsman buddy, who uses Marley as bait in attempts to pick up women.
These entertaining but conventional characters remind us this is a big studio film starring Aniston and Wilson, and that certain plot points need to be hit. But the complexity that "Marley & Me" offers within that format remains impressive.
MARLEY & ME
3 stars CAST: Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Alan Arkin, Kathleen Turner, Eric Dane
DIRECTOR: David Frankel
WRITERS: Scott Frank and Don Roos, from the book by John Grogan
THEATERS: Century (Folsom, Greenback, Laguna, Stadium), Regal (Auburn, El Dorado Hills, Natomas, Placerville), UA Roseville, Holiday Davis
115 minutes
Rated PG (thematic material, strong language, some suggestive content)
Source: www.sacbee.com
Movie Review: 'The Wrestler' pins demons
Mickey Rourke gives a beautiful performance in "The Wrestler."
Rourke transcends the physical trappings of his aging pro wrestler character – the leonine, platinum mane, 'roided-up pecs and self-inflicted razor cuts aimed at giving the crowd what it wants – to impart his character's desire to connect, at times even lending Randy "The Ram" Robinson a kind of spiritual grace.
Locked out of his New Jersey trailer for failing to pay rent and hobbled by hangover injuries from his 1980s heyday, the Ram has it bad these days. But he still has a few things going for him, like the self-awareness to recognize he's been selfish much of his life and that he must make up for lost time.
Though he's working with a limited emotional tool set, the Ram reaches out anyway, to the adult daughter (a stony, thoroughly believable Evan Rachel Wood) he never really knew, and to a stripper (Marisa Tomei) who's sweet to him because he pays her and because she thinks he's a nice guy, in that order. Seeking comfort after a traumatic experience, the Ram, for the first time, seems willing to offer something in return.
Rourke brings a ton of bruised baggage to the role, as someone more famous for his eccentricities, for his pocket dogs and ravaged puss, than his acting. But the performance is so accomplished that one need not make the connection from the beat-up guy on screen to the handsome young man of "Diner" and "9 1/2 Weeks" to give it credence. Many viewers will be unable to make that connection, anyway, since Rourke's period out of the spotlight lasted longer than his time in it.
Undiminished from that time, thankfully, are Rourke's gentle quality and his humor. The Ram is not the smartest guy in the room, or even in the low-rent wrestling rings where he performs for a nostalgia crowd. But he's winningly self-effacing and a natural showman, whether in the ring or behind the deli counter of a supermarket, where he joshes with customers while juggling orders.
Rourke subtly but brilliantly lets the past intrude on his character's affable present. The Ram wasn't always a sweetheart, obviously, and we see the guy he was in flashes – in the anger sparked by a too-demanding, possibly unhinged customer, and in the now part-time wrestler's continued need for the adulation of the crowd.
Director Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a Dream") and screenwriter Robert Siegel give Rourke a thoughtful yet exceptionally lively cinematic showcase. Aronofsky often trains his camera on the back of Rourke's head, giving us access to the Ram's point of view as he moves through a world that no longer seems to need him.
The wrestling scenes are so authentically brutal that they never appear choreographed. And that's saying something, given that they're essentially choreographed-squared, as professional wrestling scenes staged for movie cameras.
"The Wrestler" also contains one of the finest individual scenes in recent memory. I won't say much more about it, except that it will resonate with anyone who misses those sweet, sweet days of Quiet Riot and IROC Camaros.
Tomei's character, Cassidy, is refreshingly devoid of either a heart of gold or a drug habit. What she has is a young son and a need to pay the bills. Tomei's acting here is natural and also deceptively simple, since she's playing many layers. Cassidy wants to keep the Ram as a customer and therefore must navigate their interactions carefully, neither encouraging nor discouraging him too much.
Tomei's extended show of skin in "The Wrestler," though certainly reflective of her character's occupation, eventually seems indulgent on the part of the filmmakers. One starts to wonder why this highly talented, Oscar-winning actress needs to be topless in more than one scene.
It's the kind of question that usually arises with a 24-year-old rather than a 44-year-old actress. But perhaps in this era of Pilates, great nutrition and skin-care advancements, 40 is the new exploited.
The Wrestler - Trailer
Source: www.sacbee.com
Movie Review: Million Dollar Baby
4 stars
"Slumdog Millionaire" bursts with life, delighting, shocking and constantly engaging through lively visuals and the rags-to- maybe-riches adventures of a young man who travels from the slums to the hot seat of the Indian "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire."
Director Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting") presents a world where garbage dumps serve as playgrounds, and criminality and cruelty are a matter of course. But it's also a place where ingenuity can pay off and where hope, once sprung, can survive.
The shanty town inhabited by eventual "Millionaire" contestant Jamal Malik and his bother, Salim, might be one of the worst places in the world to grow up. But it's home to them, and Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle lend it the same vibrancy they later will the Taj Mahal. Both places offer opportunities for mischief and moneymaking for Jamal and Salim, orphaned as children by an anti-Muslim attack that killed their mother.
Adapted for the screen by Simon Beaufoy from the novel "Q&A" by Vikas Swarup, "Slumdog" makes a case for nature over a lack of nurture in contrasting the behavior of siblings faced with the same circumstances. Jamal will lie, cheat and steal to survive, but remains in essence a good person. Salim, on the other hand, probably would have tapped his inner "Scarface" had he grown up in Boca Raton.
Much of "Slumdog" unfolds in flashback, with six actors total playing Jamal and Salim at various ages. Dev Patel is the standout as the older Jamal, an assistant – he mostly serves tea – at a Mumbai cell-phone call center. But Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar also shine as the very young Salim and Jamal, respectively.
Khedekar captures Jamal's indefatigable quality, and Ismail – discovered in a real slum by Boyle and crew – nails Salim's developing, difficult character, especially during a close-up of Salim's reaction to his kindhearted brother's invitation, over his protests, to a fellow orphan named Latika to join them in their shelter from the rain. In that close-up, we see Salim's sense of betrayal, along with a growing recognition that his brother is and will always be a sucker.
Latika is Jamal's great love, from whom he will be separated by a series of hard-hearted, sometimes sadistic people – a separation that will affect them differently. Patel and Freida Pinto, the gorgeous actress who plays Latika as a young woman, lend their characters a street-wisdom beyond their years. But whereas Jamal still seems hopeful, Latika is cautious and cynical. Or at least she tries to be.
"Slumdog Millionaire" is so stylistically boisterous that its lasting impression is one of movement – of characters running or of trains speeding by. Yet the film is just as powerful when the camera settles.
This is especially true during the scenes on the set of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire," the format for which matches the American version down to the English-language questions. (The film's dialogue is in English and Hindi, with English subtitles.)
Patel plays Jamal's on-camera moments beautifully, highlighting the young man's excellent recall as well as the savvy about human nature he developed on the street. As the host (played to smarmy perfection by Anil Kapoor) continually points out that Jamal is basically a tea fetcher, Jamal plays along, shrugging off the condescending tone. But when he must, he stands his ground in the manner of a young man who came up the hard way.
The compulsion of the TV host and others to question Jamal's ability and/or right to win – sometimes violently – speaks to the continued gulf between classes in modernizing Mumbai. But even the film's social commentary is laced with affection, presenting this city of 19 million as a place where people will take to the streets to cheer on a boy from the slums who made it on to a TV show.
Given its recent history, Mumbai is a city in need of a valentine – even one as warts-and-all gritty as "Slumdog Millionaire."
Slumdog Millionaire - Trailer
Call Bee movie critic Carla Meyer, (916) 321-1118. Hear her discuss the week's movies at 4:40 p.m. on Fridays on NewsTalk 1530 (KFBK).
Source: www.sacbee.com
Video: 40-Something
Tyler Anderson takes a look at an unusual retirement home for ex-HIV test patients
Source: www.nationalpost.com
Movie Review: Unmerry pairing spoils 'Four Christmases'
This photo released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Reese Witherspoon as Kate and Vince Vaughn as Brad as they discover the pitfalls of holding a baby in New Line Cinemas romantic comedy, Four Christmases, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.
Delightful apart but deadly together, Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn look, throughout "Four Christmases," as if they just want to get this thing over with.
That their characters spend the film with family members they would prefer to avoid is coincidental. The true awkwardness lies in the pairing of movie stars.
Wrong for each other physically, comically and perhaps even spiritually, the tiny, self-possessed Witherspoon and her tall, anything-goes co-star seem randomly matched in the way stars no longer required to screen-test together (e.g., Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker, "Failure To Launch") sometimes can be.
From this mismatch to its lowbrow script, "Four Christmases" smells of faulty Hollywood packaging. The best the picture can say for itself is that it's only Vaughn's second-worst holiday movie, after "Fred Claus." There's rarely a smart moment in "Four Christmases," and that's a disservice to its stars, whose one shared trait is intelligence.
Instead, the picture gives us pratfalls, projectile vomiting and far too many opportunities to embarrass Witherspoon, an actress of considerable dignity, not to mention the owner of an Oscar. (Frankly, when watching "Four Christmases," "Walk the Line" seems to have happened a lifetime ago.)
Directed with little flair by Seth Gordon, maker of the excellent documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (seriously, rent it), "Four Christmases" is an episodic film strung together by an interesting enough premise: Brad and Kate, a San Francisco couple who prefer spending holidays on exotic isles, are fogged in at the airport and interviewed by a local TV station for a segment subsequently viewed by their respective (divorced) parents. Thus, they are unable to extract themselves from visiting four separate households and meeting each other's relatives for the first time in their three-year relationship.
What kind of relationship lasts three years without the participants meeting each other's family members, especially when everyone lives in Northern California? The kind that happens only in the movies, of course. Sort of like a scene where Brad and Kate take the Golden Gate Bridge to get to the airport from San Francisco.
First up is Brad's father's (Robert Duvall) rural, hick- ified home, where Kate and Brad enjoy cheese product on trans-fat crackers and Brad gets pummeled by his cage-fighter brothers (Tim McGraw and Jon Favreau).
Though the movie's depiction of lower-middle-class life is condescending, production designer Shepherd Frankel certainly nails the details, from the gold stove to the 1970s casserole dish Brad's parents probably saved S&H Green Stamps to obtain.
Able to be crinkly and ornery by rote, Duvall, like most of the top-drawer supporting cast (Sissy Spacek plays Brad's mom, Mary Steenburgen is Kate's mom and Jon Voight is Kate's dad), breezes through his role. Expending considerably more energy are Favreau, Vaughn's pal and frequent co-star, and Katy Mixon, who plays his character's wife. They perform a well-timed, wonderful bit of comedy during a gathering at Brad's mother's upscale hippie pad.
When Kate and Brad visit the well-tended suburban home of Kate's mother, Kate is the brunt of all jokes, with Witherspoon asked to physically battle 5-year-olds and withstand baby spit-up and the upstaging of her character by her boyfriend.
The scene where Brad outshines Kate is funny, showcasing Vaughn's agitated-showboat charms. But it doesn't help explain why Kate subsequently would nudge Brad, a commitment-phobe as well as an attention hog, to marry her.
Witherspoon seems to wonder the same thing, bringing a joyless quality to relationship-centric scenes as well as to more comedic moments.
Four Christmases - Trailer
Source: www.sacbee.com
Movie Review: 'Curious,' yes, but full of warmth
Brad Pitt ages — in reverse — in "Benjamin Button."
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" does what technically masterful films so rarely do, inspiring a tremendous sense of warmth as well as admiration.
There's a glow to "Benjamin," which director David Fincher ("Zodiac") and cinematographer Claudio Miranda bathe in amber tones, lending a down-home quality to a picture that, visually, epitomizes sophistication.
Every shot is perfectly composed, and the special effects are artisan-like as well, incorporating Brad Pitt's likeness into the old/young body of his character, Benjamin Button, who is born in his 80s in 1918 New Orleans and proceeds to age backward.
Squalling and wrinkled, the infant octogenarian is left on the steps of a home for seniors. He's quickly scooped up by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson, emanating maternal kindness), the home's African American caretaker. Though the residents don't buy Queenie's story that Benjamin is her sister's baby, they accept their fellow rocking-chair inhabitant – Benjamin grows in height as he drops age spots – as one of their own.
The juvenile Benjamin, 4 feet tall with a stooped back and a gleam in his eye, is one of the most ingratiating figures ever to cross a movie screen. Hobbled by ailments, he's nonetheless full of a child's vigor. You see this in Pitt's expression, since his face, amazingly, has been digitally merged with his character's small body.
And you can see how much Benjamin adores young Daisy, the granddaughter of a resident. Even through watery, worn eyes, Benjamin can see that Daisy will someday become Cate Blanchett and that he will someday become Brad Pitt. That is, after a stop in his 60s as a ringer for Robert Redford.
Benjamin will experience plenty of adventures along the way in a life for which he's always grateful, given that the doctor told Queenie, when he was a newborn, that he would live only a short time. He keeps a positive outlook, maturing from nice older gentleman to nice middle-aged gentleman.
But nice, ultimately, is about all there is to the character. "Benjamin Button" so thoroughly envelops us in its improbable, gorgeously rendered world that it takes nearly half the picture's overlong 2-hour, 47-minute running time to notice the lead character is, essentially, an observer of his own life.
This recognition comes even though Pitt, given the difficult task of crafting a character mostly through narration (the film unfolds as passages read from Benjamin's diary) and/or in tandem with heavy makeup and special effects, has breathed considerable life into the character. But an actor's performance composes only a fraction of a finished film, and especially one so stylistically representative of its director, not to mention its screenwriter, Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump").
At those moments when Benjamin's personality does register, he's too Gump for comfort. From Benjamin's Southern accent to his great love for his childhood pal to his appreciation for his mama's truism that "You never know what's coming for ya," Benjamin seems drawn more from Gump than from the character in the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which the film is based.
Benjamin, though, enjoys far more time with women than Forrest did. While working on a tug boat anchored at a Russian port, Benjamin spends time with the wife (Tilda Swinton, neatly mixing vulnerability and upper-crust reserve) of a British diplomat. Benjamin says he adores this woman despite her being "plain as paper" – a highly inaccurate way to describe Swinton.
Casting Blanchett and Swinton as his love interests shows Benjamin clearly has a type, and it's not buxom and bubble-headed. But Daisy is his lasting love, and they will meet, at various times in his old and her young life, in a relationship where timing truly is everything.
Benjamin is still pretty old when dancer Daisy joins the company of the American Ballet Theatre in New York and subsequently becomes less likable. Not only does the script keep Benjamin and Daisy apart for too long, but Daisy develops from sweet girl to pretentious young woman.
A phenomenally gifted actress who is always technically perfect, Blanchett can come off as chilly at times. And that's fine when playing Queen Elizabeth I, but not when playing a manchild-captivating New Orleans girl.
During some scenes between Benjamin and his straight-backed, wannabe Beatnik dream girl, Blanchett seems ice cold, and thus completely at odds with what makes the movie special.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
3 stars
CAST: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Tilda Swinton and Jared Harris
DIRECTOR: David Fincher
WRITERS: Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, from the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THEATERS: Century (Downtown Plaza, Folsom, Greenback, Roseville, Stadium), Regal (Auburn, Davis, El Dorado Hills, Natomas, Placerville), UA Laguna
167 minutes
Rated PG-13 (brief war violence, sexual content, smoking, strong language)
Source: www.sacbee.com
Jay Chou and Lee Hom behind cause against payola (Xin.sg via Yahoo! Singapore News)
Singers and management executives of Sony Music, JVR Music, Universal Music, Linfair Records, Monster Studio, Forward Music, etc, gathered at a press conference for a cause against payola in Taipei on Jan 8.
Source: sg.news.yahoo.com
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