Six short films, unrelated except for whatever it was that Echelon Studios’ marketing people were smoking when they came up with the title “Shorts for Cats.” It’s a cute idea – catnip affair. Perhaps that’s why the fuzzies slept through the whole thing.
When Confronting Homophobia, Always Choose Love
Eminent domain undoubtedly needs to be reformed, but why must propositions like 98 include baggage – what some call a Trojan horse – like rent control? The seeming inability to craft straightforward propositions is precisely why 98 comes across as self-serving political posturing for narrow interest groups rather than serious, voter-driven policy. Patt Morrison has it right when she calls for “gutsier legislators” and “ballot measures that don’t require rocket science, brain surgery or forensic analysis to figure out.”
‘Futile Attraction’: Nothing Futile About This Kiwi Comedy
Deftly putting the “mock” in mockumentary in enough ways to make a mad punner happy, “Futile Attraction” peels back Reality TV’s implicit structural flaw and exposes it to withering satire. Director/co-writer Mark Prebble hits on a clever way to simultaneously propel the narrative “story” of the people making the documentary and their subjects while also taking apart, po-mo style, reality dating shows on a meta-level.
Prop 98: Don’t Give Hay to Trojan Horses
Eminent domain undoubtedly needs to be reformed, but why must propositions like 98 include baggage – what some call a Trojan horse – like rent control? The seeming inability to craft straightforward propositions is precisely why 98 comes across as self-serving political posturing for narrow interest groups rather than serious, voter-driven policy. Patt Morrison has it right when she calls for “gutsier legislators” and “ballot measures that don’t require rocket science, brain surgery or forensic analysis to figure out.”
Indiana Jones and the Bag of Mixed Results
It’s the snap of the whip! The tip of the fedora! The leap of death! The hanging off the cliff! The last minute of the escape! The crack of the wise! The poison of the dart! The thrill of the chase! The dust off the artifact! The bones in the grave! The idol in the temple! The x on the map! In other words, it’s Indiana Jones!
But – well, there is a but.
The Forbidden Kingdom: One Heck of a Popcorn Popper
The surprise in “The Forbidden Kingdom” isn’t the lack of a real surprise in terms of plot or characters. Any familiarity with the film’s component genres – Hollywood romances, Hong Kong Kung Fu, and so on – will make plain how this unabashed crowd-pleaser paints strictly by the numbers. Hence, the bullied kid will learn Kung Fu, exasperating teachers bewildered by his ineptness, and eventually turn the tables on the bullies. He will meet a pretty, and tough, girl (Liu). He will become, in short, a noble warrior steeped in the spirit of martial art virtues. No, the surprise doesn’t lie in the parts but in how the whole transcends its constituent clichés to become a fun-loving, thrill-seeking homage. It’s like inviting some good ol’ friends over for one heck of a popcorn-popping party.
A Double-Dram of David
David Mamet’s amusing soufflé “Keep Your Pantheon,” about the misfortunes of a desperate acting troupe, would be right at home with “historical” farces put on by Renaissance Faire troupes like Sound & Fury. Granted, this new short play by a playwright who needs no introduction is not quite so blatantly bawdy or low-flying as, say, “Testaclese and Ye Sack of Rome,” but the overall silly spirit of mirth and merriment is comparable, as is the discernible lack of any goal other than to make the audience laugh. Mamet throws enough jokes that most of them stick. Bonnie Grisan and director Neil Pepe stack the deck in the audience’s favour by casting actors of proven comic worth – David Payner and Ed O’Neill – alongside worthy co-performers. It’s ye olde-tyme comedy of errors, indeed; funny if inconsequential, with a deliberately old-fashioned theatricality that includes big, mouthy, quasi-stentorian dialogue.
Gay Marriage: Huzzah for Checks and Balances!
So the California Supreme Court did it. The judges overturned the ban on gay marriage (http://news.yahoo.com/). It’s a significant civil rights victory, of course; a triumph in the name of capital-L Love. Bravo! Yet I can’t help but feel that it’s a shame the victory had to come through the Supreme Court rather than the people themselves, a result that hysterics burdened with an excess of conservatismo will make use of as they attempt a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Better than Even Odds in “Crap Shoot”
Is the Hollywood machine’s decision-making process, the formula by which it sorts out the wheat scripts from the chaff, merely a crap shoot? Is there an explanation for why Hollywood puts out such awful movies on a consistent basis? These are, perhaps, serious questions at the cotton-candy heart of “Crap Shoot”, but they're also not especially profound.
Questioning that Old Ultra-Violence
When I was a kid, I played with Transformers, fascinated with the ability to transform a car or plan into a robot and back again. But unlike my best bud at the time, I was rather particular about which Transformers I’d collect: only the good guys, the Autobots. And so it was with just about everything I played, even with video games. I simply had no interest to inhabit, even in fantastical sense, the role of a villain. So I can’t quite relate to the fascination with villainy that underlines many crime movies, horror movies or even video games like Grand Theft Auto IV, which is currently breaking sales records. I struggle with the idea of games in which one can murder cops, run over pedestrians, and so on, just as I struggle with the notion of being entertained by violence in films.