Across the Universe is a Trip Well Worth Taking

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Across the Universe enjoyed a relatively short stay in theaters, especially in St. Louis, but I still managed to get a classic Rich Siegel style two viewings in. With the coveted Oscars about to be handed out I’ve been racking my brain as to who I think really deserves them as well as what my favorite movie of 2007 truly is. I just saw Michael Clayton for the first time and was very impressed. This directorial debut for Tony Gilroy is remarkable, building slow intensity before it erupts with extremism. Of the Oscar nominees I’d actually give the best actor spot to George Clooney for his portrayal of a man at wits end in Michael Clayton, but we all know it’s going to Daniel Day Lewis for his oil man in There Will be Blood. Something was lost on me in There Will be Blood and I’m not quite sure what it was. Instead of hailing it as a classic as most critics have been, I thought it was boring and uninspired despite Daniel Day Lewis’s exceptional performance. I also caught a second viewing of the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men which I will hail as a classic without reservations and give my approval for the Best Picture Oscar as well as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Javier Bardem for his portrayal of the man who is the reason why this is no longer a country for old men. As much as I loved No Country I’ve got to give my top spot, as you might have guessed already, to Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe.

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Taymor’s last directorial effort was 2002’s Frida, a beautiful movie that told the tale of famed artist Frida Kahlo played by Salma Hayek, who has a great cameo in Across the Universe as 5 trippy sexy nurses. Frida was filmed with some of the most vibrant colors I’ve ever seen in a film with each scene more beautiful than the next. Occasionally scenes would start with a painting by the late artist that would quickly transform into a scene of realism. This technique was not overused, was particularly well done and proved to me that Taymor is a talented and innovative director. When I first saw trailers for Across the Universe with Taymor’s name attached I had high hopes, all of which were blown out of the water when I saw the film.

Across the Universe opens with 6 separated characters of Beatles fame: Jude, Lucy, Max, Sadie, JoJo and Prudence. All are broken in their own way and are destined to come together to find happiness. A common criticism I’ve read about the film is that it was disjointed, an opinion I couldn’t disagree more with. The character introductions are each presented in separate music video-esque scenes that may come off as disordered but gains bearing as all of the characters lives begin to intersect. While utilizing Beatles’ songs to tell the story you’ll find no John or Paul vocals in this film. This is a musical in every sense, in which the characters sing the words to express themselves. Whether the song is upbeat or slow is determined by the scene it is trying to tell, not how the original was composed. Using a combination of live action, animation and special effects Taymor really captures the spirit of the time and delivers a tale of love and loss that will remain with you long after the credits roll.

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Some of the musical numbers in this movie I can only classify as pure genius and deserve to be seen instead of described, so I’ll only say that the scene surrounding the song She’s So Heavy should be You-Tubed if you refuse to see the entire film for some unreasonable I’m too macho for musicals complex rationale. Across the Universe hits store shelves on DVD on Tuesday and I urge you all to check it out if you haven’t had the pleasure yet, it is most certainly a trip worth taking.

- Rich

Published in:  on February 1, 2008 at 5:24 pm Comments (3)
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Cloverfield Impresses & More of Rick’s Rants

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After one of the most enticing marketing campaigns completely brain washed me to need to see this movie the second it came out, I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. Its surprising to me that there is such a critical divide over Cloverfield since I’ve found over the years that critics tend to like anything different since they see the same crap over and over again. Cloverfield, on top of revitalizing a genre really did accomplish originality, a rarity in movies today. Critics adored last years The Host, a Korean monster movie that I thought was just plain boring and doesn’t hold a candle to Cloverfield. This monster movie isn’t getting nominated for best picture, but the camera work is amazing, the way they portrayed the story with cuts to our protagonist and his love interest everytime the camera got turned off is extremely intelligent, and the special effects are jawdropping. At one point our heroes seem to be victorious as they climb in a military helicopter. We the viewers, along with our heroes, get our first overhead view of the monster terrorizing Manhattan, but the beauty is fleeting; a monster tentacle whips up and catches the helicopter. Watching a helicopter crash from the viewpoint of the passengers is pretty damn cool. I’m gonna have to classify this as a must see in theaters. If you get motion sickness you might want to pop a Dramamine before you go, otherwise, enjoy the ride.

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My newest Rick’s Rants is up on Movieweb in which I give a very personal account of how FOX lifted my spirits last Sunday with the new Terminator show, Family Guy and American Dad. I also express my discontent with the new American Gladiators. As always, heres the link: Rick’s Rants: Quips on Televisions Finest. I’ll be doing a TV year in review of 2007 for Movieweb, and a movie year in review for The Trifecta as soon as I’ve seen all the possiblities. I just saw the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which will certainly make my list and should be seen by all. Hopefully I’ll get to Atonement this weekend. Enjoy Cloverfield everyone, its one hell of a ride.

- Rich

Published in:  on January 19, 2008 at 2:08 pm Comments (2)
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No Country for Golden Compass Ending Removers for Commercial Appeal Raising Purposes

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I woke up Friday morning at 8:30 AM, hit up some class and then left a review session early to bolt out to the first Golden Compass showing of the day. I know the reviews were mediocre, except Roger Ebert’s review, (thumbs up / down dude) which on top of being a 100 / 100 hailed it as the next great fantasy trilogy.

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So… I was disappointed, to say the least. I honestly wish the movie was an hour longer, which is a weird thing to say about a movie I was disappointed with. They cut out the climactic ending of the first book and I simply couldn’t understand why. It’s a great ending, an ending that ties up some loose ends while creating new ones leading into a great sequel, an ending that is visually fantastic, an ending that made the rest of the story sit just right, as a great ending should. I racked my brain; maybe they didn’t finish the special effects in time for the release date? No, that’s ridiculous. Even if they had to get a sweat shop of animators hopped up on crack to keep them awake for a month straight, the studio would figure out a way to get it done. What could it be? Thankfully I have someone to blame for my angst. Tonight I glanced over at an Entertainment Weekly that was open to an article about said film. It told a tale of a young director named Chris Weitz who had lost his way. Apparently he was having a mental breakdown during the filming of About a Boy. He decided with his next project he’d go big, so he headed to the North Pole for a spirit journey or some shit and wrote the film adaptation of The Golden Compass by hand because a boat short circuited his laptop when he plugged it in. Touching story and all (a single tear drips down my left cheek as I type), with one tiny problem: You’re script kinda sucked the life out of one of my favorite books of all time. When they originally announced this movie the script was by Tom Stoppard, known to me as the scribe of such films as Shakespeare in Love and Brazil, but known to more cultured folks as a serious big hitter in the literary world. Apparently his script was rejected because it had long wordy chats about philosophy and tangent universes and such, my favorite parts from the book. Good old Chris went on his spirit journey and wrote the simplified version the studio wanted. The worst part is I might have liked his iteration had the ending not been cut, which brings me to the little paragraph in the EW article that peaked my interest. The studio cut the ending because they wanted it to end upbeat instead of on a down note. Instead of having Lord Asriel kill Lyra’s friend and cut into a tangent universe on a mission to kill God in a spectacular of visual effects as the universe rips apart with dust, the movie just ends with Lyra flying away with Roger. God forbid the studio could have any clues that these movies are really about a man’s attempt at killing God and the girl who partakes in original sin when it all goes down. New Line: shame on you. I can only hope the DVD will have the extended edition with some more exposition and the original ending. Please, pretty please.

All that being said, all the animals were great, the special effects were really top notch. The acting jobs were great, including the animals. They all reflected the facial features and motions of their respective humans. And damn, those polar bears can fight. Even after writing this frustrated rant I do want to see it again… whatever that means. Let me know what you guys think, I’m interested.

- Rich

Published in:  on December 10, 2007 at 12:44 am Comments (3)
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No Country for Golden Compass Bashing Religious Zealots

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Hello fair readers. Today for the first time in a long time I’m going to generate some original content for the Trifecta that is not simply just a plug for my movieweb article (which I’ll still be plugging). In fact, let me just get the movieweb article plugging out of the way immediately: My newest edition of Rick’s Rants: Quips on Television’s Finest has just been posted up on the site as of this evening. In it I rant about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (my new favorite comedy) and the Futurama movie Bender’s Big Score. Rick’s Rants has officially been upgraded into the Column Section of Movieweb instead of the TV features which will hopefully bring in more readers. As always here’s a link to the article: Rick’s Rants. Hope you all enjoy.

Since I’ve been writing these movieweb articles I haven’t had a chance to write about movies, so now I’ll return to form to discuss two very important ones.

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This weekend marks the opening of what has been my most highly anticipated film release all year: The Golden Compass. I’ve been a big fan of the books since my friend Pam highly recommended them to me about a year a half back. I plowed through the trilogy and have since been touting them as some of my favorite books. Ever since the announcement of the first cast members I’ve had high hopes that this trilogy could achieve Lord of the Rings status. Now that the opening is upon us it’s become pretty clear that it’s not going to. In fact, I’d say there’s even a danger that the rest of the trilogy won’t get made despite the big name actors that have attached themselves. Why you ask? It seems that the Catholic community has condemned a movie none of them have seen yet. I’m not really surprised, part of what I liked about the books is the obvious Christian bashing, but apparently the movie does a pretty good job of staying non-partisan. Its all about tolerance people! You don’t see the Atheists of the world out protesting the Passion of the Christ or Jesus Christ Superstar do you? If you’re into Jesus or any of those other fairy tales the Bible has to offer I encourage you not to miss a significantly better fantasy story called the Golden Compass.

I’ve seen countless trailers, the first 5 minutes of the movie and tonight, despite my best efforts, couldn’t help but read some early reviews. The consensus seems to be that it looks great but is confusing to newcomers who aren’t familiar with the books. This of course doesn’t bother me one bit, except that there’s potential that my non-Dark Materials-initiated friends, who I’ll drag to see it with me this weekend, will bitch at me because they didn’t like it. Even more devastating though is that the masses might not like it, and if the masses don’t like it, there won’t be more movies (a single tear drips down my left cheek). All I can do at this point is hope.

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The second movie I wanted to talk about is the movie that everyone is talking about: No Country for Old Men. Critics have thrown caution to the wind in praising No Country as the clear front runner for Oscar season and are calling it the best movie of the year. Densen, our guest writer, loved it and thought it was hilarious while Warsh, quite oppositely, thought it was great, but doesn’t deserve all the critical acclaim it’s recieving. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen the film and I’m now officially ready to state my opinion on it. I loved it and I think it justly deserves all the critics’ praises. Up until I’d seen No Country I thought that Capitán Vidal from Pan’s Labyrinth was the scariest realistic character ever portrayed on the silver screen. Bardem’s Anton Chigurh certainly takes the prize. Javier Bardem deserves an Oscar for his performance, and something tells me he’s going to get it. There’s been a fair amount of controversy over the ending or the lack there of. When I left the theater I was shaken to the core, maybe more so then ever before from a movie. Obviously No Country was very abrasive and violent, but I think the dominating contributing factor to my core shaken-ness was from the fact that I had very little closure when I walked out. I’m very interested to know what people thought about this movie, so drop a comment if you have time. Danny has promised a new article by the weekend and I’ve been bugging Warsh as often as I can, so please keep checking the Trifecta.

- Rich

Published in:  on December 4, 2007 at 9:59 pm Comments (2)
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Billion Dollar Movies

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In the history of the worldwide box office there have only been 3 movies ever to gross over one billion dollars.

Number 1 clocking in at 1.8 billion in ticket sales is Titanic – winner of 11 Oscars and revealed Kate Winslet’s gorgeous breasts which caused a young Geoff Pitman at age 11 to hand write a 6 page love letter and send it to Kate Winslet herself. Interestingly enough a rewritten version of that letter without any of the – I saw your tits in Titanic parts – made it in to Ani Hatza’s hands (a girl I was obsessed with in elementary school) with my signature. Geoff was always getting me in to trouble. In the end Titanic affected us all and was worthy of its mighty box office stature. Enough said.

Number 2 on the list with a smooth 1.2 billion in ticket sales is my personal favorite movie of all time – The Return of the King. I know the hobbits may seem a little gay, and who knows, maybe the reason I love them so much is because I was drenched in estrogen in the womb, but every time Sam picks up Frodo and starts carrying him up the mountain… I start tearing up. Also the recipient of 11 Oscars, I think we can all agree that Return of the King deserves its billion dollar haul.

Number 3 on the list with 1.06 is the second pirate’s movie – Dead Man’s Chest. I was in Japan, being my insane media obsessed self, dying to see Dead Man’s Chest the second it came out. The fortunes smiled upon me, as they usually do, when Elly found out about a sneak preview in Tokyo’s Ropongi Theater. The tickets were 35$ bucks a pop, I shit you not, but it was well worth it. We walk in to this huge ridiculous state of the art movie theater that was packed. There were a ton of people dressed up, and not just attendees, there were professionally paid actors dressed up in some serious costumes. And the best part was, not only was there Captain Jack and the pirates crew (me and Captain Japanese Jack are pictured below), but Darth Vader and some Jedi’s were there too. The first time I saw Dead Man’s Chest I loved it. It was funny, epic, had some amazing visuals and was just a good time. As the credits rolled I thought back to the beginning of the movie when Darth Vader and those Jedis were walking around. I thought to myself – maybe this is the next Star Wars. I felt that the general consensus was that people didn’t like Dead Man’s Chest because it didn’t come to any conclusions, but that certainly didn’t bother me. I walked out of that theater in Tokyo with supreme confidence that Pirates 3 would be one of the sweetest movies I’d ever see and that it would conclude an amazing trilogy that may eventually be considered among the best. It won the Oscar for special effects, and spun off a great dice game called ‘Pirate Dice: A Game of High Seas Deception’ that has become a staple at my apartment. As you all know I’m not much of a drinker, but I think that Pirate Dice: A Game of High Seas Deception would be a great drinking game that should be tried by all. You can pick it up at your local Wal-Mart for $15.99. So anyway… because of the fun time, the spin off dice game, the absurdity of Darth Vader being at the premier, the Oscar and the prospect of an amazing concluding third movie, I’ve deemed Dead Man’s Chest worthy of its billion dollars.

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I tried to think back to this summer’s movies with a positive sentiment. The first time I saw Transformers I loved it, although the second time it sorta lost me half way. Ratatatouille was really heartwarming, although it must have been missing something because two of the girls I saw it with walked out. The Judd Apatow team made the summer for me with Knocked Up and Superbad, which were maybe the two best movies all summer. Even so, I can’t help but being extremely disappointed with this summer because there’s this huge thorn in my side called Spiderman 3. Spiderman 3 suffered from tangling too many plot lines that I didn’t care about into a mess. Then there’s a thorn that’s so big in comparison to the Spiderthorn that it might as well be a pebble in my urethra that I can’t pee out. That pebble is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. What the fuck happened? I’ve talked to one person who liked this movie, one person, and his name is Ian Lopez. He thought it was “epic and visually stimulating,” end quote. Sorry E, I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one. Pirates 3 was a joke. Let me outline one side plot for you that you may not have had time to really think about. Remember that girl from Pirates 2 that looked like an African gypsy that hadn’t brushed her teeth ever, but was still kinda hot? It turns out she is the human form of Calypso, goddess of the sea, who appointed Davy Jones, her lover, to ferry the dead to the next world. In return he could step on land once every ten years to fuck her, but one time she didn’t show up so he became a crustacean monster that doesn’t ferry dead people but just pirates around being a douche bag. The pirates eventually decide to free Calypso, which apparently means turning her into a bunch of crabs (coincidentally the same crabs from Jack Sparrow’s 20 minute acid trip that had nothing to do with the movie) that do nothing and then she is never seen or heard from again. Ian also said in his defense “I’m very easy to please.” I’m easy to please too, especially when I’m hyped about a movie like I was for Pirates, but I honestly wish I could have the 3 and a half hours of my life back (even though I’d probably waste it watching episodes of Flight of the Conchords I’ve already seen). Even Adam Shelly who I would classify as a serious pirates lover thought 3 was “just stupid.” Pirates 3 is currently boasting ticket sales of .96 billion and is likely to be the 4th billion dollar movie by the time it farts out. I plead to all, please don’t go see the inevitable next pirate’s movie. I hope they spend a fortune on making it. I hope they make the most expensive movie in the history of movies to follow up their two previous billion dollar movies. And then I hope that no one goes to see it. Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer both need a big kick in the balls for Pirates 3, and what better way to do it then them losing half a billion dollars on Pirates 4. Unfortunately we live in an unfair world, and I’m sure everyone will go see Pirates 4. Shit, even I’ll see it. It saddens me so deeply that we the people of the world gave Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney a billion dollars to not only waste 3 and a half hours of our lives but also to destroy the spirits of all those out there who hoped for another holy trilogy to worship. I’m glad Darth Vader wasn’t at the premier of Pirates 3, he might have force strangled us all in a blind insane fury sparked from the pure horrendousness of the film.

- Rich

Published in:  on September 1, 2007 at 3:54 am Comments (5)
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