The Hangover Part 2

They said this was going to be the Godfather, Part 2 of comedy sequels, and while that may initially seem like a major boast for this type of film to make, it actually wasn't that far off. You see The Godfather, Part 2 essentially tells a very similar story to that of its predecessor, and so does The Hangover.

In this film, we're in Thailand for Stu's wedding, and, needless to say, as the bachelor party commences, the hijinks ensue. All of the lead cast is back, including, oddly enough, Ken Jeong as Mr. Chow, who feels forced into the film, but is, never the less, very funny. There's not much to say about this film. If you've seen the first one, you've seen this one. The gags are a little different, and more oriented towards the geographical location the crew finds themselves in, but otherwise it's pretty paint by numbers.

Roger Ebert's review/meditation on Malick's "Tree of Life"

A Prayer Beneath The Tree Of Life

By

Roger Ebert

Terrence Malick's new film is a form of prayer. It created within me a spiritual awareness, and made me more alert to the awe of existence. I believe it stands free from conventional theologies, although at its end it has images that will evoke them for some people. It functions to pull us back from the distractions of the moment, and focus us on mystery and gratitude.

Not long after its beginning we apparently see the singularity of the Big Bang, when the universe came into existence. It hurtles through space and time, until it comes gently to a halt in a small Texas town in the 1950s. Here we will gradually learn who some of the people were as the film first opened.

In Texas we meet the O'Brien family. Bad news comes in the form of a telegram, as it always did in those days. Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) reads it in her home, and gives vent to grief. Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) gets the news at work. We gather a child has died. It is after that when we see the universe coming into being, and Hubble photographs of the far reaches.

This had an uncanny effect on me, because Malick sees the time spans of the universe and a human life a lot like I always have. As a child I lay awake obsessed with the idea of infinity and the idea of God, who we were told had no beginning and no end. How could that be? And if you traveled and traveled and traveled through the stars, would you ever get to the last one? Wouldn't there always be one more?

In my mind there has always been this conceptual time travel, in which the universe has been in existence for untold aeons, and then a speck appeared that was Earth, and on that speck evolved life, and among those specks of life were you and me. In the span of the universe, we inhabit an unimaginably small space and time, and yet we think we are so important. It is restful sometimes to pull back and change the scale, to be grateful that we have minds that can begin to understand who we are, and where are in the vastness.

Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life's experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer "to" anyone or anything, but prayer "about" everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.

We all occupy our own box of space and time. We have our memories and no one else's. We live one life, accumulating it in our minds as we go along. Terrence Malick was born in Waco, Texas, and has filmed much of "Tree of Life" in small Texas towns; the house of the O'Brien family is in Smithville. I felt like I knew this house and this town. Malick and I were born within a year of one another, and grew up in small towns in the midlands. Someone else, without my memories to be stirred, might be less affected by its scenes of the O'Briens raising their three boys.

I know unpaved alleys with grass growing down the center,. I know big lawns with a swing hanging from a tree. I know windows that stand open all day in the summer. I know houses that are never locked. I know front porches, and font porch swings, and aluminum drinking glasses covered with beads of sweat from the ice tea and lemonade inside.I know picnic tables. I know the cars of the early 1950s, and the kitchens, and the limitless energy of kids running around the neighborhood.

And I know the imperfect family life Malick evokes. I know how even good parents sometimes lose their tempers. How children resent what seems to be the unforgivable cruelty of one parent, and the refuge seemingly offered by the other. I know what it is to see your parents having a argument, while you stand invisible on the lawn at dusk and half-hear the words drifting through the open windows. I know the feeling of dread, because when your parents fight, the foundation of your world shakes. I had no siblings, but I know how play can get out of hand and turn into hurt, and how hatred can flare up between two kids, and as quickly evaporate. I know above all how time moves slowly in a time before TV and computers and video games, a time when what you did was go outside every morning and play and dare each other, and mess around with firecrackers or throw bricks at the windows of an empty building, and run away giggling with guilt.

Those days and years create the fundament. Then time shifts and passes more quickly, and in some sense will never seem as real again. In the movie, we rejoin one of the O'Brien boys (now played by Sean Penn) when he grows to about the age his father was. We see him in a wilderness of skyscrapers, looking out high windows at a world of glass and steel. Here are not the scenes of the lawn through the dining room windows. These windows never open. He will never again run outside and play.

What Malick does in "Tree of Life" is create the span of lives. Of birth, childhood, the flush of triumph, the anger of belittlement, the poison of resentment, the warmth of forgiving. And he shows that he feels what I feel, that it was all most real when we were first setting out, and that it will never be real in that way again. In the face of Hunter McCracken, who plays Jack as a boy, we see the face of Sean Penn, who plays him as a man. We see fierceness and pain. We see that he hates his father and loves him. When his father has a talk with him and says, "I was a little hard on you sometimes," he says, "It's your house. You can do what you want to." And we realize how those are not words of anger but actually words of forgiveness. Someday he will be the father. It will not be so easy.

DVD - Tales From The Gimli Hospital

Tales From The Gimli Hospital is aueteur Guy Maddin's feature debut. Made in 1989, Maddin spent years watching films with his friends, and, after having made some shorts, decided to throw his hat in the feature ring. Like almost all of his films (excluding Dracula:Pages From A Virgin's Diary), there are certain autobiographical elements to the piece, and it is heavily influenced, visually, by the silent cinema. This is before his jump into faster montage style cutting, a la early Russian cinema, and is smoother and a lot less obtuse than some of his more recent work.

The story focus's on Einar The Lonely, played by frequent Maddin collaborator Kyle McCullough, who, after developing a plague like sickness, ends up in the Gimli Hospital, waiting to die. He meets Gunnar (Michael Gottli), who shares the bunk next to him, and regales the beautiful nurses with all kinds of stories. When Einar attempts to do the same, to gain the interests of the nurses, he is constantly rebuffed. As Einar gets to know Gunnar more and more, though, he realizes he has a dark and terrible connection to him.

Gimli is a great first feature from someone who learned everything he knows about story and filmmaking method from simply watching films. This was in the late 80's, so there probably weren't a whole lot of filmmaking books available, and they probably weren't easy to find in Winnipeg, Canada. Maddin keeps the story moving and is, obviously, developing his visual style, even from this extremely early point in his career. Gimli may not be the best way to start watching Maddin films, but it is definitely one of his better pieces.

Suckerpunch

I've thought for a while about how to review Suckerpunch, and now that the film is almost out of theaters, doing so seems like a bit of a waste of time. So, for future reference, I will simply say - This was the most nonsensical, ridiculous, mind numbing, draining film I have ever seen. I spent most of it wondering why ANY of it was happening, and, to be perfectly honest, the only thing that kept me awake was the sheer loudness of it.

An online reviewer, Sean Rhodes, encapsulated my feelings about Suckerpunch perfectly - It is a 14 year old boys wet dream. I only wish I had written that review first.

Time Marches On

Time is something that none of us can really seem to master during our lifetime. When we're kids, everything seems to take forever. The eight hours you're at school never seem to end. Playing with your friends seems short, but then you have dinner, homework, and that weird space of time between that and being forced into bed by your parents seems like forever. As things move on, though, more responsibility is put on your plate and time seems to go faster and faster. By the time you're in your twenties, you're so busy that years have gone by and you can barely remember what happened.

I was looking for an old blog post when I came across some of the pieces I wrote back in 2008 about submitting The Definers for a Texas Film Production Fund grant. One of the posts was about sending the script to Greta Gerwig to review and see if she would be interested in signing on to play one of the leads. This was post Hannah Takes The Stairs and pre Greenberg. I honestly thought I had a decent chance. She wasn't a professional actress at that point, just doing stuff with friends, and she seemed to be interested in taking risks. I received a note from her a few weeks later expressing that she was just too busy to work on it (she was working on Swanberg's Nights and Weekends and had just gotten off of Ti West's House of the Devil, along with being in the early stages of being courted by a "Hollywood film", which I'm assuming was Greenberg).

I do wonder what things would have been like had she said yes, and had I received the TFPF grant. Obviously, The Definers wouldn't just be something in the back of my mind, a script that's gathering dust while I try and figure out how to make it. Who knows, I could get really lucky and find someone to throw some funds at it, and actually hire Greta legitimately, but... I'm not going to hold my breath...

The Limousine's "Internet Killed The Video Star"

Directed by David Dutton

Julien Mokrani & Samuel Bodin's "Batman: Ashes To Ashes"

This video contains graphic violence and some sex.