Pop Culture Round Up: January 23 - 29

U.K. supermarket chain to offer movies with milk

Banksy's first film unspools at Sundance

Smoking in ‘Avatar’ and the Limits of Boundaries on Ratings

Fox Wins Studio War For Robert Rodriguez’ ‘Machete’; Now His New Filmmaking Home

Tim Burton président à Cannes

It’s the 1980s all over again at the cinema

Consumer advocates declare war on copyright treaty

Design - When More Is Decidedly Less

District of Columbia's Bag Tax Creates Unique Behaviors

What were Macbeth and his wife Gruoch really like?

Bacon Bourbon Caramel Corn

School briefly pulls dictionary over 'oral sex' entry

Miramax Dies: Rest in Peace

Catcher in the Rye was never adapted, but its influence is everywhere

The Conchords Meet The Muppets?

Miracle dog survives icy trip on the Baltic

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Despite my feelings about The Lovely Bones' failings, I wish more adaptations were as freewheeling as this one. Sherlock Holmes, as you know him, probably isn't close to what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote anyway. Deerstalker and calabash pipe? Never. Boxing? Why yes, Watson did describe Holmes as an "expert" boxer.

It seems as though screenwriters Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg combed through Doyle's stories for the best quips and least used traits (beyond the obvious, of course) and tried to tackle the character from a fresh angle. Since they have Robert Downey Jr. in the role, it worked. I hope nothing ever happens to that wildly expressive face. How does he get emotions to travel as currents under the surface of his skin? He can hold an expression for a ghost of a second, and you feel it yet never feel the work. It's extraordinary.

But I think my feelings about Downey are (too?) well documented at this point (no, seriously. He makes a basket case whose neuroses are only held at bay by mysteries and cocaine look like fun), so let's move on to Jude Law, as this movie made me like him again. This is the first role I've seen him in since . . . forever? that didn't rely on or even make reference to his looks as a part of his character. Instead they slapped a mustache on there and let him go to town, and it's lovely town to visit. His Watson is lithe, elegant, and precise but with a rough and dangerous edge. Watching the two of them together -- arguing over a vest, walking through evidence, or even sitting at home with their shirt sleeves rolled up -- casts such warmth that it's hard not to want to curl up in their scenes.

Despite their chemistry, the movie isn't all fun, games, and hotties. It's slow to get moving, a farting dog is used as a punchline, Mark Strong is underused, and Kelly Reilly has too much dark eye make up on (what? A lot of dark eye make up on light-haired ladies makes me think the character is evil because you see two black pits where the eyes should be, and Mary isn't evil). While the movie is more interested in building a franchise than telling the story at hand at certain points, the plot is decent, and director Guy Ritchie obviously put the emphasis on fun. It worked. Now if I can only find an opportunity to remark, "Now that we have a firm grasp of the obvious" or yell, "No girl wants to marry a doctor who can't tell if a man's dead or not!", that would be ideal. B+

Sidebar: Down with advertising campaign! Pretty much every scene you've sees of Rachel McAdams in the ads is not in the movie. She's great in the scenes she does get, but that's not the point.

Pop Culture Round Up: January 16 - 22

On Language - Movie Misquotations

Valery Gergiev slows the tempo

American Library Association presents kids lit awards

'Drag Me to Hell' for best picture?

Billy Baldwin Is Serena's Home-Wrecking Father on Gossip Girl

Marc Webb to direct 'Spider-Man'

Twilight graphic novel set for March

Bafta nominations pitch Avatar against An Education and The Hurt Locker

Why we love TV's anti-heroes

The Lovely Bones (2009)

My Book vs. Film came out today, but it's not one of my long, detailed ones (phew?). It's more in line with Time Traveler's Wife, under a 1000 words because I have so little to say. When the credits rolled, I remarked to one of my viewing companions that I felt like I saw half a movie.

I wonder how I would feel if I wasn't familiar with and attached to the source material. I read it years ago during a period of unemployment when I was devouring books. Best of all, all I knew about the book was that it was popular and well liked by a handful of my peers. I knew nothing about the plot, and, since I'm not much of a book jacket reader either, I was completely surprised and shocked by what followed. Moreover, there are bits that have stuck with me over the years: Lindsey borrows something from Susie's closet to wear to the memorial service, but it was something that Susie had borrowed from her best friend Clarissa, who opens her mouth to say something but decides against it. There are other, more germane to the plot elements of the book that I remember as well (including the metaphysical WTF that appears late in the story), but things like that -- the details that don't need to be included -- are what make books memorable and reading worthwhile.

I mentioned in the book vs. film Mark Wahlberg's hyper-earnest performance, which is a drag, but not Stanley Tucci's, which is so over the top that I briefly wondered if it were a joke. To be honest, there's not a lot of sense and coherence behind the casting of the adult characters. Rachel Weisz is underused (I really feel like she could sell me on why Abigail leaves, but the movie doesn't give her a voice), and Grandma Lynn is so reduced that Susan Sarandon (great though she is) comes off as misplaced.

Saoirse Ronan, on the other hand, is so expressive and available as an actress that it's impossible to imagine anyone else in a role once she inhabits it. She's funny and beautiful as Susie, and you just want to give her a hug long before anything happens to her. If the entire movie were Ronan, the quietly strong Rose McIver, the sensitive Carolyn Dando, and the impossibly adorable Reece Ritchie, it might have been something. The rare moments of emotional impact (Susie's attack, Lindsey's break-in) are so few and far between and the rest of the movie so fussed over, that it doesn't live up to the promise of its star. C

Pop Culture Round Up: January 9 - 15

“Oh, I’m chasing this guy? No, he’s chasing me.” 34 essential uses of voiceover in film
Knowing my opinion of voiceovers, this list contains a few of my favourites.

U.K. Unveils First-Ever Double Prince Portrait!
So cute!

Marilyn Manson has proposed to his actress girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood
WTF? What happened the last summer's rumour that she was banging the Viking?

Watching TV shortens life span, study finds
I'm effed.

Spider-Man 4 Unravels as Franchise Moves On Without Tobey Maguire, Sam Raimi
At first I was annoyed, but I've started to come up with some pretty cool reboot ideas.

UseMyAccent Helps Actors Talk Like an Egyptian

Mystery at the Philharmonic: Who Was That Clarinetist?

Jeff Bridges's 10 greatest performances
Everyone's going to pick The Dude, but what about Seabiscuit?

Depp gets life-sized statue in Serbia

Anxious or sexually competitive? Try God

James Cameron rejects claims Avatar epic borrows from Russians' sci-fi novels
But what about Pocahontas?

Daybreakers (2009)

Daybreakers should be exactly the kind of palate-cleansing fluffy actioner that comes out in January. For large swaths, it is. Unfortunately, it's also a metaphor about dwindling resources that never quite gets out of the gate.

A 2009 plague has turned the vast majority of Earth's human population into vampires, and, by 2019, the world is on the brink of devastating blood shortage (by extermination the human race). Chief Hematologist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) has been tasked with finding a suitable blood substitute, but he gets caught up with a group of rebel humans (led by Willem Dafoe and Claudia Karvan) first. Turns out they have something better on offer: a cure.

Yes, twin writer-director team Michael and Peter Spierig, the world needed another golden-eyed vampire named Edward who doesn't drink human blood and wants to be human again and (maybe) falls for a brown haired lady. Okay, he's not really like that Edward. I just found it momentarily distracting.

Though the vampires are actually kind of pathetic (aside from arresting the aging process and accelerated healing, they have no special abilities to speak of. At only ten years on, immortality's not even guaranteed) and the dialogue, particularly Dafoe's, is often ridiculous, it works out. The filmmakers hosted a contest on Worth1000 to come up with the design for a world were vampires ruled, resulting in a sleek, modern 1930s twist (not unlike personal Hawke fav Gattaca), and it's filled to the brim with cool ideas about how such a world would work: specially tinted windows and small cameras allow vampires to drive in daylight and see themselves without mirrors, the subwalk connects the city for easy pedestrian travel, blood is treated like cream for coffee.

But for all this, there's little actual thrill or action to suspend the viewer in this world, and many of the connections between characters aren't drawn well enough to keep the viewer's attention there either (though one fight between Edward and his brother Michael Dorman smarted). Still, it's awfully cool to think about. And did I mention that when the vampires are staked, they explode? C+

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

It's a rare movie that manages to have a completely understandable plot and still make next to no sense.

Here's what I get: a millennium ago, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) showed up at Doctor Parnassus's (Christopher Plummer) monastery, where the monks continually tell the eternal story because the universe would cease to exist if they didn't. Nick stops them from telling the story, and the universe continues to exist, but it doesn't sway the good doctor's faith. Nick makes Parnassus a bet: first one to 12 disciples wins. Parnassus gets immortality as a reward, which turns out to be a curse. 1000 years later, Parnassus falls in love with a young woman but can't woo her as a homeless old man. Nick strikes a new deal: Parnassus is young and more powerful than ever, and all he has to do give up any offspring at the age of 16. The woman and Parnassus are happy together for years until she's pregnant at 60 and dies in childbirth. Parnassus raises the girl, Valentina (Lily Cole), alone, and we join the story a few days before her 16th birthday, where she is part of Parnassus' traveling magic act, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, along with Anton (Andrew Garfield) and Percy (Verne Troyer). Nick shows up to make new bet: first one to five souls wins Valentina.

Pretty straightforward, right? I mean, magical and all that, but nothing you can't follow. But you may have read that whole thing and thought, "Wait, isn't this Heath Ledger's last movie? Didn't they hire three other dudes to also play him?" Yes, and I'm glad to tell you that with only a minor bit of re-writing by Gilliam and Charles McKeown, having Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell step in as Tony does make sense. Each time he enters the imaginarium (basically your imagination amplified so that you can walk into it), he does so with others, and thus must compete with their imaginations.

That part, surprisingly, is the part that makes sense. Everything else about Tony, particularly and mostly importantly to the story his motives, remains essentially unknowable. That's not a crack on Ledger's acting -- he plays Tony as unknowable and each of the other three actors tasked with taking up the part do manage to pick up elements of his performance and weave it into their own (though Law's, in particular, seems at first oddly hammy). But why Tony has to be such a mystery and why it must remain unsolved is as unclear as the character. Ledger's a slippery, charming con artist who seems equal parts self-serving and selfless with a rather unhealthy interest in a 16 year-old girl, and I had forgotten how fantastic his voice is. The whole thing -- light but rich -- makes his death feel unreal.

There are other details that don't entirely add up (why is Percy also an immortal?), but for everyone of those there are mitigating circumstances, like the delightful Garfield who absolutely shines as the put upon Anton or Cole, who's just the right amount of radiant to make everyone fall in love with her.

But I don't get it. The movie's in a class by itself: stunning to watch, utterly impossibly to comprehend. What's real? What's fake? What does it matter? Like the movie suggests, the story isn't critical. It's the telling.>B+

"They never have rat exhibits in the zoo. I could start a new trend!"

I normally find a quote that utilizes the month's theme, but it turns out that "liberation" quotes didn't go that well with my latest (Cult)ure article. It's a handy checklist to the trends behind the movies that defined the decade. It will also help explain why your favourite movies from 2000-2009 didn't make anyone's top of the decade list.

Also, I believe I forgot to tell you about the interview I did with writer-director David J. Garfield last month. Enjoy!

Pop Culture Round Up: January 4 - 8

It's not like I've been keep tabs over the holiday break.

The noughties in cinema

‘The Lexicographer’s Dilemma’ - Jack Lynch Explores English

Rule #1: 'If You Want To Be A Great Writer, Be A Man'

Baby-Sitters Club books to be revived

Christopher Lee to release 'symphonic metal' album

Villain dispute could delay Spider-Man 4

Vampires really are everywhere!

Alice Guy Blaché, Cinema Pioneer, at the Whitney Museum

In Praise of Infidelity

Heirs get settlement in dispute over Picassos

The Young Victoria (2009)

In a small way, Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria is the movie that Sophia Coppola thought she was making with Marie Antoinette. Both tell stories of young, independent-minded, and head-strong royals thrust to the throne when they were perhaps too young to rule. Of course, Kirsten Dunst's Antoinette was a naïve twit caught up in circumstances beyond her control, and Emily Blunt's Victoria is anything but. Nonetheless, both movies have a rock 'n' roll vibe to match their protagonist's youth and enthusiasm. With Coppola, it's literally the soundtrack, but Vallée somehow got it to pump through Blunt's veins.

Though it takes her uncle's (a delightfully loopy Jim Broadbent) death to break her free from her mother (Miranda Richardson) and her mother's comptroller's (Mark Strong) shackles, Blunt's Victoria is a passionate, sparkling, and willful queen, not at all what we've come to associate with the royal we. When Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) sets out to pull her under his spell, you almost worry for him.

Victoria, you see, has only one love, and it's the swooniest, most romantic love affair committed to celluloid in years. Victoria's cousin, Albert (Rupert Friend), is coached to win Victoria's heart at the behest of his uncle, King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann), but chafes at the notion. Shortly after meeting her, he stumbles in his charade and decides to try being himself instead. It works in no small part because Friend as Albert is one of the handsomest creatures you could ever lay eyes on. He's announced as His Serene Highness, and Friend took the cue for his performance from that title. Instead of a smouldering sex appeal meant to draw Victoria in like a magnet (surely what Melbourne had planned), Friend exudes intelligence, patience, and serenity, on the likes of which you could build a lifetime of love. Blunt and Friend glow when they are together.

Though screenwriter Julian Fellowes (who also gave us the glorious Gosford Park) takes some liberties with the history, he's also created one of the richest, most rewarding romances ever. The movie around them doesn't always shine the way they do, and its chess metaphor is a little too spelled out, but oh, well. The idea that Victoria had Albert's clothes laid out every day after his early death at the age of 42 used to strike me as daft, but now it's heartbreaking. A-

Invictus (2009)

Invictus is a rare movie that is wondrously more than the sum of its parts. You'd expect something directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon to be good, even great. Film starts rolling, and nothing spectacular happens. Every moment, every frame, every action feels obvious. Good for Freeman and Damon on the accents -- South African accents are notoriously tricky -- and that's about it, you start to think.

But much like Nelson Mandela's gamble that a symbolic victory could be just as valuable in healing his fractured nation as political policy, Eastwood's gamble on telling the story so straight it could slide into boring any second manages a rousing pay off.

Set in 1995, when Mandela apparently up and decided that winning the rugby World Cup would be great for South Africa even if their team was terrible, he called up Francois Pienaar and gave him just that job. And then they do. I really couldn't tell you how: they get a new coach who ensures that even if they're not the best team in the league they will surely be the fittest, but there's no indication that they develop a bunch of great new plays or become better at their positions. They just . . . try really hard? I don't know. I didn't even realize that they were playing the final match until after it was over.

Even so, it's nearly impossible not to be drawn in. It's not an underdog story so much as a story about people whose belief is so strong it can give the rest of us hope. Despite the rote filmmaking, that's enough to make the movie soar. B

Up in the Air (2009) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

I feel almost guilty about how much I dislike Up in the Air. I went into it initially thinking I might not like it, and perhaps that sent me down the wrong path. The performances are terrific, particularly Anna Kendrick, who was so funny in her one scene in New Moon, and now gets to chafe and struggle as a bright upstart confined by her work and her workplace. There's something about her you just want to love even when her character is maddening.

George Clooney and Vera Farminga are also lovely and positively glowing together. But this being co-writer and director Jason Reitman's third feature length film, I've noticed a pattern: Thank You for Smoking, Juno, and our current entry all have third act twists that don't line up with the movie that came before. There is one scene of foreshadowing, and poof! Massive character change! It's neither shocking nor realistic, so it ends up feeling empty. Change for change's sake, like someone in the editing room suddenly remembered that there should be a plot, and it should go somewhere.

There is the additional problem that -- and I know I'm going out on the limb here -- Clooney is miscast. He's not bad in the role in any way, so don't think that. He's great. It just that he's so convincingly satisfied with his life before his spiritual awakening, and his life is in no way made better after it that you are left with the feeling that maybe he was right all along. Maybe moving is living. Maybe this is a rebirth. Maybe . . . I don't know, exactly. The movie's ambiguous ending might just be the best part. B

It doesn't help that Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox might just be the perfect deployment of Clooney. Three movies out this fall, and the one where he's an animated character from a Roald Dahl novel might be his best work ever. Somehow without the olde tyme good looks he's extra-charming, as well as vain, generous, loyal, cunning, smart, and sneaky. There's even a gentle waft of self-mockery. The whole thing just feels like so much fun.

Of course, it helps that the movie around him is so wonderful. The setting and colour palette might be autumnal, but the movie feels like a burst of refreshing springtime air. Anderson's fussy compositions get new life when filmed to deliberately resemble Rankin-Bass holiday specials (think Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer).

All the old Anderson cronies are there -- Owen Wilson, Jason Schwarztman, Bill Murray -- as well as delightful new voices like Meryl Streep's subdued take on Mrs. Fox. For a movie that had to be carefully fussed over to be created at all, Anderson achieves a magical sense of joy and freedom in his proceedings. Subsequent viewings may prove Fox his best film yet, but for now we'll have to agree that it's simply fantastic. A-