Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)–***1/2
DVD Review

If there is anyone out there from Warner Bros. reading this, I have a request: please, please, please release Justice League: The New Frontier in theaters. I don’t want to live in a world where an animated film the caliber of this latest DC Universe release is simply called a direct-to-video movie.

A period animated film set in what was a dead zone for superheroes during the waning days of The Golden Age, Justice League: The New Frontier takes comic book fans on a dream journey into territory even the live-action theatrical releases have rarely attempted to take us. Steeped in the tradition of other recent DC Universe animations - narratives that steer away from the solid, mainstream appeal of most superhero films - this Bruce Timm production moves at a Flash-like pace without forgetting the characters or, more importantly, its inspiration.

At the end of the Korean war, fighter pilot Hal Jordan (David Boreanaz), a man who never fired at an enemy, is forced to eject from his plane and kill on the ground to survive. The day haunts Jordan so much that he is rejected in every attempt to fly into space in the early days of the space race. While he tries to find his place in post-war life, the McCarthy-fueled Red Scare is turning the American government against the superheroes who protect it. Superman (Kyle MacLachlan) can’t rectify his own commitment to American ideal with his super friends’ loss of status. The Flash (Neil Patrick Harris) is forced to give up chasing jewel thieves and go into hiding. Wonder Woman (Lucy Lawless) returns to Paradise Island.

Only Batman (Jeremy Sisto), struggling with is own identity as a feared vigilante after frightening a child, remains on a case and uncovers a threat beyond anything the Earth has ever imagined. With the help of a Martian (Miguel Ferrer), who cannot get over the injustices in human society, they sniff out the source of a cult that serves “The Center.” The threat is enough to band masked crusader, human, and even Martian together, while giving Jordan the opportunity to become the superhero he always could be.

At this point, I must confess, I never read the Darwyn Cooke comic series on which Justice League: The New Frontier was based. Still, the sight of the film, its vivid animation, and well-paced narrative is enough for film fans alone to take it seriously.

While not an epic in terms of runtime, the film carries itself as if it were a David Lean superhero film. We do tend to lose some context and character because the film is only 75-minutes long, but the film’s focus on unlikely characters like Hal Jordan and The Flash is enough for us to forgive the apparent lack of Batman and Superman. They do have their own franchises and animated series, after all.

In terms of its political context, I can’t imagine a better time for Justice League: The New Frontier to have been released as a film. Hearing JFK’s acceptance speech from the 1960 Democratic Convention over the animated montages of our Justice Leaguers is inspiring enough, but in a time when we need a New Frontier president and a community of responsible citizens willing to come together for the common good, Justice League: The New Frontier proves to be as timely as it is entertaining.

DC and Warner, you may have created a monster here. It’s going to take one hell of a live-action Justice League movie to beat what was accomplished in The New Frontier. Sure, there’s room for improvement, but the boldness of Justice League: The New Frontier lies in what it can do as a film that doesn’t rely solely on the conventions of the contemporary superhero film genre.

Justice League: The New Frontier is available on DVD today. 

Jon Stewart should host the Oscars every year - and know you can’t beat an 11-year-old at Wii tennis.

Even if you are French, as long as you are a hot young actress who “deglams” you’ll always beat out the competition. Congrats Marion Cotillard.

I want a recount on the editing award. Would have loved to have seen the Coens win 4 Oscars in one night.

If Roger Deakins can’t win an Oscar for The Assassination of Jesse James, I can’t imagine what he does have to do to win one.

The gods must be crazy because they gave us Diablo Cody. Her acceptance speech was one of the most heartfelt I’ve ever seen. Definitely worth checking out on YouTube.

Here are the winners:
Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
Best Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, Juno
Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille
Best Doc Feature: Taxi to the Dark Side
Best Doc Short: Freeheld
Best Score: Atonement
Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood
Best Song: Falling Slowly, Once
Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters
Best Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Animated Short: Peter and the Wolf
Live Action short: Le Mozart des Pickpockets
Art Direction: Sweeney Todd
Visual Effects: The Golden Compass
Best Makeup: La Vie Rose
Best Costume Design: Elizabeth, The Golden Age

I only got 10/21, which is pretty low, but for every one I got wrong, I wasn’t too unhappy with the winner. When did the Academy get taste? Oh yeah. They did give The Bourne Ultimatum three awards. Nevermind.

I’m excited about The Dark Knight. I’m eager to watch Iron Man. But this trailer for The X-Files 2 has just put it at the top of my must see summer movie list. I think this trailer confirms exactly what the monster is going to be in this new Mulder and Scully adventure (notice the wagging tail and the clawed faces). If you aren’t a fan of The X-Files, this trailer is cut for you too. The fans in the background are obviously having a freaking meltdown, but it’s just thrilling enough to get anyone, ANYONE in the theater.

Universal, take note. Your Wolf Man movie has some major competition.  Plus, who wouldn’t rather see Billy Connelly as a werewolf hunter instead of Hugo Weaving?  Pure gold.

I’m a bit out of touch with the filmmaking community in my hometown of Erie, Pa. It’s amazing what moving just 100 miles will do. Anyway, time for a little catch up.

First up is John C. Lyons, who just completed his first feature film titled schism. You can catch up on the production with my In the Lyons Den series. Well, Mr. Lyons is now selling tickets to the Erie premiere of the film. schism will debut at Edinboro University April 17 & 18.

Also worth noting is the production Virgin Pockets by Paul Gorman and the gang at GMD films. They sent me a screener a few months back, which I’ve still yet to sit down with. The film got some good coverage in Billiards Digest (PDF) and thanks to the wonders of the Internet you can watch it through GMD’s VOD service. You can also go the old fashioned route and purchase the DVD.

Here’s the Virgin Pockets trailer, too.

Keep it up Erie!

Day Zero (2007)–**1/2
DVD Review

Day Zero is more of a conversation starter than a watchable film. The drama, set in a near future where the draft is reinstated due to an escalated confrontation in the Middle East, languishes in the realm of politics for too long. In the early scenes, the tone is set for a cable news-level debate, without much concern for the story. Surprisingly enough, when Day Zero sheds its political skin we can dig in just enough to start caring about what the film and the characters are trying to tell us.

What does your patriotism look like when you find out you have 30 days left of civilian life before going to war? For the three friends, all draftees, the contrast is stark. George (Chris Klein) just made partner at his law firm. He opposes the war, but as his friend Dixon (Jon Bernthal) says, George has benefited from America’s freedoms. Dixon is eager to go to war, reminding the people around him about 9/11 and a fictional terror attack in Los Angeles. Then there’s Aaron (Elijah Wood), an anxious writer who is pushed close to the edge upon the receipt of draft notice.

Though all three get more or less equal screen time, it’s the character Dixon who goes through the fits and throws of the choppy production to uncover the film’s sincerity. He’s the one, early in the film, who often sounds like a talking head on the right, but has the most manifestly potent transition in the weeks before he ships off.

Dixon, you see, falls in love. He may not be the best written character of the bunch, that title will go to Aaron, who could only have looked good on paper. But Bernthal’s performance as Dixon is as rough and raw as should be expected in a film about the draft’s return.

Directly opposite Dixon is George, a wishy-washy lawyer who in the hands of Klein is as unbelievable as he is unlikeable. Klein’s performance as an urban professional who desperately wants to dodge the draft doesn’t get under our skins like Bernthal’s. He has all the makings of an effective character, yet Klein’s lack of nuance and boyish looks make it impossible for him to compete against the other characters for our attention. That includes Ginnifer Goodwin, who has a marvelous turn as George’s wife.

In spite of some mediocre acting and a troubled screenplay, the topical film still resonates on premise alone. That’s not to say the notion of a renewed draft is solely important. Instead, we are confronted with a discussion of patriotism that is worth having on a larger scale. Day Zero isn’t strong enough to get the average Joe thinking about what it means to be a patriot, but it’s certainly a starting place for anyone who manages to catch what has so far been a little seen film.

Day Zero, starring Chris Klein, Elijah Wood, Jon Bernthal and Ginnifer Goodwin, directed by Bryan Gunnar Cole, is available on DVD Tuesday, Feb. 26.

Be Kind Rewind (2007)–***
Quickie Review

A freak accident at a power plant supercharges some guy who hangs out at a Jersey VHS-rental store. The magnetic field he produces erases the tapes, forcing him and the store’s clerk to improvise remakes of all the movies. A messy, but ultimately funny comedy, this Michel Gondry picture tickles your funny bone as often as it grates on your nerves. (Though at this point I should point out that the “funny bone” is a nerve, Mr. Literal.) The extracurricular activities have more potential for entertainment (see www.BeKindRewind-TheMovie.com or search “sweded” on YouTube), so don’t be surprised if the film becomes as big a pop culture force as Napoleon Dynamite. For those who reminisce fondly on the days of VHS, it’s a must see. Starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow.

Be Kind Rewind SWEDED!

Die Hard SWEDED!

I’ve officially lost count of just how many awards No Country for Old Men has won this Oscar season. It’s taken home the DGA, PGA, SAG and WGA awards, something only one other film has done since the SAGs started giving out the Motion Picture Cast prize. That film was American Beauty. We know how that Oscar season ended.

More shocking is No Country for Old Men’s near swept of the less publicized guild awards like the Cinema Audio Society award and the Art Directors Guild award. Even American Beauty can’t make that claim. It’s time to stop talking about if No Country for Old Men is going to win at the Oscars. We may want to start asking if it’s going to lose anything.

With that in mind, I’m giving No Country for Old Men a solid sweep at the Oscars. Here are the finals predictions for next Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony.

Motion Picture - No Country for Old Men, Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen
Actor in a Leading Role - Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood
Actor in a Supporting Role - Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men
Actress in a Leading Role - Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose
Actress in a Supporting Role – Ruby Dee in American Gangster
Adapted Screenplay - No Country for Old Men, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
Original Screenplay - Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy (Sorry, Juno fans.)
Animated Feature Film - Ratatouille, Brad Bird
Art Direction - There Will Be Blood, Jack Fisk (art director) and Jim Erickson (set decorator)
Cinematography - No Country for Old Men, Roger Deakins
Costume Design - Sweeney Todd, Colleen Atwood
Directing - No Country for Old Men, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Documentary Feature - No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
Film Editing - No Country for Old Men, Roderick Jaynes
Foreign Language Film - The Counterfeiters
Makeup - La Vie En Rose, Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald
Music, Score - Atonement, Dario Marianelli
Music, Song - Once, “Falling Slowly”, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Sound Editing - No Country for Old Men, Skip Lievsay
Sound Mixing - No Country for Old Men, Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland
Visual Effects - Transformers, Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl, and John Frazier
Short Film Animated - I Met the Walrus, Josh Raskin
Short Film Live Action - The Tonto Woman, Daniel Barber and Matthew Brown
Documentary Short - Sari’s Mother, James Longley

The 80th Annual Academy Awards air Sunday at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.

Margot at the Wedding-*1/2
DVD Review

Noah Baumbach’s characters have always been slightly maladjusted, but they never felt unreal. Margot at the Wedding changes that. In his latest film, he transplants characters from a Todd Solondz film into a movie that is too dramatic, tonally, when compared to its characters.

One of those characters is Margot (Nicole Kidman), a writer from Manhattan, who takes her son Claude (Zane Pais) to her estranged sister’s wedding. The depressed, dejected scribe hasn’t told her son that she’s trying to leave his father for a writer who lives near her sister, which is why dad didn’t come to the family event.

Margot hasn’t talked to her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in years. She’s coming to the wedding more to escape her husband than to be with her sister. When Margot meets Pauline’s slacker husband Malcolm (Jack Black), Margot’s overly critical nature is directed at a perfect target.

Calling Margot unlikeable is a gross understatement. Calling her anything more than a cliché would in turn be an overstatement. While we have plenty of reasons to pity her – self-hatred, an abusive father, low self-esteem – we can’t help but exclaim, “What are you thinking?!” when she asks her son if he’s been talking about her behind her back.

Part of the problem is Kidman, who is never really in tune with just how ludicrous her character’s actions are. Kidman is too subtle and too comedically inept for the role. When she is thrown into a scene with Black, particularly the one where they are discussing jobs, the banter is an uneven back-and-fourth of pseudo-comedy from a comedian and exhaustingly tense drama from a dramatic actress.

Maybe the most upsetting part of the film is watching Claude interact with his mother while he experiences his own sexual awakening. Claude is treated as a secondary character, but his sensitivity and disturbing interaction with a unbalanced mother make his character the only one that is worth our concern.

Consider watching a dramatic version of Running with Scissors where Annette Bening’s unstable mother character is the lead and her son is supporting. That’s what it’s like watching Margot at the Wedding. It lacks honesty. It lacks humor. It lacks entertainment value and artistic integrity. It lacks most anything that should make a film worth watching. In fact, if you think your family is screwed up, you may still have a better time with them than you would have watching Margot at the Wedding.

DVD Features:
“A Conversation With Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh”

Margot at the Wedding, written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Nicole Kidman, Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh, is available on DVD Tuesday, February 19, 2008.

Okay, Audrey. I forgive you for The Da Vinci Code. We all need a paycheck.

Maybe Priceless will make up for it. Billed as a “re-imagining” of the classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the French-language film is set to open in theaters on March 28. Here’s a glimpse of the poster that will start to pop up at your local movie house.

Click for a larger image

It’s not iconic, not compared to the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster featuring that other Audrey.

Still, I’m willing to give Ms. Tautou the benefit of the doubt. She earned it with Dirty Pretty Things and Amelie.

Most fun in the world: watching a Beatles movie. No, I’m not referring to Across the Universe. I’m talking about the zany Richard Lester film Help!. Sure the comedic timing isn’t perfect and it’s absolutely, off-the-wall silly, but Help! can’t help but indulge the Fab Four’s tendency toward spirited farce.

I wasn’t alive when the Beatles were around, but the high-profile DVD releases (also for A Hard Day’s Night) certainly indicate a phenomenon the hasn’t died yet. The Beatles and Elvis and good knows who else I’m missing have impressive filmographies when compared to the pop stars of our day. What do we get? From Justin to Kelly.

There are also the direct-to-DVD movies starring Justin Timberlake and Jessica Simpson, but one has to wonder what has changed, culturally-speaking, to result in such blunders from our current chart toppers to result in misfires across the board. Remember the much-hyped Outkast musical. Neither do I.

Of course, looking back, even a movie like Help! had it’s detractors. Here’s how the New York Times film critic at the time described the film: The boys themselves are exuberant and uninhibited in their own genial way. They just become awfully redundant and—dare I say it?—dull. Too true, especially when compared to the Beatles’ iconic A Hard Day’s Night.

Yet, endearing cinematic turns for The Beatles or Elvis, music artists who worked with directors like Lester or Richard Thorpe come once in a blue moon these days. The last artist to make the successful jump from music icon to on-screen success story was Eminem in 8 Mile, directed by Curtis Hanson. Love him or hate him, Eminem’s standing in popular culture cannot be denied, if only because he succeeded where so many other – 50 Cent, Vanilla Ice, Britney Spears - have failed.

Is Hanna Montana the closest thing we can get to a major superstar leap to the big screen? Maybe. The still mass marketable demographic that is the tween audience certainly makes it easier for an artist, real or fake, to realize his or her cinematic potential. Stars like Andre Benjamin, Ludacris, Chris Brown and Alicia Keyes are still going to show up in movies now and then, but I’m eagerly awaiting the next music artist to dominate our culture and deliver a great movie experience. When you watch a movie like Help!, how could you not?

Diamond

Jailhouse Rock (Elvis)
A Hard Day’s Night (The Beatles)

Platinum

8 Mile (Eninem)
Help! (The Beatles)

Gold

Purple Rain (Prince)
The Rose (Bette Midler)

Coaster
Crossroads (Britney Spears)
Cool as Ice (Vanilla Ice)
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (50 Cent)