Dedication (2007)–***
DVD Review

I’ve often described movies as bipolar, but never in such a positive manner as I would describe Dedication. Seriously unhinged and better for it, this debut film by director Justin Theroux stirs together the best parts of Woody Allen circa Annie Hall to create a modern love-story for a generation of people who are trying too hard to be jaded.

Dedication opens in an adult film theater where two children’s book authors, Rudy (Tom Wilkinson) and Henry (Billy Crudup), are searching for inspiration. It doesn’t take long for Rudy to come up with the idea of a beaver, and the long-time collaborators are off to the races. The book is a huge success - a monster hit, in fact – but that doesn’t improve Henry’s bleak outlook on life. Rudy does all that he can to encourage his young partner to enjoy living and find a girl, a nice girl.

Rudy’s earthly support comes to an end when the aging illustrator discovers that he has terminal brain cancer. With only the memory of Rudy (and a rather antagonistic one at that) to guide him, Henry is more lost than ever. His compulsive behavior gets worse. His anxiety is at an all time high. And, worse, he has another beaver book due to his publisher. The publisher hires Lucy (Mandy Moore) to work with him as his new illustrator, and she might just be the one to bring him out of his overpowering funk.

Fortunately for the audience, we benefit from Henry’s deep depression. Writer David Bromberg delivers a quotable script with devilish, wounding one-liners from the dreary protagonist. With Henry’s words coming out of Crudup’s mouth, we get a character who is more like Jack Nicholson’s Melvin in As Good As It Gets than the expected Zach Braff in Garden State.

Yet, as is expected in even the darkest romantic comedy, Henry perseveres to make a transformation when he develops feelings for Lucy. Lucy, played by Moore with a natural charm and down-to-earth attitude, isn’t necessarily compatible with Henry. She’s not even a complementary partner, but she’s the nice girl Rudy wanted Henry to be with. More for Rudy than himself, Henry woos her in his own awkward way.

“We communicate nowadays through damage,” Rudy tells Henry early on in the film. The impact of this line on Henry, though not immediately apparent, is profound. It carries the film. We don’t know much about Henry’s past other than the occasional allusion to issues with his parents. There are also some manic moments, where Henry’s negativity bursts out in a fountain of humorous inanities, but Henry’s struggle to do right by Rudy mellows the film at just the right moments. Rudy is Henry’s lithium, and we could all learn to be a little more balanced if we just listened to Rudy.

Dedication, directed by Justin Theroux, starring Billy Crudup, Mandy Moore and Tom Wilkinson, is available on DVD Tuesday, Feb. 12.

Bernard and Doris (2008)–**
TV Review

While watching Bernard and Doris I waited for the other shoe to drop. Hell, I was even waiting for a glass to be thrown. I was waiting for any hint of drama, but there was no drama to be had. Thus is the problem with Bob Balaban’s telefilm about the relationship between billionaire philanthropist Doris Duke and her butler and caregiver Bernard Lafferty; it is a bore.

Duke (played by Susan Sarandon) isn’t a diva here. She drinks a little too much occasionally. She likes things her way, and she doesn’t like waste. We first meet Duke when she fires her butler for informing her that he is going to throw out food she refused. He didn’t pay for that food, she reminds him and then gives him the boot.

Enter Lafferty (Ralph Fiennes), a mysterious, unassuming fellow who just happened to work for Elizabeth Taylor and Peggy Lee. Without asking or without being offered the job, Lafferty begins to serve Duke, who quickly takes him on once she’s sober enough to make the decision. Lafferty, who is gay, isn’t susceptible to Duke’s usual fuck and fire antics. Instead a friendship develops that, though dubious in the eyes of most of her handlers, both she and Bernard understand.

The film flirts with the idea that Lafferty is scheming to cash in on Duke’s inevitable death (which he does). It nearly goes so far as to make Duke out to be a hardcore lush and a insatiable cougar. It sniffs around the idea that Duke had a wild outburst now and then, even if she is a solid, considerate figure. Then it bludgeons us with Lafferty’s alcoholism, which isn’t that interesting.

There’s no doubt that Duke is an incredibly intriguing figure, but the film plays out like a badly staged theatrical production without any theatrics. The single location (Duke’s estate) is cramped and claustrophobic, and we merely hear voice-over references to Duke’s exotic exploits.

There’s a moment where memos to the staff from Lafferty, who is out globe-trotting with Duke in southeast Asia, are narrated to the audience. Instead of getting to see the adventuring, we watch the staff at the estate put dust sheets over her antique furniture. There’s a sense that the relationship really blossomed during those months away, but we don’t get to see it. We remain disconnected, and even talented performers like Fiennes and Sarandon can’t draw us in.

Bernard and Doris airs Saturday, Feb. 9 at 8 p.m. on HBO.

Post-Juno, I decided to catch up on Ellen Page’s acting. Tonight I finally watched Hard Candy, the I Spit on Your Grave for the To Catch a Predator generation.

The film follows a girl named Haley (Ellen Page) who decides to play a little too rough with a 30-something photographer (Patrick Wilson) she meets online. This Lolita has a serious vendetta.

Word of warning: anyone who says they like this movie shouldn’t be left alone in a room with your young daughter. It’s a sick, masturbatory fantasy for anyone who ever wanted to be tied up by a 14-year-old girl. Much like a Saw or Hostel subjects us to grotesque violence, Hard Candy forces us to sit through the torture of a man who (spoiler alert) probably should have his balls cut off. If I cared one way or another for the characters, I wouldn’t be as repulsed, but this film is entirely devoid of anything. Even Saw made an attempt at having a moral.

Worse, it looks like it was shot by the type of high-minded, but tasteless graphic designer we see lampooned in sitcoms. In the immortal words of Roger Ebert, I hated hated hated this movie.

Josh Brolin, who upped his badass credentials with his recent starring role in No Country for Old Men, might be the hunter and not the hunted in a blockbuster franchise film - Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. The Three-Two-One snagged an exclusive interview with the film’s director McG who mentioned a few big names when asked about his “dream Terminator”:

And there’s guys out there like Russell Crowe and Eric Bana, bring a good physicality, they do what they do, but I don’t know if they’re exactly right at the end of the day. (Smiles) Josh Brolin is a very exciting actor - we’ll see.

There’s a nice size pull quote alerting readers to that last sentence, so it’s got to be news, right? Check out the full interview here.

But on a side note, I’ve been a little behind on the blockbuster news. When the hell did McG get this gig and who should be fired for thinking that was a good idea? Just wondering.

Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins starring Christian Bale (as John Connor) opens in June 2009.

A seemingly ill-conceived festival re-branding campaign in season two of the three-season behind-the-scenes theater series Slings & Arrows uses lines from bad reviews to connect with a new audience. One such review reads “…theater has never made television looks so good.” Well, in the case of this Canadian TV import, I can honestly say television has never made theater look so good.

I first discovered Slings & Arrows during the non-stop coverage of The Sopranos finale. TV critics on NPR were debating, prematurely, whether the HBO mob saga was the best show in the history of television… ever. One critic chimed in on his love of the show Slings & Arrows, calling it the best show he had ever watched.

As a viewer who has taken in the series Slings & Arrows twice in its entirety, I’d have to say the critic wasn’t far off. The show about the fictional New Burbage Theatre Festival (based loosely on Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival) is the best combination of Aaron Sorkin and Alan Ball, two people who have made what are arguably the best modern TV dramas, The West Wing and Six Feet Under, respectively.

With Slings & Arrows, we get Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes look at theatrical productions of Shakespeare’s classics featuring an idealized version of a festival’s artistic director in Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross). Tennant is an eccentric artist who believes in the power of the theater. He takes over for former friend/mentor/enemy Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette), who - and here’s where the dark comedy of one Alan Ball comes in - dies after a ham truck runs him over.

At the time of his death, Welles was, as the local theater critic puts it, going through the motions. The shows were stale, but profitable, something the bean-counting festival director Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) didn’t mind one bit. Upon Welles’s death, Smith-Jones, at the urging of an American business executive with ties to the festival’s major corporate sponsor, Holly Day (Jennifer Irwin), begins to develop major Disney World-type improvements to the festival. That is until the board appoints artiste Tennant as interim artistic director.

The Diana Christensen-esque Day competes with Tennant for the direction of the festival. Is great theater enough to fill the seats? Does the festival need to be more business-minded? That’s a major struggle in the above described first season, as well as the macro conflict of the show’s three-season run.

The more character-driven portion of the narrative follows Tennant’s attempt to work with his former lover and festival star Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns). Tennant once went mad in the middle of a performance of Hamlet because of Ellen’s liaison with none other than the gay Welles. Everyone questions Tennant’s sanity, but no one more than himself because he has regular conversations with Welles’s ghost.

The ghost of Welles, a witch-like but prescient old donor, a dying old actor among many other intentional idiosyncrasies ensure that each season mirrors ever so slightly the Shakespearean production that Tennant is charged with putting on. The show, however, is at its best when dealing directly with the productions, allowing some of the finest working theater actors in Canada to take on classical roles with often towering intensity. Stars well known to American audiences like Rachel McAdams and Sarah Polley give performances you hardly expect if you’ve only seen them in their commercial film work.

There are many great performances in the show, but I love one particular performance in season two. Prior to a preview for the show Macbeth, the lead Henry Breedlove (Geraint Wyn Davies), an arrogant, complacent stage legend, is fired. He and Tennant don’t see eye to eye (and Welles’s ghost is siding with Breedlove!). The show goes on with Breedlove’s unprepared understudy Jerry (Oliver Dennis) in the role of Macbeth. In this great, almost episodic program Jerry has his chance to rise up and create for a few brief moments an effective, if unusual Macbeth. It’s an exceptional moment for Jerry, a bit part if there ever was one, but it also shows that the show is so solid that it can go on slight tangents without losing sight of the bigger picture. The episode that follows is near perfection.

Much of the series is at the level of that episode that follows Jerry’s turn. It’s a show that runs hard and runs fast, but fades out quickly. It’s a sprinter of a series, with only 18 episodes in total, short of even a single season run for most broadcast television shows. The greatest delight is watching Slings & Arrows burn the candle at both ends. While it’s burning, it gives such a lovely light. I can’t imagine the show ever holding up a longer run. Slings & Arrows, after all, is a show about theater, and the playwrights and actors who created it aren’t writing a love letter. They’ve written a Dear John letter to the theater that has risen. It’s evident in the constant lampooning of the corporatization of the medium, the ludicrous marketing campaigns, and a musical takeover of the festival. In the end, Slings & Arrows could be classified as a problem teleplay, if only because for every bit of comedy the show chronicles the grand tragedies of modern theater.

Don’t miss these DVD features:

• Extended performance scenes
• Lyrics for the each season’s opening song
• A bonus disc with some very raw behind-the-scenes documentaries

Slings & Arrows: The Complete Series DVD set is available February 5, 2008.

Well, No Country for Old Men continues to steamroll the competition in the race for Oscar.  This weekend’s Producer’s Guild of America win means it has officially won top prize from every guild.  Even The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King didn’t do that. (The Peter Jackson fantasy epic lost the WGA Adapted Screenplay prize to American Splendor).

While No Country for Old Men deserves every award it gets, the season is quickly becoming very boring.  Is anyone even hearing a hint of dissension in the Oscar race?  Well, I recently wrote an article for BlogCritics.org on how Oscar night can be interesting again.  You can check it out here.  It’s a quiet acknowledgment that the Oscars aren’t supposed to award the best in film.  The Oscars are all about show business.  When Crash won Best Picture, it was shocking and even if the film wasn’t any good. I’d much rather experience a jaw-drop than a yawn.  So, Academy, I urge you to make my jaw hit the floor.

Unless that means giving the Oscar to a disaster like Atonement.