Quick Review: Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

So while everyone else was rushing out to see "Guardians of the Galaxy," I took advantage of a bit of extra cash to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the second chapter of the reboot. It takes place ten years after the events of "Rise of the..." The virus that gives apes an intelligence boost has wiped out human civilization. The apes, led by Caesar (Andy Serkis), have built a community in the Muir Woods north of San Francisco. They eventually discover that a colony of humans, immune to the virus, remains in San Francisco and some of them are trying to access a hydroelectric dam that could restore power to the city. The story plays out under a cloud of distrust. The humans don't entirely trust the apes. The apes don't trust the humans. There's some dissent in the ranks of the human leaders (Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman), as well as among the apes. Oh, and there's a point to be made about guns, as the humans have a stash of weaponry. I enjoyed it all, but not overwhelmed. Maybe it was because there was only a cameo from James Franco? My grade: B.

Quick Review: This Is The End

And now back to our regularly scheduled movie review programming. (I hope.) I expected a lot from the trailer for This Is The End and, unlike a lot of movies recently, this one mostly lived up to my expectations. A comedy in which the Apocalypse takes place is one thing. When it focuses on how this event affects Hollywood celebrities, that's another story. And when those celebrities -- James Franco, Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride are the stars, with many other cameos, from Rihanna to Michael Cera to Channing Tatum -- are playing exaggerated versions of themselves, it goes to the next level. Lots of raunch, but also lots of laughs and some meta commentary about the celebs themselves, their importance (or lack thereof), how they're perceived by the public and media, etc., and a little stab at religious beliefs (after all, the Apocalypse is happening). Had me laughing almost from the start to the finish. My grade: A-minus.

Quick Reviews: Potter 7.2, Crazy Stupid Love, Rise/Planet of the Apes

Five movies over the last two weeks. I've let this go way too long and can't motivate myself to write separate posts for each of these, so I'm doing this in two posts.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2: Pretty much everything you'd expect from the final Potter movie, even if you didn't read the books. One of the hyped moments was the first kiss between Ron and Hermione, but what I really liked was their immediate reaction once the kiss was over. My grade: B-plus.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.: Why do we need, two commas and a, period in the title.? Very good, made me laugh, a little contrived, a plot twist near the end caught me completely off-guard (although some apparently guessed it in the trailer). Ryan Gosling: yum. My grade: B-plus.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: I've dubbed this a preseboot: a prequel/sequel/reboot of the franchise. Technically it's only a reboot but this is my word. I like that it gave a plausible explanation of how the "rise" actually starts, and how the story makes you root for the apes to win. James Franco's talent is kind of wasted, though. My grade: A-minus.

Quick Reviews: Scream 4, Your Highness

I don't like to combine movie posts into one, but it's been a little while since I've seen these and I need to get this out of the way, and with the Flyers game starting in an hour, I'm pressed for time. Maybe that's what I need to motivate me to write: deadlines.

Nah.

Anyhoo, one of these is already gone from theaters and the other won't be far behind.

"Scream 4" brings back original stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette and a bunch of new kids to be slaughtered by the latest Ghostface killer, who gets to killing when Campbell's Sidney Prescott returns to town on her book tour. The movie is most notable because the real-life martial issues of Cox and Arquette are eerily played out on screen -- their characters, now married, are having some issues of their own. While the film tries, after an 11-year gap, to reinvent itself for the digital era, it never really does. There's lots of talk of being "meta" but not enough that's actually meta-something. My grade: C-plus.

"Your Highness" had very few laughs. I never got invested in the plot, involving a medieval kingdom and the quest of two brothers (James Franco and Danny McBride) to save a fair maiden from an evil wizard, and...face it, the plot doesn't matter. This felt like an excuse to run around in costumes and make juvenile sex and drug jokes and curse almost constantly. Most of it fell flat, although I never was annoyed enough to think about walking out of the theater. Maybe that was because I enjoy staring at James Franco. My grade: C-minus.

Where The Oscar Show Went Wrong

It's simple: if you want to be young and hip, it takes more than just hiring young stars to host. I adore James Franco and Anne Hathaway, and I think they had decent chemistry at times, but they were given just awful material to work with, as were the Oscar presenters.

A lot of people on my Twitter feed seemed to think Franco was high. I think they were confusing him with his "Pineapple Express" character. And he spent plenty of time posting videos to Twitter, which I think would be a problem if one is both trying to use a smartphone and host an awards show at the same time. Maybe he was too distracted by Twitter. I just think it was the terrible jokes and banter from the writers. (If Bruce Vilanch had a hand in this, as he often has had in past Oscar shows, perhaps it's time to consider retirement.)

One of the few jokes that worked, and I don't know if it was part of the script or an ad lib, came after Hathaway's little song-and-dance number. Because, he said, "you got to wear a tuxedo," Franco came onstage in drag. He followed that with: "The weird thing is I just got a text message from Charlie Sheen."

The whole reason for Oscar's being is for Hollywood to, metaphorically speaking, fellate itself. They're all there to congratulate each other and kiss each other's ass. There's no room for out there, edgy humor unless they're directing it at themselves (or close friends/coworkers, such as Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law). That's why the Sheen joke went over well:

A Little Twitter Justice

So a guy I've been following for a while on Twitter posted a comment last night about (not his exact words) how some people tweet too much. This was interesting, considering how his tweets were at times among the most numerous, inane and annoying things on my timeline. Pot, kettle, black.

Then I figured out that he wasn't following me back. I was somehow under the impression that he was. There's a website called Friend or Follow where you can easily check to see who doesn't follow you back, and who you're not following back. There's another website where you can see who's unfollowed you, but he's never come up on that since I've started using Friend or Follow. So I guess I overlooked the fact that I started following this guy and he never followed back.

I know that people don't care to follow all of my previously posted Twitter etiquette rules...or any of them...and there are surely times when I can be an annoying Twitter presence. (Like yesterday, for example.) But one thing I can't stand is hypocrisy, and someone who breaks many of my Twitter rules but complains about others' tweeting habits, isn't someone I need to follow, especially if he's not following me back.

So I unfollowed him. Oh, sweet freedom.

I feel that, unless you're a celebrity of some sort (musician, athlete, news media), if I'm going to follow you and you're not really entertaining or informative, you should at least follow me back. Last night I began following back some people who've been following me -- for quite a while, in some cases -- but I hadn't previously reciprocated.

(As for you celebrities, I'd love it if you followed me back. A few actually do. James Franco just joined Twitter. I really want him to follow me back.)

Quick Review: The Green Hornet

I mentioned somewhere (maybe on Twitter) that I was confused by the promotional campaign for "The Green Hornet." The theatrical trailer had some comedic elements but concentrated more on the main story: ne'er-do-well playboy Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), affected by the death of his newspaper-publisher father, takes up the mantle of the Green Hornet to fight crime in Los Angeles. The TV commercials in the days immediately before the film's release, however, made it seem like more of a comedy or a spoof than the typical superhero movie. I suppose, in retrospect, the presence of Rogen (and the fact that he co-wrote the screenplay) should have tipped me off from the start. He's never been so annoying, and the entire thing is basically Britt Reid being a boorish, incompetent jackass from start to finish. Even at the end, when a hero in movies is typically at his or her best, he's pretty much completely lost without his sidekick Kato, his father's mechanic who's also got mad martial arts skills. Even Kato's not immune to buffonery at times, though, especially when the two clash over Lenore (Cameron Diaz), hired by Britt Reid as an assistant at the paper. Kato is played by Jay Chou, a Taiwanese singer/actor making his Hollywood debut, and it's clear he's still learning to speak English. It does not go well, and almost comes off as a little racist. The best part of the movie was a cameo at the very beginning by James Franco. When the best part of the movie ends in the first five minutes... My grade: D.

On The Other Hand...

Unlike James Franco, Jake Gyllenhaal can come out of the closet any time he wants, especially since he broke up with Taylor Swift. I never thought that was real, let alone that it was going to last a while. She strikes me as a perpetually lovestruck 14-year-old even though she's 21. He's 30 now. The age difference isn't the issue. The maturity difference is. She should go back to Taylor Lautner, if you want my opinion. And Jake should come out and declare his eternal love for me, or at least stop by for a night...oh, what the hell, let's run this picture again...

By the way, perhaps because of this picture, somehow my "Love and Other Drugs" review has nearly caught up to my second nearly-naked Pat Burrell post as most-viewed on my blog since Blogger added their new Stats feature.

Speaking of coming out, did you hear that Johnny Weir is gay? Most of the commentary today revolves around the utter lack of surprise at this, since by his actions and attitude he'd done everything but make it official. I had my own joke line about it when I tweeted earlier ("Water wet, fire hot, Weir gay; or: time to sell some books!"). But this story at EW.com gives a more nuanced view of why he wanted to come out on his terms.

P.S. In part this post was a test to see if Blogger solved the problem that was disrupting things last night. It seems like it's back to normal. I have 2 movies, 2 weeks of comics and the NFL playoffs to write about, so I'm glad it's fixed!

I Don't Want James Franco To Be Gay

James Franco has always been unusual, it seems. Whether it's his acting choices, or going to college, or writing a book of short stories, or whatever, he never seems to let anything dictate his unconventional path. And he's played his share of gay characters, most notably in "Milk," which always leads to speculation about his own sexuality, even though he's been in a relationship with a woman for some time. (I think much of this speculation, particularly from gay men, is because he's pretty; otherwise, not nearly as many people would care.) In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he talked about that very thing rather brilliantly:

“It’s funny because the way that kind of stuff is talked about on blogs is so black-and-white. It’s all cut-and-dry identity politics. ‘Is he straight or is he gay?’ Or, ‘This is your third gay movie — come out already!’ And all based on, gay or straight, based on the idea that your object of affection decides your sexuality...”

“There are lots of other reasons to be interested in gay characters than wanting myself to go out and have sex with guys. And there are also lots of other aspects about these characters that I’m interested in, in addition to their sexuality. So, in some ways it’s coincidental, in other ways it’s not. I mean, I’ve played a gay man who’s living in the ’60s and ’70s, a gay man who we depicted in the ‘50s, and one being in the ‘20s. And those were all periods when to be gay, at least being gay in public, was much more difficult. Part of what I’m interested in is how these people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition. Or, you know what, maybe I’m just gay.”

Here's my problem: he's been so cool about it -- not feeling it necessary to issue strong denials or take offense about it, not making condescending "I have lots of gay friends"-type statements -- that I fear that, if he did suddenly come out and say, "Yeah, as it turns out I really am gay," he'd be ripped to shreds by a lot of people for being a hypocrite, or for not coming out sooner. It seems odd but I think he'd get almost as much criticism as right-wing political types get (such as Ken Mehlman) get. It wouldn't be quite as harsh, since Franco isn't actively working against equality or anything like that. But I think it would still be there, and it would be a shame.

So I really hope James stays straight...although I wonder if he could get away with being bisexual? Or just "experimenting," perhaps. And if you do want to experiment, James, I can help you out there. Even if you go back to this look (because I kinda dug it at the time):

Quick Review: 127 Hours

It's pretty obvious that spoiler alerts aren't needed here: "127 Hours" is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, who was hiking in a remote canyon in Utah when a boulder fell and trapped his arm. Unable to dislodge the boulder, running out of food and water, with no search parties looking for him since he told no one where he was going before he left, he eventually did the only thing he could do in order to stay alive: he cut off his arm. When the movie was screened at film festivals earlier this year there were reports that some people got sick after seeing the amputation scene. I expected something a lot more graphic, but it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. James Franco, as Ralston, has to carry the movie as he's alone on screen for much of it. Other than in a few flashbacks (as he's looking back at his life and his choices while trapped) he's not interacting with anyone else. He's definitely up to the task. Some of the film work was a little distracting -- do we really need to see the point of view from the inside of a water bottle? -- but for the most part, even knowing the eventual outcome, the suspense still builds. My grade: B-plus.

Quick Review: Eat Pray Love

I sooooooo wanted "Eat Pray Love" to be a complete disaster, worthy of nothing but utter disdain and contempt, so I could write a three-word review such as "Barf Scream Stab" and be done with it. Alas, it was not to be. Not that it's all that great. "Eat Pray Love" is based on a memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, and she's played by Julia Roberts. Poor Liz is unhappy in her failing marriage (husband played by Billy Crudup); then she's unhappy with her younger rebound guy (played by James Franco) so she decides to take off for a year. She goes to Italy (to eat), then to India (to pray) and then to Bali (not with the explicit purpose to love, but she finds it anyway with a fellow divorcee played by Javier Bardem). Even with voiceover narratives I couldn't quite figure out exactly why Liz was so unhappy. Maybe the book spells it out more clearly. Instead of being an insightful journey of self-discovery, it all seemed a bit trite. At least there's a variety of male eye candy in the film, including a gorgeous Italian man named Luca Argentero, who posed for a 2004 calendar. He actually looks better now then he did back then. One of the calendar shots is below; if you do a search, you can see a full rear nude shot as well. You're welcome. My grade: C-plus.

James Franco on a soap? Why?

I don't know what bothers me more: the news that actor James Franco is going to appear on "General Hospital" in a story arc that's set to last for a few months (although he's only scheduled for three tapings, the article says) -- it seems to me that someone whose career is currently not on a downward slide shouldn't be doing a TV soap opera -- or the fact that the role where I found him to be the most attractive is, strangely enough, "Pineapple Express."


Yes, really. I have no idea why, so don't ask. It is what it is. Let's just accept it and move on.