If Drew Barrymore’s directing movies now, should we be checking our 401Ks, scrutinizing our pension packages, getting stable healthcare plans, and maybe looking for somewhere quiet by the sea? – What, no Charlies’ Angels 3? – If we still dig Drew’s lips, does that mean we officially prefer older women now? – speaking of Charlie’s Angles, er, Angels, if Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu ever decide to direct, is it okay if we pass on the footage and just…uhhh, y’know? – Were you not expecting more than just a little sexual innuendo? The film’s called Whip It – If Ellen Page’s playing a beauty pageant winner, does that make it okay for us to ogle her now? – (It’s never felt entirely legal) – We’re just saying, it’s kind of a chick-flick, isn’t it?, so we’ll need to get our kicks from somewhere – isn’t Eve, a co-star in this, a rapper? – never actually saw Riding In Cars With Boys, but the title was pretty cool.
Bring on the lawsuits!!! – and the existential doughnut cream.
Director: Peter Berg, producer of TV’s Friday Night Lights; Terrence Malick, director of The Thin Red Line, will handle all scenes pertaining to the throwing of critical Hail Marys.
Cast: Entourage’s Adrian Granier as New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez (a few more pecs on there and the resemblance is startling), Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jets coach Rex Ryan, and Dexter’s Michael C. Hall as Tom Brady of the New England Patriots (what resemblance? Michael C. Hall is Tom Brady); Greg Kinnear as Pats coach Bill Belicheck, Robert Downey Jr as previously disgraced dog-violator Michael Vick, and a less tall Clint Eastwood as New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin; Luke Wilson as Giants quarterback Eli Manning, Josh Brolin as almost forty or maybe fifty Brett Favre, and SpiderMan3’s James Franco as the New Orleans Saints’ unstoppable Drew Brees; Ben Affleck as Tony Romo, the beefiest Culkin there is as Matthew Stafford, and Sam Rockwell as Peyton Manning.
We kind of think Rob Lowe could do a bang-up job as both Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart, both quarterbacks for the Arizona Cardinals. The man simply doesn’t age at all.
The Story! It must begin in New York, where it will in some sense end, with University of Southern California graduate Mark Sanchez getting off a plane to learn his fate in the annual draft. All the headlines are abuzz with fellow rookie Matt Stafford almost certainly on his way to Detroit, a city blighted by dire economic times and even worse football scores for its hometown Tigers. But it’s not all about the newcomers, in yet another exciting run-up to the new season – the immediate future of one or two veterans of potent name hang in the balance too.
Brett Favre, legendary leader of Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers for so long, is wrestling with a shoulder that isn’t quite what it used to be, and mulling a move to Packer rivals the Minnesota Vikings, partially because they’re the Minnesota Vikings, and partially because they’re the only team that’ll have him. Kurt Warner, too, is counting up the years, after leading the Cardinals to their first Super Bowl in a healthy ol’ while – it kind of complicates things, that young Matt Leinart is throwing the ball a lot like he used to in college.
The Philadelphia Eagles stun the nation by giving Michael Vick a second chance, not too long after his incarceration on charges of animal cruelty two years ago now, for dog fighting. Starter Donovan McNabb, however, is in the shape of his life, and isn’t going to roll over easily for any re-instated Superman. Tony Romo, in Dallas, is now Jessica Simpson free, and troublesome-teammate Terrell Owens-free, and needs to make his Cowboys team look like title-contenders. Kerry Collins is looking to recreate a perfect normal season last year for the Titans in Tennessee, but the NFL’s a notoriously fickle championship.
More significant than most other headlines is the fact that Patriots QB Tom Brady is back after injuring his knee on the first day of their last campaign, as Giselle Bundschen’s new husband and a father for the second time. Last time he played a complete season, the Pats went 18 and 0 before the Giants got in the way of their claiming a third Vince Lombardi trophy in four years.
But enough history. Matthew Stafford does eventually get drafted by the Detroit Lions, it’s been a longer time coming than the inauguration, to a mixed crowd of people roughly his age (we just expected the draft audience to be more suits and ties, but hey). The boos are a little deafening, ‘cause Stafford and the Lions together has kind of been a long time coming, but not really when Mark Sanchez steps up to shake on it with the Jets. A hell of a season is officially staring football fans in the face, when Brett Favre flies into Minnesota to put his Vikings deal in ink.
Last year’s Most Value Player Peyton Manning starts off swinging, making burger-meat of every team he throws against to help win the Colts their first five games – the last time Manning’s arm worked this way, they went on to become champions. The Titans, inversely, are a complete shadow of the team they were last time out, losing their first four. Drew Brees makes New Orleans a scary place to go, notching up win after win with 3+ touchdown passes per game (usually one will do). Talk is he’s the next Tom Brady, as Mr. Giselle starts off a little shaky against the Buffalo Bills, wary of that knee, but secures the win in the game’s dying moments in trademark Brady fashion. Director Peter Berg must pan out to show all of Foxboro stadium erupting at the return of the king.
Mark Sanchez defies the notion that rookies are mostly good for photo-shoots, by leading the Jets to a 3-0 start, including victory over their old rivals the Patriots. On the other side of New York, Peyton Manning’s younger brother Eli, a Super Bowl winner himself, is learning to throw the ball more, and the results are glorious. Two virtual shut-outs (Scores of zero for the enemy) see the Giants score well over thirty points twice, including away at the Cowboys brand new park. Romo is picturesque of the literary tragedy’s afflicted hero, a genius the atoms just won’t dance a tango for. A giant overhead screen at home and a pair of classy road-wins do little do stem the contemplative headlines, but Cowboys owner Gerry Jones vows to stick by his man.
All this, and we haven’t had to mention the reigning Super Bowl champions the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Brett Favre gets a respectful outing against former team the Packers, scoring the win with the kind of masterful play the sport’s Hall of Fame beckons his name for. The Denver Broncos, a young side with a young coach, match the Colts for 5-0, and have everybody wondering if silverware’s on their horizon.
Maybe it is. But in our movie, Eli’s Giants and Drew’s Saints clash in the NFC Final, and the Jets find themselves squared off against the seemingly unstoppable Colts in the AFC finale. An all New York final is set up, with both fixtures settled in overtime, and Mark Sanchez becomes the first rookie to win the Super Bowl in his first season since some guy called Kal-El. The recession finally ends, and the recovery finally begins.
Brett Favre retires again, having toiled like Mel Gibson in Braveheart in a playoff match against the Jets, but not for long. What would an NFL season even mean anymore, if Brett Favre didn’t pre-empt it with a little suspense?
It’s always been one’s lingering suspicion, hasn’t it, that Johnny Depp might not be quite as flawless as he seems? He’s Tim Burton’s guy; he’s done takes with Brando; and like all good Hollywood pin-ups, he hasn’t got much to say if the camera isn’t rolling – what’s most remarkable is he’s got into position playing the kinds of roles he’s always wanted to. ‘Compromise’ isn’t one of the many descriptive that’ll be applied to Depp when his star’s natural light has faded, when he dies clutching a moment in the mandibles of his now trademark subtlety, daring it to be something twisted, something phantasmal.
It certainly doesn’t seem to matter what kind of moment it is. It could be a murder sequence in something as suited to surrealism as Sweeney Todd was, or five hundred odd seconds of Hunter S. Thompson shooting up, or The Libertine’s central debauchee launching a crushing diatribe on universal morals. Whether or not he actually gets them to - the moments to do as he pleases – is another matter entirely, one that more than ever, post Public Enemies, is deserving of near-scientific scrutiny; because – because, my pretties – another word we’ll use to describe Depp, if we are level-headed and discerning, is ‘misused.’
This is, after all, the fine gentleman who signed up to make those Pirates sequels – innocent fun, of course, but clear and certain nose-dives to any self-respecting thespian. But we’re not here to talk about whether Johnny’s entitled to be tactful and nice about his career choices, because he is. What we’re trying to do here is get everybody thinking analytically about every Depp performance you’ve ever called brilliant and applauded accordingly – then consider whether you were clapping before or after the movies in question had even begun.
I have, you see, and find myself levitating in a problematic hyperspace. There are in life those cinema outings where you sink into the darkness as usual, but discover that after an hour, an hour and a half, two, you’re yet to disengage from your job, your bills, the all-round traffic of life. It’s supposed to be a clincher – a film about one of the most revered bank-robbers in American history, John Dillinger, played by the seasoning clown-prince of modern-day actors. Never mind the Depression-era setting; there’s no escape on offer because the entire time you’re watching Johnny Depp.
It’s saddening to write, but his complete lack of presence got me thinking… about his lack of presence in the nevertheless charming Finding Neverland, in the pleasantly tooth-decaying Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. He should be having fun, playing John Dillinger for schmuck’s sake, but all the while he’s Johnny Depp, just doing his job and not a great deal more.
It may occur to you, as it did to me, that there are a variety of emotions simply not in Depp’s nevertheless vast repertoire: rage, boisterousness, sadness, confusion. He made desperation and enthusiasm his own as Ed Wood, but to my mind has since abandoned them.
Depp’s co-star Christian Bale, another champion of our cinematic times, demands to be filmed every time he walks into a scene, as lead officer on the hunt for Dillinger, Melvin Purvis. The trait is useful, given that director Michael Mann barely has a screenplay in place. Public Enemies contains extended attempts at theatre, with its quick hellos and swift goodbyes, and the dirty ballet indulged in by well-dressed criminals, fur-coated beauties and cops in fedoras; but this puts added pressure on the ensemble’s eyes, ‘cause therein the dialogue must take place, and on words that aren’t whole enough to withstand a breeze.
It all feels rather empty, the scene that sees Dillinger, for instance, sneaking into quarters of the police unit charged with his apprehension under the auspices that all he wants are the baseball scores. He dwells for a moment on newspaper cuttings of himself and comrades who are mostly dead; and for a second you wonder what’s going through his mind: is it regret? – sadness?- pride? Practically none of the above, because all Dillinger does is grin, escorting himself out of there with all the charm and swagger of a sophisticated action-figurine.
Another crushing disappointment is the moment Dillinger actually dies. He’s shot dead on a street, stalked by swarms of cops, and flanked by the innocent immigrant ladies who set up his demise. If this is how it happened, well and good – but just because America’s public enemy number one, for a time, got gunned down on the sidewalk is no excuse to make the process look this cheap.
I could tell you Marion Coittard, delicious as she is, looks an awkward guest rather than the anti-hero’s love interest, no thanks to some shoddy lines, her character’s strange French/Cherokee heritage and perhaps a little too much lipstick; that Billy Crudup makes for a stocky but just too tight-assed J. Edgar Hoover, infamous director of the FBI; and lastly, putting my hammer down, that Stephen Graham could have done with more screen-time as the wonderfully cocky Baby Face Nelson (the man’s British, for crying out loud). But stating this takes too much heat off Michael Mann, who coincidentally also shot a film called Heat, and isn’t doing plenty to escape that picture’s gravity. As co-screenwriter, all his best dialogue emerges when guns are exchanging rapid fire, then vanishes ‘til the next time blood gets a chance to spill.
This is a somewhat polemical piece on Johnny Depp because all the film’s shortcomings present him with the chance to rescue it from artistic limbo, if only he’ll escape his artistic comfort zone. Depp fails to rise to the occasion, in a role that a fan like me swore he was born to play. This came nowhere near The Assassination of Jesse James, aesthetically and also on the basis of the lead performance. In it, Brad Pitt was towering as the title character, and paranoid and savage all at once, and made a valuable case for his own place in Hollywood history. In Public Enemies, Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp, but it turns out that just won’t be enough anymore.
POPCORN: A movie based on a book based on a legend – so it’s amazing how little it has to say for itself.
I’ll admit I don’t know an awful lot about the Venice Film Festival, other than that it takes place in Venice. Sure I’ve got some ditties up my sleeve, just in case of a mix-up with that Golden Bear, and also the fact that George Clooney can grab a bus home. But these are just that, ditties, and it would be embarrassing to presume such trivia qualified as knowledge. My daydreams, on the other hand, remain the stuff of pedigree, so despite my all-round ignorance, I have some grasp, at least, of how exciting it must all be.
The quaint inn where one is putting up, in the next room from an aspiring actress who’s tactful about putting out; the wonderful neglect to put on a jacket, or an undershirt, or, hell, underwear, because the weather’s as good as hand-set in Italy; the aspiring actress, smiling deliciously as you half-waltz past one another in the hall, trading the phrase ‘Bon giorno’; the socks-less skip you embark on down the lane, and the gentle gondola to a cafe down the canal, with an operatic gondolier and a paper whose headlines you don’t understand; idiotically ordering a baguette with coffee, as if this were Cannes, then just as idiotically flipping through a Lonely Planet guide for the Italian translation of ‘bun’; the aspiring actress joining you at table, with an elegant grip on her tea-cup , and those deferential eye-lashes; a chin-wag later, with George (Clooney) and Matt (Damon) and Michael (Moore), on healthcare reform and how absurd the other side is, on Italy and all its subtle charms....
If you are, by any chance, at the Venice Film Festival, feel quite free to interpose my grand projections with even tea-spoons of actuality. I am, myself, in attendance at the Mediocrity Film Festival, in the bunker-like comfort of home, as an esteemed and distinguished guest. My entire wardrobe is filled with cashmere garments, and Eva Green has promised to teach me manners on the weekend.
Mediocrity is my favourite word in the English language. It has, at once, the sound of scorn, and the appearance that it is a complete indictment of the way things are. I like that mediocrity is what maddens men, into a state of revolution... of refusal, of not having anymore and of uprising. The pattern always makes for some fantastic movies, a bunch of them independent, and the occasional mind-job bio-pic.
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Even of what’s going on in Venice, I have a crudely rough idea. I understand somebody’s let Nicholas Cage in, and that Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass (the Bourne trilogy) have made another film together. It’s called The Informant!, totally with the exclamation mark on there, and my subconscious has to be totally tripping bolls about this, ‘cause there’s a political knife-edge to it too. The new George Clooney project is called Men Who Kill Goats By Staring At Them, so I’m definitely tripping bolls, and with Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore’s latest smart-ass documentary, I’m all out of bolls to trip. Oh, and Paris Hilton’s reportedly flogging her jewellery off the red carpet, ‘cause apparently there’s a recession on.
In the evenings, after another day at the Mediocrity Film Festival, I’m reading Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, so I can impress Eva with my dandiness – it’s off to a cracking start. I’m trying to get my hands on Les Miserables, so I can get my hands on Eva – I don’t think Ms. Green would give any man half the chance, had he never read Les Miserables.
The films on show at the Mediocrity Film Festival aren’t in themselves mediocre; it’s the fact that I’m seeing them once, two years, or even decades late, that’s what’s truly mediocre.
I began with In Bruges, possibly two and a half weeks ago now. I remember this winning an Academy Award for best screen-writing not long ago, unless I’m much mistaken, but I have my doubts now from how sparse the dialogue is. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, the script’s great – I just didn’t know the Academy gave out Oscars for scripts this concise, else I’d have won one by now and dedicated it to me cousin Finn and me ma. I hope to die a painless death in Ireland.
Colin Farrell’s hilarious as the troubled hitman who’s killed a boy with a bullet through a priest, Kevin Gleenan fatherly as his frustrated mentor, and Ralph Fiennes pleasantly surprising as the London mobster who’s sent them off to Bruges on an unspecified errand. The joke’s supposed to be how naff a city Bruges is, but I could die in Bruges... except I’m already scheduled to do so in Ireland.
The global cinema-goer, averaged out, has probably seen Public Enemies already, and patiently awaits the syndication of Inglorious Basterds now; where I live, we’re yet to see either one, and at this point, I’m tripping everybody else’s bolls. Leatherheads, the Clooney-directed love-around set against the Twenties of proprietor-driven American football, was a lot of fun last Thursday. It just tried too hard, maybe, and John Krasinski from The Office – I love you, man – didn’t try at all. I didn’t know what to do with myself when it was over, so I caught the end of Iron Man, which I have seen, for the heck of it. LOVE!!! how the Led Zeppelin track in the credits captures perfectly what it’s like to fight crime in an iron-freaking-suit. My friend told me to look out for the Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury cameo if I ever got the chance, so I did; Tony Stark, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D? Tantalising, somewhat.
I’m a man without obligations on Sundays, so I juggled the prospect of reading an art-mag with that of watching one of the classics. But The Belle of New York ended as awkwardly as Singing In the Rain began, so I did away with that pretty quickly. I could only manage ten minutes of Diamonds Are Forever at six PM, ‘cause I had gouged my eyes out on Xbox – the poor little buggers just couldn’t take it anymore. It’s got some amusing murder sequences, Diamonds Are Forever. Baby Mama, my Monday night from heaven, didn’t pan out as such: Tina Fey was the snarky, relatively sane observer she always is, while Amy Poehler was snug as a bug playing the crazy, unpredictable blonde – when it would’ve been much more fun to see them swap roles for once. I’m also getting round to absorbing the sight of Greg Kinnear on Tina Fey, but only just.
Christian Bale’s all about technique; Cate Blanchett, God bless her, depends heavily on a trademark gait and all-round spazzed-outness (‘cause all I do is rock, and roll); and Marcus Carl Franklin, very tellingly, bears the most striking resemblance with ol’ Bob in Dylan uber-flick I’m Not There, as the boy rocker under the adorable impression that he’s an Afro-American soul-man (wonderfully inscribed on his guitar-case is the warning, ‘This Machine-Gun Kills Fascists’). But the most charged, most energetic moment of I’m Not There is when Heath Ledger issues entry, strapped with musical machine-gun, and yet his Dylan’s never called upon to play a tune by director Todd Haynes, in this multi-faceted mind-job of a biopic. Dylan’s a hero of mine, and in all likelihood everybody in this movie’s; but it’s Ledger - in a film that side-winds enough to make you permanently colour-blind – who’s daring enough to perform against archetype and see what happens.
It’s the way he speaks, like a shifting tectonic plate; the way he holds that there machine-gun, like it’s a plastered drinking buddy. Every other movie I watch, I am in constant mourning for Heath Ledger, wedged between awe and some uncomfortable envy at his performance in The Dark Knight, and the finality he was unknowingly sprinkling on it. You stand up in applause, watching his work in retrospect, and you request an encore, before you realise you can’t have anymore.
A full review is coming soon, and so’s District 9... If I were you, as far as impending doom goes, I’d be worried about the review.
Songs For Expressing A Little Compassionate Hatred.
*Caring Is Creepy – the SHINS.
Harmonic, haunting angst, delivered in a hymnal package. Doubts about commitment never sounded this good...in fact they never sounded at all.
*When I Used to Love You – JOHN LEGEND.
John Legend gets his domestic discontent on – in a church! The choir comes in with an uplifting finish, and everybody’s laughing by the end – if your ex is the ironic type.
*Slow Night, So Long – KINGS OF LEON.
Back when Kings of Leon were a pack of tar-spittin’, gin-swiggin’ cowboys from outta nowhere, they made music that touched one’s inner cad. For the anti-gentleman, when halfway through a fumble in the dark, he realises he’s not having a nice time.
*I Don’t Know What To Do (With Myself) – the WHITE STRIPES.
I don’t know what to do with myself... but I’m almost certain I don’t want to do anything with you.
*Sick Sick Sick – the QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE.
Phwoar! Doesn’t condone breaking up abruptly with significant others, getting demonically trashed immediately afterwards, and then getting sick on their doorsteps; but we have to admit that’s very Phwoar.
*Razorblade – the STROKES.
The coolest band in the world put down a song four years ago, this one, that contained the lyrics “My feelings are more important than yours...” Need we say more?
*Another You, JOHN MAYER.
Remember that old adage about there being plenty of fish in the sea? John Mayer wrote a song about it before he slipped into an ocean of hot actresses with the paparazzi for day-jobs, and it wasn’t too bad. He’s got tattoos now, so we wonder if he still feels the same way.
*Not My Friend, NORAH JONES.
We cannot say enough about Norah Jones, and she hasn’t had an album out for years now. What is that? A deftly pressed piano key? A xylophone? One fantastic note, interlaced maybe with just one more, drapes the songbird in a blanket of flowers. You don’t deserve her, you DOGS!
*Annie, You’re A Star – the KILLERS.
Hot Fuss was the album that defined modern pop-disco, and the Killers were the band that did it. The song for breaking things off when you really don’t want to, because you’ve been apprehended in ladies’ clothing. That doesn’t make you any less of a man, big guy.
*I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked – IDA MARINA.
The indie anthem of the summer! – midway through the war of words, call in reinforcements. He/she won’t know what hit him/her. That/this is/was about it/the end maybe?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those most sentimental of sensations, the ‘butterflies’, and am compelled to investigate the nearness of their extinction. I’ve started by having a look at my anatomy, in the interest of full evolutionary disclosure. The results aren’t pretty, so cynicism drives me towards the present environment of 21st Century sexuality, or of all-round horniness, if you prefer; so I’ll begin from there.
The primary threat to the butterflies is, in fact, all-round horniness. What’s the fancy intellectual-sounding term, collective, for a bunch of butterflies? Whatever that is – let’s imagine ourselves to be walking, talking, shagging highways, chemically bundled collections of traffic, and the butterflies to be paper-planes taking off from five-year old runways on the sidewalk. Hardly jaw-dropping stuff, by any measure. I almost forgot to specify that the butterflies are practically always experienced by males – unless there’s a memo I missed, and thus neglected to wipe my behind with – in order to make the point that males devote much of their time now to nurturing erections; and ladies, with all due respect, to giggling at the sheer abnormality of it all, before opting to be more ‘polite’. I fear I’ve strayed, somewhat, into the murkier waters of a science that’s not my own, but must carry on.
It’s amazing, some of the things ordinary people will willingly do to each other nowadays – the places we’ll gladly put our mouths, our feet, and our noses, from whence Spock and Captain Kirk would gladly turn away, for an interplanetary siesta on Martian Madagascar. Conventions of Generation Right Now theme these dark but not so far-off bodily lands in line with some of our favourite dishes, and yet people only bother to actually flavour one another less than half of the time. Perhaps mankind should keep its clothes on and eat more sandwiches; or maybe not hit the rest-room every time it feels a little queasy, thus flushing butterflies into existential obscurity – or sewerage tanks.
I’m not in the habit, personally, of eating already satisfactory snacks off of other people, but on the other hand, I do not understand the urge to call a doctor at the onset of butterflies: the mental sperlunk to nowhere, the inconstant heart-rate, the burning need to pull one’s pants down and detoxify like its New Year’s Eve. Butterflies are initially unpleasant, gradually over-demanding, and do not effectively run free-market economies, so it’s not surprising to find that a couple million years on, we’re about ready to do away with them altogether- be we mice or rabbits, meek or all-conquering, Michael Cera or Gerard Butler. That leaves us in a literal dead-heat: a world where romantic comedies are nothing more than deal-clinchers for a little rumpy, and movies about butterflies, no matter how good, offer futile, dying resistance.
Your first favourite scene in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is going to be the one that introduces Kat Dennings, the film’s female lead, because it’s going to be perfectly legal to gawp at how hot she looks in a prep-school uniform – thereafter, you’re going to gawp at how hot she looks period. The music, the maybe-not-so-infinite-playlist, will work its charms on you the entire time, but not quite before it occurs to you...that young Michael Cera, Nick, will play Michael Cera for the rest of his acting career, and that it’s a damn good thing he’ll get away with it. You’re going to love that his character Nick drives a sh*tty car, has gay friends for a posse, whom he plays with in a band, which is alternately referred to as ‘Sh*t Sandwich’ and ‘Fistful of A-Holes’, amongst other unkind things. Did we mention that this is a movie about a girl, a guy and his band scouring New York City in search of her favourite band and what in rock circles is commonly referred to as ‘the new sound’? Marvellous, because that’s exactly what it is: baked beans on the tin, and baked beans on the in.
Infinite Playlist has the bubbliest script any rom-com has presented us with in ages. Not since Juno, a good two years ago now, have a rough ninety minutes of boy-meets-girl dialogue given us such a mind-job (that’s exactly what you think it is), and Peter Sollett, the gem’s director, makes sure the film has no pretensions about itself. Everybody involved is in this to provide a great yoghurt-in-pyjamas experience, provided an cinema will have you, and the simple purity of that is hard to put down. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist feels a lot like Christmas – tingly inside, as if it were snowing all over your heart, or as if butterflies...
It couldn’t be, and it really isn’t. Like Christmas, however bright, however shiny, however well intentioned Infinite Playlist is, you can’t fully suppress the feeling that it’s all somebody somewhere’s marketing illusion. You sense there’s a glaze too tender over what’s supposed to be a night from hell, Norah’s life beyond the plot is much too perfect for her circumstances (Kat Dennings is far too perfect for her circumstances), and it’s heinous, absolutely heinous, that Michael Cera will sail along without ever having to break a sweat...but once you express yourself out loud, you’ll feel like a complete killjoy, and a lemony alkali will replace all your saliva. At least Cera is one of us, and you’d be a total ingrate, if you had anything negative to say about a whole plate of Kat Dennings.
The true disappointment, as epic as any you’ll ever suffer, is that you will feel nothing. While Sollett, Cera and Dennings dress trees in tinsel and deck the halls, plotting you an escape, you’ll dip a single toe in its fiction, wide awake to the notion that you’re witnessing a fairy-tale. You will fail to disengage from the realities beyond your seat, because butterflies are dead.
Our helmets, and our arms, are respectfully lowered.
POPCORN: This is not a review! – it’s a funeral; with Red Bull and ice-cream and air-guitar. A perfect little movie, unwittingly crafted for an imperfect world.
Our Five Favourite Scenes!
From Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist...
1- When Michael Cera, as Nick, tells his gay best friend forever that “it’s hard being hetero.” Amen.
2- When Kat Dennings’ blonde best friend forever, totally WASTED!!!, drops her gum in a coffee-coloured toilet bowl – then picks it up and chews it some more.
3- When Nick’s troublesome ex, packed full of vendetta, dances in front of his headlights by a pier, to that ‘I Believe In Miracles’ track from The Full Monty. If she’d been clumsier, the whole thing might have gone down in movie-history. We think.
4- When Norah’s indie-punk-ska ex, in a little leather, a pair of Converse, and hair-gel, tries to plug her his band’s album. The band’s called ‘Ozrael’, presumably ‘cause he’s Jewish, and the star of David looms on the CD’s cover. Classic.
5- When Nick’s entourage, Norah and all, walks into a transsexual strip-bar, where a trannie is butchering the words to 12 Days of Christmas. On the fifth day of Christmas, he – she? – wants five Taye Diggs; we want 50 Kat Dennings’s.
Chipo on Michael:"He's very...warm."
Chola on Michael:"He's a magnificent douche."
Michael on Chipo:"Scheming and manipulative."
Chola on Chipo:"An emotional pineapple."
Michael on Chola:"My pet chipmunk."
Chipo on Chola:"My very own Tina Fey."
Michael on Chola
