Saturday, December 26, 2009

2009 Catch-Up, part 1

I suddenly realized, as I scanned the magazine covers at the newsstand last week, that in addition to the usual year-end lists of favorite movies, music, etc., everyone is also making "Best of the Decade" lists as well. My consumption of popular culture these days is decidedly odd, skewed away from both the stuff at the top of the box-office or record charts, and the stuff that winds up being critical faves. I tend to watch and listen to the stuff that ends up in the vast middle, stuff that might make a small splash but then vanishes from the radar.

I don't know that I feel moved to do a decade-encompassing list or post, though I will probably make a year-end list soon. But as I looked over my movie and book journals, I noticed several works I found notable (for reasons both good and bad) that I haven't mentioned here yet, so I'm going to try and cover those very briefly over the next week.

Up (2009)--As a rule, I don't care for Pixar movies; as with the products of the Harry Potter machine, I can appreciate that they are well-made and even clever, and yes, they may be more than "just" kids' stories, but I find them uninteresting and uninvolving. This one, I enjoyed, mostly due to its visual style. An old man, under pressure to sell his property so high rises can be built, ties balloons to his house and floats away, along with a Boy Scout stowaway, to find an adventurer he had admired in his childhood who has been missing in South America for years. The plot is standard-issue moralizing about hero worship and fulfilling our dreams, but almost wordless opening sequence, which encapsulates the old man's life from childhood to the present day, is lovely, and the colorful balloons that fill the screen from time to time are delightful eye candy.

District 9 (2009)--Aliens who look like tall insects make an emergency landing on Earth, in South Africa, and are soon relegated to ghetto camps, despised and distrusted by humans. They can't seem to leave--it turns out they are working on producing fuel needed to get back home. A human, just as prejudiced as anyone else against the aliens, winds up wounded and slowly begins transforming into a human/alien hybrid. The authorities, who are doing grotesque experiments on sick and dying aliens, want to get hold of him and he throws his lot in with the aliens. A rather heavy-handed allegory for any number of intolerance atrocities (slavery, Nazism, apartheid). The digital creatures (actors in motion-capture outfits who are then erased out of the frame and replaced by CGI) are effective, and Sharlto Copley is very good as the human-alien. The production was relatively low-budget but doesn't look it.

The Invasion (2007)--Dreadful remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers; despite the presence of Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Jeremy Northam, this movie barely kept me watching to the end, and 2 weeks later, I could barely recall a thing about it. Watch the 1956 and 1979 versions, both excellent, instead.

Whatever Works (2009)--Woody Allen just keeps on keepin' on, making variations on his earlier, more inspired movies, even if audience and critics don't follow. Here, Larry David (above) plays the Woody Allen character, an aging misanthrope whose life is changed when he falls for a very young girl (Evan Rachel Wood). Yeah, the pairing is a little creepy, even without knowing Allen's real-life situation with the almost 40-years younger Soon-Yi Previn, and there is absolutely nothing new here; even the gimmick of David talking directly to the camera is a re-heated Allen technique. But David makes a somewhat fresh substitute for an on-camera Allen, Wood and Patricia Clarkson are good, and the handsome Henry Cavill (below) is a treat.

Hamlet 2 (2008)--A high-school drama teacher who is about to lose his department stages a wildly irreverent musical version of Hamlet. The YouTube teaser for this, a production number called "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus," is great fun, but nothing else in the movie even comes close. Steve Coogan, a big comedy star in England, has done nothing for me in this or Tristam Shandy. I'm not sure where this goes wrong, but it sure does. Possibly of interest to Glee fans, as it seems like it might have inspired that show.

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