and after the nukes, the only thing left will be roaches and music biopics: denver premieres for 12/5

Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody watch the approaching mushroom cloud, confident in the knowledge they will outlast us all.

Our man in Cap Hill Pike Bishop boldly goes so you don't have to:

Cadillac Records- By turning the colorful lives of American R&B, Blues, Country and Rockabilly icons into so many portraits in beige, Hollywood has, for the last thirty years or so, worked hard to Disneyfy the history of our country’s musical heritage with the dreaded subgenre of the music biopic. Due to the fact that most of these movies are written and directed by Baby Boomers (or their sycophantic children), it is hardly surprising to note then, that an insidious undercurrent in all of these biopics is the idea that the music of say a feisty hillbilly hero or a urban/rural negro bluesman will soon find its way to a young and hip white kid from the city (read: suburb) and influence the most perfect form of musical expression ever- Rock and Roll, preferably the late 60s British variety. So when we watch the trailer for the new film Cadillac Records and a see the snippet of the young Rolling Stones approaching the nonplused Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright) at the door of a South Side bar and tell him, “We are big fans. We named our band after one of your songs… ” we know in what context the filmmakers want us to view the characters up on the screen. They might as well have had some classic rock dork stand in front of the actors, point and say, “Psssst. That’s Muddy Waters. He made Rock and Roll possible!” To that end, Cadillac Records will do the same for some of the Chess recording artists as say, What’s Love got To Do With It did for (Ike and) Tina Turner or Ray did for Ray Charles or Walk the Line did for Johnny Cash- it will push a couple more best-of compilation albums out the door to the curious only to be brought back again some time later as used-bin fodder for cash or trade.

The stunt casting (and the thinking behind it):

Beyonce Knowles as Etta James (She does what she wants because she is the producer and don’t you forget it.)

Mos Def as Chuck Berry (This one is obvious- He’s the Chuck Berry of Hip-Hop.)

Cedric the Entertainer as Willie Dixon (He’s fat. Get it, Willie Dixon was fat too.)

Eric Bogosian as Alan Freed (He wrote and starred in Talk Radio so he’s perfect for the role of a disc jockey!)

Tony Bentley as Alan Lomax (Well he played Hal B. Wallis, the guy that produced Elvis’ first movie, in that Made-for-TV Elvis movie. Muddy Waters is the Elvis of Blues. So why don’t we get this guy to play Alan Lomax, the guy that produced Muddy’s first field recording. It would be like karma or something.)

The rest of the cast:

Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters
Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess
Gabrielle Union as Geneva Wade
Columbus Short as Little Walter
Eamonn Walker as Howlin' Wolf
Kevin Mambo as Jimmy Rogers
Valence Thomas as James Cotton

The Punisher: War Zone- When a comic book movie is dumped onto the market at either end of the summer release schedule, an alarm should go off in your head that says “crap movie.” If you learn that said comic book movie is a 2nd time reboot (as in a third stand-alone movie, for you kids without the math skillz) of a franchise whose only rewards are watching rounds of ammo being fired into the bad guy’s faces and some wicked cool ‘splosions, then that alarm should no longer be necessary. From here on out you are on your own. The word out in the intranets is that The Punisher: War Zone is nerdy hipster manna in that it is so, so very bad that it is good. I love the first line of Roger Ebert’s review where he writes, “You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer.” There is a sense of pathos and of fear in his proclamation, almost like he has seen what’s coming over the horizon and knows that it can’t be stopped.

Antarctica- Opening at the Starz FilmCenter is this dramedy from Israel. The synopsis they give reads:

Director Yair Hochner gives us a wacky comedy that ignores politics altogether while focusing on its characters’ domestic and romantic problems. And no one has more problems than gay siblings Shirley and Omer. Omer is almost thirty and still hasn’t found himself — or the man of his dreams. A series of disastrous blind dates hasn’t helped. Shirley is a little younger and has already nabbed her dream woman, Michal, owner of the hippest café in town (and Shirley’s boss). But the thought of settling down scares Shirley, who wonders if she’s ready to give up her long-held plan of traveling to Antarctica.

As the siblings sort through their feelings and prepare for adulthood, friends and relatives chime in with their advice and problems of their own. No one has more of either than their “Jewish mother from hell,” Shoshanna, played, in what Hochner describes as a tribute to both the films of John Waters and the late great Divine, by Yoam Huberman, one of Israel’s most talented drag artists.

They Killed Sister Dorothy- Also opening at Starz FilmCenter is this documentary. The synopsis they give reads:

They Killed Sister Dorothy chronicles the legal proceedings that followed the execution-style murder of Sister Dorothy Stang. At seventy-three, the Catholic nun and activist had lived in Brazil for thirty years, collaborating with the government to establish sustainable development in a remote corner of the Amazon. But along the way, she had made enemies among the ranchers who stood to benefit from the exploitation of the rainforest and its natural resources. In 2005, she was shot six times at point-blank range. Two men were arrested for the killing, but it quickly became clear that her death was part of a much greater conspiracy.

A Christmas Tale- Opening last Friday but continuing on this week is A Christmas Tale, the critically-praised French film about a dysfunctional family gathering together for Christmas after the family matriarch learns she is dying from leukemia. It looks like the ensemble cast of character actors is the big draw for this film along with the pleasant structure of vignette-like scenes adding up to an emotionally satisfying whole. It stars Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Melvil Poupaud, and Laurent Capelluto. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen)

blog under punches: day night day night, redbelt, iron man/the incredible hulk

Please insert lame-o hot suicide bomber joke caption here.

Day Night Day Night (2006) - A short, spare film - so lean and stripped down that even the title makes reference only to the order of plot's events - that features a stupendous performance by novice actress Luisa Williams. From the very start, Day Night Day Night hones in on the troubled face of a nameless, feckless, possibly-Muslim-wanna-be Times Square suicide bomber, and keeps us there throughout to powerful effect. While director Julia Loktev may not have created a wholly believable film (how can you make a movie about a suicide bomber sans politics?) she and Williams have nevertheless created an irresistable lead in spite of the unsteady ground their effort teeters on: a delicate, bird-like little girl, nibbling on junk food and much too polite for the mall much less New York City, she follows every gesture on her behalf with a breathy and lilting "Thank you," even for the driver dropping her off to the spot where she'll be killing herself.

Redbelt (2008) - Pretend, for a moment, that yours truly is not some penniless grad student a-blog-blog-bloggin' away with his movie store buddies, but a Rocky Mountain superstar film programmer (I don't know if there is such a thing as a professional film programmer, but we're pretending). And pretend that I'm asked to program a series on Bush Time - the deal is no docs, all narrative. So first up's The Departed (2006). And then comes David Mamet's Redbelt.

Redbelt of course runs through all the regular Mamet tropes - tough guys, tough guytalk (or apparently, how Mamet thinks tough guys talk), the limits of belief and honor. And while the film is, in essence, an update on the B-boxing flick, complete with the borderline-ridiculous and dastardly plot "pivot" to put our hero Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor, perhaps one of the most engaging and able actors ever to utter one of those insy-outsy Mamet lines of dialogue) into the ring, on the whole it also manages to be Mamet's most cinematic, as well as one of the most subtle and politically elegant - if there is such a thing as political elegance, but maybe you can pretend a little more with me - politically elegant films of the last few years.

Forget, if you can, Mamet's oddly-reckoned turn away from...well, it's hard to tell what, exactly. Something about hack economist Thomas Sowell and JFK. Forget that shit, though. It might just be Ejiofor's excellent, controlled perfomance in the demand for clarity his bruised and cheated character makes at the end of Redbelt, but I think there's more - more like compassion for what the characters are going through, real compassion, not faux-tough-guy compassion - and it shows a piece of drama underneath the pulpy trappings that's bigger than the rest of the flick.

Iron Man (2008) / The Incredible Hulk (2008) - One a new entry in the Marvel movie canon, the other a reboot after the lovely and odd and arty Ang Lee entry failed to impress fanboys: what makes, for me, the spate of comic book flicks so rewarding is seeing a director (Tim Burton, once upon a time, or Sam Raimi, or Chris Nolan) fall in love with a book's protag, and it looks like Jon Farveau might be on his way to making magic with Tony Stark - a super-brilliant, adult-adolescent, playboy-inventor assembled from Robert Downey Jr.'s unused acting tics and too-cool-for-school attitude, who seems genuinely surprised his throwaway character has won so many fans. Farveau himself is hip enough to know what makes a movie like this work: an incredibly cool guy in an incredibly cool flight suit with bombs and lasers and shit, and a measure of believability. It doesn't gamble on throwing itself head-first into the real world or at more serious themes, like Raimi's emo Spidey or the Nolan's end-of-the-century musings, but Iron Man does at least turn and face the idea that if there was a guy who made wonderful weapons, those weapons would more than likely be used on poor people living near or over oil wells. Oh, and that corporate heads - well, the CFOs, anwyay - are totally fucking evil.

This new Hulk moves the spotlight away from Ang Lee's meanderings (the only character he really cared for was Mr. Green, and the detached and stiff tone of the Hulk-less scenes bogged an otherwise excellent movie down) and onto Norton's solid portrayal of Bruce Banner via Bill Bixby - apparently, Norton's a big TV-Hulk fan who collaborated on drafts of the script - and the rest of cast looks like they're enjoying themselves. This makes up for a lot: Edward Norton's Hulk does indeed use the catchphrase, and he and the Abomination (a properly bitter Blonsky, played by Tim Roth) exact lots of damage on Harlem and New York, and the film puts the tussle between the two gods of late-20th century America the best versions of the comic looked at - the military and science - into crisp perspective, but the last third of the film feels hemmed in and way-too-tight: there's rumoured to be a 120-minute plus version of the flick somewhere out there, but the DVD release carries about 10 or 15 minutes of exposition the movie could've sorely used.

There's a larger effort afoot to create some kind of Avengers movie event, and because of this, neither of the more recent Marvel entries, despite all their class, their declared devotion to the comic continuity, and their superficially sharp performances, they dpn't feel like whole movies, but merely pitstops on a way to $8-dollar-slurping sequels. I'm liking what I'm seeing, but I don't like being taken for a sucker - at least, right up front, with only a bit of pretense - even less.