Went to watched Slumdog millionaire last night.. Excellant film about an 18 year old lad from Mumbai who is one question away from winning 20 million ruppes on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and is accused of cheating as no one ever gets that far on the show. We see how he gets the questions right as each question is relevant to his life in flashbacks..

I think this film won a few goldon globes.. Amazing music..

Slumdog Millionaire.

8/10..

HEAD OF STATE (2003) - **1/2

The other day, comedian Chris Rock was complaining to CNN of how hard it is to make jokes about President-Elect Barack Obama, a sentiment also shared by writers for THE DAILY SHOW and Conan O'Brien, etc. Apparently unlike our previous Commanders-In-Chief, Obama is a tough pickle to define down to a general public humorous stereotype. You know what I mean, George W. Bush the redneck imbecile, Clinton the fat man-whore, and Bush Sr. the dry long-winded wimp. Now that last one I never got the "wimp" label, for unlike those others, he did actually fight in a war, but whatever. Surely there is someone out there who can write solid gags about good rhetoric or being an egghead or (so far) not embarrased out country?

So within hours of Obama's inauguration as our 44th President, I figured it was opportune time to review a movie that star/writer/director Chris Rock had produced several years ago. Now kids, this was back when the concept of a popular-elected black President was optimistic science fiction, thus the idea itself was the whole fucking joke. HEAD OF STATE wasn't exactly a hit, but will Rock continue to recieve his monthly residual checks for STATE after that whole punchline was muted by Obama's election?

What I do think may stick around for STATE is how eeriely similar Rock's character is to our new President. I mean think about it, Rock is an Alderman in D.C., basically portrayed here as a glorified community activist, which Obama started as in Chicago. Both cities notorious for their corrupt Democratic party-machine politics, but these men seem to have played the game and succeeded without being severly tainted by the process. Both have pivotal connections to Abe Lincoln, with Lincoln a hero of Obama, and Rock making a crack about black janitors working at the Lincoln Memorial having to polish his brass balls. Both guys are unabashed liberals and were initial long-shots because they were unknown quantities, their ethnicity and also they supposedly lacked the "experience" for the Oval Office, yet ultimately prevail over the more veteran white Republican candidate in the debates and election.

The difference though is that Rock only gets his party's Presidential nomination after the candidate and his running mate both die when their planes crash into each other. I think we need more stringent guidelines against pilot drinking, don't you? A nasty white Senator (Bill Arnot) from the party decides the election is a dog, so his scheme is to draft a guaranteed loser (preferably a black), so that next time he'll be both the nominee, and win easily. Arnot has always been fucking great in movies and LAW & ORDER as the sleezy shithead, so here's a shout out to him. You rock (pun!)

Rock as a stand-up, he's always funny while giving accute social commentary, and not afraid to criticize his own people. He shits on bullshit, no matter who or what, and I always welcome his HBO specials. What I've never understood was, why is he such a lame filmmaker? He's got the smarts, but what is with his incapability to write a decent narrative or plot around his comedy? Nevermind the fact that he's a weak director, and STATE is painfully obvious. Hell I think outside of his good political jabs, STATE just isn't funny, unless Tracy Morgan talking on and on about his meat while waiting for reruns of MARTIN is hilarious to you.

I mean, MARTIN?!?! Shit Chris, pick a black sitcom at least that was good.

What also sucked was the annoying running joke of his stalking bitchy ex-girlfriend (Robin Givens) and Rock crying "Security!" Urgh.

Sub-par thematics aside, STATE is at best when Rock rambles about politics. His campaign in the beginning is as safe, non-offensive, and dull as it could be, which reminds me alot of John Kerry. If you remember, Kerry in 2004 was the liberal nominee too, but he was rather afraid to be outright about that little fact. We got so many painful Photo-Ops with Kerry pretending to be a hunter and drinking beer, and speaking always of how you should vote for him because simply he isn't Bush. The GOP successfully painted him as a classic weak-kneed flip-flopping pussy liberal, and with such a piss-poor campaign, Kerry deserved to lose.

In the dumps emotionally and in the polls, Rock gets advice from big brother and running mate Bernie Mac to quit that sillyness, and just be himself.... like Obama did. He also ran against the Bush Years, but agree with him or not, he presented an alternative vision for America, which appealed to war-weary/jobless Americans. Unlike Kerry and Bill Clinton, Obama didn't run away from the liberal label, but rather embraced it. Hell, consider that scene when Rock during the debate basically yells bullshit on his opponent Nick Searchy over the issue of guns, and asking God to bless not just America, but the whole world.

That too brings back that pivotal moment in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain announced to suspend activities to solve the failing economy, including skipping the first debate. I think his party were outright shocked when Obama instead called his bluff, planned to do the debate anyway, and famously quoted as saying: "A President has to do two things at once." Well McCain despite his pledge slinked back to the debate in time. Hey, who's the pussy now?

Now one sequence in STATE I hated when I saw it in theatres was when Rock makes his great come-back this side of Truman by airing cartoonish ads of how the KKK and Osama Bin Laden endorse Searchy. I thought it was rather ridiculous and way too far fetch to be credible, even with the dirty commercials we've gotten before. Then last year, all those viral racist propaganda of how Obama was a socialist Arab Muslim terrorist foreigner (mostly produced in the South), including recently the head of my state's Republican party producing a CD which called him "The Magical Negro." As a Tennessean, I apologize that he humiliated my state with such a stupid public spectacle that it evidently cost him the RNC Chairmanship. Seriously dude, we're still having to live with the fact that the Klan was formed in Pulaski. Don't make it worse for us ok? If we aren't careful, we'll be equal to Alabama or Mississippi soon enough.

How about also Rock and Obama both have white advisors who greatly factored into their victory (David Axelrod for Obama, Dylan Baker for Rock)? Consider too that Rock appears in a TNA wrestling match, while Obama (with Hillary Clinton and McCain) taped a short address for WWE. Obama is an avid basketball fan, and so is Rock. Sharon Stone also sponsored both.

Man, I'm getting scared with all these parallels. Hopefully, in the never-made STATE sequel, Rock didn't appoint bitter rival Arnot to Secretary of State to neutralize him as a possible future threat. Maybe too that Mac is wise to keep his damn mouth shut, or since his death in office he's replaced by little brother Dave Chappelle. I'm Vice-President bitch! Rock's archnemesis in his quest for re-election would be Tina Fey, playing a clueless Governor of a western state who knows more about hunting moose than politics, and maybe her running-mate would be former doctor-turned-southern governor Richard Jenkins, or slick charming douchebag Mormon, played by Donny Osmond.*

But I'll give Rock something over Obama, which is when Rock personally buses his original constituents on election day, which Obama and his $800 million campaign couldn't apparently find the time to do. He'll get another chance in 4 years.

Yes He Will!

*=Apologies to Donny Osmond, for I doubt that he is a douchebag in reality, or at least I hope he isn't. I didn't know any other Mormon actor. Just so you all know, not all Mormons are shitheads like Mitt Romney.

GET CARTER (2000) - **

In the current issue of MEN'S JOURNAL, current feel-good Hollywood comeback story Mickey Rourke recounts of how at the ebb of his career, he got a thug part in GET CARTER primarily because star Sylvester Stallone believed Rourke could convincingly beat him up. Plus, it was a favor. When the studio offered Rourke only scale wages that insulted him, he balked. His paycheck then doubled, but later on the set he learned that Sly himself put up the extra money to get Rourke. With Rourke possibly going to win the Oscar for THE WRESTLER, he's just signed on to Stallone's all-star action picture THE EXPENDABLES, so I guess he's paying back his debts.

Anyway, Stallone was right for one nice scene, you do buy that Rocky gets his ass handed to him by Rourke. I really liked how they confront each other at a mansion party, both walk off together to an unoccupied room, and proceed to brawl. Earlier, when Rourke smugly asks Sly how pretty he is, Rambo replies: "Yeah, like cat-piss in the snow." Damn, a pity that the rest of the movie aint that good, nowhere near it.

Based off the 1971 British crime classic which I haven't seen, the GET CARTER remake has an ambition in theory that I should dig. That is, parlay itself like a 1970s crime picture would do when hampered by the R-rating standards of that epoch, where you could get a titty and some violence, but no where as excessive or graphic as say SIN CITY can be these days. But many of those simple no-bullshit slick flicks still kickass not from content, but from great acting and great scripting for which those thespians could become utter badass with. Apparently the original GET CARTER with Michael Caine is supposedly such a film.

A fine example for this update is when Sly confronts a rapist drug-dealer at an apartment balcony, who unsurprisingly pleads Stallone not to kill him. "You killed yourself." We cut to Sly leaving the building, and he walks by a car, where the sex offender fell onto.

Yet in spite of good intentions and a nice touch or two, I surprisingly found myself never really giving a serious shit about what was happening in GET CARTER. I mean Stallone, a native of Hell's Kitchen in New York City, is credible as a mob enforcer from the white ghetto. I can't blame Sly for this failure unlike his other turkeys. He certainly seems to be game to play a ruthless bastard thug who in a single-minded quest to find out who murdered his brother. Thus he goes back home to bury his sibling...and his killer.

But something about this movie just doesn't work, nor I ever cared about what was happening. In other words, this is the sort of action set-up and picture I usually eat up for breakfast, and I yet here I am unsatisfied. What is the fatal flaw? I enjoyed Steven Seagal's URBAN JUSTICE, which had a similar premise and similar resolve with a micro-budget compared to CARTER, so what is the difference?

I think what comes to mind immediately is that Sly's character itself in CARTER never early on gets a good opportunity to display undisputed badassry, to make flow the sort of movie that I described above. Sure Stallone beats up people in Las Vegas, but so what? In JUSTICE, Seagal meets his ex-wife at their son's funeral. You expect her to bitch at Seagal for finally coming back or whatever, but instead she only makes him promise to kill whoever was responsible, that's it. Compare that to CARTER, which like most other action pictures with such a premise, the relatives of the dead whine or complain at the avenging protagonist.

See my point? JUSTICE and the CARTER demarcate for one was unique regarding the hero's state of mind, and the other wasn't. Rhona Mitra plays a throwaway mistress/junkie in CARTER. I'm sure she from DOOMSDAY could easily beat up Stallone, not because he's weak in contrast to her DOOMSDAY persona with that robotic-surveillance camera for an eyeball.

Take the sequence when Sly meets millionaire/criminal Alan Cumming at his office. I like that Cumming claims his pornography racket partner Rourke (and threatening blackmailer) killed Sly's brother, but Stallone was keen enough to see through this bullshit, that Cumming only wanted him to conveniently eliminate a problem. Just imagine though, at their skyscraper office, with a giant window overlooking the whole city, Sly could simply say to Cumming: "This looks like a tall building. How long you think it would take a body to hit the sidewalk?" Remember HEAT when DeNiro is sincere about his capabilities with that lucid warning over the phone? Such a simlpe moment which carries heavy weight is what GET CARTER so desperately craves, but never finds.

Then again, I doubt director Stephen T. Kay has that much imagination within him. His career consists basically of this, several episodes of THE SHIELD, and that lousy horror movie BOOGEYMAN. He also co-wrote THE MOD SQUAD, which absolutely sucked. I mean for the most part in CARTER, his filmatic goals are solid but then he pulls an idiotic editing regime at a rave, such so-confusing-I'm-bored nonsense that Tony Scott and Michael Bay are real big fans of.

A website years back voted this as the worst remake ever, and I totally disagree. It's worthless and probably pointless, but I wonder if those ballot casters would change their vote if they saw last year's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD REMAKE, or any of Michael Bay's horror rapes.

Hopefully, the real GET CARTER kicks as much as people over in the UK claim. As a nod, the CARTER remake casted the original Jack Carter in Michael Caine as a gangster/businessman. I enjoyed him, but wow his final sequence is just so awkward out-of-place with rest of this CARTER, nevermind his big reveleation making absolutely no fucking sense at all. Then I find out that Caine was brought back for more scenes after test audiences liked him.

I guess they were big fans of the genuine GET CARTER, and wished they were seeing that version instead.

Hey Ebert - I bet you can't write a review w/o a curse in it! Sheesh. You think the Sun Times would ever publish any of your stuff?

WALL.E (2008)

6/10

Boring, boring, boring. Can't believe this did and still would sweep the awards with such a sappy inconsistent script. 6 only for the technical aspects of the first half of the movie.

I disagree completely. I absolutely loved WALL-E. Just curious why you think it was an inconsistent script?

I have only seen the previews of it. I was thinking of taking my grandkids to see it, BUT I too heard it was boring. It seems like something that would appeal to young kids though.


TIS

I enjoyed Wall-E too.

Hey, don't pick on RR. I like his reviews, potty mouth and all.

Nice one on Get Carter RR. You remember it better than I. As a Sly fan, I admit, it's easily forgotten. Even tho, he did look HOT!


TIS

I'm just trying to encourage him to write better, and more professionally, assuming that's what he wants to do. It'd take too long to read thru them all and fix his grammar, but the language is Step #1.

Whoa whoa, now you read my "rambling long bore" reviews?

Wow, this year is indeed all about Change.

No no, I never said I read them. They're way too long.

Then how can you give me good fucking advice?

I mean, Then how can you me good plucking advice?

Well, for start you could write them shorter, in this day and age attention spans are very short.

A huge shuttle with lots of probes plants only one explorer on Earth. It is the first thing WallE has seen in 700 hundred years, or he doesn't know better not to hang around the shuttle or watch out for the bitchy cone! Robots want to hold hands. So lame! Apparently in 700 hundred years they've developed feelings, but not speech. All they can do in that department is to call each other's names with very bad voices. Sex is obsolete, yet there are fat babies and not clones. And a plant's seed somehow ends up under an old box(?) and then grows there without any light. And again somehow it survives being in vacuum without being ripped apart for a significantly long time.

Don't even start me on the single brain cell moral of the story.

All in all, icing on a shoe box.

I know this will be like reading a foreign language to you, but how about:



See how easy that is?

If you want to sound intelligent, then use intelligent words. And I don't mean more 16-letter words, but fewer 4-letter words. It's one thing if you're writing dialog in a novel. It's another if you want to be taken seriously in syndication.




P.S. If you're looking for good advice on fucking, that's another matter.

Watched WE OWN THE NIGHT at the week-end.

It was pretty good. A grim and gritty crime caper. Right up my street.

P.S. Ronnie,the original GET CARTER was filmed in my home town,Newcastle, so it a particular fave of mine. I liked the remake as well though!

Fuck that noise, fix the grammar but keep the style.

I remember seeing previews of that before it came out. It looked pretty good, but if I recall wasn't on the theater for very long.


TIS

I usually don't bother with grammar clean-up because I usually think of BB.Net and FCM as like your local friendly bar. You bring your shit, but necessarily get dressed up seriously for the occassion.

Also, thanks for that constructive advice. I appreciate such, negative and positive, when people actually read my reviews.

Yeah, WE OWN THE NIGHT was a pretty good trashy street crime melodrama. I don't get the hate at it, I really don't.

Man, I'm more and more intrigued to just Netflix the original GET CARTER. It sounds like the real deal.

Also, you live where Michael Caine shot a movie at? Wow.

As a semi-professional movie critic, watching the original of a movie you review makes a lot of sense.

One of my only claims to fame Ronnie.....

It was the 70's and most of the landmarks and bars are gone now but it is still Newcastle in all it's grim glory!

just watched "Jackie Brown", which was the last Tarantino flick that I still had to watch. I believe QT himself said that this is a "smaller" work than "Pulp Fiction", but the hype must've been so huge at that time that "Jackie Brown" couldn't keep up with half of it. my opinion is that it's only 1/4 of an hour too long. okay, half an hour. but that's what I think of 2/3 of the movies I see that run longer than 120 minutes. the acting and the characters and of course the dialogues are all great and I don't have no problems with slow-paced movies, so I have to say I liked it.

Sure, and yet doesn't it give the remake a honest chance without bias? Not that the GET CARTER remake took advantage of this....

Anyway, I'll Netflix the original.

I think this was his only movie he didn't write. It's based on an Elmore Leonard book, who was writing Tarantino style books decades before Tarantino was around.

Well, I got my new review ready Geoff, but I fear the rambling and cursing remains. You mind calling in an exorcist for me?

If you think cursing makes you sound more intelligent, then go for it. Cuz God knows all the public swears that Einstein, Hawkings, and Lennon have used in their lives were quite substantial... so I wouldn't expect anything different from you. lol

Rambling is fine, though... I'm very guilty of that myself, so that means it's okay.

Just quickly, though... I saw SAW V the other night. I LOVED the first one, and continue to like the franchise and all in general (because I like the genre)... but is it me, or, are they not exponentially stepping-up the traps to make things more exciting like they should? Sure, each episode had one or two great new traps, but to me, I think at this point, they should be so ridiculously more clever, to prevent any yawning in the seats. I feel the franchise has declined (in general) down the line -- BUT -- I still think they're better than many others. But they need to step it up a few notches I think. Show some fucking GORE for once, maybe??

It's cussing, not cursing!