The September Issue

Once as I was lunching in the glamorous Gehry cafeteria at Conde Nast headquarters, I was stunned as the lunch time chatter-buzz instantaneously receded, like a wave broken on craggy rocks, into hushed, reverent silence. The cause? A joint spotting of Conde Nast owner Si Newhouse and his most famous employee, Anna Wintour, sylph-like even in woolly Chanel tweed of pink and mauve. While you could have heard a pin drop, it was the click, click of her serious pair of Louboutins that filled the vacuum.
I was expecting the film The September Issue to ride that same emotional wave of fear and admiration, cresting with occasional panic. Anna Wintour, is after all, the inspiration for the diabolic boss who wears Prada and torments underlings, designers and bosses alike until they quiver like fat-free jello in an earthquake. Instead of focusing on the Conde Nast-y, the film focuses on the busy and perilous intersection of fashion and media at which Ms Wintour finds herself directing traffic; continuously keeping the flow moving forward and helping those around her avoid calamitous crash and burn accidents. As though it weren’t hard enough to put out a magazine that people want to buy month after month, she is an industry lynch pin, cementing deals between talented designers and retail firms, giving designers manufacturing, production and yes- even runway show advice. And the film is balanced enough that you can see, as with a rainbow fading into sunlight, the blurry edges of Ms. Wintour’s difficult reputation, but appreciate all of her brilliance.

The Ugly Truth

Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars. Oh… and surprise everybody! Men are also after sex!- Such are the premises of this screwball comedy.
Katherine Heigl stars as control freak Abby, a career minded news producer (much like Heigl’s uptight anchorwoman in Knocked Up btw), who nurtures conventional, idealistic, romantic notions about relationships. Chauvinist and men-are-after-sex-proponent Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler) enters her life when she is forced to produce his show, The Ugly Truth, and an amusing battle of the sexes begins as Mike bets Abby that he can help her win over her gorgeous, “perfect on paper” (and on her checklist) neighbor- if she follows The Rules (so to speak) of his playbook. Yes, it’s an ugly truth, the characters are more caricatures than deeply developed characters, and there are no big revelations about love or about relationships in this movie. But the real Ugly Truth is that Hollywood makes very few laugh-out-loud from start to finish and hold-your-sides funny movies. The great news is, The Ugly Truth IS one of those few.

Two Lovers? More like Two Very Boring Hours.

Two Lovers? Forgive my naivete, but I thought that being lovers implied either being in love, or at the very least some hot, passionate sex. Sadly, there is very little of either in Two Lovers. Joaquin Phoenix, usually so shining in his portrayal of wounded, flawed characters searching for normalcy and burning to forget their pain (The Village, Walk The Line), plays to type as Leonard…so why this time is Leonard so dull and flat? Answer: the script sucks! What else can you say about a script so implausible that someone throws a ring into the ocean, and then stumbles on that same ring 5 minutes later? The characters unfortunately are even more pathetic than the plot- one lover, Sandra, is characterized only as a Jewish girl desperate for a relationship, while Gwyneth Paltrow’s Michelle is even more vulnerable and damaged than Leonard, (making him want to save her), and Leonard himself is so selfish, taking advantage of Sandra on the one hand, and throwing himself at Michelle immediately upon her break-up with her boyfriend, that it is hard to care who he ends up with or whether he even lives or dies.

Here’s the quick and (dirtier than anything in this movie) math: if in love, Two Halves don’t make a whole, then three half-assed characters certainly don’t make Two Lovers. Or a very good movie.

Harry Potter 6: The Vanishing Cabinet ate the climax!

In the novel, the last scene of The Half Blood Prince, is a truly, gripping and shocking affair; Harry and Dumbledore arrive from their search for the horcrux to see the Dark Mark over Hogwarts and Death Eaters roaming the castle- they are fighting for their lives. It is fast paced, full of action, and the climax- Dumbledore's death at Snape's hands is both a shocking betrayal and a cliffhanger setting up the 7th book. The film though, leads you through those events with all the thrill and urgency of the "It's A Small World Ride" at Disneyland. What a waste of some of the most exciting material in the Harry Potter series!

Ice Age 3; Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Three-quels are only rarely thrilling; and the bones of those that tried and failed are everywhere; Pirates of the Carribean 3, Shrek 3 and…(shudder) The Godfather 3… Luckily, Ice Age 3 is not as desperate as the aforementioned, but it certainly lacks the magic spark of the first two Ice Ages. Part of the problem is that the action in this film feels so forced; Syd gets captured by a giant T Rex after stealing her eggs, and so the whole crew, including a pregnant Ellie, goes looking for him. Not only is it tough to care that Syd gets captured, but it is tough to feel that he didn’t deserve capture, and once you’ve accepted that, you realize that if the T Rex didn’t eat him at once…he probably isn’t in that much danger anyways. The addition of a new stock character, Buckminster, livens things up a bit, but doesn’t make you care about what happens to these characters, and this despite the fact that this tale has all the sap and gooey-ness of the La Brea Tar Pits. The lone ray of sunshine is Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel, who manically dances his way around the dinosaur kingdom (figuratively and literally this time) in search of the nut that is his soulmate. But sadly, while Scrat lights up the screen, the flickers of the most excellent Scrat are too few and far between to truly enlighten the whole film, and we are left waiting for the end of the film ...and the re-dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Transformers 2; Revenge of The Fallen

This movie is a teenage boy’s fantasy; fantastic fight scenes, sleek cars, and hot babes getting dirty (ok...just oil and sand- blockbusters have to be PG-13 in order to sell trillions of tickets!). Sam Witwicky, the lucky, if not lovable, loser, is back, and so it seems are the Decepticons as they continue to seek the shard of The Allspark that just happened to get caught on Sam’s favorite sweatshirt. (I guess, they don’t make washing machines like they used to...) The Decepticons race to recover this shard, and therein we discover that the title is actually a clever pun- sorry, I meant “a pun”- on the word “Fallen”- as those who will take revenge on us earthlings will not only be the previously felled Megatron, but his overlord boss “The Fallen”, who looks like a cross between the bad guys in Aliens and The Matrix (both of which managed to spawn much better sequels than Transformers btw). The Allspark cube of course, was nothing but a clue to a bigger mystery, and so the race continues, with plenty of excellent special effects and some of the most appallingly, embarrassingly misogynistic and racist scenes in recent movie memory, (featuring Sam’s weeping, wailing mess of a mother, a robot humping Megan Fox’s leg, and a ridiculous scene in which Megan Fox lands with her face in someone’s crotch), as well as the awkward and not-even-remotely funny exchanges between the jive-talking Skids and Mudflap. Aside from that there is plenty of awesome action, teenage boy humor (such as focusing on the large balls on one of the Decepticons), and lots of danger before the good guys win. But oh no! A few of those mean old Deceptikons managed to sneak away- meaning that we are facing yet another helping of Transformers. As they say, Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Up!

Pixar has done it again: released a film with incredible rainbow saturated graphics, a storyline with the unexpected twists and turns of an airplane in turbulence, and some very endearing characters. Up is a spirited tale of two unlikely travelers, a grumpy old man living in the past and a well meaning, but inept, chocolate hoarding young boy searching for a father figure. Together, they float to South America in a house pulled by thousands of balloons, where they take on the jungle, a pack of talking dogs, and a murderous, ferociously competitive explorer. Along the way, they teach each other a great deal about love, life, and loyalty. Humor “a-bounds” especially within the dog pack; from the curiously high pitched tones ascribed to vicious Doberman Alpha, to the lovable furball Dug’s attempts to kidnap “the snipe”, to the continuous squirrel induced lapses in the dog pack’s concentration. But the film isn’t all easy laughs, as sadness and regret are the engines to the house, dirigible and the story. However, there is just enough sweetness, redemption and friendship mixed in so that, like the plethora of helium balloons that pull up the house, the film is truly…. Uplifting.