Not a Review: I Declare a Theme Day

I, Trent Sketch, declare that today, Monday, March 12, 2007, shall officially be known as Award Winning Film day. You can expect reviews of many award winning films to appear today on this site, to help wash the taste of that gay shepherd movie out of my mouth.

Expect reviews of:
The Lives of Others
Children of Men
Pan's Labyrinth
Battle Royale
Jesus Camp

And more to come today.

That is all.

Review: Brokeback Mountain

I figure that, since I technically didn't post yesterday (oops), I might as well roll with the piss everyone off game and recreate my three reviews of the film Brokeback Mountain.

Let's go back, way back, to a simpler time, when I trusted in film critics and Hollywood Awards Hype to tell me what I should see and appreciate as groundbreaking independent cinema.

December 11, 2005:
I arrive at my favorite little chain movie house in NYC to an opening night screening of Brokeback Mountain. I hear it is one of the best films of the year, and quite possibly a film that will survive the ages as one of the truly great pieces of filmed art. I had read the novella before I even knew there would be a film adaptation and loved the tragic story and beautiful, sparse prose.

2 Hours and 14 Minutes Later:
That is the single worst film I have seen all year. My God, it makes Saw II look like Rosemary's Baby, and even I'll admit that the Saw franchise is mediocre at best (let's save that for another review...). It was 2 hours and 14 minutes of cloud porn, with an occasional beat down or gay sex scene. Anna Faris was incredible (of course she is, she is the single most underrated movie actress consistently working today: thanks Scary Movie franchise for simultaneously creating and destroying her career in one gloriously so-bad-it's-good farce), and that cloud porn sure was pretty, but NOTHING.HAPPENED. Nothing. Heath Ledger was strong, Jake Gylenhaal was just awful (just like in Donnie Darko - another review for another day), like I always knew he was. Michelle Williams was far better than the character she played and full well deserved the attention she received. But this was a film with more shots of clouds than plot, and truly, if it had been about a straight romance: it would have been critically panned for being an exercise in self-indulgent filmmaking.

2 Weeks Later:
Maybe I overreacted. It was opening night, I wasn't feeling my best, the theater was overcrowded, and I was tired. So, I'll go buy another ticket for Brokeback Mountain. Just in case, I'm bringing a magazine and sitting near the aisle.

2 Hours and 14 Minutes Later:
That was a great issue of ReadyMade Magazine: I have some great ideas for projects to do over break. Oh, the movie? God awful. That score is one of the most snore-inducing things I have ever heard, yet everyone talks about how brilliant it was. Jake Gylenhaal is a little better than I thought (on the scale of From Justin to Kelly acting, with Justin Guarini being the lowest and Anika Noni Rose being the highest, he falls into a firm Greg Siff - which for non-American Idol obsessists, is the equivalent of, say, David Arquette in Scream III: passable, not great, but good enough to barely create a realistic character and advance the story), while Heath Ledger is worse than I thought. The accent is great, as is the physical embodiment of the character - including not moving his jaw - but that's as far as it went. No real emotion (other than that great beat down scene at the fireworks I love so much: drunken rage rocks! woo!). Anna Faris and the rest of the female cast acted circles around the males, and that's fitting, considering they were in the only scenes that weren't just an excuse to shoot pornographic scenes of clouds slowly passing by a mountaintop. What the hell? Stop with the cloud porn! Does Ang Lee have a fetish or something, because this isn't his only film that likes to focus on clouds. I mean, Quentin Taratino has a thing for big ugly amazonian feet, but at least they aren't in every damn frame of his films. Jeez! Wake-up people: It's a bad movie.

Three Weeks Later:
Hmm...a whole lot of award recognition for Brokeback Mountain. Maybe I should give it one last go...

2 Hours and 14 Minutes Later:
Those poor clouds. Wait: did I really just spend 33 dollars in less than two months to rewatch a film that I absolutely hate in NYC? Fuck that. Brokeback Sucks.

March 5, 2006:
What do you mean this won for best score, adapted screenplay, and direction at the Oscars? Well, look on the bright side: how much worse could a Gustavo Santaololla score get?

November 10, 2006:
Gosh, Babel would have been such an amazing film if it wasn't for that awful score. So boring and repeti...oh, of course...it's that same guy that did Brokeback. Suddenly I appreciate that score so much better: at least it had more than one chord repeated over and over. Shoot, this score makes Notes on a Scandal sound like Mozart.

February 25, 2007:
WTF? They gave him Best Score AGAIN? Screw this, I'm going to the opera.

So you see class: God really does hate me.

Please feel free to comment with all your hate messages. I've taken far worse flack for far greater films than Brokeback Mountain.

I'd link to a Brokeback Mountain video, but I'm afraid it would eat away the rest of my soul.

Review: Bam's Unholy Union

All right, sorry for the late posting. Even though I have officially been on spring break for over 24 hours now, I have done more work in the past 24 hours than I have the past three years at my school. Thanks to my ridiculous over achieving ways in high school, my mother - who works in the school system - will forever be entangled in the going ons of my high school's drama club (former Thespian Society President here and star of every damn show ever while I was in school, as well as acting stage manager, costume designer, set builder, lobby displayer, graphic designer, programs, tickets, flyers, promotion, advertising, fundraising, choreographer, assistant director, lighting, sound, effects, and that was just the last show I did). This year, they are staging Disney's High School: The Musical, and right now I need to save the off-stage events from complete distruction. Go Wildcats! Woot.

Trent Sketch Safety Tip: Avoid the movie like the plague people. Run! Run! Run for your lives!

On with the reviews.

I hate Jackass. I hate Wildboys. I hate the new Celebrity Death Match. I hate the new Road Rules. And I hate Viva la Bam. Why? Because they are utterly stupid displays of ridiculous stunts that many people I know are dumb enough to repeat in person. There is no redeeming quality to any of this drivel.

So how can I hate that and inexplicably love Bam's Unholy Union? Simple: I love drama. The stupid stunts are balanced out with pure bitchiness from Bam's wife Missy and his entertaining mother April, and Bam actually gets stopped from doing the worst of his work. If he does go through with something that would make Jesus cry, Missy makes him pay for it any way she can. And best of all: unlike the other marriage reality shows on MTV (Newlyweds, Till Death Do Us Part, and that unwatchable Travis Barker/Hooker Wife show), Missy and Bam are very clearly in love. It's no reality sham for money, there is actual chemistry here that makes it seem like Bam may actually be a human being and not just a worthless meat puppet also-ran skateboarder.

Hopefully, for once (please?), MTV won't destroy every ounce of goodwill I have towards a show by running into the ground with way too many seasons that try to recreate what was enjoyable about the first (cough Real World cough).

Review: The Notorious Bettie Page (2006)

I was not entirely sure what I would think of this film when I watched it today. It's been on my to see list since I read rave reviews of Gretchen Mol's titular performance, but I also read that the film wasn't nearly as good as her performance.

After watching it, I believe I might need to revisit the Sketchy's, because this is certainly one of the best made films of 2006. The film is a biopic of former pin-up queen Betty Page, focusing on her photographic and film work as a gateway into her actual personality and beliefs.

The technical film making is spot on: the various qualities of black and white/color film stock capture the actual passing of time in the film in a realistic way, while adding a visual interest many biopics neglect in favor of superficial analysis. The most interesting visual trick is showing the actual covers of magazines Bettie appeared on with Gretchen Mol posing as if the shoot were happening live. The direction is spot on and I am eager to see more work from Mary Harron (of American Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol Fame). If she keeps choosing smart projects like these, she will certainly become a force to be reckoned with in film.

The performances are terrific, especially Gretchen Mol as Bettie and Lili Taylor as Paula Klaw - a photographer who shot most of Bettie's work. Mol captures the purity and innocence of Bettie with great ease, while Taylor pulls off a funny - yet caring - money loving business woman to perfection.

The film is great, but be forewarned: there is a whole lot of nudity and bondage in the film - tastefully executed, but there none the less. If this makes you uncomfortable, I probably wouldn't recommend seeing it. But for those that can handle the content, The Notorious Bettie Page is a surprisingly uplifting, inspiring tale of a woman who wanted to live her life the best way she knew how, no matter what.

Review: Norbit

So even though I'm not feeling much better, I realized that if I didn't start posting in this blog again, it would end up dying. And dying isn't fun. Believe me, I've had way too many failed projects that weren't nearly this much fun or rewarding (woot! 3.70 via Google, only 96.30 more and I can collect!).

I am not very proud but certainly pleased to say that I did not pay a dime to see Norbit, and neither did my darling mother. A family friend apparently buys every bootleg available, and I will be working my way through a classy stack over spring break (2007: NJ Suburbs, now where'd I put my swimmin' trunks?) including Stomp the Yard, The Hitcher (remake), and Black Christmas (remake). I might even build up enough nerve to finally watch Dreamgirls (might, Beyonce scares me, yo).

So, let's start with the positive. The make-up is incredible. The only character that looks anything like Eddie Murphy in the film is Norbit, and that still looks quite different considering the impressive under bite, scrunch to the face, and head protecting fro (it's in the film, I'm not making this up). Mr. Wong - an elderly racist Chinese man (not making this up, yo) - looks convincing elderly and bald, while Rasputia looks realistically obese and bitch-faced. I'm just waiting for when, ironically, the film that lost Eddie Murphy his Oscar is nominated for one (best make-up, more of a lock that Click was).

Now that we have that out of the way: acting sucks, characters suck, pacing sucks, continuity sucks, lighting sucks (and it wasn't just the bootleg DVD recording that looks like a five year old with developmental problems made), sets sucked, costumes were ok, direction sucked, music sucked, sound editing sucked. Surprisingly, the screenplay was rather complex for the series of fart/racist jokes it held (my personal favorite running gag: Mr. Wong saying Rasputia was a big ugly gorilla - not joking, people, I'd say watch for yourself but I will not be responsible for people poking out their own eyes or busting their eardrums to stop the madness). If a more adept director had handled the film with a cast that wasn't just Eddie Murphy/phoning it in, this could have been a heartfelt little comedy. Thankfully, I will never have to worry about that ever again.

Suddenly, I have a headache again.

Trent Sketch safety tip: don't watch this film. It's bad for your health.