How I learned to Love Liza (Sex and the City 2)

So I've been on CBC TV and Radio for the past couple days cataloguing all the things that are wrong with Sex and the City 2. The never-ending tide of brand-name goods. The guileless zeal the fab four display for their divalicious lifestyle. The colour-blind avalanche of designer disasters.

But....there are a couple things I liked about the sequel.

So in the name of positivity here is (semi spoiler warning...)

A SHORT LIST OF SOME GOOD THINGS IN SATC2:

It's funny. Occasionally. I will say the writer/director Michael Patrick King has a knack for staging the outrageous. Two scenes stick in my mind. First, Carrie and Mr. Big in bed listening to a screaming baby in one room, and Samantha's wild animal sex in the other. Watch the trailer if you want to see the punchline.

Speaking of Samantha, my other favourite moment comes as Sam has just finished proselytizing about the power of vitamins for fighting menopause. Then she sees Charlotte's new nanny, (played by Alice Eve) a voluptuous vision, bounding bra-less towards them. Samantha's mouth hanging wide open crammed with vitamins is classic.

Carrie. I hate to say it but Carrie is still the best character Sarah Jessica Parker has played. When SATC works it's like the best of Woody Allen crossed with Nora Ephron. But I think part of the problem with the sequel is that Carrie's got it all. In the TV series she was still a scrapper. Sure she had the shoes, but only one apartment and hadn't hit it big as a writer. (At least not at the beginning.) Now Carrie has her man, the swanky NYC digs, she's a best selling author with presumably an unlimited credit card. Hard to feel her pain when it's whether to wear Dior or Dolce to dinner.

Liza. Yup, Liza Minnelli. The queen of Carbaret shows up at the ultimate and I mean ultimate gay wedding to officiate. (There are swans!)

Now when she first appeared and spoke, well to be honest, I felt a little sorry for her. But then Liza performed a cover of Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies." Now I'm not a fan, or at least I wasn't. But I gotta say Liza owned that song. She rocked it. Great performance from a real woman that almost, almost made Sex and the City 2 worth seeing.

3-Duped

I got a little glimpse of the future last night.
And it involved a lot of people wearing funny glasses.

I happened to see two different 3-D experiences. First, Samsung’s new 3D TV, and then the 3-D film Clash of the Titans.

Care to guess which was the better experience?

It was the TV.
The screen was crisp and the graphics hovered out in front of the set like something out of Minority Report. The content wasn't much, a loop of sporting events, but 30 seconds of a soccer game was all I needed to understand the potential.

Of course, for the full 3-D experience you'll need a new TV, a new Blu-Ray player, and don't forget the special 3-D glasses. A steal at $249 a pair.

Well now, perhaps the movie is looking a little more affordable eh? An extra 3 dollars a ticket doesn't seem so bad if you get a 3-D experience in return… Except this isn't real 3-D. This is a 2-D film, converted into 3-D.

Seems the producers of Clash of the Titan decided they'd spend an extra 5 million to convert the flat 2-D film into 3-D. Or almost 3-D. Call it 2 and half.

Now, I’m not a fan of 3-D but I’m know when it’s done right. Avatar. Coraline. Up.
Of the new breed of 3-D films Clash of the Titans is the worst viewing experience I have seen in years. Some scenes have no depth at all. Take off your glasses and you'll see little or no difference. Often one or two characters appear to hover in front of the background. The effect is basically that of a children’s pop-up book.

Many film blogs have relished sharing the details that the producers actually outsourced the 3-D conversion to a shop in India. Meanwhile SFX wizards are pointing out that most theatres aren't equiped to properly project 3-D films. The polarized sunglasses you wear darken the image and hurt picture quality. One can imagine the animators who worked on the new and improved Kracken crying when they see the muddy results.

Now, let’s be clear. Without or without 3-D, Clash of the Titans is no future classic. It’s the Showgirls of action films. A quick and silly sword and sandals adventure, (regarding Medusa, our hero says “Don’t look the bitch in the eyes”) with a plot that belongs in the Mighty Hercules cartoon.

But who cares right? We just want to watch Sam Worthington slash stuff!

Meanwhile movie theatres are converting to 3-D capable systems as fast as they can. Far from being a novelty, 3-D films are beginning to clutter up the multiplex forcing theatre owners to make tough decisions. The charming How to Train You Dragon barely got a foothold before Clash of the Titans came along.

But the worst effect of the return of 3-D is how it brings out Hollywood’s shallow side.
Now more than ever it's not about how good a picture is, it's about the spectacle.


The industry considers movie like State of Play or Duplicity failures. All that money for big movie stars and nothing to show for it? So why waste time writing something smart and hard to sell? If you have a movie with a great visual component just slap a 3-D on that title and you’re set!

So get ready for Tron 3-D, Smurfs 3-D, Piranha 3-D, Harry Potter 3-D, and Erector Set…3-D.
(Really. )



A now in honour of the next ten years of squinting through sunglasses, a classic from Timbuk3.


*Update*
The Big Picture has an interesting take on why Movie Stars should fear 3-D the most.

More Mel

This week's radio/podcast review is Edge of Darkness.

In short it's a mess. Cramming the plot from the original BBC miniseries (right) into a 2hour flick just doesn't work.

The big question of course is just how Mel would do, returning acting after an 8 year absence.

I have to say the results are disappointing. The new Mel just seems angier. It's Mel against the world, nothing new.

If you're looking for a little more context on the return of Mel, let me suggest two links.

This is an interview with Mel done by a local entertainment reporter who had the temerity to bring up the whole racist drunk driver episode. The results are uncomfortable and I'd suggest illustrative.

The Shadow in his smile, is an excellent article by Geoff Boucher of the LA Times. He actually got to spend some time with the man and gets a sense of how he's struggling to put the past behind him.

As for reasons to watch Edge of Darkness? Danny Huston plays a great piece of corporate scum. Ray Winstone is fine, but really why wouldn't you just rent Sexy Beast instead?

Sorry Spike

I’m sorry Spike.
You see I really want to like Where the Wild Things Are.
The idea of matching skater-boy genius Spike Jonze to the beloved kid lit classic seemed the perfect collaboration. Those monsters were like the grubby teddy bears we all shared. And who better to direct then Spike Jonze? He who taught us to how to be John Malcovich. He who predicted the hipster moustache, when Mike D and the boys shot Sabotage.
So I really wanted to like it.

But, I can’t.
Yes it’s beautiful. The monsters loom large and lovely. It is exactly as I imagined it, well that is until the monsters open their mouths. Suddenly these mud-caked mascots sound like the cast of Felicity. Carol doesn’t like Bob and Ted. K.W. spends too much time with her friends. Judith is always picking on Ira and no one listens to Alexander.

Is this really the fantasy world we envisioned? Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak anointed Spike Jonze because he seemed so boyish himself. Certainly watching Spike and his young surrogate Max get along I can see there’s a part of the director that’s still hiding under the bed with his flashlight.

Childhood is a beautiful thing. But we’ve been living the past for so long Hollywood should be charged with smothering its inner child. You know before Jonze inflated the 20-page book into a blockbuster he’d been working on an adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon?.
And heck, why not?. The past couple years it feels like we’ve done nothing but playing in the past. GI JOE, Star Trek, Land of the Lost. How did we get here where nearly every piece of mainstream entertainment is a version of something else?

I remember a number of years ago when I was running a film club for a group of high school students. After watching a couple clips one of the students remarked how lucky I was to have grown up in the 80s when all the great movies were made.

It’s hard to look at the decade that brought us Police Academy 1 to 6 as a renaissance, but then again as least the good filmmakers were making something out of nothing. E.T. Back to the Future. Ghostbusters. All classic, entertaining films with inspiration to spare. What can we look forward to now? Ghostbusters 3 . Fantastic. Flabby phantom versions of the original.

Time to stop looking backwards.
I think I can survive without the next remake of Clash of the Titans, Thundercats and whatever else is in the pipe.
It’s time to see something new at the movies again.
As the boy king says, "Let the Wild Rumpus Start!"