Judging by the trailers the issue of her age isn’t brought up except for the usual “I want grandkids/you’re post-pubescent you should be married already” braying from parental figures that applies regardless of the lead’s actual age. In this case, however, the issue that Bullock might not even be able to have kids anymore seems to not come up. This is in an era where Cameron Diaz (eight years Bullock’s junior) is playing a woman who has teenage children (My Sister’s Keeper) and Jennifer Aniston (five years Bullock’s junior) is playing a desperate 40-year-old who is trying to get pregnant by any means possible before it’s too late (Baster).

What are we seeing here? Is it a turn on of the regular Hollywood barriers that don’t allow women of a certain age into many roles, a Hollywood power player getting roles she doesn’t really deserve because of behind the camera clout or just a woman using the fact that she looks younger than she actually is to her advantage? I’m not really sure.

(P.S. I’m perfectly aware that men of the same age face no such bias against working in these types of movies. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that the double standard isn’t sexist.)

In the article I ask Brown about the transition of his show from CBC Radio One to being a podcast. Here’s a sample:

I knew the show wasn’t coming back. If CBC didn’t bring classical music back, after the kind of response it got for the changes to Radio 2, Search Engine wasn’t coming back to FM radio.

You can find the article here.

The Plot:
Speed Racer, looks up to his brother Rex Racer who races cars. However, Rex Racer gets killed and then Speed Racer needs to race to win. Or something. The plot is inconsequential when it isn’t incomprehensible.

Good:
• This movie REALLY looks like a cracked out acid trip. There’s a weird hyperactive energy here that’s all over the place. The final race where Speed wins (spoiler I guess, sorry), ends with a 2001-esque sequence that plays out like a hyperactive visual orgasm. It takes the style of the old cartoon and ramps it up.
• The movie is at it’s best when it’s really pushing how over the top it is. Whenever their crazy shit is going on you can’t tear your eyes away.
• The kid and the monkey are distractingly annoying less often than you would expect (although they are still distractingly annoying).

Bad:
• The plot.
• Any sequence where the hyperactive style goes away and it becomes more like a regular movie. There are two scenes in particular where Speed is getting a pep talk from his parents that just DRAG.
• The kid and the monkey.
• The idea that Racer X could be anyone BUT Speed’s brother Rex. Seriously.
• It was too long.

Overall:
It was impressively insane. I don’t know if it was enjoyable though. Not really. ]]> http://kaszor.com/?feed=rss2&p=38 3 http://kaszor.com/?p=37 http://kaszor.com/?p=37#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 19:34:00 +0000 Daniel Kaszor http://kaszor.com/?p=37 The first summer movie hits, and it features one of the more interesting Marvel heroes and the Robert Downey Jr.’s second coming (or third coming, or maybe fourth).

The Plot:
Tony Stark is a super-genius and a playboy, making billions as the head of Stark Industries, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. After a successful sales call in Afghanistan, Stark is kidnapped and taken captive by a terrorist group called the Ten Rings. They want him to make them a bomb. He makes a suit of robotic armour instead, and then escapes. Having a crisis of conscience, he decides to make a new better suit and become a superhero. Iron Man is born.

Good:
• Hits all of the necessary superhero story points perfectly.
• RDJ portrays Stark as capable, narcissistic, caring and a little crazy. It works.
• The suit is pretty bad-ass.
• The movie has a sense of child-like wonderment tempered with a realistic gravitas. Only not that pretentious.
• Simply fun from start to finish.
• Best post-credits Easter-egg ever.

Bad:
• Jeff Bridges’s bad guy seems a touch too over the top and buffoonish in the movie.
• The stereotypical terrorists.
• Not quite enough Iron Man.

Overall:
Very few summer blockbusters hit the sweet spot of FX, characterization, cheezy fun, seriousness and pace as Iron Man. Although may not be the best summer blockbuster coming out this year (although who knows), it may well be the most easy to enjoy without reservation. Worth seeing on a big screen. ]]> http://kaszor.com/?feed=rss2&p=37 3 http://kaszor.com/?p=36 http://kaszor.com/?p=36#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:18:00 +0000 Daniel Kaszor http://kaszor.com/?p=36 Jackie Chan and Jet Li are the pillars of the Hong Kong and Chinese marital arts flicks making there way to North America in the last fifteen years or so. Too bad that they waited until they were old to team up.

The Plot:
Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano, the poor man’s Shia LaBeouf) is a kid from Boston who likes Kung Fu movies. He gets roughed-up by street thugs, finds a magical staff and falls off a roof. When he wakes up he’s in The Forbidden Kingdom, a version of ancient mythological China. Now, with the help of a drunk and possibly immortal vagabond (Chan), a kind-of assholish monk (Li) and a love interest who talks only in the third person (Yifei Liu), he must return the magic staff to the Monkey King (also Li) and defeat the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou).

Good:
• The action is better than most American produced martial arts movies (this is probably because of the Chinese funding and choreography).
• It’s certainly Jackie Chan’s best American movie.
• The pace is somewhat breezy. It doesn’t drag.
• It plays the hero’s quest angle fairly well.
• It’s kind of fun how they explain Chan and Li playing multiple roles.

Bad:
• You can really see the political aspect between how much presence Jackie Chan and Jet Li have in the film. About 20 minutes in it seems strange that Li’s monk character hasn’t been introduced yet (although he has showed up as the Monkey King), and I realized that it was because that would have unbalanced the movie towards Li and away from Chan. On the same note, the fight between Li and Chan is quite good (considering how old they are), but ends in such a draw as to seem pointless.
• The story arc of the movie is fairly predictable.
• The white lead is bland.
• When kung fu shows up in the “real world” at the end of the movie, it seems out of place.

Overall:
Not something to go out of your way to see if you aren’t a fan of the genre, but not crazy terrible like some were predicting it would be. It does work fairly well as an actiony kids movie. ]]> http://kaszor.com/?feed=rss2&p=36 2 http://kaszor.com/?p=35 http://kaszor.com/?p=35#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:01:00 +0000 Daniel Kaszor http://kaszor.com/?p=35

The Plot:
Peter Bretter (Jason Segal) is a music composer on the CSI-esque show Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime and dating one of the stars of the show Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). She dumps him and he goes on vacation to forget her … only she’s at the same resort as him with her new boyfriend.

Good:
• Some hilarious moments, many related to full-frontal male nudity.
• Did a good job making the sentimental scenes have jokes in them, and remain funny.
• All of the leads acquitted themselves well. Surprisingly Mila Kunis was probably the stand-out, having finally outgrown her Jackie character from That 70s Show.
• Stays funny throughout, despite being a bit long.

Bad:
• Unfortunately the plot focuses on several sitcom like contrivances (the fact that they’re at the same resort, they have rooms next to each other, ect).
• It is a little bit long.
• Although it fulfills the Apatow formula fairly well (R-rated jokes, characters with depth, kind-of more sincere than you expect), it has become a formula at this point and isn’t as surprising.

Overall:
The film is hilarious, but will be just as worth while on video. ]]> http://kaszor.com/?feed=rss2&p=34 2 http://kaszor.com/?p=33 http://kaszor.com/?p=33#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:20:00 +0000 Daniel Kaszor http://kaszor.com/?p=33 This list is fairly mutable. Next week I might rank another movie in a different slot based on my mood. I also haven’t seen the following movies: Gone Baby Gone, The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford, Into the Wild and Knocked Up. Any of these might end up slotted in somewhere. Additionally, I walked out of the room about halfway into my room mate watching Hairspray.

Honourable Mention 4 – Beowulf
I’m not sure that I would put this on a “top” list, but it hangs together fairly well and the final fight between the dragon and Beowulf was the best spectacle scene in a year of spectacle. I don’t know how this will look without the big screen and 3D though.

Honourable Mention 3 – Juno
The movie just seems to be a bit to pleased with itself to really slot into a top spot, but I did enjoy the movie for all the reasons that everyone else did. The film is already being hurt by its own success and it has already become cool to dislike it for its forced quirkiness. I might also just be putting it here just because my list below is so dude-centric.

Honourable Mention 2 – Wristcutters: A Love Story
You know how much money IMDB says Wristcutters made after it was “released” in theatres in November? $231,551. It was getting good reviews coming out of Sundance. In 2006. I have no idea why this quirky comedy about love after suicide couldn’t find its way on the indie scene, and I wish it luck on the DVD circuit.

Honourable Mention 1 – Charlie Wilson’s War
This breezy (in a good way) movie is about a real senator who was integral in getting the US to supply the mujahadin against the Soviets. It stars Tom Hanks, was directed by Mike Nichols and was written by Aaron Sorkin. It was also a good ending away from being my top film of 2007. As it is it’s not quite good enough to get into my top five.

5 – The Bourne Ultimatum
The best threequel in a year of threequels, the third Bourne movie still somehow maintains the series’s trademark of tense action and intelligent thought. Personally, I liked the fact that almost two movies later, Bourne is still messed up by his girlfriend getting killed. The thing does lose a bit of the realistic mayhem that the previous movies got so right (it ended up being quasi-realistic mayhem), but I think that’s okay as the series built to its conclusion.

4 – Hot Fuzz
About two-thirds of the way into Hot Fuzz I didn’t know if I was sold on it. It seemed less like a parody of a cop/buddy movie and more of a weird quasi-comic remake of The Wicker Man. Then everything paid off in one of the most hilarious and over-the-top sequences I’ve seen in years. I want to see it again right now.

3 – There Will Be Blood
There are problems with There Will Be Blood (the final few scenes with the son seemed a bit off to me), but the movie is relentless. This is mostly because of the central performance by Daniel Day Lewis as a man who’s obsession with succeeding over all others feeds his seething hatred of humanity.

2 – Zodiac
This is the only movie that I can remember seeing on home video where I was captivated as if I was watching it on the big screen. It’s a weird movie that stands between a fictionalized account and a straight-up reenactment of events. It’s long and meanders, but damn if I didn’t get absolutely caught up in the slice of history presented here. It’s too bad this came out in March and no one saw it.

1 – No Country for Old Men
The first note of music in No Country for Old Men comes quietly and ominously as the end credits begin to roll, and it feels like the movie is finally allowing you to let out the breath that you’ve been holding in for the whole two hour running time. The Coen Brothers’ last couple movies have been disappointments, but the filmmaking here is so confident and outright perfect that it’s almost impossible not to become enraptured by it. Some people have poo-pooed the ending of No Country, but the more that I thought about it the more that I couldn’t see it any other way.

To put this in perspective I will use an obscure reference. Do you remember the season two finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation? For those who don’t here is a refresher. Riker beams down to a planet and then gets pricked by the stinger of a creature that looks like a log. He then goes back to the ship and has a clip-show in his head. If the Simpsons episode where Bart shakes Homer’s beer too much is the best clip show ever, then this is the worst. Clips are arranged in a nonsensical way and the entire proceeding is almost impossible to sit through. It was also, as mentioned before, the season two finale. The episode completely derailed the narrative momentum of the show. It was an episode created because there was a WGA strike.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I’m personally on the side of the writers. The fact that they don’t get any money for shows sold on the internet is ludicrous (if someone is profiting, the writers should get paid), and it smacks of terrible Hollywood accounting. If there are any big updates I’ll post ‘em here.