Buzzzzzzzz.

Click on the picture and head over to The Costa Rica News to read my review for The Green Hornet.

As usual, come back and comment!

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Am I alone in thinking that this looks like it might end up in rankings of "worst movies ever made" for years to come?
When I was a child, The Smurfs were thought to be demons by some crazy-ass religious fanatics, their little action figures would turn to life in the middle of the night and murder the unlucky child who happened to own them. This movie makes me think the crazy religious freaks weren't so far off...
The tagline should be changed to "be scared, be VERY scared".


Isn't Seth Rogen dreamy?
Sigh.

Also Merry Christmas to you all! How did you spend it? watched any good movies? Ate to the point of coma?

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Again, I just love how The Green Hornet is trying to make us think Seth Rogen is the most attractive man on the planet.
See him there, most of his face hidden by the famous mask, just a bit of scruff and a severe, mysterious look. Really, if you had no idea he was starring in this and just happened to see the poster in a theater lobby who would you think is playing this part?

Is it Me...

...or does Seth Rogen look kinda attractive in this newly released still of The Green Hornet?

The Ten Movies That Defined My Decade.

7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(Michel Gondry, 2004)

Out of all the movies I have ever seen, very few have captured "falling in-and out of-love" like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
It's a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, even if the rest of the outfit is completely loopy and strange.
Michel Gondry's interpretation of Charlie Kaufman's screenplay plays out like a stream of hippie consciousness with lo-fi settings and sci-fi straight out of a 50's B movie.
Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey (where is this man's Oscar?) give career best performances as doomed lovers Clementine and Joel who undergo a procedure to have each other erased from their memories.
The premise might sound like a Kaufmanian gimmick, but the truth is that the guy knows what he's doing.
His stories might not be easy to contain within a genre, but the emotions and humanity under all those layers of quirk and weirdness could rival neorrealism.
Watching this movie the first time I was confused most of the time, but I remember leaving the theater completely moved.
I had no idea why and I couldn't understand or relate to it. It wasn't until later when I too had an experience I wanted to erase from my memory forever that I understood what "Eternal Sunshine" had tapped so accurately into.
The pain, the bitterness, the joy, the fun...they all go hand in hand when you look back on a past love affair. The mind has a hard time with hierarchies.
When a movie plays out like a version of thoughts you've had, you know you won't want to forget about it.
This one did that for me.

Be Kind Rewind ***

Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Jack Black, Mos Def
Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz
Paul Dinello, Sigourney Weaver

Michel Gondry was probably born in the Island of Misfit Toys.
Or maybe he just went to school there.
He has a unique view of a world populated by underdogs filled with problems they can't solve because of their impossibility to grasp reality by the horns and choose traditional solutions.
Whether they're having their memories erased or breaking into their crush's apartment, Gondry's characters will probably never face life like the rest of us do.
What's surprising about this behavior is that when it should result completely annoying and impossible to identify with, we end up actually understanding and even envying them.
Somehow everything that Gondry does and starts off sounding like the blowup of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, ends up having a childlike innocence to it that results absolutely refreshing.
"Be Kind Rewind" is no exception; set in Passaic, New Jersey (but looking more like a Cyndi Lauper video) it tells the story of Mike (Mos Def) a clerk who works in a declining VHS rental store owned by Mr. Fletcher (Glover).
Mike's best friend, Jerry (Black), spends his time hanging out at the, often empty, store, when he's not trying to destroy the power plant he lives next to.
When Mr. Fletcher gets notice that his store will be demolished unless he renovates it to keep up with city safety standards, he leaves on a mission to spy on a Blockbuster like chain of movie rentals and discover what makes them successful (no, DVD is not as obvious to him as to us) and leaves Mike in charge.
Following a failed attempt to sabotage the power plant, Jerry becomes magnetized and accidentally erases every tape in Mr. Fletcher's store.
When the store's most loyal customer, Miss Falewicz (Farrow), drops by to rent "Ghostbusters" the guys come up with a plan; they will make their own versions of every movie and rent those.
After recruiting a local woman (Diaz) and claiming that their tapes come from Sweden, which is what makes them special, they create "sweded" versions of every movie, from "Rush Hour 2" to "Driving Miss Daisy" and "2001: A Space Odyssey".
This unleashes Gondry's mad genius and has him come up with alternative ways to represent the films they're recreating, while he delivers an essay on progress, the importance of history (Mike is obsessed with Fats Waller) and a big hearted take on the intrusion of big corporations.
While Mos Def doesn't contribute nothing we hadn't seen before and Jack Black amps up his annoyance factor to the x level, the film's supporting cast is extraordinary.
Glover's innocence is made of the stuff we don't see much of nowadays and Farrow is magical.
In a movie so in love with the movies it's not by chance that Gondry hired Farrow, who after her ethereal performance in "The Purple Rose of Cairo" seems tailor made for stuff like this, when during the movie she says "our past belongs to us we can change it if we want" you will feel transported to the magical New Jersey where the film is set.
Gondry's directorial skills are more polished than ever which in his case means that things look very manufactured. And if there is one thing you wonder about the film's ideology is whether Gondry is trying to say that his sweded versions make justice to the originals or if he's "simply" encouraging in others the creative spirit that inspired him.
The thing about Gondry is that he possesses such a childlike innocence that you never know if he's inviting you to play or winking sarcastically.
If Frank Capra and Jan Svankmajer had a love child he would turn out like "Be Kind Rewind".