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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

September 27, 2007


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2007-09-27

Not magically delicious

Comedian Dane Cook plays a 'lucky charm' in this foul comedy

(Good Luck Chuck, now showing)

D+

Wow! I learned so much at tonight's pre-screening of Good Luck Chuck. Where to begin?

1. First, I learned - despite what my sister insists - that Dane Cook is not really that funny. (Which is odd because the movie's tag-line reads like a curiously sticky-fingered, mistaken cultural reference: "There's something funny about Dane.")

2. I realized Cook has bad acne scars. (Which is weird because his character, Dr. Charlie Logan, and his fat, broken comedic crutch of a sidekick, Dr. Stu (Dan Fogler), continually make fun of a woman who is both: a) fat; and b) acne-ridden.)

This movie is so confused!

Before I continue class, let me fill you in on the plot deets, aka 'suggested reading' for this second-hand lecture (cue: glass of water sipping).

Dr. Charlie - or, 'Chuck' as he's referred to once or twice - is a dentist who unknowingly lives out a childhood curse on his love life, cast long ago by a rebuked admirer at a pre-teen kissing party. The poorly-scripted curse means that every one of Charlie's girlfriends will eventually break up with him and then, immediately, meet their soul-mates/life-partners.

For a while, Chuck loves his loveless hump-fests (especially when word gets out about his 'lucky charm' status), but a developing crush on a hard-to-get penguin aquarium worker named Cam (Jessica Alba) starts to freak his brain, as much as she freaks his body. Will Chuck be able to overcome the curse and his compulsions to win Cam's heart forever? The tedium will kill you.

3. Good Luck Chuck also taught me that filmmaking in Canada - no, not Canadian filmmaking, rather, American movies shot in Canada - must be like a visit to the brothel: it offers cheap, dirty, anonymous practicality. This movie goes to great lengths to hide its Vancouver-centric location, and it might even succeed if you've never been to the Vancouver Aquarium, or watched Danger Bay (both of which totally rule). I guess the film does pay semi-homage to Canada's invention of multi-screen cinema (at Expo 67 in Montreal) with a raunchy 12-screen nude-fucking mosaic.

4. I also learned that lots of revealing sex scenes and sustained full-breast shots in a mainstream comedy make audiences feel really awkward - and not just the old-timers seated in front of me, who left when the Expo 67 tribute started. It's not that I couldn't believe that I was seeing them, it was that I couldn't believe that I couldn't believe I was seeing them.

5. Finally, my evening's most insightful lesson came from Free Press critic Alison Gillmor (Rats! Not her again!). In the lobby of SilverCity Polo Park, during our usual post-mortem chat, Alison made the cleverest of quips to my preview-screening-guest/cinema-free-loader, Winnipeg master sculptor Jennifer Stillwell: "Hopefully, Walter will be your 'lucky charm,' Jennifer, and the next movie you go see will be a good one."
— Walter Forsberg

'There's a food metaphor in here...'

François Girard's latest Silk starts off sweet and tasty but ultimately won't satisfy

(Silk, opens Sept. 28)

Thinking about candy is a good way to get a sense of François Girard's new film Silk. It seems alluring but will ultimately leave you deeply unsatisfied.

The film's essential plot elements, like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, come in three instalments. As the curtain - the cinematic wrapper - opens, the viewers are fed the first morsel as Hervé Joncour (Michael Pitt), a young, 19th century French aristocrat, falls for Hélène (Keira Knightly) and marries her. Mmm, sugary sweet happiness!

Cup two taste-tests Hervé's post-military involvement with silk trade guru Baldabiou (played respectably by Alfred Molina, who's really good at billiards). Baldabiou convinces ol' Herv to go on a long, silkworm smuggling reconnaissance trek to Japan - in an era when foreigners weren't allowed entry for trading purposes, and railroads were scarce. You shouldn't be eating this!

The package's final plot-piece involves a gorgeous Japanese concubine (Sei Ashina) whom Hervé meets while abroad. Craving her luscious chocolate exterior (as no words are ever spoken between the two), Hervé isn't satisfied by seeing her on his first two trips. Hungry for more once back in France, he returns to Japan for a third and climactic time only to find her gone forever, a victim of the violent turmoil at the end of the Edo period, when Japan was opened up to foreign trade. Ah, such bittersweet parting!

Pitt has chanced to work with an array of noted, contemporary auteur-directors (Bernardo Bertolucci for 2003's The Dreamers, Gus Van Sant for 2005's Last Days) but he has never really convincingly nailed a character like he did teenage druggie Donny in Bully (Larry Clark, 2001) or as Jen's jock boy-toy Henry on Dawson's Creek. The boyish juvenilia of his looks too often gets in the way of his performances' attempts to convince us he's a grown man. The same is true for Silk. Here, I'm thinking Popeye Cigarettes. (Oh, sorry, that should be 'Candy Sticks.')

In Silk, director Girard has confected a picture that looks as ravishing as a gingerbread house, but it is just about as empty. Despite a relatively promising historical premise, great period depictions, and the cinematically rare lack of subtitled foreign languages (which expertly aligns viewers with the comprehension levels of its main characters), the movie never really delivers any great revelation when, frustratingly, one always seems imminent. The pacing of the film's three major plot developments effectively whets audience appetites, pumps them up, but, at the end, leaves everyone with upset stomachs. (Boy, this candy metaphor is really growing sour.)

Somewhere down the line, Girard's attempts to follow up his epic and successful The Red Violin (1998) fail, and it might be because he didn't have Don McKellar helping him with the script.

In this, the movie seems ultimately closest to a candy such as Pocky. Initially, you love the saccharine sweetness and enjoy the wares, but by the end, you're unfulfilled and left wondering: "I can't believe I just ate that shit."
— Walter Forsberg

Getting into the game

New documentary 8 Bit deconstructs video game culture - literally

(8 Bit, Oct. 1 -3 at Cinematheque)

A+

When grunge and hip hop became wildly popular around the world in the early '90s, it certainly wasn't the first time that 'underground' culture surfaced topside for air, causing a conceptual frisson that changed the world. (Surrealism, cubism and abstract expressionism, and corollary concurrent developments in the art world certainly beat Seattle to that punch.)

But it was, arguably, one of a handful of times in history when underground culture became popular culture.

A new documentary, 8 Bit, makes the same kind of inferred claim about the impact of video game culture on society, the art world and cinema through interviews, on-screen examples, and showcase performances by video gamers who have artfully appropriated tools of couch-potato mind-control.

While it's clear that filmmakers Marcin Ramocki and Justin Strawhand may not have created a great revelation of the cinematic form, the case they make for video games is very convincing. And fun.

(First, before reading any further, break out your dayplanner, or Apple Newton, and pencil in - no, use pen - 'see 8 Bit with friend.' It is one of the great historical documents of contemporary culture. I know, no more broad claims, but it really is excellent.)

What makes 8 Bit such an accomplished independent documentary isn't the feigned charisma of the on-screen filmmaker nor the powerful social message. It's the fact 8 Bit's subject matter is transcendently fascinating: talking heads who play with video games all day long and who are probably way smarter (and richer) than you.

The filmmakers have amassed an incredible array of the world's biggest computer-nerd artists - including Cory Arcangel and Role Model - Chiptunes musicians such as Bubblyfish and Bit Shifter, and media critics such as Ed Halter. Each provides a unique angle on game technology as the film moves chronologically through the original, mid-20th-century development of video game technologies by the military, the 1970s arcade craze and the 1980s home gaming phenomenon.

Then, the mind-fuckingly smart ideas of the film's featured DIY artists and cyber-minimalist enthusiasts begin.

Ramocki and Strawhand include examples of how these creative video game geeks use archaic, eight-bit video game technology for making art and having fun. We see Joe McKay's Audio Pong installation where participants duel it out in the classic game via a modified, voice-activiated console. We see Arcangel's work Mario Clouds - a hacked Super Mario Nintendo cartridge with all of the graphics removed, save for Marioland's horizontally-scrolling clouds.

Arcangel calls video game hacking: "Subway graffiti for computer nerds," but audiences will be floored by the things these kids can do in hacking flat, pixel-y technology - Nintendo nerd or not.

By the time the film moves beyond its focus on basic eight-bit console technology into discussions of how video game hacking is the realization of postmodernist critical theory and philosophy, the borders between real life and virtual reality have been conceptually blurred and you just might be searching on eBay for that Amiga you used to own.
— Walter Forsberg

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