Alexis Bledel has fallen on some rather hard times as an actress in that everything she has done outside of Gilmore Girls merely proves that the only role she’s capable of is Rory Gilmore. In Post Grad, the character’s name is Ryden Malby, but it might as well be the same as it is nothing more than a reprisal of her Rory Gilmore persona: Intelligent, well-read (who reads Post Office by Bukowski anymore?), and clueless about her power over men.

Promotional poster for Post Grad

The story already begins on an unfavorable note being that someone decided it would be a good idea to have Ryden tell you everything about herself and her life on a vlog. She then instant messages her best friend Adam (Zach Gilford) to meet her and her family for a post-graduation lunch since his father can’t make it and his mother is dead, facts that are tactfully pointed out by Ryden’s dad Walter (played by a particularly annoying Michael Keaton). The opening is initially forgiveable; writer Kelly Fremon creates some interesting relationships that parlay into key thematic (though played out) elements. It is what comes later that makes the film fair game for the sell pile of your DVD collection.

The zany family of Ryden Malby

The entire premise of Post Grad is based on Ryden’s intense lust for a job at a publishing house in Los Angeles, the name of which evades me, but is umimportant because it is fictional, much like the notion of a publishing house existing in LA. Though she has no experience, her previous internships at Penguin (which also doesn’t exist in LA), make her believe she has a real chance at getting the position. So confident is she, in fact, that she writes a three thousand dollar check for an apartment in Century City just hours before her interview.

Another trite promotional poster

Predictably, Ryden does not get the job after a number of hiccups prevent her from arriving, specifically a car accident, and, even once she gets there, the obvious disinterest of the interviewer is explained when the next applicant, Ryden’s college rival Jessica, enters the room with some sort of previous reference, proving that it is who you know that matters.

Ryden and her best friend Adam, who is in love with her self-absorbed ass

Completely floored by the concept that she isn’t going to be doing what she wants after how hard she worked the past four years (or eight, depending on how you look at it), Ryden desultorily pursues other leads and finally lands a short-lived job as a production assistant, courtesy of her hot neighbor (Rodrigo Santoro) who directs informercials for a living. This romantic interlude sends Adam, who tries his best to accept their platonic friendship, into a jealous rage that prompts him to cut her out of his life and move to New York to go to law school. Fucking drama queen.

Ryden pretending not to notice Adam hearts her

Anyway, it’s easy to guess, at this point, that everything ends up going smoothly for Ryden, even if it wasn’t the exact mental picture she had originally envisioned for herself. Translation: Apart from a few clever lines and some slapstick moments (Carol Burnett’s influence maybe?), Post Grad is in the same forgettable vain as recent throwaway movies like New in Town or The Proposal. One of the main reasons Fox Searchlight was probably willing to distribute is that they could see the relatability of the film to an audience of recent graduates. Everyone can identify with not finding a job at a time when the economy is a fucking piece of shit and having a college degree in something like English literature doesn’t really mean that much anymore.

Funny People is comedy’s golden child’s, Judd Apatow, third feature film writing and directing. It stars everyone that has been in his previous movies plus Adam Sandler and Jason Schwartzman. That makes it so new and exciting right? Well, I’m going to say no although I appreciated the idea of changing it up.

The holy trinity that could save comedy?

Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a comedian who has had a similar path to Adam. He was funny then, made really bad movies, and is now washed up. He finds out he is dying so in a last stitched effort he takes on Ira, (Seth Rogen) a young comedian, to write jokes for him as he does what will be his last tour. Simmons learns a lot about life and he makes amends with all the people in his life.

Then he gets better. With a new lease on life he begins to pursue the only girl he has every really loved, Laura (Leslie Mann). She has all kinds of mixed feelings and guilt that makes her throw her self at George. She tries to justify it by saying her husband is just like George even the cheating aspect, so why not get back with George. Then when it comes time to tell her husband she chickens out. Out of rage George takes it out on Ira by firing him. The film ends with Ira and George writing jokes over coffee. Apatow should not do open endings.

I do feel like that acting is really good. Sandler and even Rogen steps it up for a much darker film. My problem is that it wasn’t really a Judd Apatow movie. The dick jokes are all there and brace yourself there are a lot of them. I just feel like Rogen has out grown the underdog roll or I have grown tired of him acting like an idiot. Sandler and Manns relationship is really great in the beginning but takes a weird turn. Mann gets back with her husband. This is a plot device known as the false ending. If the false ending is sad the real ending is happy.

At least they had fun making it. You won't watching it.

The false ending is sad but also really forced. I know people will argue it is part of Mann’s character to feel scared and too afraid to make any giant changes to her life. I just feel like this break up could have been less cliche and more Apatow. Through out the film I didn’t laugh and that’s bad when it’s made by these people. I was waiting for the big moment. The Steve Carrell getting waxed or the crazy trip to Vegas with Paul Rudd and Rogen. It lacked big laughs for the sake of overplayed melodrama. That’s why it opened to the lowest opening by an Adam Sandler movie. It was lower than Spanglish people.

Bottom line this is a rental, a cheap theater viewing, or wait for network TV to show it.

Cannibal The Musical is Matt Stone’s and Trey Parker’s first film from way back when they were college boys. It started with a trailer then enough people convinced them that making this a real movie was a great idea. I’m glad they did. I noticed that it is on Netflix finally.

Back before Parker and Stone lost to Phil Collins at the Oscars, they were lost in the wild west.

Our story begins like all musicals, in the woods as a cannibal rips his party apart limb from limb. Alfred Packer (Parker) is wrongfully accused of committing those crimes. He tells a court reporter, Polly Pry (Todd Walters), how he got into this predicament.

Packer leads a party of miners across the Colorado Territory to Brekenridge. Along the way Packer looses his best friend and horse to a bunch of trappers. Packer diverts the party south to follow the trappers and win back his horse. They face river crossings, bear traps, lack of supplies, and even a cyclops. All the good stuff from Oregon Trail but with songs. Soon frost bite sets in and the party gets really lost. Packer goes looking for help and when he returns all but one of his party is dead. After an amusing fight with his crazed murderous comrade, Packer makes his way to the nearby town. The sheriff heads out looking for Packer’s missing party and they find the mangled bodies. I won’t ruin the ending but it has a big finish like all musicals.

This is probably the only film that really displays the amazing talent that Trey Parker has at writing music of any style for any situation. You will watch this film over and over again just for the songs. They are really damn catchy like real musicals. The instrumentals sound kind of like they came out of a video game made in 1991. It is weird at first but after a while it really fits in with the whole idea of the movie. The sound in the film is an issue at some points. I blame it on the ultra low budget but it can be distracting when it gets really echoy.

Now that's a DVD cover.

The comedic acting is pretty good for the budget. You really can see where Stone and Parker got a lot of their ideas for their later projects. Matt Stone’s hat and crazy red hair can be directly linked to Kyle’s hair and hat on South Park. Also the main theme of the film is played at the end of every South Park episode. The little tone played along with the Braniff airplane is the song “The Sky is Blue”. It’s really interesting to see the roots of these two comedy giants. The main thing that you think when the film is done is, “why don’t these guys make films more often?” I wish they did they certainly have the talent to make musicals until they die.

South Park fans, Team America fans, Basketball fans, Orgasmo fans, and musical fans will enjoy this movie more than they should. I mean, it is a student film.

I love a film with good narration, and a good soundtrack. After extensive research (approximately 15 minutes), I wasn’t able to find who narrated this film, but it sounded like it could have been the guy from Stranger than Fiction or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – if you know, please let me know! (500) Days of Summer is another one of those touching romantic comedies (read My Life in Ruins) that makes you do some soul searching afterward. Definitely not a chick flick, but it was still cute, with an indie feel even though it was done by Fox Searchlight.

3rd Rock from the Sun failed to put Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the map, but this film definitely will, and the same is probably true of Zooey Deschanel, whose most notable role was the sister in Almost Famous. Their relationship in the film is why the Facebook’s and MySpace’s of the world have a “It’s Complicated” field for relationship status. And they depict it to a fucking T.

Compilation of Movie Posters for 500 Days of Summer

Tom Hansen (Levitt) meets Summer Finn (Deschanel) at work, and it is basically love at first sight – for him, at least. He fumbles his way into her arms, and they hit it off with the caveat (from her) that it won’t be anything serious. We see their relationship unfold back-and-forth, from before the turmoil, to after. An editing convention that I both admire, and despise (it’s love-hate, what can I say?). It’s obvious that there will be issues though, since Tom clearly wants something serious, and Summer clearly does not. They have really cute dates together, especially a long scene in IKEA (which was in-your-face product placement, let me tell ya) where the couple pretended to be going to different rooms of their fictional house. Even with all the heartache Summer caused Tom, he was able to find his way at the end – which is all right, but I’d LOVE to see a sad ending for once.

As I alluded to earlier, the editing is phenomenal, but I am not sold on cutting back-and-forth from the good, early days, to the bad, final days of their relationship. Not quite the same hate I had for a similar convention employed in Memento, but I’d rather the story be interesting on it’s own. And luckily this film’s story was simple, yet interesting, and the chemistry between Joseph and Zooey was spot on.

The narration was superb, even though some retards online think otherwise. The music was down-right perfect for the film, with songs from Regina Spektor, The Smiths, and Simon And Garfunkel. On top of the editing mentioned earlier, my favorite scene was a side-by-side view with simultaneous running clips of “Expectations” on one side, and “Reality” on the other – this as really bad ass, and I’m sure it’ll be imitated. I’m a sucker for dresses, and they put Zooey in some stunning outfits, particularly the dress she wore in the wedding scene…my my my.

500 Days of Summer: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in THAT Dress...Yowzers

Only a couple things confused me – why Tom felt Summer was out of his league is beyond me. All the build up about how Summer gets her way due to her beauty was strange; don’t get me wrong, she’s a really pretty girl, but she’s no “17 double takes on a city bus”, as the narrator depicts. Aside from that, I have no idea why the “best friend” and younger sister were even in the film; they were supposed to be Tom’s support group to deal with Summer, but they were on-screen for about 13 seconds, and those roles could have all been handled by Tom’s cubicle buddy (played by Geoffrey Arend).

(500) Days of Summer is great for audiences of all ages. It’s lighthearted, clever and cute. Take the old lady out to see it, and get yourself some headers on the drive home.

Enjoy!

The thing about classic films is, although they’re deemed “classic,” very few people have acutally seen them. Case in point is New York’s River to River Festival and its graciously free showing of The Seven Year Itch on The Elevated Acre in the Financial District. While the film may have been helmed by the directorial king of classics himself, Billy Wilder, the only piece of visual information sustained in anyone’s mind is Miss Monroe’s billowing white dress over the grate of a passing subway.

The dress that launched a thousand latently horny men in the fifties

Watching the film amid an audience of Seven Year Itch virgins was not unlike explaining the psychological intricacies of Giuletta of the Spirits to someone who watches The Hills. Comments included, “…a simpler kind of humor in the fifties.” I give the person credit for knowing which decade it was made in though. Still, after hearing this, a fantasy materialized in my mind, wherein Billy Wilder paper cuts members of the audience with his screenplay and Marilyn takes on the rest by strangling them with her infamous chiffon dress. No such fantasy came to light and I contrived to sit against the cement slab step of The Elevated Acre wishing I had just stayed home to watch it on DVD rather than endure the unappreciative sentiments of NYU students who have the social gall to carry around a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Apparently the only scene worth watching in The Seven Year Itch

Then again, seeing The Seven Year Itch in a crowd of modern men and women got me thinking about the general overratedness of this 1955 Marilyn Monroe vehicle. Had the audience been watching a Wilder film that better stands the test of time, like, say, Ace in the Hole, would they have left that patch of grass at the end of the evening wanting to fortify their film collections with the work of Billy Wilder? Or is it simply about being able to say that, yes, they have seen the scene that every American comes out of the womb somehow aware of?

Promotional poster for The Seven Year Itch

The elements of annoyance escalated when, at the precise second her dress lifts, most audience members felt inclined to take a picture of it. And this is where a serious sociological question must be asked: Is there any point in watching, listening to, or reading anything when every portion has been extracted and highlighted, preordaining what we’re supposed to know and like best?