Change the header to, "Available on DVD and VHS on July

[DavidCPA]

I will be renting this flick next weekend as it has gotten so much discussion on this board. I hope it is not much ado about nothing.

-DavidCPA

Edit: Did not know the subject had a character limit :oops:

It should read:

Change the header to, "Available on DVD and VHS on July 9!"

[Murph]

I'll be checking it out soon, as well.

It better be good!

[DavidCPA]

The Royal Tenenbaums was ok, but nothing great.

I saw Duets tonight and thought it was a better movie. Good ensemble cast. Paul Giamatti and Andre Braugher are very good together. Even Angie Dickinson has a brief role. I recommend this for a cheap rental or seeing it on cable.

-DavidCPA

[Tom Chick]

DavidCPA, you've been in Arkansas too long! It's time to get out. Good god, man, you're recommending Duets to people! Since I actually had to see the movie when it was theatrically released, I'm attaching here my Official Movie Review:

The Xanadu of karaoke movies

By Tom Chick

Okay, pop quiz. Match the movie on the left to the subject matter on the right.

Duets roller skating
Xanadu mechanical bulls
Urban Cowboy male dancers in sweatbands
Staying Alive karaoke

Pencils down. Tally the number of correct answers and check your score below.

4 points: You know silly fads. Steer clear of Duets, a movie that addresses karaoke in deadly earnest. Literally.

3 points: You are probably too young to know what Xanadu is. Congratulations on missing out on the whole 70s thing. Now go see Almost Famous and Ice Storm.

2 points or less: Hey, you're the target audience for Duets -- someone completely blind to the absurdity of cultural phenomena like karaoke! Check it out tonight and bring your wife. You guys will have a ball.

Duets is one of those buddy/road movie hybrids interspersed with scenes of people doing karaoke. Actually, it's like three separate movies, each with it's own pair of buddies. Well, let's call it one movie and two half movies, because only one of the pairings is explored, albeit clumsily, with any sort of character development. The chinless balding Paul Giamatti is a businessman with a family who gets sick of the whole corporate suburbia habit that Kevin Spacey kicked in American Beauty. Giamatti tells his wife he's "going out for cigarettes". He walks into a bar, gets tanked up on beta blockers, and sings karaoke, at which point he discovers himself. "The real path to the real meaning of the real truth," he calls it. In other words, he's flipped his lid. "I can't go back to who I was," he explains, "I'm different now. I sing." Giamatti picks him up Andre Braugher from Homicide hitchhiking and they hit it off in some Texas berg on Duet night. But Braugher is an ex-con on the edge with a gun. This could be great material: the regular guy who goes crazy over karaoke and his armed accomplice. Unfortunately, in one of the biggest cinematic blunders since Travolta said "Hey, I have this L. Ron Hubbard script that would make a great movie!", Duets is not a comedy.

The other two buddy pairings are really nothing more than underwritten vignettes. Scott Speedman from Felicity as a cabbie gets picked up by Maria Bello from ER as a woman using karaoke and fellatio to make her way to California. As she faces her chance to make it big at a karaoke contest in Omaha, she gets nervous and throws up in the ladies room. He follows her into the stall and explains how he really wanted to be a priest and the world is beautiful. She bucks up and writhes around under colored lights, singing that Eurythmics' song, "Sweet Dreams".

The third pairing is Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis. She is a Vegas waif. He is a karaoke hustler. They meet in a funeral parlor. A hideously old and bloated Angie Dickinson springs into the room scaring the hell out of everyone -- I think this is why Duets is rated R -- and announces that they are father and daughter. Miss Paltrow prances about and looks adorable acting like she's about sixteen. The big payoff in the movie is her get up at the end: she's wearing little Swiss Miss braids and red leather hotpants. I mean, is Brad Pitt gay or what? Mr. Lewis could have offered a sort of ironic commentary on his own status as a VH-1 pop icon, but he's far too glib and oblivious. For the definitive treatment on Huey Lewis, you'll have to see American Psycho.

The karaoke scenes in Duets are completely devoid of the canned tinny sound of actual karaoke. As for the singing, Braugher belts out a great a cappella "Free Bird", but I don't think it qualifies as karaoke unless he has the machine going in the background. Miss Paltrow sings a mean "Bette Davis Eyes". Otherwise we're supposed to know how deeply meaningful karaoke is the same way we know the hero in a detective movie has fallen in love with the nightclub singer: the camera slowly dollies in on his face while he watches her sing. That's movie language for someone being moved by music. We get a lot of this in Duets. Of course, we also get the obligatory scenes of the drunk Japanese businessman and the fat man in a Hawaiian shirt singing karaoke.

For a movie about karaoke, Duets squanders far too much time with its insipid stories about these six people. By the time it's over, four of them will be driving to Sparks, Nevada in a pink station wagon, one of them will be dead, one of them will simply go home, and the audience will realize it would have had a much better time just going to a karaoke bar, getting drunk, and laughing at the people who get up to sing. Duets is just as embarrassing for the people involved, but nowhere near as much fun for those of us who had to watch it.

[mtkafka]

Recent rental I liked was Charlotte Gray with Cate Blanchett. Pretty good movie... well shot too! Sorta like an old fashioned World War 2 spy/romance movie. Not bad! And it WAS better than the English Patient.

etc

[Bub, Andrew]

I viewed my brand new copy of Tenenbaums the other night and it struck me what a damn massacre it would be to ever see it in pan and scan. It's a beautifully shot movie with career redefining performances from Hackman, Houston, at least one of the Wilsons, Glover, Paltrow, Kumar, and that weird looking tree in the left hand side of the frame during the "I'm dying" scene on the street.

The hotel lobby did an excellent job too.

[DavidCPA]

DavidCPA, you've been in Arkansas too long! It's time to get out. Good god, man, you're recommending Duets to people!

Sorry but Duets was a good movie. TRT was good, but nothing special to me. I guess my tastes may vary from the normal movie afficianado. I have also seen some of the Academy awards winners on DVD recently and I honestly think that Harry Potter and the Sorcer's Stone was given the shaft. It is the best movie from 2001 that I have seen (including TLOTR). To each his own I guess.

-DavidCPA

[chet]

Duets killed me. I kept waiting for them to take it deeper and deeper for laughs. They did, but as you said tom, not for laughs. I had no idea it wasn't a comedy until the end of the movie (on cable) and they had the little snippets over the credits where each actor proclaimed they had no idea karaoke was so big and serious, BUT IT REALLY IS!!!

karaoke hustlers? How is that not funny. I had never heard almost every song they sang, but the movie made me think I should have. The free bird scene was great. I was waiting for someone to yell out that he was cheating.

I wish they would have had more about the karaoke groupies.

Chet

[DennyA]

David,

Have you read the Potter books? It seems everyone I know who liked the movie had read the books.

I get the impression that the joy of the movie is seeing familiar pages coming to life. Because as one who hasn't read the books, I found it two-dimensional and even dull in parts.

Tenenbaums, on the other hand, is a RIOT. And I think I finally have a disc where my wife will be as interested as I am in watching the outtakes and director commentary... She loved it too.

I have to watch Rushmore again to decide which of the two I like better.

Caught Bottle Rocket on cable a couple of weeks ago. Not a bad first film... Definitely had its amusing moments.

[DavidCPA]

David,

Have you read the Potter books? It seems everyone I know who liked the movie had read the books.

I get the impression that the joy of the movie is seeing familiar pages coming to life. Because as one who hasn't read the books, I found it two-dimensional and even dull in parts.

Tenenbaums, on the other hand, is a RIOT. And I think I finally have a disc where my wife will be as interested as I am in watching the outtakes and director commentary... She loved it too.

I have to watch Rushmore again to decide which of the two I like better.

Caught Bottle Rocket on cable a couple of weeks ago. Not a bad first film... Definitely had its amusing moments.

Nope, I haven't read the books. I thought the movie explained the history of things that happened outside of the main story very well. Being able to identify and understand the setting in the movie so easily was a big selling point for me.

What exactly about TRT was a riot? Paltrow with extra, extra heavy eyelinder was as funny as anything else in the movie. The only thing I thought was extraordinary was the soundtrack. I'll have to look for that at Best Buy sometime. My wife thought TRT was ok too but nothing special. I won't rent it again, but will give it another chance when it hits HBO, Starz, IFC or the Sundance network.

-DavidCPA

[Jim F.]

In Omaha's defense, we don't have life altering karaoke contests. Not even Omaha is lame enough for that.

I found the Harry Potter movie to be rather...boring. I was obviously not the target audience. Also, I spent the whole movie saying "If he's supposed to be this great wizard, why it the girl the only one casting spells? She seems to be the saviour".

And the game that they play...no sense what-so-ever. Who really cares about 10 point goals when catching the little flying thing is worth 150 points and ends the game? It's like the final round in Family Feud. Sure, you're kicking ass, but some moron says "Tacos" for "Traditional Italian Dishes" and suddenly the other team is playing for the big money.

I dunno, I just don't see the appeal of the Harry Potter movie. Maybe I need to read the books.

[Alan Au]

I found the books more interesting than the movie. While the movie does a good job of incorporating almost all of the key scenes from the book, the events themselves don't transition very well, so the pacing seemed a bit off.

- Alan

[Tom Chick]

What exactly about TRT was a riot?

One thing I've come to realize about The Royal Tenenbaums is that it takes a very definite sense of humor. It's okay not to like it. Really.

Liking Duets, on the other hand... :)

"What the hell kind of a way is that to act?"

-Tom

[Anonymous]

Yeah, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and TRT all require a very sublte sense of humor. One that relies more on gaudy diction rather than slapstick or anything too obvious.

Consider one of my favorite exchanges from Rushmore..

Max: So you were in Vietnam?

Mr. Bloom: Yeah.

Max: Were you in The Shit?

Mr. Bloom: Yeah, I was in The Shit.

The thing you also have to take into account is the context in which this was said. They're at a Rushmore wrestling match, and Max has just insisted on paying for Mr. Bloom's popcorn, nevermind the fact that Bloom is a millionaire. The delivery of those lines is also perfect, and it just combines to make it one of my favorite movie scenes. Pure sublime.

[Tom Chick]

Anthony: Did you see what he had on?

Dignan: Yeah, it was pretty cool...

-Tom

[Anonymous]

Bob: Wha-- why is there tape on your nose?
Dignan: Exactly!

Dignan [explaining their robbery plan he's drawn up]: Okay. There, you see the star is me, right there, and I'll be in there. The X is Anthony. Bob, you're the zero out here in the car.

Dignan: We'll get him. We'll get him. Man, dont worry about that, we'll get him. And when we do, we'll blow up his car, do something. I can guarantee you that. What makes me furious is thinking about the look on Bob's fat face, thinking he pulled one over on us. I tell you another thing. If our paths cross again, you're gonna see a side of Dignan that you havent seen before. A sick, sadistic side, cause I'm furious at Bob.

[Tom Chick]

Damn, I loved Bottle Rocket! Abso-fucking-lutely loved it. Just reading these lines has me laughing out loud.

You had asked before, Kale, about my preference for Tenenbaums over Rushmore. Some of us had kind of gone over that on the old boards, but I meant to at least give you my capsule take and now these lines from Bottle Rocket are reminding me.

I thought that Tenenbaums had more of the emotional honesty and accessibility of Bottle Rocket. They were very much rooted in objective perspectives on their characters. I felt like Rushmore, on the other hand, went pretty far into Max's head. I wasn't always sure what was real and what was a flight of fancy. Max was fascinating, to be sure, but when was he exaggerating and when was I seeing the truth? There's a little bit of this in Tenenbaums, particularly with the genius of the children (Dalmatian mice?), but the kids grow up and the movie doesn't linger there. Rushmore never grew up.

Also, I find the themes of Bottle Rocket (friendship) and Tenenbaums (family) to be more meaningful to me than those of Rushmore (first love, coming of age). It's a strictly personal thing, but stories about misguided kids just aren't as relevant to me as they used to be. Romeo and Juliet is still incredible Shakespeare, but those two dumb kids getting in over their heads aren't as compelling to me as, say, a misguided Othello murdering his wife, Hamlet struggling with revenge and injustice, or Lear betrayed by his family.

Not to say I didn't like Rushmore. I did. I've liked it more every time I've seen it (three times). But I don't like it nearly as much as Bottle Rocket or Tenenbaums.

Okay, there you have it. I even worked in a few gratuitious Shakespeare references.

-Tom

[Jim F.]

I have yet to see Bottlerockets or TRT. Saw Rushmore and thought it was a cute movie, but not the great film people keep telling me that it is.

Maybe my idea of comedy is different. So, lets find out.

Soo... what did you think of Snatch (the movie, not the nether regon)?

[Tom Chick]

what did you think of Snatch

It's no Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

Snatch was an entertaining swirl of activity, but ultimately forgettable. I'd say Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels did a much better job of affixing actual characters in front of the swirl of activity.

"Guns for show, knives for a pro..."

And you, Jim? (BTW, see Bottle Rocket and/or Tenenbaums. I think they're pretty different from Rushmore.)

-Tom