We’re All Gonna Die, Vol. 532

Crunching the stats, making his plansFrom CNN:

“Beneath an Antarctic glacier in a cold, airless pool that never sees the sun seems like an unusual place to search for life.”

You know why? Because it is. This is how the best horror movies start, with the glacier explorations and the teeny microbes that take over the hapless scientists and make with the homicidal madness or the genetic mutations or the chronic thingism.

Remember the crazy old guy warning everyone about the perils of messing with ancient natural deposits? He’s not always wrong. In fact, sometimes he’s the only one who really knows what’s going on.

And I don’t even want to mention the latest warning sign of the inevitable zombie apocalypse. But then, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.

The World is Yours

Well, this is unexpected.

It may look little, but it's got the world in thereEngadget HD is reporting — and other sites are corroborating — the arrival of a multi-region Blu-ray player.

Which is to say, a machine that can be told to play any disc from anywhere in the world. You can set it to “Region 0” for standard DVDs, and a simple keypad hack will switch its BD configuration to Region A, B or C, and back again, when required.

This is a very good thing. There are plenty of Blu-ray discs available in the UK and Europe (which is Region B, to North America’s Region A) that have tempted me on my trips overseas … and which I’ve had to leave on the shelves due to the inflexibility of the PlayStation 3, which not only can’t be hacked but refuses to play region-free material if it’s encoded in PAL. That seems kind of dickish on the part of Sony’s engineers.

At just $349.99 USD, the Momitsu seems like a very good solution. It’ll replace the region-free Philips upconverter I’ve been using to play European and Australian discs, and add international BD functionality, letting me do my part in stimulating the global economy by snapping up a few Region B discs from various sources.

Sure, “Almost Famous” will make it to BD in North America eventually, but let’s be real; Paramount’s never going to bother with “Son of Rambow“, and there’s no way something like this is ever going to make it over here, either. So it’s a no-brainer.

American Dreams

Juice it!It’s a smallish week for movie releases, providing a necessary breather for those of us trying to stay on top of everything — honestly, if there had been another ten openings this week, I suspect I might be on the top of a building with a rifle right now.

Lucky for everyone in my neighborhood, there were only five, and these are they:

“Crank: High Voltage”: It’s three months later, he’s not dead any more, and there are plenty of new people to kill. Also, Amy Smart is the best sport ever. Screened at the last possible minute, though I can’t imagine why.

The Education of Charlie Banks“: Fred Durst’s directorial debut (yeah, “The Longshots” was released first, but produced after this one) explores the delicate relationship between a nervous preppie (Jesse Eisenberg, doing his Jesse Eisenberg thing) and the sociopath (Jason Ritter) who helps him learn about life. The “Raging Bull” poster in their dorm room? It’s a metaphor!

“17 Again”: Matthew Perry turns into Zac Efron, develops radically different bone structure, terrifies his family. I think. Rad liked it; Adam loathed it.

“State of Play”: Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck play a journalist and a politician with a thorny personal history in Kevin Macdonald’s Americanization of the acclaimed BBC miniseries; Adam found it well-meaning but sort of unnecessary.

Sugar“: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s excellent American baseball movie — which isn’t a baseball movie at all, when you get right down to it — deserves the largest audience it can possibly get. So, sure, let’s call it a baseball movie. Whatever sells tickets.

Right, that’s this week covered. Now, back to the screener pile …

We’re Starting to See Results

Espionage means never having to say you're sorryIf the movie section of this week’s NOW feels a little frenetic, what with all the film festivals and everything, just imagine what it was like to spend two weeks watching all those Sprockets and Toronto Jewish Film Festival entries, looking for the good stuff. Because there was plenty of stuff that was, shall we say, less good.

My picks for the TJFF were “The Debt” (which is the source of today’s image) and “Run For Your Life“; my Sprockets piece is here.

Also worth a read, in my humble estimation: My interview with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, whose “Sugar” is a major step forward for the duo after “Half Nelson”. Which was pretty good to begin with, mind you.

The News of the Day

Mark my words, they're gonna go with 'mental defect'What can I tell you? My DVD column hasn’t gone up yet, and I have to post something before heading out for a day of Hot Docs screenings.

So let’s consider the pop-culture landscape, which has been busier than usual in the last 24 hours. Marilyn Chambers, the star of David Cronenberg’s “Rabid”, was found dead in her home, aged 57; elsewhere in Los Angeles, Phil Spector — whose visage graces this page, and is probably already giving you the willies — was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of actress Lana Clarkson.

Oh, and in other news, Ronald Reagan turns out to have been a rat for the FBI during the McCarthy era. Remind me again why he was so great for America?

Observing and Reporting

One of these days, a real rain's going to fall ... fortunately, we're indoorsThe weekend box-office is in, and it is more or less as expected: America embraced the Miley Montana movie and kept going to “Fast & Furious”, while not really knowing what to do about “Observe and Report”.

I don’t know what the fourth-place status of “O&R” will ultimately mean for Jody Hill’s directorial future, or Seth Rogen’s bankability  — not much, I’m thinking, since the disaster that was “Zack & Miri Make a Porno” was largely laughed off by all concerned not six months ago — but even if it isn’t topping the charts, the film has certainly grabbed hold of the critical conversation.

The House Next Door throws a link to Andrew Schenker’s consideration of the movie’s structure over at The Cine File, Tracy Clark-Flory offers a singularly uninformed take on something she didn’t like about the trailer at Salon’s Broadsheet blog and Slate’s Dana Stevens finds that the film just ain’t sitting right.

And in addition to an interview with Hill and Scott Tobias’ review, The Onion AV Club has posted a typically considered A.V. Talk, with its critics batting the movie back and forth in convenient podcast form. As always, don’t forget to read the comments — there’s some great stuff in there.

The Truth, and Consequences

... but we're miles ahead of them on the highwayObviously, nothing I can produce is going to be able to compete with the news that the U.S. government has finally declassified Area 51. (No aliens, though; the really cool secrets are probably tucked safely away in Area 52.)

But we can still have a little fun, as in today’s Sympatico/MSN gallery, which uses Seth Rogen’s bad behavior in “Observe and Report” to wonder what the world would be like if movie characters were held criminally accountable for their wacky on-screen antics.

Neil Patrick Harris is looking at a whole lot of community service, is all I’m saying …

A Good Friday

I gots 99 problems ...So much for today being a quiet day — there are almost a dozen films opening, including no less than four highlights of last year’s Cannes lineup. Jump right in, won’t you?

“Dragonball: Evolution”: Wait, Chow Yun-Fat is in this? Why on earth didn’t anybody tell me? Not that it would have mattered for an opening-day review, since the studio declined to screen it, but still …

Duska“: Joss Stelling’s strained comedy of manners is so self-consciously droll that I just couldn’t bear it. And you’d think I’d be the perfect audience for a movie that a good 20 minutes taking cheap shots at the empty pageantry of second-tier European film festivals …

“Hannah Montana: The Movie”: OMG is this really the last time Miley Cyrus will play the dual-identity teen popster? Deirdre thinks it ought to be.

Hunger“: No qualifications here: Steve McQueen’s debut — an impressionistic consideration of the hunger strike at the Maze prison in 1981 — is a fucking masterpiece. So, you know, you should probably see it.

It’s Hard Being Loved By Jerks“: Daniel Leconte’s documentary about the defamation charges brought against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing those contentious Danish cartoons arrives fresh from closing Cinefranco, but if you missed it there …

“Jerichow”: Fresh from Cinematheque’s recent German series, Christian Petzold’s spin on “The Postman Always Rings Twice” pops up in commercial release. Rad and Adam offer their bravos.

“The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”: Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” is on its way to becoming an absurdist classic, returns with this more serious-minded adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel. But as Rad and Kieran discover, it’s not as much fun without Pirate Steve.

Observe and Report“: Travis Bickle gets reincarnated as a mall cop in Jody Hill’s surprisingly effective “Taxi Driver” update — which is much darker and much meaner than Seth Rogen would have you believe. Turns out that’s a good thing.

“Shall We Kiss?”: The luminous Virginie Ledoyen gets a rare opportunity to play comedy in Emmanuelle Mouret’s dry French farce about friends who discover they have les hots for one another. Susan and Kieran are amused, if not enthusiastic.

Tulpan“: Sergei Dvortsevoy takes his cameras to the Kazakh steppes for this lovely tale of a big-eared dreamer, his sister’s family and a whole lot of sheep. There are also two camels.

Two Lovers“: I’ve been telling people about James Gray’s excruciatingly intimate (and, apparently, unconscious) reworking of “The Heartbreak Kid” for nearly a year, so it’s great to see the film make it to local screens. Well, “screen”, actually, since it’s only at the AMC Yonge and Dundas. But it’s totally worth the trip.

Right, that’s plenty. And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go to the bakery and stare covetously at hot-cross buns …

My other other gig.