109 minutes of profanity-laced hilarity

In The Loop is basically a film version of the BBC television show The Thick of It. I’m sure any British readers out there already realize this, and conversely, I’m sure practically no American readers know this. If the television series is anywhere near the quality of this film, I’ll be a happy man once I track it down.

In The Loop is a scathingly, brilliantly hilarious political satire that pretty much never stops with its one-liners and vitriolic arguments.

It’s pretty obvious early on — or from any of the trailers — that In The Loop is poking fun at the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. There are people on both sides that want to go to war and vice versa, and they are all entwined in a web of confusion and absurdity.

The events of the movie are kickstarted when British minister Simon Foster (played by Tom Hollander) says that war is “unforeseeable” in a radio interview, and the media runs with it, as Simon is berated and emasculated by his superior Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi). Simon doesn’t quite realize the storm he’s created until he is confronted in the street by reporters and provides yet another soundbite that is blasted over the airwaves. It just seems that every time he opens his mouth, things only get worse.

Starting on the day of the “unforeseeable” quote, Toby Wright (Chris Addison) becomes Simon’s assistant throughout the entire affair, shuttling between meetings in both the UK and America. He manages to do damage of his own, accidentally leaking information to the press and also destroying his romantic relationship back home in probably the most embarrassing fashion imaginable. Simon and Toby make for an immensely amusing disaster of a team.

There's a lot of this in the film.

Meanwhile, the two Americans they work with, the US Assistant Secretary of State Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and her assistant Liza (Anna Chlumsky), seem on the ball and mostly treat the two Brits as the bumbling — if well-intentioned — idiots they are. They work together with Gen. George Miller (James Gandolfini) to try to stop the seemingly unstoppable march to war. They are mostly up against another Assistant Sec. of State, Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who is naturally the most unlikeable character in the film. I think you can guess how it turns out.

The star of the film is undoubtedly Capaldi, who seems to be ripping someone apart in every other scene. Every time he opens his mouth, a geyser of expletives shoots out, hitting whoever happens to be around square in the face. You may think *he* would be the most unlikeable character, but it’s hard to hate someone who is capable of effortlessly eviscerating anyone within shouting distance. There’s a reason why the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay — and that reason is that insults have never been piled on top of each other so well outside of a David Mamet film.

Probably the only complaints I can think of are the subplot that has Steve Coogan complaining to Simon about a wall that is about to fall and possibly crush his mom and perhaps that the movie just kinda of ends. But the former is still pretty funny and the latter — well, I wasn’t really watching the film for a twist or tidy, meaningful ending. I think it works fine and shows that politics just go on. And go on as dysfunctional as they’ve always been.

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Even the cover looks indie.

Parenthesis in the title. Zooey Deschanel dressing up in silly clothing. The two main characters sharing a love of The Smiths. A musical number complete with a bit of hand-drawn animation. Could a movie get any more indie?

Perhaps surprisingly, you don’t need to be a hipster to enjoy this film.

You also know from the start that the movie is non-linear, which was probably the best way to spruce up the fairly humdrum relationship. The film touches on key events that both initiate and destroy the relationship, usually skipping back and forth between good and bad. I say humdrum because looking back, it’s not the most original or interesting course of events, but the story is told in a way that is consistently entertaining. Although, some people who have just suffered a tough breakup might not feel the same way.

The film is anchored by a great performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the naive young Tom who, the minute he sees Summer (Deschanel), knows she’s the one. As the relationship develops, he never understands why she doesn’t feel same about him as he does about her, even though she stated from the beginning she wasn’t looking for something serious. Deschanel does her job of looking pretty and being — arguably — a bitch. It’s all about perspective!

This doesn't actually happen!

The small supporting cast does a pretty great job, from Tom’s friend McKenzie asking Tom what the hell is wrong with him, to Tom’s little sister dispensing advice as if she were an experienced 40-year-old woman. Between the sister character in particular and the musical dance scene in the middle of the movie, there’s a bit of light-heartedness that tempers the ultimate crushing of Tom’s soul.

Those unrealistic, and possibly too cutesy, components of the film allowed me to handle the final word of the script a bit better than some other people I’ve come across. Sure, roll your eyes, but it fits well enough. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

But even with those parts, the film manages to stay true to its emotional roots, and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Tom’s bewilderment and broken heart really do hit home. It’s about him learning from his first love and heartbreak. It’s about his growth coming out of that world of hurt. And it’s told in a way that is clever, energetic, and heartfelt.

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So much cooler than the iPad.

Paramount has announced that Minority Report — the Steven Spielberg-directed, Tom Cruise-driven sci-fi thriller — will be available on Blu-ray on April 20th.

Spielberg’s Philip K. Dick adaptation will be a two-disc package, featuring a video transfer from a true 4K master created last year. It’ll be presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital with English, English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles.

The Blu-ray package certainly looks like it’s going to be worth the upgrade, as in addition to the previous released extras presented in standard definition (except for HD trailers), there will be plenty of new special features presented in high-definition.

The full rundown of new supplements includes: The Future According to Steven Spielberg; Inside The World of Precrime; Phillip K. Dick, Steven Spielberg and Minority Report; Minority Report: Future Realized; Minority Report: Props of the Future; Highlights from Minority Report: From the Set; Minority Report: Commercials of the Future; Previz Sequences. All presented in HD.

It’s been listed at $29.99, so one can safely assume it’ll be going for 20 bucks on Amazon and Best Buy (at least on release week).

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Better than a Pink Floyd album!

It’s a big ball of cheese in the sky.

What would happen, wondered first-time feature director Duncan Jones, if Aretha Franklin lived on it? She’d probably eat it all, he quickly concluded. So he put Sam Rockwell up there instead. You know, just to see what would happen.

As it turns out, the result was really quite something.

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut working in about as remote a place as you can imagine – a tiny, one-man mining outpost on the dark side of the moon.

He’s been there for 3 years, away from his wife and child, entirely alone except for his robotic assistant GERTY (Kevin Spacey) and his own thoughts. His only communication with his home planet comes via pre-recorded satellite messages, received sporadically via a faulty comms link-up.

A pretty bleak way to earn a living. Let’s hope the money’s good.

And so our lonely protagonist spends his days coordinating and maintaining the ‘helium 3’ mining harvesters which scour the vast surface of the moon. It is on one such day, barely two weeks away from his trip home, while out repairing a fault on one of these machines, that Sam meets with an accident and only barely survives.

Waking up dazed back at the mining outpost, things take a rather bizarre turn as he discovers that he is no longer totally alone. He finds a perfect double version of himself, a doppelganger, if you will, inhabiting the station with him. Spooky.

Cool as the dark side of the moon.

It seems to me that what we have here is a science fiction movie. Not a film set in space with aliens and warp-drives and lasers and magic bloody powers. An actual work of science fiction. By this I mean (and I’m more than prepared to state that I am by no means an authority here) a film that imagines a future existence which actually raises questions about mankind and, for want of a better, less poncey expression, ‘the human condition’. Sam’s isolated existence, the necessity of his job for Earth’s survival (for ‘helium 3’ is a new, super-green source of energy), the way in which he is treated by his employers, not to mention the film’s big plot revelations, are all used to great effect by director Duncan Jones to provide us with some fascinating and actually quite intimidating existential and moral posers.

Besides the deeply philosophical script, there’s one other aspect of this film which really makes it stand out, and that’s the absolutely superb turn put on by Sam Rockwell. Considering that this is a man who has spent significant parts of his recent career lending his voice to a talking guinea pig (‘G-Force’), and whose only other sci-fi output of note is as a two-headed narcissistic space pirate (‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’), the sheer scale and subtlety of his performance here is pretty mindblowing.

Rockwell is on screen for almost the entire length of the movie (97 minutes), and has to spend an awful lot of that time acting opposite ‘himself’. Not an easy task, but one which Rockwell seems to have no trouble tackling, creating an entirely believable two-hander entirely on his own, backed up ably by a suitably spooky-voiced, HAL-like Kevin Spacey as GERTY, his robotic assistant-slash-butler.

Simply put, ‘Moon’ is a superb film. Eerie, contemplative and minimalist, it’s a real “thinker”, and if you’re anything like me you’ll be contemplating your own navel for days after watching it.

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3D glasses not included

CES — the largest consumer electronics tradeshow in the world — has kicked off its 2010 edition and 3D seems to be one the hottest technologies on the floor. There have been 3D HDTV announcements and DirecTV jumping into the 3D fray, but what we care about here is the Blu-ray news. Every major Blu-ray player manufacturer showed off a new model capable of 3D, which at this point it looks like most people will break in with an Avatar Blu-ray disc.

Sony showed off their BDP-S770, which in addition to 3D will have built-in WiFi, and iPhone/iPod Touch app for remote utilization, and a bunch of streaming options including Amazon, Netflix, Youtube and Pandora, among others. It’s due to hit stores this summer.

Panasonic’s 3D Blu-ray player will be the DMP-BDT350, a player featuring VIERA CAST, which means it’ll be able to stream the same stuff as Sony’s player. But you’ll have to hook it up to your network through the USB port. Maybe the 96kHz surround re-master and 1080p upconverting will make up for the lack of built-in WiFi. Expect it on shelves sometime in the spring.

Samsung’s top-of-the-line 3D player will be the BD-C6900, but next to nothing is known about it other than it’ll be compatible with Samsung’s existing 3D displays.

Even Toshiba, the company behind some other disc format you might have heard about, announced a 3D Blu-Ray player in the BDX3000. It’ll have built-in WiFi, some streaming capabilities such as Netflix and Pandora, and should hit sometime in Q3.

Oh, and you PS3 owners out there? Don’t worry, your multi-functional Blu-ray player is ready to go. Sony announced it’ll play 3D BRDs on their upcoming 3D Bravias.

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Muggles not allowed.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the second to last installment in the Harry Potter films, released earlier this year to the delight of its age-spanning fan base.

The Blu-ray, released just last month, is the latest in a series of solid, if not always perfect, Blu-ray discs in terms of video and audio quality. How does this latest installment shape up?

Overall, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has everything you are expecting if you are a Harry Potter fan, with some changes to the books which you may or may not like. Screenwriter Steve Kloves returns to pen the screenplay in what I find to be the most humorous and enjoyable of the films to date, with the possible exception of the Alfonso Cuaron directed Prisoner of Azkaban.

The audience rejoins Harry (played again by Daniel Radcliffe) in an Underground coffee shop, reading in the newspapers about the events unfolding in the wizarding world. The waitress serves him, comments on the paper, and flirts briefly with Potter, before Potter notices Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) outside of the window, appearing into thin air. The opening scene subtlety sets the tone for the rest of the film.

When Harry and his friends Ron and Hermoine (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson) return to Hogwarts, even after the revelation to the wizarding world that super antagonist Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has returned, the tone is much more lighthearted then the previous film in the series, Order of the Phoenix.

The best way to describe the tone is an exaggerated version of high school and summer camp combined. Hogwarts is somewhat separated from the rest of the wizarding world. Most of the restrictive atmosphere has been replaced due to the Ministry of Magic no longer caring about Hogwarts as it has in the last installment, which allows Harry and the students to be kids.

Plots such as Harry and Ron’s love lives and Ron’s success playing Quidditch (the wizard sport) are touched on humorously and often throughout the film. The cast yet again brings a good acting performance, which greatly helps these parts.

Harry Potter and the Succession of Introspective Glances.

This high school atmosphere is interrupted at times by the threats of the outside world, through scenes where Dumbledore teaches Harry about Voldemort’s past, and through Harry’s suspicions that school bully Draco Malfoy (in Tom Felton’s best performance) is secretly part of Voldemort’s sworn followers.

The cinematography of Half-Blood Prince is brought to life in these scenes especially. Academy Award nominated cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel is a notable addition to the crew of the Potter films, and his work shows in the leap of quality in how the film is shot. Scenes as simple as Malfoy walking down a hallway are brought to life with great camera angles. I actually prefer the cinematography to the only other series standout, Prisoner of Azkaban.

Half-Blood Prince is brought to a close when the whimsical high school environment crashes with the dark reality of the outside world and Voldemort’s looming presence. If anything, I must complain the film ends too quickly in comparison with the book, which was a decision by director David Yates in order to build up for the two film finale.

My only other gripe with Half-Blood Prince is the film may confuse viewers who haven’t read the books. The film does a poor job explaining who the Half-Blood Prince is other than the owner of the potions book which Harry uses throughout the duration. While not as annoying as this detail was in past films (making Goblet of Fire a garbled mess of misguided storytelling) it does harm the viewer’s comprehension of some important plot items in relation to the film’s third act.

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3D is going to make 2D look like 1D.

Not content with his $232 million box-office haul from over the weekend, director James Cameron is already thinking ahead to the inevitable Blu-ray release for Avatar.

Considering most of the hype (and serious awards consideration), seems to be centered around Cameron’s unprecedented use of 3D technology – and the recent announcement that the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has adopted official 3D specs for the format – many were wondering about whether or not Blu-ray 3D had found its killer app (so to speak).

Speaking with MTV, Cameron acknowledged Avatar is expected to hit home video before summer, but just a standard release. However, the auteur does have plans for a Blu-ray 3D release sometime in the future.

“Probably the initial Blu-ray release of Avatar won’t be in 3-D and then a subsequent release will be in 3-D. That’s my guess right now,” said Cameron, “So we will probably put out a disk, you know, in six or eight months, let’s call it six months, and then after that we will have a 3-D disc when there are enough sets available.”

There is good news for fans who want more of the Skittle-colored world of Pandora and its inhabitants. It seems deleted scenes with the Na’vi, pulled from the theatrical cut, will find their way back into the standard Blu-ray release.

“It’s all wonderful stuff, but it was sort of bogging down the middle section of the movie. There’s plenty for a value-added DVD experience on this film. Of course, we’ll have to go punch it all up and get it all mixed and stuff like that.”

So we might have to wait a little bit longer for Avatar in 3D, but it is coming.

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Matt Damon is Jason Bourne in The Bourne Mid-Life Crisis.

Warner Home Video announced that Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!, the political comedy starring Matt Damon, will be available on Blu-ray this February 23rd in all Region 1 territories.

[Ed. Note: No date for a Region 2 release has been confirmed by Warner Home Video at the time of this article.]

The Informant!, Soderberg’s latest pairing with star Matt Damon, depicts Damon as a corporate vice-president who decides to blow the whistle on his company’s illegal price-fixing tactics. Based on the novel by Kurt Einchenwald, Damon has generated Oscar buzz with a recent Golden Globe nomination for his performance.

Outside of BD-Live support, deleted scenes, and audio commentary with Soderbergh and writer Scott Burns, most of the specs remain unconfirmed at this time. It will, however, be the first Warner Home Video release to be released under its new mandate to include a physical DVD copy with all new releases.

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Balloons not included.

Another year, another offering from Pixar beloved by critics and adults and kids and whoever else has a functional heart and brain.

Somehow Pixar manages to cultivate wonderful creativity and originality in almost every film they make. Up is no different, centering the story around an old man who lifts and flies his house with the help of an insane amount of balloons. Somehow, Pixar created an engaging story from that starting point.

Up sails by at a brisk pace – clocking in at only 96 minutes – but it manages to fill that hour and a half with more than enough backstory, tender moments, comedic gags, and action.

The story begins following a little boy named Carl with dreams of grand adventure, inspired by his hero Charles F. Muntz. He soon runs into Ellie, an energeric young girl who shares the same love of adventure and Charles Muntz. It is then that Carl makes the promise to Ellie that he will help her get to Paradise Falls in South America.

The subsequent sequence is a 5-minute encapsulation of Carl and Ellie’s long-lasting marriage. It’s a totally silent collection of scenes, except for the Michael Giacchio-supplied score. It may not be the absolutely brilliant dialogue-less first act of Wall-E, but it’s quite a heartfelt and useful way to establish the backstory that sets up the heart of the film.

Carl is left alone in the house he and Ellie fixed up and truly made their own. He’s getting pushed out by building contractors, who will do or pay anything to get his old house out of the way. When Carl leaves them an opening, they take it, leaving Carl with seemingly no options – until he unleashes a massive collection of balloons that lift his house off the foundation and kick off the action of the film.

What Carl didn’t realize when lifting off was that a young boy named Russell – who he had sent off on a fool’s errand the day before – was on the deck upon liftoff. Much of the story from that point on revolves around the relationship between Carl and Russell, the old curmudgeon and the excitable, curious young kid. I found myself siding with Carl most of the time, if only because I found Russell as annoying as he did.

Once the two land in South America, there are all sorts of things going on, but for the most part, everything works flawlessly. Without giving too much away, it involves a giant colorful bird, dozens of dogs wearing speech-collars, and the reemergence of a figure from the beginning of the film. Within the universe Up establishes (one where a house can be lifted up by balloons) every whimisical and providential occurrence makes perfect sense.

The film does alternate between action and dialogue frequently, but it always handles the transition well. It helps that the relationship between Carl and Russell truly grows in their intimate scenes, and that the action setpieces are exciting, easy to follow, and carry meaning and consequence.

By the end of the film, Carl has learned to move forward by letting go of the past he can never get back. I hate to do this, but it’s pretty uplifting. See what I did there?

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The big red empire is becoming a digital trend setter...

Netflix is out to own your television.

The Internet rental service has been gradually taking over set-top boxes in living rooms throughout America, incorporating its streaming content solution into any device willing and able.

The list of Netflix-ready Blu-ray devices, which now includes the PlayStation 3, is rapidly growing. Coupled with an outstanding rental delivery service, the Los Gatos-based company seems poised to turn the movie industry upside down again.

Yet, despite bloggers’ concerns that its online streaming strategy and Blu-ray surcharges are part of some nefarious plot to prematurely kill the Blu-ray format, Netflix insists it’s all about the customers.

“Everything we focus on is customer satisfaction,” replies Steve Swasey, Netflix VP of Corporate Communications, “If we can’t say, ‘How does this get back to customer satisfaction?’, we don’t do it.”

And to Netflix’s credit, the company has ranked on top the ForSee survey results for customer satisfaction nine years in a row. Stateside, the company is almost unanimously loved with a subscription base that has swelled to over 11 million.

Still, there are Blu-ray and audio/video enthusiasts that claim that Netflix is inadvertently destroying the fledgling format with its streaming service. A service which now streams select titles at 1080p, and while nowhere near the quality of a Blu-ray disc, may prove ‘good enough’ for mass consumers.

Netflix doesn’t see it that way; streaming video is merely a natural evolution for a retailer determined to avoid the same fate as its predecessor, Blockbuster.

“Netflix changed the way Americans rent movies ten years ago, when it offered the subscription DVD-by-mail service,” remarks Swasey, “But the vision all along has been that we were going to be doing it over Internet, and that’s why the company is called Netflix and not DVDs-by-mail.”

Should you start pawning off you Blu-rays immediately, or is the crisis overblown?

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