Weekend Forecast: Bruno and the Bomb Squad
By Craig Kennedy - July 9th, 2009; 12:42 am
The Hurt Locker: LiC’s pick of the week expands
Opening in wide release:
- Brüno. In Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen made Americans uncomfortable by pretending to be an obnoxious, ill-dressed foreigner. Can he do the same thing as an obnoxious, ill-dressed homosexual? Break out your lederhosen Jungen und Mädchen. Brüno Kommt!
- I Love You, Beth Cooper. What if you were the class valedictorian and you used your graduation night speech to profess your love for the school’s hottest cheerleader? What if, instead of barfing on your shoes, she then promised you the greatest night of your life? Yeah, neither of these things would ever happen in a million years. If they did, they wouldn’t need to make wish-fulfillment fantasy movies like this one. Hayden Panettiere (TV’s Heroes) stars as the hottie in this adaptation of Larry Doyle’s comic novel.
Expanding this weekend:
- The Hurt Locker. It’s still not a wide release, but The Hurt Locker explodes into an estimated 50 theaters this weekend giving many of you your first chance to see one of the more buzzed about movies of the year. Highly recommended.
Opening in limited release:
- Humpday (NY, Seattle. LA, SF 7/17). If you live in New York or Seattle, Brüno isn’t the only gay game in town this weekend. Lynn (My Effortless Brilliance) Shelton’s Humpday tells the story of two college buddies, now into their 30s, one has a wife and family and the other still hasn’t settled down. After a night of drinking, the two hatch a plan to enter an amateur porn contest by filming themselves having sex with each other. LiC is already prepared to throw the yellow flag for excessive use of the words “mumblecore bromance” to describe this film. On the other hand, it’s the fault of Lynn Shelton or her co-stars Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard that critics are lazy and reductive. Humpday was a favorite at this year’s Sundance.
- Soul Power. You’ve seen the documentary When We Were Kings about the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, now watch one about the music festival held in conjuction featuring James Brown, BB King, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz and others.
- Blood: The Last Vampire. A half-human, half-vampire samurai kicks demon ass.
Coming to Los Angeles:
- An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story. What happens when a recorder of history becomes a shaper of history? That’s one of the key questions behind Susan Morgan Cooper’s terrific documentary on Eddie Adams, photographer of 13 wars, 6 presidents, countless celebrities and one image that helped end the war in Vietnam. Combining old interviews of Adams in his prime with archival footage and new interviews with newsmen Morely Safer, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and others, Cooper sketches a compelling portrait of a talented, conflicted man who was haunted by the impact of a single Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph he took of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner. An Unlikely Weapon already played in New York in the spring and it hits Los Angeles this weekend. It will be playing in a number of other major cities in the coming months. You can keep tabs on future release dates at the film’s official website. Recommended.
The musical sponsor this week needs no explanation and it barely needs an introduction. Here is Tom Waits with Downtown Train from his 1985 album Rain Dogs:
Filed under: Weekend Forecast
Such sad, soulful music. Tom Waits is a favorite around the jennybee headquarters. Heartquarters, too.
As I commented over on Awards Daily, Film Crew Bruno successfully caused quite a ruckus when they anonymously came to my town. I lifted this from an Arkansas site that said it got it from Cinema Blend. They first went to Texarkana, Ark., where things got so out of hand they couldn’t use the footage, so they came up the highway to jennybeeville and the convention center that’s promotion is part of my job:
“Overnight, they moved the entire operation several hours to the north to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Once there, the Brüno team was contacted by the Fort Smith police about what happened in Texarkana; these officers were reluctant to cover the event. As police were the only security certified to man the convention center, the production thought they were out of luck. Fortunately, the producers met with the chief of police and several other officers to secure the clearance needed. They left the meeting armed with a list of city ordinances that were stricter than the Arkansas state rules. Lessons learned, for the Fort Smith event, the team made sure there were no glass bottles that could be used as projectiles, and they wired chairs together so fans couldn’t pick them up and lob them into the ring.
Seconds after the kiss, attendees became furious. Soon after, one member of the crowd unwired a chair and threw it at Baron Cohen’s head. At that point, it was a near riot and the performers were rushed from the premises. Audience members and other fighters alike were screaming epithets and surrounding the bus and the field team. It ended after a stand off that lasted many hours, with 40 police officers from the Fort Smith division helping to rescue the cast and crew and quell the angry mob.”
I suppose I’ll see the film. Don’t know if it will be this weekend, though. I think I have to go renew the tags on my pitchfork.
Tom Waits is love.
The original anime Blood: The Last Vampire is really really good, which may mean I’ll check out the live action adaptation. We’ll see. There are other movies I want to see first.
I’m hoping to catch The Hurt Locker this weekend maybe. I also want to see Unmistaken Child but it’s in only one theater near me and they only play it once a day (in the morning). I may have to catch that one on DVD (it’s already in my queue).
I received The Girl on the Bridge from Netflix (starring my man Daniel Auteuil) so I’ll be watching that as well. And no doubt there will be watching of TCM. :D
Funny story about Bruno, JB. It’s pretty surprising that he has not yet been either attacked or jailed, even if accidentally. I wasn’t really that excited to see Bruno until I saw the first hour of Borat again like three weeks ago for the first time in two years. I was shocked at how much funnier I found it the second time around. So at the very least I’m a lot more curious about Bruno.
But my #1 for the weekend will hopefully be The Hurt Locker. I’d also kind of like to see Whatever Works despite the mixed reviews. And I still haven’t seen Departures or Soraya. We also get Jerichow this week, which I’ve already seen and highly recommend.
Soul Power and Eddie Adams sound like promising docs as well. I’ll keep an eye out for those.
Eh, I just realized Harry Potter is on the way. Yawn. Nothing against the books or its fans, but am the only one who can’t tell the movies apart? We can debate next week…
Downtown Train is one the favorite “feeling blue” songs of me and the monkeys.
That’s quite a story JB. Is this part in the movie do you know?
I hope you get a chance to see Unmistaken Child on the big screen Alison, though being a doc it’ll still work well on DVD I think. There’s something epic though about this guy’s journey that suits a bigger canvas.
I look forward to hearing of your adventures in the Watercooler.
No Daniel, except for the 3rd movie, they’re all the same to me. The books are too, though the fact that I actually sat down and read them all at one time or another says something about them (or me…or both).
Having said that, early word on the street is that this next one is actually pretty good. It makes sense because the kids are getting older and their problems are more interesting. Also, I think there’s 35% less of that infernal quidditch.
Can’t say I’m deeply excited for it, but I’m a bit curious now.
Yes it is. I don’t think it spoils anything to reveal that the Fort Smith part is as Newsweek says, “the penultimate, climactic scene.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/205872
Craig, I would love to catch the movie on the big screen if I can, as it looks like it will be so impressive that way. I’ll try.
I’ve read all the HP books except the last one – still just haven’t gotten around to it. So far Book 3 remains my favorite, followed by Book 6. Book 3 is the first installment in the series that really starts to get dark, the characters become more complex with more complex issues, and it ends on a less upbeat note. I had no use really for the first two movies but the third started to get better for me for two reasons: first, it was my favorite book of the series and second, there was a change in directors, which made a difference.
Book 6 was also excellent and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if its corresponding movie ends up being quite good. Still, I’ll probably see it on TV instead of in the movies, as was the case with the other ones with the exception of Book 3.
Vulture pulled out a couple of interesting tidbits from that Newsweek piece including the fact that the filmmakers gave away $1 beers all night and made the crowd wait 90 minutes for the “show”
Granted, that doesn’t justify the behavior, but it’s disappointing to know the deck was kind of stacked. Get a bunch of drunk, impatient testosterone types in a room and you’re asking for trouble even without the man kissing.
The only HP I’ve seen in a theater was the last one and it bored the piss out of me. The books I think are sketchily written, but they have some juice to them…a personality…that most of the films have lacked. They’re like museum recreations of the books.
The third book and movie were pretty great. It was less gimmicky and there was a deep sense of sadness and loss and yet a ray of hope with Harry sort of belatedly bonding with his dead father over the patronus thingamajig. That was pretty moving and it was well handled in the movie.
I agree, I love that part of the story too. And I love Gary Oldman as his godfather (I love Gary Oldman in anything really).
I’ve enjoyed reading the books and I think J.K. Rowling has some very creative and entertaining ideas in them (Nearly Headless Nick is one of my favorite creations of hers), but there are plenty of people I know who just think she should be shot for writing such absolute crap.
I’m not the most literate fellow to come down the pipeline, but I do think her writing is weak at times and the farther she got in the series, the more her work cried out for a healthy editing, but she created a great and unique world. I wouldn’t put it up there with CS Lewis or Tolkien or any of the stuff I read as a kid, but it deserves more credit than it gets.
In the books, I like Nearly Headless Nick and stuff like that, but somehow in the movies all those little things kind of get in the way, but the filmmakers were so afraid of offending fans, they had to cram in every little thing. These things work fine on the page, but I think they make the movies drag.
One thing the movies do better than the books is to make quidditch not look like the stupidest sport ever. It’s just action in the movie, but in the books descriptions of it would go on for page after page after page and I wanted to gouge my eyes out because the sport doesn’t even make sense.
Also, I like Hagrid better in the movies, but then Robbie Coltrane rules.
I’m with you on Robbie Coltrane. That was perfect casting, in my opinion. In the books Hagrid can be downright annoying sometimes – Coltrane really gives him heart.
We’re on the same page about these books. She certainly isn’t Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte even, and the later books in the series were churned out so fast that they didn’t have time to edit them well – it was really rushed and assembly line. But she absolutely created a unique world and there was a lot of creativity in the series.
And yeah, I never quite followed the quidditch stuff either.
Seems like slim pickens, but I’ll have to scrutinize this more and return to the thread.
Slim Pickens: “Shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”
Also, Hermione comported herself quite well on Letterman last night. :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbaG0gDDmI4
Ok guys… remember. Soul Power. Go see it. Go love it. Embrace it. Live in it. Bathe with it. Wallow in it… or something. :)
You’ve got me sufficiently jazzed, Michael and I’ll be catching it this weekend. Remind me again what you liked about it? Are you a fan of the music in general or did the doc do something else for you as well?
I enjoyed the Potter books, but they did get Stephen King-style bloated near the end, particularly the last one. Rowling’s writing isn’t great but i agree that it’s more inventive than it gets credit for, and something that gets kids mass-reading can only be so bashed.
The movies? I liked 3 and 5, the latter for being sort of a fantasy-political thriller, and I thought Gambon finally blended into the series with that one (truthfully – he’s closer to the closet-stoner Dumbledore that I pictured anyway).
As for this weekend, I’m hoping to check Moon, maybe Whatever Works and Public Enemies, and some old stuff on DVD.
I’m wondering if I should rewatch the movies leading up to the next one. Sort of watch them removed from the books altogether.
I am a huge soul fan, but honestly, I would’ve loved the film more with fewer performances, as at times, they just can’t match the tone of the rest of the film. It’s funny, compelling, nowhere near the platform for Ali that When We Were Kings were (although there is plenty of Ali there). For a “concert film”, it’s very well layered, showing the difficulties of the crew, the realities of Africa at the time compared to what the performers and Ali largely saw it as.
It’s one that I can’t wait until I can see again, but so many scenes stuck with me. Also, not surprisingly, but gorgeously shot, and the footage holds up so well after being in a vault for so long.