I've been MIA since Thursday- that's four days. What have I been doing in this time, you may ask? Well, I've went back home and then returned to university again (for the last time before the holidays begin), saw two movies in one day (a common practice of mine- and more on them in a sec) and read an entire book which I'd already read (this was for examination purposes, not for fun). Exams next week mean I still won't be around too much- I should be revising, though how much I'll actually do is unknown- but you can still expect a few things, including, of course, The Tuesday Tribute.
But this is a movie blog, not a diary, and so to the topic at hand. The dreadful
Wedding Daze only had the divine Isla Fisher drawing me to it in the first place, but it proves yet another case of me being led blindly by my actressual leanings. There are some other good people in it- Joanna Gleason, Edward Herrmann, Joe Pantoliano; I'll even admit to liking Jason Biggs despite never seeing him in anything remotely respectable- but the whole thing is just a delirious mishmash, a revolting mixture of
American Pie gross-out comedy (Biggs' parents are sexually experimental/deviant caricatures) and a plot that seems to have been adapted from
Bringing Up Baby in some odd way (ie. they all end up in prison). This is not to compare to
Baby, however- I love that film.
Wedding Daze, however, is ludicrous- Biggs' girlfriend drops dead after he proposes to her dressed in nothing but red hotpants and a pair of wings, which I suppose is probably a good alternative to marrying someone who would even
consider doing that- and full of caricatures, from the aforementioned parents to Fisher's colleagues/friends with a circus background to her conveniently gay ex-boyfriend. Fisher and Biggs do their best to play it with a straight-face, and along with Michael Weston as his best (and thankfully sceptical) friend Ted they do mine a few laughs here and there, but the entire thing is so predictable while being so ridiculous that I just wanted to scream. Not that my audience seemed to enjoy it much- except the woman a couple of rows ahead with a extremely nasally laugh which was probably funnier than most of the film.
Grade: D+
Jindabyne, however, which I saw before
Wedding Daze, was an entirely different kettle of fish, though that was really to be expected.
Glenn's been
championing this movie since the beginning of time, it seems, and so I went in with high expectations- expectations that were, thankfully, met, solidified and bronzed. Ray Lawrence (almost as maverick as Terrence Malick in his rareity of projects) puts the entire film on edge, David Williamson's photography and music by Paul Kelly and Dan Luscombe combining to add a sinister, dangerous feeling to virtually everything in the movie, not just the things you would expect.
Jindabyne is not simply a story about the fallout of a group of men's actions upon discovering a body- it's a story of a community's struggles to deal with the intertwining issues that were already there, how they change when an event brushes them, and how the people caught up in them deal with one another. Powerful performances from a superb ensemble cast- Leah Purcell, Deborra Lee-Furness and outsider Laura Linney being the standouts as the partners of three of the four men who find the body- make
Jindabyne's depiction of a precarious community seem blisteringly real, and Lawrence is smart enough to never overplay things- Linney's clear American accent is never remarked upon and yet is clearly an issue, while the murderer (whose identity is in no doubt throughout) silently appears at erroneous intervals to unnerving effect. I did feel that the film lost something at its end- a heartfelt song at the murdered girl's funeral is moving but the tone of reconciliation feels jarring- but overall,
Jindabyne is a powerful, naturalistic and thoughtful piece of work.
Grade: A-
In music news, V.I.P. Music
reports that
'Don't Stop the Music' WILL be Rihanna's third single (but hang on- they decided on a third single and shot the video already?! They haven't even shown us the second one yet!)- thank GOD. This means that people who don't buy the album will hear it and fall under its spell. This means they'll play it in clubs. This means I can get my groove thang on to it. Maybe.
In more Rihanna news,
Good Girl Gone Bad was released today (or tomorrow if you're American)- and the UK has the option of a two-disc edition with a bonus digipack CD of remixes. 'Don't Stop the Music''s remix is not a patch on the proper version, but it has a decidedly more upbeat sound to it and is a good, solid remix, while 'Umbrella''s remix (by Seamus Haji and Paul Emanual) jazzes up the track's memorable chorus to superb effect. The Wideboys Club Remix of 'Shut Up and Drive' is pretty poor with it's swiping electronic sounds, but 'Breakin' Dishes' works remarkably well as a club track- the ferocity feeds into the icy beats of the Soul Seekers Remix. 'Push Up On Me' lends itself well too, turned into a ferocious poppy dance tune, the Soul Seekers Remix of 'Good Girl Gone Bad' brings out its lyrical strength, 'Say It' is jazzed up with an effective Caribbean rhythm but the stodgy lyrics sit oddly with it, and 'Cry' (the UK bonus track which, while a ballad, is surprisingly good and deserved the obligatory ballad spot over 'Say It') is remixed by Steve Mac to solid effect. 'Haunted'- a track which we've yet to hear the original of (though it's definitely a ballad)- is also given the Steve Mac Klassic treatment, but it's rather boring. Finally, 'SOS' doesn't really work since it was almost a remix itself; but on the whole it's worth forking out the extra for the extra disc.
Definitely, Maybe may have a rather odd and insistently quirky title, but the film itself is actually rather good: warm and gentle but trying its best to skirt cliche, and even throwing in a surprisingly prominent political side plot to ground its central characters in a tangible, realistic existance. It helps, in that, that this is a story told in flashback that actually specifies when its taking place, so, instead of having characters drifting around in a vague abstraction of a world, they're contextualised within real events and some development is actually drawn from them. It may be Working Title but Definitely, Maybe doesn't really subscribe to the usual familiar boy-meets-girl plotting, acknowledging from its outset that love doesn't always work out- Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds, subdued and therefore more likeable than usual) is telling his daughter (Abigail Breslin) the story of how he married her mother through the disguised prism of the disguised identities of the three main women who were in his life, prompted by the fact that the couple are now getting divorced. Perhaps the best thing to say about this film- which I admit does to some extent capitulate to familiar arcs and is distressingly vague in one of the three women's characterizations- is that, for at least the other two women, it creates identities that are not defined by quirks or surface observations but actually embues them with some depth. And, in this, you do- or at least I did- actually care what happens in the end, for the film has craftily navigated its way around the stories of Will and the three women (played by Elizabeth Banks, Isla Fisher and Rachel Weisz), letting all four characters make mistakes but never villanizing, and eschewing the familiar bait-and-switch turnarounds that these films are so oft falling prey to. At one point the film actually skips ahead by four years, leaving its characters to change and fester instead of forcing them into situations that just wouldn't have fit. Alright, so having an eleven year-old girl repeatedly spouting words like "slut" is a little discomfiting, but it's hardly unrealistic with the world in the state it is today. Definitely, Maybe may be a romantic comedy, but it's a good one, and it does at least acknowledge, even while it gives in to heart-warming conclusions (but by that time you want them), that the world is not perfect, that people are flawed, and that mistakes are not always so easy to forgive. B
