The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - 5

Writers'strike?
Please.

Kelly's 'Tales' of a
familiar world

e all know there's a
writers' strike going
on. Within a few
weeks, there will be no new epi-
sodes of just about any shows air-
ing until this thing gets resolved,
and major mov-
ies have been
delayed. With
industry insid- ,
ers speculating
that that could
be at least nine
months from
now, what are PAUL
we to do? We TASSI
need to be enter-
tained. I propose a solution.
I will whore myself out to the
studios and become a scab writer,
armed with only my mediocre
knowledge of film and television.
With shows like "Terminator: The
Sarah Connor Chronicles" pre-
miering soon and the "Sex and the
City" movie headed for theaters
next summer, I can only imagine
the execs will like this idea as
much as I do.
Here's what I have in store for
television:
"THE BOURNE JURISDIC-
TION": Recently retiring from
the exhausting task of uncover-
ing his identity and fighting the
entire United States government,
Jason Bourne (played by Benjamin
McKenzie of "The OC.") is going
back to his roots. As a detective
in New York, Bourne would solve
a new case each episode by flying
around the world and disarming
the perpetrators with his trade-
mark three-punch takedown.
Cars crash, bullets fly and justice
is served when you're in Bourne's
jurisdiction.
"LEGALLY BLONDE: JUSTICE IS
BLONDE": The series picks up
after the second movie left off,
wherever the hell that was, and
would chronicle Elle Woods (Anna
Faris, "Scary Movie") solving
tough "Law & Order"-style cases.
But by using her unique skill set,
she takes on cases other legal dra-
mas can't, such as "The girl who
wore her friend's dress and then
lied about it" (Gucci isn't supposed
to look stretched like that) or
"The tragedy of the fake handbag"
(Prada double-stitches its purses,
obvi!). On The CW, Tuesday at 8/7
central. Dear God, I can actually
see this happening.
. "ARMAGEDDON: THE SERIES":
Wait, wait, stay with me. Every
week it's up to A.J. Frost, Harry
S. Stamper (he totally survived
the explosion) and the rest of
their team to save the world from
impending doom. How many ways
can the world end, exactly? After
they end climate change in the
pilot, the rest of their struggles
include reigniting our dying sun,
diffusing a nuclear war, curing
a massive bird-flu outbreak and
finally engaging in hand-to-hand
combat with the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse. The show will
have a budget roughly the size of
Norway's GDP and will own the
18- to 36-year-old male audience.
And coming soon to a theater
hopefully nowhere near you:

"24: GENESIS": Fifteen-year-old
Jack Bauer has exactly an hour
and 47 minutes. There is a threat
to Central Topeka Union High
School's Homecoming parade. The
nature of the danger isn't specific,
but it's rumored to be egg-related
and perpetrated by CTU's rival
high school, which is located in
the middle (possibly eastern) part
of Topeka. Working closely with
Class President Dave Palmer,
football captain Jack - along with
his sidekick, the socially awk-
ward mathlete Chloe - staples
fingers and paper cuts noses to
get the information he needs. Can
Jack save Homecoming? Is there
enough time? Find out December
2008.
"IL FILM DEL SOPRANOS": Ever
since David Chase's unsatisfying
finale, the fans have wanted more.
The film opens right as the screen
turned black, when Tony takes a
bullet to the chest in the diner. The
ensuing two hours involve him
slipping in and out of nonsensical
coma dreams, with occasional cuts
to useless subplots that involve
A.J. beinga douchebag club
owner and Paulie Walnuts hir-
ing a transsexual stripper at The
Actually, this
is a bad,
bad situation.
Bing. As Tony awakes in the last
few minutes, the rival New York
crew storms the hospital intent
on killing him and the rest of the
Soprano clan. Cut to credits. If you
wait longenough afterward, David
Chase pops up and says, "Fuck
You! Again!"
"HEROES UNLIMITED": Given two
hours instead of the usual one to
work with, the writers decide they
can double the 42 main characters
that already populate the show.
The movie is a bunch of short,
three-minute clips that involve
each new hero demonstrating his
powers in various places around
the globe with no distinct plot in
sight. This would be accompanied
by a two-hour-long voiceover
monologue by Dr. Suresh that says
everything you'd ever want to
know about evolution, power and
responsibility.
There you have it: Your entire
TV and movie lineup is set until
2009. See? We'll be fine. Who
needs fair wages? I really don't
know what everyone's complain-
ing about. Who really thinks you
can make money from the Inter-
net? I mean, seriously, they should
... ah man, I can't do it. This is a
bad, bad situation. CEOs, just pay
them their 2.5 percent. You can
wait another six months to buy
your private island. I miss "The
Office" already, and it's only been
four days. I can't imagine what
nine months is going to feel like.
Hold me.
- E-mail Tassi at tassi@
umich.edu and tell him he has a
bright future ahead of him.

Yes, "Buffy" fanboys, she plays a porn star. Your new competition: The Rock.

By JEFFREY BLOOMER
Managing Editor
I know what you've read. Yeah, they
booed "Southland Tales" at
Cannes. They do that a lot.*
And, no, Richard Kelly isn't
a prophet. He doesn't speak Southland
for our moment any more
revealingly than Bill O'Reilly Tales
does, though certainly he is At the
more interesting in his dis- Michigan
order. He made a movie that Theater
became a cult touchstone,
and as with many bluntly Samuel Goldwyn
provocative films of that
variety, "Donnie Darko" circles many more
ideas than it consummates.
Between the anticipation that ushered in
"Southland Tales" as Kelly's "Darko" follow-
up and the brutal festival reception that threat-
ened to crush it, there's something to be said
for the fact that the movie has even opened in
American theaters. Though the version now at
The Michigan Theater is apparently much dif-
ferent than the earlier cut that earned the film
its reputation, the final product is as stagger-
ingly idiotic as all the nasty press suggested.
And yet by the time the movie gets to the end
of its 144 minutes - down 20 minutes from
that first cut - it also strikes a weirdly poi-
gnant rhythm, a big, stupid, sweet and possibly
insightful dissection of American culture.
The movie is basically a series of loosely
constructed stunts that play on post-Sept. 11
STOP
SURFING
THE
WEB.
DESIGN :
WEB.
Our web, that is. on
E-mail grossman@
michigandaily.com.

politics and pop culture. The film opens with
a nuclear nightmare set in the Texas of sum-
mer 2005 and, after an interlude that imagines
World War III, the reinstatement of the draft
and hyper-Bush chaos in Washington, cuts to
California in 2008 amid the next presidential
election. There's a flash of a Clinton-Lieberman
Democratic ticket, but as you might imagine,
the film's sole interest is in the Republican side.
The inside of that campaign, particularly its
efforts to destroy a sort of latter-day Weather
Underground resistance driven by "neo-Marx-
ists," becomes the chief narrative thread.
If that makes it sound like the movie makes
sense, it doesn't. It features Sarah Michelle
Gellar as the Barbara Walters of a porn-star
version of "The View," The Rock as an amne-
siac right-wing actor married to the daughter
of a presidential candidate (Mandy Moore),
Bai Ling as a sexed-up lurker who knows the
secrets of the world (actually, that part does
make sense), a heavy "Saturday Night Live"
collective and Seann William Scott as ostensi-
ble twin brothers. Oh, and there's a voice-over
by Justin Timberlake, who at one point leads
a musical number to a Killers song. He also
shoots people on occasion.
There's more, much more than this review
can contain or that the movie can logically
survive. Pop spectacle is rarely this stocked,
but the size of the ensemble complicates a film
without a clear foundation in the first place.
The movie's genre limbo and narrative flam-
boyance hardly temper the clutter. Its actual
jokes are almost never funny, but the film itself

often is. There are moments of socially incisive
drama - at one point, a character stumbles on
a young man about to take his life because he's
been drafted - butKelly diffuses most of them
with shrugging irreverence. There is also a
time-travel subplot, and even in a film with
a climax involving a flying truck, a bazooka
and a blimp, there are long stretches that are
uneventful and simply boring.
Part of the reason this confusion doesn't
totally dismantle the movie is because it'sclear
Kelly isjust fooling around. His political rumi-
nations are neither particularly sophisticated
nor original, and his movie is nothing more
than a farcical, anxiety-whoring caricature
of American culture. But there is also release
in that. Kelly's brazen manipulation of head-
lines coupled with the film's cheerful lack of
subtlety has an unhinged charm that allows
him to gun it creatively and for the audience
to embrace his successes as well as his failures.
This is also true of the actors, who take each
scene as it comes, running with their ludi-
crous, ham-fisted characters without a single
wink at the camera.
That isn't a recommendation, and no one
should mistake "Southland Tales" for a func-
tional narrative. But as the film comes to a
close with a dance number that somehow
seems to bring together the story, it finally
feels rewarding. This is a violent, crude, inex-
plicable movie, yes, but the experience is not.
If you have the time to spare --really, really to
spare - "Southland Tales" certainly doesn't
hold out on you.


FILM IN BRIEF

No small 'Wonder'
if you're still a kid
"Mr. Magorium's Wonder
Emporium"
At Quality 16 and Showcase
Fox Walden
There are two ways to look at
"Mr. Magorium's Wonder Empo-
rium." The first is to take it at face
value, its flaws clear with one- or
two-note characters, disjointed
plotlines, obvious believe-in-
yourself themes and a great idea
that never really fulfills its prom-
ise.
The other possibility is to look
at the movie through a child's
eyes. The safe place Mr. Mago-
rium (Dustin Hoffman, "Strang-
er than Fiction") creates is one
where playthings come alive;
where pretending, creativity
and imagination are encouraged;
where there isn't a TV in sight.
In this realm devoid of product
placement and violence, death
and abandonment are dealt with
through "King Lear" and the
belief that the end of one book
marks the beginning of another.

Cynical parents as serious as
the film's Molly Mahoney (Nat-
alie Portman, "Garden State")
might walk out of the theater
shakingtheir heads,turned offby
the juvenile failings of the movie.
But 6-year-olds - and those with
a 6-year-old still inside of them
- might realize that sometimes
in movies, it's better not to think.
It's better to just believe.
SARAH SCHWARTZ
A dry, inauthentic
version of the
classic novel
** 6
"Love in the Time of Cholera"
At Quality 16 and Showcase
New Line
Set in turn-of-the-century
Colombia, the new film version
of "Love in the Time of Cholera"
falls short of the great Gabriel
Garcia Marquez novel on which
it is based. The story centers on
the cripplingly love-struck Flo-
rentino Ariza (Javier Bardem,

"Before Night Fails"), and the
infatuation that drives the film
is established early as Florentino
falls for Fermina Daza (Giovan-
na Mezzogiorno), the well-to-do
daughter of mule owner Lorenzo
Daza (John Leguizamo, "Ice Age
2: The Meltdown").
Though it has good intentions,
director Mike Newell's ("Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire")
version of the novel never really
captures the characters' passion.
Love, the main ingredient in this
story, is manifested mostly in the
physical form, only toward the
end resembling anything close to
emotional connection.
At one point, in response to
the female protagonist admitting
virginity, her fiance whispers,
"This is going to be a lesson in
love," right before they engage in
coitus. The only thing the scene
needs is Vaseline smeared on the
lens to indicate that we're watch-
ing a porno.
And if the gratuitous sex isn't
enough, the accented English
intended to replace the natural
Spanish and the dopey costumes
make the film hard to stomach as
a legitimate adaptation.
NOAH DEAN STAHL
I