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Film Fan Fridays for Friday September 30, 2011

Hello Film Fans and Fanatics!

Welcome to Film Fan Fridays for Friday September 30, 2011! It's another record high week of releases. 14 films. If you wanted to see everything you'd have to go to 2 a day! Personally, I would love to do that.

In limited release this week we have the majority of our titles with 8 films playing on just a few screens and I'm surprized to see Machine Gun Preacher in limited release, it's the biopic starring Gerard Butler as Sam Childers a biker preacher-defender of Sudanese orphans and was one premise I almost didn't when I heard it but it's true. Keeping it we have 2 documentaries We Were Here and Sleep Furiously. Making things go boom we have the indie sweetheart film Bellflower following two friends who literally like to blow cars up and it's been winning the hearts of many and it has a total hipster feel to it. We finally have Gus Van Sant's Restless (2011) coming out (I remember the trailers last summer!) a melancholy looking drama centred on mortality and love, starring Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska and I'm sure that one will have tears. There is also the South Korean film Poetry, Chang-dong Lee's follow up to the well received Secret Sunshine. Also out is the comedy The Last Circus / Balada triste de trompeta, and wow we've had a few circus movies this year! And last but not least the Thursday September 29, 2011 release of documentary A Matter of Taste: Serving up Paul Liebrandt.

In wide release this week we have 6 titles to choose from including spooky looking Dream House starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz & Naomi Watts and from the poster I bet there are some kids in that one too. We have the comedy/drama 50/50 following a twenty-something battling cancer (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and is a semi-autobiographical story from screenwriter Will Reiser. What's Your Number? stars Anna Faris and is based on book 20 Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnak and follows her journey as she looks back at her past 20 relationships to see if any of them could have been "The One", along with the help of neighbour Chris Evans. We also have the Canadian/Punjabi comedy-drama Breakaway / Speedy Singhs starring Vinay Virmani, Russell Peters and Rob Lowe, Force a Bollywood remake of the Tamil film Kaakha Kaakha and the Christian drama Courageous. That truly is a little bit of everything.

Have a great weekend!

Shannon

Festival Watch

Brazilian Film Festival of Toronto
September 29 - October, 2011 at various locations in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Toronto Palestine Film Festival
September 30 - October 7, 2011 at various locations in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Thursday September 29, 2011 Releases

A Matter of Taste: Serving up Paul Liebrandt
Dir: Sally Rowe - feature film directorial debut
Documentary
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site & Trailer, IMDb Page

Friday September 30, 2011

50/50 (2011)
Dir: Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, The Wackness)
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston
USA
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Bellflower
Writer/Dir: Evan Glodell - feature film directorical debut
Cast: Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson, Rebekah Brandes, Vincent Grashaw
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Breakaway / Speedy Singhs
Dir: Robert Lieberman (NetForce, The Tortured (2010)
Cast: Vinay Virmani, Russell Peters, Camilla Belle, Rob Lowe, Anupam Kher
Canada
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Courageous
Dir: Alex Kendrick (Fireproof (2008))
Cast: Alex Kendrick, Ken Bevel, Kevin Downes, Ben Davies
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Dream House
Dir: Jim Sheridan (In America, In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot)
Cast: Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, Elias Koteas, Marton Csokas, Taylor Geare
USA
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Force
Dir: Nishikant Kamat (Mumbai Meri Jaan, Evano Oruvan)
Cast: John Abraham, Genelia D'Souza, Raj Babbar, Mohnish Bahl
India
Official Film Site & Trailer, IMDb Page

The Last Circus / Balada triste de trompeta
Writer/Dir: Álex de la Iglesia (The Oxford Murders, The Day of the Beast, La comunidad)
Cast: Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Carolina Bang, Manuel Tallafé
Spain/France
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Machine Gun Preacher
Dir: Marc Forster (Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace)
Cast: Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Poetry
Writer/Dir: Chang-dong Lee (Secret Sunshine)
Cast: Jeong-hie Yun, Nae-sang Ahn, Da-wit Lee
South Korea
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer.

Restless (2011)
Dir: Gus Van Sant (Gerry, Good Will Hunting, Paranoid Park)
Cast: Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

Sleep Furiously
Dir: Gideon Koppel (A Sketchbook for the Library Van)
Documentary
UK
Limited Release
No Official Film Site Found, IMDb Page, Trailer

We Were Here
Dir: David Weissman & Bill Weber (The Cockettes)
Documentary
USA
Limited Release
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

What's Your Number?
Dir: Mark Mylod ("Entourage")
Cast: Anna Faris, Chris Evans
USA
Official Film Site, IMDb Page, Trailer

**please note this list of releases reflects first run film released in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as of September 30, 2011**

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Film Fan Fridays for Friday September 30, 2011

4:22 AM | Labels: 2011 Releases, FIlm Fan Fridays, Film Fan Fridays 2011

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THE BIJOU REVIEW: "What's Your Number?"

3:42 AM | Labels: 20th century fox, Evans, farris, movie reviews, Mylod, romantic comedy, The Bijou, What's Your Number

WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER? - Worth a Ticket: The Number's Higher Than You'd Think

Romantic comedies that are actually romantic and comic are so rare these days, it doesn't matter so much that WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER? is in many ways thoroughly second-rate. It delivers some laughs and a likable couple to root for, and as you're watching it, the part of your mind objectively noting all the flaws and sloppiness is gradually eclipsed by the part that shrugs and says "Awww."

It would be impossible, for example, to defend the very premise of the movie, which stems from a novel by Karyn Bosnak, adapted by Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden. Anna Faris plays Ally Darling ("Darling"? Really, was that necessary?), a young woman whose younger sister Daisy Darling (Ari Graynor) is getting married, and in the way of women in romantic comedies, this makes Ally borderline insane about the need to be settled down. She's particularly distressed when she realizes that her count of lovers has reached just about 20, and some study in Marie-Claire says that any woman who's slept with that many men will never find a husband. So, obsessed with not exceeding her allotment, Ally decides to track down her 20 men in the hope that one of them will have morphed into her Prince Charming.

So far, so hypocritically pretending to be sexually liberated while actually being completely morally retro. But wait: across the hall from Ally lives a dissolute, womanizing, good-looking and frequently unclothed aspiring musician named Colin (Chris Evans), who agrees to help Ally find her exes in exchange for getting refuge in her apartment from his own one-night stands. Do you really need me to say who turns out to be the perfect man for Ally? Who cleans up his own act and and is the only one who appreciates Ally for the woman she really is? And that just as this is becoming clear, Ally will find herself pursued by a man who is, in every superficial way, Perfect, meaning that she'll have to make A Choice?

I mean, ugh. Absolutely. And yet... The script has some snap and off-hand surprises, and more importantly, it has Faris and Evans. Faris has been waiting to be the Next Big Thing for so long that it feels like a broken record, and it looked like The House Bunny was going to be her ticket--but even though that movie was a hit, she's still not A Name. She's even better in Number than she was in Bunny, because she gets to be smart instead of Judy Hollidayish dumb-yet-wise. And Evans, who seems to be trying to prove himself in every genre at once this year, from the action heroics of Captain America to the serious drama of Puncture, does a softer version of the sleazy-guy-who-turns-sensitive that Gerard Butler's been playing in movies like The Ugly Truth and The Bounty Hunter, and it works. He and Faris have a real comic rapport that's sexy and comfortable, and it makes them a pleasure to watch together.

The movie also has an unusually strong supporting cast, with people like Blythe Danner as Ally's disapproving mother, Eliza Coupe and Heather Burns as two of her friends, Andy Samberg, Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie, Joel McHale and Martin Freeman as some of the exes, and Dave Annable as Mr. Perfect. Mark Mylod, who's been a house director on Entourage, keeps things moving briskly toward the predetermined ending and lets Faris and Evans do their stuff.

It's more than a little uncool to admit enjoying What's Your Number? because every step of the way, it would be perfectly fair to characterize the movie as cliched, predictable and as subtle as a CG robot battle. But a little wit and charm go a long way in this genre, and while Number isn't--well, it certainly isn't Crazy Stupid Love--it's an enjoyable piece of undemanding fluff.

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THE SKED'S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: "Person Of Interest"

11:51 PM | Labels: action, Caviezel, cbs, crime, drama, Emerson, Nolan, Person of Interest, Pilot + 1, pilot reviews, procedural, The Sked

A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season: a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear their ugly heads. The results can include changes to tone, pace, casting and even story. Here at THE SKED, we're going to look past the pilots and present reviews of the first regular episodes of this year's new series as well.

Previously... on PERSON OF INTEREST: John Reese (Jim Caviezel) is a former CIA assassin who fell into a drunk and homeless life after something unspecified happened to his girlfriend some years ago; he's recruited by the utterly mysterious Finch (Michael Emerson), who has created a master government system which sifts through every single surveillance camera, e-mail and phone call in the country to detect potential terrorist plots. However, the system has an unintended additional ability: it can also predict which people will soon be involved in violent crimes--although it can't tell whether those identified people will be the victims or perpetrators of the crimes. Finch talks Reese into joining him to stop these crimes before they happen, alternately protecting and capturing the people implicated. Reese ultimately agrees, and along the way he gets enough damaging evidence on corrupt cop Fusco (Kevin Chapman) that the man has to become his inside source when police info is needed; Reese also draws the attention of honest cop Carter (Taraji P. Henson), who knows something strange is going on but can't quite figure out what.

Episode 2: Person Of Interest has an original slant on the procedural, and in the second episode, written by series creator Jonathan Nolan and Executive Producer Greg Plageman, and directed by Richard L. Lewis, the series continues to be intriguing. Finch's magic machine has popped out the ID of a teenage girl who, according to the files, was murdered with her family 2 years earlier. Since the magic machine can never be wrong, Reese sets out to investigate, and sure enough, it turns out the hired killer who shot her parents allowed the girl to live. Now, however, her life is in danger once again, because she's in line for a huge inheritance that the people who killed her family can't let her claim. The story, like the pilot's, was quite cleverly worked out as long as you didn't think about it too much.

We also get a dribbling of tantalizing details about Finch, including flashback glimpses of him and his business partner 5 years earlier, as he started to work on the magic machine. Since the partner is played by Brett Cullen, it's almost certain he'll turn out to be up to no good--we also find out that the partner is (apparently) dead in the present. Besides that, there's some welcome deadpan humor as Reese manages to follow Finch without being discovered and finds out that Finch's way of "hiding in plain sight" has him working as a humble software designer at a conglomerate that, in fact, he owns.

The episode all works pretty well, and although the series' debut numbers weren't too exciting, it seems like a show that has potential for growth, especially if NBC falters in the hour. A limitation, however, may be that since both Reese and Finch are largely keeping their lives secret, there's an awful lot of enigmatic clipped dialogue and little chance for emotion (although no one can do more with "enigmatic" than Michael Emerson). Also, the "pressuring the dirty cop for information" sequence has been just about the same in both episodes, and will get old-hat fast if there's not some variation. For now, the Taraji Henson plot and character are footnotes, although presumably Nolan has some ideas for where it's heading.

As the season's new procedurals go, Person Of Interest is easily the most promising. It's not essential viewing at this point, but it's a diverting way to spend an hour.

Original Verdict: If Nothing Else Is On...

Pilot + 1: Worth Keeping An Eye On

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THE SKED'S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: "Prime Suspect"

10:00 PM | Labels: Bello, crime, drama, Mirren, NBC, Pilot + 1, pilot reviews, Prime Suspect, The Sked, Thursday

Previously... on PRIME SUSPECT: Detective Jane Timoney (Maria Bello) is newly appointed to an all-male homicide squad in Manhattan. The other cops resent her, but she's stubborn to the point of abrasiveness, and her brilliant skills and intuition for police work mean they won't be able to get rid of her. Meanwhile, she and her boyfriend try to navigate a committed relationship that includes his bitter ex-wife and young son.

Episode 2: There have been a few changes in Prime Suspect since the original version of the pilot. Most visibly, the role of Jane's boyfriend Matt is now played by Kenny Johnson, previously of Saving Grace and The Shield; his character is still an architect, but now an all-American one, as opposed to the original actor, the very British Toby Stephens. The tone of the show has also been fiddled with: in the original pilot, Jane was practically facing a cabal of evil males who would barely speak to her, let alone pay any attention to her ideas on a case. Now the misogyny has mostly been crystallized into the character of Duffy (Brian F. O'Byrne), who's a terrible cop as well as a bad guy, and the other cops (including Aidan Quinn, as the head of the squad, and Kirk Acevedo) treat Jane with wary tolerance, if not acceptance.

Of course, all this begs a question which was true even in the pilot: why is this show Prime Suspect? It's not as though the title is going to bring in throngs of US viewers. The main attributes of the original British series, which was produced in 1991 (with many sequels thereafter)--apart of course from the very fine writing and the spectacular acting by Helen Mirren--were the extreme boorishness of the other cops, and Jane's own self-destructiveness, which included heavy drinking, horribly ill-advised relationships, and outright flouting of the rules. All of that has been minimized greatly for American network TV in 2011. 20 years later, even the recent British sequels have allowed Jane to be an accepted part of the force, and as to self-destructiveness, this Jane has a couple of glasses of scotch with her lovely boyfriend from time to time, and that's about it. All that's left is a remarkably routine cop show.

On those terms, the new Prime Suspect is OK, in a CBS kind of way. Bello is very strong as Jane, but the script of the second episode (by series re-developer Alexandra Cunningham, with direction by Jonas Pate) makes things far too easy for her. A mother has been murdered and her young daughter taken, and since it's Duffy's turn in the rotation, he's lead on the case. As soon as he fixates on an ex-convict child molester as the killer, we know he's dead wrong, and when he sends Jane out on routine interrogations, it's obvious she's going to hear and recognize the telling clue as to who the villain really is. Late in the episode, when things briefly go dark as Jane tries to undo the damage Duffy's done to the innocent man, there isn't the kind of connection between Jane and this man that there should be, because this Jane doesn't really have a dark side of her own (not even as much as Kyra Sedgwick's Brenda sometimes has on The Closer, let alone Mirren's Jane). Meanwhile we get another go-round of Jane spooking Matt's stick figure of an ex-wife, just as in the pilot, and Jane's lack of fondness for children is played for a laugh.

Aside from Bello (who does need to politely tell the costume people it's time to ditch the silly hat), there's nothing remotely exciting or distinctive about the new Prime Suspect. It's just a functional crime show, comfort food for a crowd that doesn't want its sensibilities mussed in the least.

Original Verdict: If Nothing Else Is On...

Pilot + 1: Still Unmemorable

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THE SKED'S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: "Charlie's Angels"

7:56 PM | Labels: ABC, action, charlie's, crime, Ilonzeh, kelly, Pilot + 1, pilot reviews, Taylor, The Sked, Thursday

Previously... on CHARLIE'S ANGELS: Stop me if you've heard this before: 3 gorgeous women--disgraced ex-cop Kate (Annie Ilonzeh), ex-jewel thief Abby (Rachael Taylor) and ex-car thief Eve (Minka Kelly)--have all reformed and gone to work as private detectives for the unseen Charlie Townsend (voice of Victor Garber), working along with Bosley (Ramon Rodriguez).

Episode 2: Here are 2 fun factoids about the first regular episode of Charlie's Angels. First, the episode was actually written (by Executive Producer/re-developers Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and Producer Sony Staglione) to be the third episode of the series, but ABC moved it up to air immediately after the pilot on the theory that it was markedly better than the second episode that was shot (which will air next week)--so this is the network's idea of the show putting its best foot forward. Second, the episode was directed by Angela Robinson, whose credits include the 2004 Sapphic action-comedy D.E.B.S., a movie one might easily see as having been influenced in interesting ways by prior incarnations of the Angels story.

Unfortunately, those are the sum total of worthwhile or fun aspects to the episode, which is almost entirely dull and routine. A Charlie's Angels that isn't an escapist fantasy isn't much, and having a storyline set among aspiring fashion models, with a couple of the leads donning what are supposed to be designer outfits for a few scenes, doesn't get it done. The dialogue is so uninspired it practically feels phonetic (when Eve leaps on a suspect and pulls him off a dock into the water because she thought he had a gun, someone says "She certainly knows how to make a splash!"), and the plotting is truly woeful. In order for the story to move forward, characters have to act like idiots (cops don't even look at an air vent that's hanging partly open, no one notices a "security guard" making his rounds while carrying a military-style metal briefcase), all in service of something about an Eastern European hit man who has to fake a green card marriage to a model just so he can be in place to kill the Russian president's wife. I think.

There's also a mild and ineffective attempt at characterization, as the episode introduces Kate's ex, who was also her police partner before he dumped her both as colleague and fiance after her scandal, and who's now moved to Miami so they can have awkward encounters all through the episode, culminating in her realizing that what they had wasn't really love after all.

The stars, at least two of whom have proven to be talented in the past (the jury is still out on Ilonzeh, based on her try at being "serious" toward the end of this episode), aren't even called upon to be sexy--just pretty, in an almost antiseptic way. There's no fun to any of it, and even as a dumb cop show, the action here would be considered unimpressive on basic cable.

Charlie's Angels could work for people who want something attractive playing on the TV screen while they surf online or have a conversation, paying attention for a few seconds every five minutes or so. But for people who are actually watching the set, it offers little in the way of entertainment value.

Original Verdict: If Nothing Else Is On...

Pilot + 1: Community and Parks & Recreation Are Only a Button Away

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[2011.09.30] CECILIA CHEUNG'S NEW COMPANY OPENS

3:55 PM | Labels: Cecilia Cheung, LEGENDARY AMAZONS

courtesy of mingpao.com

Yu Yuk Hing (second right), Rick Chin (third left), Emily (second left)
courtesy of takungpao.com

After her divorce Cecilia Cheung Pak Chi not only took care of her sons but also remembered to develop her own career. Recently she and her manager invested in the New Asia Entertainment + Cecilia Cheung Workshop, which already opened in a low key manner. Becoming a boss, Pak Chi even spent six figures for an employee lucky drawing to improve relationships with them.

Pak Chi posted three photos yesterday online and wrote "Cecilia Cheung Workshop Opens With Low Profile, Boss Cheung Blatantly Benefits Employees". Actually Pak Chi and her manager's New Asia Entertainment + Cecilia Cheung Workshop earlier opened in Hong Kong. That day she led ten employees in the opening ceremony. In order to increase employee morale and improve their relationships, she threw in six figures for the employees to play a lucky drawing for cash prize. Pak Chi's workshop design was simple and even faced the race track.

In addition, Pak Chi also posted two photos from the set of LEGENDARY AMAZONS (YEUNG MOON NUI YEUNG). She was practicing with a long spear with a stunt coordinator. She wrote, "As long as it is within my ability I would finish all of my scenes. I hope to not only fight exciting but also fight pretty." Thus during her free time she practiced her martial art scenes.

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Film Fan Fridays for Friday September 30, 2011

Film Fan Fridays for Friday September 30, 2011

THE BIJOU REVIEW: "What's Your Number?"

THE SKED'S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: "Person Of Interest"

THE SKED'S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: "Prime Suspect"

THE SKED'S PILOT + 1 REVIEW: "Charlie's Angels"

[2011.09.30] CECILIA CHEUNG'S NEW COMPANY OPENS