Ten Statements About....SMILEY FACE (2006)

In this photo, Anna looks like I felt after I watched this film

"When I get home, I'm going to frame a bunch of stuff I love. Like lasagna. I love lasagna. It's so good and cheesy."

1) I should have known the moment that Gregg Araki's name popped up as the director of this film that I was in for a marathon of pain. Fuck Gregg Araki. Dude's been making films since I was in college and has yet to make anything I can find even remotely tolerable (and that includes The Doom Generation, with its gratuitous Rose McGowan nudity).

2) To be fair, Araki isn't the only idiot responsible for this mess. The script is by one Dylan Haggerty, and the next time I see his name on a film, I will remember that he is the man who did what to me was the inconceivable by writing a film that made me hate Anna Faris (although I haven't seen Paul Blart, Mall Cop, so it might not be the only film with that quality).

3) Don't get me wrong--I adore Anna Faris. I think she is extraordinarily talented, both as a comedian and as an actress (if you dont believe me, just watch her turn in May). She manages to find something likable in every character she assays, even in dreck like The House Bunny....except this one.

4) And here's the integral reason why. Throughout the film, we're told at key points that Faris' Jane is supposed to at the core a decent human being. And there are references to her being able to function normally as a human being...and yet, with all that the script tells us about her, we have no sense she is anything other than an out-of-it stoner bitch. There's no baseline to get a sense of what she was like before she started smoking pot like a maniac, so we have no sympathy for her as she goes through this Odyssey.

When John Cho looks at you with pity for your pot use....sigh

5) For that matter, there's absolutely no reason for us to have sympathy for Faris' Jane. Even when the thing happens that supposedly is going to make us feel uplifted by her, it makes no sense. What we end up with is a stoner chick wrecking havoc on her life and the life of others.

6) Who the fuck thought the idea of Faris being convinced Danny Masterson's Steve fucks skulls...only to have us find out that Steve actually does fuck skulls in a black room with satanic symbols painted on the walls when he discovers she has failed him was funny?

Oh, wait...I forgot this was a Gregg Araki picture.

7) Admittedly, I think there was some sort of recognition moment when Faris, while waiting on her audition, interacts with the absolutely adorable Jayma Mays, who played the Anna Faris roles in those awful ______ Movie films. But the humor doesn't come because the fact that Farris is looking at her successor is supposed to be the humor.

8) You know this film has failed in investing our lead with our sympathies where we see her being cowed by Jane Lynch...and you're actually rooting for Lynch to give her an primo supremo dyke beatdown.

"You mean I agreed to work with GREGG ARAKI????"

9) Ouch....you know, that inspiring moment where Jane drops the Communist Manifesto and it splinters into a bunch of pages that are blown up and down the California coast? The question of why it was inspiring aside, the fact that it hinges on a truly dreadful piece of CGI sort of defeats its impact.

10) Oh, and Gregg? I know I get the concept of Anna Faris having Roscoe Lee Brown as her mental voice is supposed to be funny. I know you get it. But the bulk of people watching this film probably were asking, 'Who the Hell is Roscoe Lee Brown?'

Overall...fuck Gregg Araki, and fuck this film.

Ten Statements About....THE FUGITIVE (1993)

"For the last time, I am NOT The Unabomber!"

"Listen up, ladies and gentlemen. Our fugitive has been on the run for 90 minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is four miles an hour. That gives up a radius of six miles. What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, townhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up to 15 miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him."

1) You want to know how to write an effective suspense thriller? You set up a smart, resourceful character. You put him in an untenable situation. You sic an equally smart resourceful character on his tail....and you don't let up.

2) The reason why Harrison Ford worked so well as an actor at this period is the tension between his worn, sad face and his physicality. And I'm not talking about big fighty-fighty stuff; I'm talking about simple things like the way he runs, or the way he knocks someone's arm off his shoulder with such conviction. The combination of these two qualities give him an everyman vibe that allows so many people to identify with him.

On his off days, Tommy Lee Jones liked to dress up as a
homeless man and harass redheads for being the spawn
of the devil....

3) But don't get me wrong--this film is owned by Tommy Lee Jones. From the moment he steps into the frame, he makes us watch him no matter where we go. And most importantly...

4) The script by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy (soon to carve out a filmmaking career of his own after this) is hyper-efficient in defining his characters. Sure, we know very little about Ford's Kimble, and even less about Jones' Gerard, but we know what these characters are about, what their motivations are, and what their desires are. We find these character relatable without forcing far too much backstory on their, well, back.

5) Ahhhh, Jeron Krabbe...how I wish you had more of an American career like your friend Rutger Hauer. Sure, your role is relatively small in this film, but you are the best when it comes to being oily and smug...and when Ford beats you up, it's just sooooo satisfying....

6) On a related note....wow, it's so weird seeing Jane Lynch playing someone who's not evil and wants to make teens unhappy.

If you don't acknowledge his smugness, Jeron Crabbe
will hit you with his girder...

7) You know, at first I was wondering why Sela Ward was so prominent in the cast list, as she spends literally the entire film as a corpse, whereas Julianne Moore's name is way down...but in retrospect, the script gives Ward an integral position as a sort of ghost that drives Dr. Kimble forward on his quest, and Moore's role is just to scowl, yell at Ford and snap at Jones. So, you know, their position is valid after all.

8) The script is so good that even Gerard's support staff--and there are a lot of staff he has in support--has little grace notes that give us very clear idea of where they're coming from.

9) However...if there's one weakness, it's in the portrayal of the Chicago cops. I understand that this is for expediency's sake--after all, the script gets the story into high gear very, very quickly--but the sharpness of the other characterization makes the one-sidedness of the cops seem like plastic caricatures.

10) Yes, the solution starts coming out of left field--an argument can be made that on some level this has the whiff of 'Just Go With It'....but the pacing is such I have to wonder if this was brought up to create a MacGuffin-esque Hitchcock angle to the film.

Overall...an excellent suspenser that works due to a great script, some exceptional casting, and even more exceptional characterization.

Ten Statements About....VERONICA MARS SEASON ONE, EPISODE SIX 'Return of The Kane' (2004)

"Yeah, and I bet this is how Jeb Bush did it, too..."

"Arrest records. Evidence Log. Autopsy Report. How many times do I have to look at this stuff? Until it starts to make sense."
 

1) Even before the credits, alot gets done--we finally get introduced to the Echols parents, played by real life celebrity couple Harry Hamlin and Lisa 'Fish Lips' Rinna; we see the storyline involving Jake Kane's pushing Duncan to be more involved progressed; we establish a little more about Wallace in setting up the central mystery for this episode; we are introduced to Abel Koontz (played by the highly underrated Christian Clemenson), the supposed killer of Lily; and we get Kristen Bell making sundaes. Okay, so that last part is only of interest to me, but still...it's obvious that Thomas--who wrote the story for scripter Phil Klemmer--is getting ready to start kicking things into high gear.

2) Oh, and one more thing...Amanda Seyfried pops up for the first time as a vision/guiding spirit, helping her piece together the mystery of her own murder. Supposedly, Seyfriend was only to appear in a small number of episodes, but Thomas liked the energy she brought to the set so much, he kept adding her to other stories...and boy, does the ghoulish chemistry between Veronica and Lily just supercharges every scene they're in together.

3) I'm still not sure why the whole 'Bum Fights' angle gets dragged into this story; it really doesn't interact much with the actual 'student election/Pirate Points' main spine...yes, it does help define the sort of home life Logan suffers through, but it could just as easily have been dropped into a dozen other stories.

Jane Lynch..torturing kids
since 2004...

4) Wow, Jane Lynch was being a bitch to high schoolers loooooooong before Glee, you Gleeks.

5) You really have to wonder if the whole storyline revolving around the school election was a reaction to the whole 'hanging chad' situation--which still rubbed some people the wrong way four years later.

6) While this may not look like a significant introduction, Madison Sinclair, played to Heather-y perfection by Amanda Noret makes an impression...and becomes a very significant thorn in Veronica's side as this season and next continues...

7) There's a definite parallel between Kyle Secor's Jake Kane who (at least at this point) is a well-rounded character who actively wants what's best for his son, and Hamlin's Aaron Echolls, whose only thoughts are of himself. This will play out as we go deep into Season One.

As we'll learn as we get deeper into season one, all families
are unhappy in their own way...and the Echolls family's
unhappiness is a dark and perverse one...

8) The sequence that begins with Logan picked out a belt from a large closet full of them and ends with Lisa Rinna sitting alone with an enigmatic look on her face, drinking while the sounds of a beating reverberate through the house, is powerful film noir manque. Rinna has never been a great actress, but she does have moments of greatness...this one, where she is a modern Sphinx, her reaction to the violence elsewhere unreadable, is one of those moments of greatness.

9) The whole throughline involving Wanda and Veronica may seem a little deux ex machina...but I do think it serves to shore up the film noir cred of the series--namely, that anybody can betray our heroine, and anybody can prove to be an ally.

10) The stinger, which sort of brings the Abel Koontz situation to the fore for future episode, works here--it's a cliffhanger-without-being-a-cliffhanger, driving us to follow on to next week.

Overall....this is a collection of great moments that maybe shouldn't be hanging out together, but is still a great lil' forty-some-odd minutes thanks to a lot of set-up and advancement of individual story arcs.