| Tuesday, January 08, 2008 |
| Sweding the movies |
As I write this, voters are still casting ballots in New Hampshire, but a bunch of polls make it sound like it's Obama's race to lose. Things are less clear-cut over on the GOP side. California's primary isn't for another month, but I've already received two phone calls from young-sounding, enthusiastic Obama volunteers. I have no idea how they got our new phone number -- it wasn't a random call, since they asked for "Susanne." I'm on every do-not-call list known to man, and have never donated to a political candidate. Is it magic? Somehow, I don't have the heart to ask the Obama Girls to remove my number from their database; they don't want anything from me, they just want to tell me how great they think their candidate is. It's kind of cool that the Youth Vote actually seems to be coming out this year, and an Obama/McCain race would certainly be one with clear-cut generational differences. Idea for McCain -- find a young veep candidate, maybe someone like 38-year-old Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, and vow to serve only one term if elected. That would make people less uneasy about the age factor, and wouldn't it be cool to have a president who didn't need to worry about reelection? (I must admit here that I don't really know anything about Gov. Blunt besides the fact that he's young and Republican. Hopefully he has a bit more gravitas than, say, Dan Quayle.)
But enough about politics. Last night, we went to an early, early screening of Michel Gondry's new film, "Be Kind Rewind." It doesn't open until Feb. 22, although it will be screened at the Sundance Festival later this month. Gondry has directed zillions of great music videos, most notably for Bjork, and also co-wrote and directed the brilliantly loopy "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," so expectations were running high.
The trailer and posters for the film make it seem like kind of a wacky mainstream comedy, but of course Gondry throws in a few surprises. The movie's main characters are Mike (Mos Def), who works at a run-down video store in Passaic, N.J. (so downmarket it only rents video cassettes -- no DVDs), and his friend Jerry (Jack Black), a loudmouthed conspiracy theorist who wreaks havoc whenever he goes. When the genial owner of the store (Danny Glover) takes a week off, Mike is left in charge, with only one order: Keep Jerry out of the store. Naturally, Jerry comes in, and he manages to demagnetize the store's entire stock of tapes (long story). A customer comes in wanting to rent "Ghostbusters," so Mike and Jerry decide to use the now-blank tape and an old video camera to shoot their own version of the film. All of a sudden, the guys' homemade videos -- "Robocop," "Rush Hour 2," "Driving Miss Daisy" and more -- are the hottest thing in town. They start referring to their creations as "Sweded videos"; they can justify the steeper rental price because they're allegedly from far-off Sweden.
Anyone with a low tolerance for Jack Black may find this movie a bit too Jack-heavy for their tastes -- he's definitely in your face here. Both Mike and Jerry are a bit dim, but have an essential sweetness. At heart, this is a movie about the importance of community and creating your own art, a message hammered home perhaps a bit too heavily in the film's last 20 minutes or so. "Be Kind Rewind" definitely isn't on the level of an "Eternal Sunshine"; it's more of a pleasant diversion. The sequences where Mike and Jerry make their movies are undeniably funny, though, and I'm sure Gondry would be happy if it inspired some audience members to pick up a camera and "Swede" some movies of their own -- or, even better, create something entirely new. |
posted by 125records @ 12:04 PM  |
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| 2 Comments: |
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I was wondering about the videocassette thing - you'd think it would have been less awkward just to have set it in the early '90s or late '80s or something. Or maybe there really are video stores so run-down and serving such poor customers that there's no particular call for DVDs.
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About ten minutes after reading your entry, I saw the Missouri Governor on Fox. He is going to bat for the family of the young girl who was driven to suicide by internet bullying. Looks like a great young man.
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I was wondering about the videocassette thing - you'd think it would have been less awkward just to have set it in the early '90s or late '80s or something. Or maybe there really are video stores so run-down and serving such poor customers that there's no particular call for DVDs.