Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast
NEW RELEASES 7/21/06
3 pieces of Mooby toast
Clerks II (R)
Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson
Directed by: Kevin Smith
When the Quick Stop burns to the ground, the fondly remembered slackers Dante and Randall are forced to flip burgers at Mooby’s to gather some minimum wages (especially since Dante plans to marry soon). Nonplused, Jay and Silent Bob offer commentary using language which would make bikers and stand-up-comics blush.
2 and 1/2 pieces of haunted-house toast
Monster House (PG-13)
Voices of Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Nick Cannon
Directed by: Gil Keenan
With producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis on board, this movie has great potential. But after flirting with Hitchcockian themes and true horror, it quickly retreats, quaking before the PG-13 icon. Unlike the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, you know that none of the animated characters in “Monster House” are really in peril.
No toast unavailable for preview
My Super ex-girlfriend (PG-13)
Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson, Anna Faris, Eddie Izzard, Wanda Sykes
directed by Ivan Reitman
The moral of this film seems to be “When a mere mortal falls for beautiful super hero, he better not break up with her….or else.” For example, after she trashes his car and thows a live shark through his window, the super powered girl whispers sweetly: “I knew you’d come back to me…that’s why I didn’t kill you.” Seemingly unsure how to market the film, the press release from the studio spends three paragraphs telling us about the director’s past successes (“Ghostbusters,” “Old School,” etc.), while this newest film may harken back to the heroines in his early works like “Cannibal Girls” or “Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia”.
Who Killed the Electric Car
With gasoline prices approaching $4/gallon, fossil fuel shortages, unrest in oil producing regions around the globe and mainstream consumer adoption and adoption of the hybrid electric car (more than 140,000 Prius’ sold this year), this story couldn’t be more relevant or important.
Starts Friday, July 21st at the Rialto in Santa Rosa
NEW on VIDEO & DVD3 pieces of South African toast
Tsotsi (R)
Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano
Directed by Gavin Hood
Box Office: $2,753,840
When a brutal, cold-hearted thug car-jacks a BMW, the unexpected infant in the car seat changes Tsotsi’s future. If you believe in the redemptive power of a child’s innocence and the love of a strong woman, then this Academy Award-winning version of Athol Fugard’s story of sorrow and joy is for you.
2 pieces of “no she ain’t” toast
She’s the Man (PG-13)
Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Julie Hagerty
Directed by Andy Fickman
Box Office: $33,687,63
The plot of Twelfth Night is kicked into a private high school where a soccer-loving kid played by Amanda Bynes poses as her twin brother in order to defeat her old high school (which prevented her from joining the boys’ team when the girls’ team shut down). One big problem is that Byne’s interpretation of teenage manhood, involves talking like an effeminate good-old-boy from Hazard County.
TRULY CANADIAN
by
Gil Mansergh
As I write this, the peaks of the rugged Kootenays are at my back, the headwaters of the
Columbia River flow leisurely at my feet, and the Christmas tree covered mountains of the Purcell Range are in the distance. A horn-blowing, lumber-laden freight train winds through the valley, pairs of bald eagles soar on the hot afternoon breeze, and bicyclists, hikers, rafters, tennis players, sunbathers, swimmers, hot spring soakers, photographers and golfers traverse the roadways, riverbeds, hiking paths and fairways in every direction. This is Canada.
I wrote last time that most of the scenic wonders I would visit I have already seen on the movie screen. This is mostly true, but also very, very wrong. My own list of never seen treasures is topped by a mountain lake that was originally named the HeeJee by its British discoverer, but now goes by the moniker “Lake Moraine.” Formed by glacial runoff when a rock slide (called the rockpile) stopped up a small valley, the crystalline turquoise water is so clear that canoes seem to float in the air. The moderate hike following the northern lakeshore was made ten times more delightful with my young granddaughters in tow. Strategically located rocks must be climbed, tiny streams crossing the path must be splashed through, and when I joke that we have to travel over the imposing glacial-covered mountain ahead of us to get home, the three year old says “OK. We can slide back down on skates (skis).” What I don’t share with her is the sign warning that the hike is only suggested for groups of six or more people closely clumped together “since that magic number seems to keep the grizzly bears away.
I stumbled upon a mystery (still unsolved) in my resort’s lobby. A shelf held DVDs available for rent, and on the top left corner was the movie “Water,” (the story of a young Indian girl sold into marriage and then abandoned by her families when her much older husband dies suddenly). The week before I left on vacation, this film was still being shown in theaters at home so I asked how it came to be on the shelf. “They just arrive from the distributor,” the desk clerk told me. But the owner of the local video rental store in the nearby town was very surprised when I told her about the DVD. “I haven’t heard of the film,” she admitted, “but it wouldn’t be the first time the resort puts a movie on the shelf before the release date.” Then she looked up the official date in her distributors guide. “It appeared in theaters on May 14th,” she said. “Not too long ago…The DVD release is marked ‘Not Announced.’ They shouldn’t have that film at all. I’ll have to head over there and check it out.”
The desk clerk, the video store owner and almost every Canadian I have talked with speaks in a distinctive manner. Sounding like a cross between Sheriff Marge Gunderson in “Fargo,” and Gary Cooper in “Sergeant York,” they often add an “eh?” at the end of a sentence. This leaves me with the feeling I’ve just been asked a question even when I haven’t. They also sound apologetic somehow, as if the drop-dead-gorgeous surroundings and weather, or the polite drivers, or the two nights of brilliant fireworks displays for Canada Day July 1st, or the craggy mountain tops painted Technicolor orange and pink and purple by sunsets which last an hour or more were sub-par. This same feeling of “We’re number two,” is evident in TV shows and the press. For example, when the Calgary Herald ran an interview with Jacqueline Dupuis, the new director of the Calgary Film Festival , they asked for comment about the criticism that past festivals had falsely promised appearances by noted Hollywood stars. (Not only did William H. Macy and Naomi Watts not make an appearance, they were apparently unaware they had even been invited.) Ms. Dupuis offered the following defense: “You have to understand, stars go where they need to go to sell films…therefore stars won’t be coming here. If they do come, it will only be out of the goodness of their heart.” Eh?
Instead of apologizing, Canadians should be boasting about their film industry. The National Film Board of Canada has a long-standing tradition of underwriting daringly innovative movies and some of them are on my list of all-time favorites:
Writer/director Denys Arcand won the foreign-language Oscar for his poetic tale of an egoist’s last days in “The Barbarian Invasions” (2003), but we first met all of these richly faceted characters twenty years earlier in his “The Decline of the American Empire” (1986)
Writer/director Atom Egoyan has created two masterful films dealing with the loss of children. Ian Holm is the insurance adjuster who arrives in a snow-shrouded Canadian village after a tragic school bus accident in in “The Sweet Hereafter” (1997). And Egoyan offers the following comments about “Exotica,” his most successful film: “It was a hard sell…turned down by people who really should have known better, because, in retrospect, the movie’s called ‘Exotica,’ it’s set in a strip club, and it’s a thriller.”
Two films from the activist 80’s offer beautifully sympathetic portrayals of dramatically different individuals. The wistful female protagonist in the avowedly feminist film “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” (1987) is truly memorable and the movie’s musical theme still haunts my mind. In contrast, stuntman-turned-actor Richard Farnsworth embraces the role of a septuagenarian train robberwith great gusto in “The Grey Fox” (1983).
Comments? E-mail gilmansergh@comcast.net
Hear Gil’s Cinema Toast radio show 7:35 Thurs. AM KRSH-FM 95.9