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Confetti
Confetti is an offbeat British mockumentary in the Chris Guest fashion,
combining laughs with sentiment and apparently employing quite a bit of improv.
The premise this time is that a British bridal magazine is looking for a new
hook in its annual "wedding of the year" issue. After all, classic white dresses
all look alike, and the traditional format is tired, so this year the magazine
will reward the most original wedding with their June cover. The process begins
with auditions. They advertise the concept and invite long lines of people to
bring their ideas to an expert panel of judges, reminiscent of the first round
of American Idol. From the various loony concepts, they settle on three:
- A tennis theme
- A Broadway musical theme
- A naturist theme
These three ideas are to be developed by professional wedding planners, and
all three weddings will be held together in a vast arena as a media event, with
celebrity judges picking the grand prize winner.
Things seem to go poorly. The tennis partners are unsympathetic. The Broadway
couple and their family don't seem to be very musical. Worst of all, the
magazine's lawyers decide that the nudist wedding ain't gonna happen. No nudes
in the arena. No nudes in the magazine.
In a manner somewhat reminiscent of Guest's Best in Show, things work out
much better than planned. The weddings have their bright spots, and we learn to
like the three couples much more than we thought we would (well two of them,
anyway).
While the film is not a complete failure, it doesn't really work. There's
probably a good lesson here for filmmakers. Unless your name is Guest, you
should probably try to make your mockumentary either zany or emotionally
resonant, but not both. It is no simple task to develop sympathetic characters
while ridiculing them. I can't think of many people how have been able to employ
Guest's techniques successfully and even the master himself had a recent misfire
(For Your Consideration). In addition to the structural problems inherent in the
technique, the film just isn't very funny, so it plays out less like a comedy
than an irritating drama with annoying characters. I found myself quite bored
quite often.
There is a ton of nudity from the naturist couple and their friends. Full
frontal, full rear, male, female. Whatever you might see in a nudist camp.
Unfortunately, the nudists do not look like professional actors and models, but
like real nudists. In other words, they could pass as a random sampling of
Wal-Mart customers. Olivia Colman, who plays the naked bride, has a fairly
pretty face, but ... well ... why be mean?
You can see everything for yourself if
you care to. I don't especially recommend it.
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* Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).
* White asterisk:
expanded format.
*
Blue asterisk: not mine.
No asterisk: it probably
sucks.
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OTHER CRAP:
Catch the deluxe
version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles,
here.
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Natural Born Killers
Natural Born Killers (1994) is an Oliver Stone film based on a story by
Quentin Tarantino and starring Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as mass
murderers. They meet, kill a whole bunch of people, go to prison, escape, and
raise a nice family. The policeman who made catching them a vendetta (Tom
Sizemore) prepared himself for the battle by choking a prostitute to death.
So much for the plot.
Harrelson and Lewis are fine in the film. Even as strange as it was, they
sold their characters, but any plot I can summarize in less than a line of
text is pretty much a throwaway, and I saw no message to the film. Tarantino
is reportedly unhappy about what Oliver Stone did to his story. Stone, not
known for restraint anyway, chose to use B&W, color, multiple film stocks,
animated sequences, and a constantly rotating horizon to film this one. Viewed
as a workbook of odd camera techniques, it was much too long at 118 minutes.
This is a C to C-.
Some people were impressed. Ebert, in awarding four stars, had a theory as
to what all of this meant. He saw it as an allegory for the OJ trial,
demonstrating that we have become jaded and are no longer affected by
violence. Berardinelli, in awarding 1.5 stars, was as unimpressed as I was.
IMDb readers say 6.8.
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Bad City
The Time Machine is parked today as we look at Bad City, aka Dirty Work.
Meghan Maureen McDonough shows breasts in bed after having sex. Caps and
three clips
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Red Road
Jackie (Kate Dickie), a CCTV operator remotely surveying the
movements of people in a run-down part of Glasgow. She is introduced as
a lonely figure whose only human interaction away from the workplace is
semi-regular passionless sex with a married man. One night, as well as
the dog-owner and dancing cleaner she usually watches over, she spots a
shifty character from her past, Clyde (Tony Curran). From that moment
her empty life is filled with an obsession to confront him. We are kept
enthralled as Jackie follows, both on CCTV and in person in his life,
appearing at his house party and following him into pubs and cafes.
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Notes and collages
"Farscape" - Part 10
Season 2, Ep 8
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Pat's comments in yellow...
Alberto Gonzales, the first Mexican-American Attorney General, is reportedly
under heavy pressure to resign.
* Bush found a Guatemalan guy who'll do the job even
cheaper.
The State Education Agency found that one-third of Washington, DC, is
functionally illiterate.
* There are three branches of government, so guess
which one it is!
A 35-year-old Orlando man was thought dead after he jumped off a Carnival Cruise
ship, but he was rescued alive after drifting for eight hours in the Atlantic
because he weighs 300 pounds and his fat kept him insulated and floating.
* Tragically, just as he was being hauled to safety,
some Japanese whalers harpooned him.
On this day in 1727, Sir Isaac Newton, the discover of gravity, died in London.
Also on this date in 1969, John Lennon married Yoko Ono.
* So both men discovered an all-controlling force they
could never escape.
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