On a quick side note: That guy who does the movie reviews on the Today Show is fucking terrible. Not only his old white man afro(which looks like it was gathered from the sweepings off a barbershop floor) and Dudley Boy glasses, but his voice invokes images of a deranged Mr. Rogers. Anyway...
I'll be leaving in about an hour to check out Michael Mann's latest, Public Enemies, starring everybody's favorite weirdo Johnny Depp. I'm actually not all that hyped for this. I've never been much of a Depp fan, and I find his choices in roles more interesting than the performances themselves. When left to play fairly conventional characters he's less than inspiring. But I can't deny the wealth of talent in this thing including the fantastic Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard. The presence of Stephen Dorff scares me, as it's a rare thing when he's part of a good film that doesn't involve vampires, but hopefully this will be different. This is playing pretty much everywhere, although it's shocking how few screens it's getting in comparison to Transformers.
Apparently, the Resistance won! We've been fighting for months, trying to smuggle illegal independent film into the corrupt Multiplex framework with little to no success. Even works by one of the most acclaimed creators of all-time, Woody Allen, failed to break through for fear of indie cinema gaining a foothold in the public consciousness. With the help of a mole that we helped plant inside the Multiplex Hierarchy, Allen's latest film, Whatever Works, about a neurotic middle aged(Larry David) who marries an equally absent-minded woman(Evan Rachel Wood) 40 years his junior can finally be absorbed by the teeming masses.
What else?
I gotta take a sec to urge everyone to check out The Stoning of Soraya M., a powerful film about an Iranian woman unjustly convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. Starring Shoreh Aghdashloo(24, House of Sand and Fog), it is an unflinching tale that puts a fine point on the lack of rights for Iranian women and the helplessness of their lives. Since I saw it yesterday it shouldn't be on my list but I might actually see it again it was so good. It's not a fun movie, obviously, but it's a movie with a message. It's currently playing at Landmark E Street Cinema and AMC Shirlington.
I'm a little intrigued by the trailer for Unmistaken Child, a documentary about a Tibetan monk sent on a lifequest by the Dalai Lama to find the reincarnation of his dead master. Apparently they followed this guy for nearly 5 years, and only a few weeks ago completed editing on the film. For that reason alone I'm interested, and if I find a couple spare hours will squeeze this in. As usual a film like this only playing at Landmark E Street.
I'm hoping to catch a screening of Bruno this week, although I admit to not being the biggest supporter of Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat. I don't buy for a second that any of his stunts are legit, which kinda puts a damper on the whole thing. Frankly I've never found guy caricatures all that funny. It looks and feels sorta outdated, but we shall see.
