I'm exhausted. I got plenty of sleep last night, but you never quite catch up, do you? I'm going to be brief with the scattering of movies I saw over the last couple days excepting Knocked Up, as I started to include it here, but it's a hugely overlong piece I've gotta finish and post on its own later.
Monday: Smiley Face
Anna Faris isn't into pot and eats some. Hilarity ensues, and distribution may be tricky for the movie (even though it's really funny) because it's about pot. I hope it doesn't just get shoved off on a pay-cable channel. People deserve the chance to laugh at this one in a group. It's pot humor that even non-whacky tobacky types like me can dig.
Tuesday: Helvetica, Blackbird, and Confessions of a Superhero
Helvetica, a documentary about the iconic font, as I have mentioned previously, is font nerd porn. It reminds me of Wordplay, in that it's so much about the magnificent art that is the expression of language. You can have a great infrastructure and tools to work with, but it's all about how they're implemented. If you aren't working with something visually arresting, no one is going to pay attention in this day ad age of instant gratification and recognition. This is one I'll buy on DVD and watch regularly when doing a design project, and will be an absolute must-see for all my graphic design wizard friends.
Blackbird was a gigantic letdown and I had barely any expectations going into it. Adam Rapp is a brilliant playwright, but this play just doesn't work on screen for me. That said the performances by the leads are exceptionally good, full of lived-in quality. As we drag on, the movie starts to feel like a slow painful death, which may have been intended, but even for a guy like me who relishes depressing stuff, I couldn't get into it. I swear to God the only reason I didn't ditch was that Scott Weinberg didn't, and if there's anyone I want to be when I grow up...it isn't him---but, I do want to suffer through some of the same garbage so I can try to hate on it more than him. Of course, I'd never win.
Confessions of a Superhero is about the people who dress up as Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Wonder Woman, and so on and walk Hollywood Boulevard taking pictures with tourists for tips that make up most or all of their income. This is the doc I always wish would be up for Best Feature Doc at the Oscars so tons of people would see it.
All of them seem fixated on celebrity, from a Superman who claims to be Sandy Dennis' long-hidden son to The Hulk who is the American Dream made flesh (working up to an apartment from a cardboard scrap in an alley), to an unsuccessful model/actress Wonder Woman, and finally a Batman who looks strikingly like George Clooney, is delusional, and claims to have killed many people.
This will get picked up, it's sharply-edited, well-shot, and never induces checking-of-the-watch.
Gotta run to lunch, then a doc, then another, then Reign Over Me. Tomorrow will probably be a Day of Rest.