Double Feature! Two reviews:
"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" and "Countdown to Zero"





Scott Pilgrim vs. The World | A film review by Gary Chew

GARY CHEW/Sacramento
7/26/2010

This is not a movie about some dude named Scott Pilgrim who has a bone to pick with Tulsa's venerable daily newspaper. What it is...is what I'd call a put-on, teenage-angst, video-game, comic opera. And to get an accolade in at the top of this mini-tome, I said to the studio man, on exiting the screening, that "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," may rival ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'" I know that's sticking my neck out some. But I think I'll go with it, anyway.

(BTW, first time I saw that 1975 smash was at Tulsa's Village Cinema on Garnett Road. If I remember correctly, we rocked that night.)

There was a hellava lot of rocking going on in a Sacramento cinema this evening, too. Michael Cera, in the title role, was doing his hero-geek, deadpan act to perfection to the tune of some zippy CGI and "marvelous" garage band sounds---with babes in blue, green and purple hair throwing their feminine guile around all over the place. Action scenes, which abound---as they say, today---were awesome. Keanu Reeves and Jet Li, need to eat their hearts out, fur shur.

When a comic book reader in my early teens, it was Batman, Superman and Captain Marvel on my block. Had the Scott Pilgrim Oni Press graphic novels of Bryan Lee O'Malley (the first released in 2004) been available to me when I was an annoying pubescent male way back when, I'd've surely read them in lieu of Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent and the Marvel Family. That might be why I had trouble staying awake in "The Dark Knight," not to mention the recent Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle entitled, "Inception."

Sorry, some loved it...some slept.

"Scott Pilgrim," the movie, certainly induced insomnia for me throughout its running time of about an hour and forty minutes. The film, directed by Edgar Wright, ("Shaun of the Dead") is quite a piece of very contemporary opera, too. There are appropriately spaced arias and pretty crappy garage band suites and overtures, greatly staged fights that produce no blood flow (except once on Gideon's cheek) and some really cool geek, er...uh..Greek chorus action during the local duel-of-the-bands-to-the-death stand-off. Furthermore, Scott's band, for which he plays bass, carries a title that sounds like it could come right out of the mind of a genius like Giacomo Puccini ("Madama Butterfly"). How amazing is the Sex Bob-Ombs for the name of a really cool band, I ask.

Scott, our intrepid geek, has been dumped by his recent girl friend, Envy Adams. Envy (played by Brie Larson) is the lead singer of the nemesis band, The Clash at Demonhead. But heck, Scott has just been "struck" by the new gal in town, Ramona Flowers. She's played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But in order to date Ramona, Scott must defeat Ramona's seven evil ex-boyfriends.

Too bad the 22-year-old Scott meets Ramona just as he's being given the rush by a 17-year-old high school girl named Knives Chau. Knives is so totally much younger than Scott it becomes embarrassing for him. Ellen Wong, in a refreshing and effervescent debut, plays Knives and shows that she can swoon with the best of them...like teenie-boppers back when the Beatles did the Ed Sullivan Show on CBS.

Other band members include Kim on drums (Alison Pill, "Milk," "In Treatment"), Stephen Stills on guitar (Mark Webber) and Young Neil, the soundman (Johnny Simmons, "Jennifer's Body"). Apparently, nobody went for characters with names like Crosby or Nash.

Top: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alison Pill; Bottom: Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh, Brie Larson

Others who ought to be mentioned are Anna Kendrick, ("Up in the Air" and Oscar-nominated for it) as Scott's older sis, Stacey; Tulsan and SNL dude, Bill Hader whose character's name isn't listed; as well as Sacramento-born Brie Larson ("Greenberg," "United States of Tara") as Envy Adams that uppity singer chick (mentioned earlier) who kicks the ass of Scott's heart, according to the script.

Ellen Wong	Anna Kendrick

Another villain of this piece is Gideon, a name also dropped above. He's the ultimate evil ex-boy friend whom Scott must finally confront. He's played by Jason Schwartzman, who you'd swear must be Stanley Tucci's son or much younger bro. (Just sayin'.) An insufferable impresario, Gideon refers to his night club (where a big showdown occurs near the close of the movie) as a cathedral of cutting-edge taste. Very cool.

Another thing cool is how this film makes it clear the relaxed way young people, today, are with gays and lesbians. There are no gay or lesbians love scenes except for a quick kiss between Stacey's boy friend and Wallace, who's humorously played by Keiran Culkin ("Igby Goes Down"). Wallace is gay and also Scott's roomie, but they're just friends. Some fun things happen, though, with Wallace and Scott at home when Wallace has another fellow in for a sleepover.

"Pilgrim vs. The World" is rated PG-13. But the dialogue implies one particular word is spoken that would "R" rate the film if the creative graphics and special effects didn't include the bleeping of this f*#iliar expletive, as well as blacking-out the screen just where the mouth is of the foul-speaking young lady who utters it with a certain amount of regularity. It's gets a laugh every time.

Lots of neat graphics are laid into the live action, imbuing "Scott" with a grandiose sense of the Comic Book with humorous segues from this to that. Some of those memorable TV Batman fight-sound words come into view in many places for added amusement; a telephone call always gets a "rrrrrrinnnnggg" splashed on the screen.

Other than Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson not showing up in cameos, my only (slight) issue is that the action/fight scenes might be a bit more plenteous than an old teenager needs, so I add that as only a mild precaution since everyone I saw around me was undergoing very intense entertainment stress. You can probably tell that I was too.

So, let the video games begin, Pilgrim!

Countdown to Zero | A film review by Gary Chew

GARY CHEW/Sacramento
8/6/2010

An 8 and-a-half year old boy on August 6, 1945 can't appreciate what a horrific, yet historic day he has just lived. It took a few years for the gravity of what was wrought on that bright Monday morning across the incongruously named Pacific Ocean to soak into his naive mind.

Here on August 6, 2010 (a Friday), that same person feels familiar, old chills up and down his spine watching "Countdown to Zero." He'd felt them before while seeing films like, "On The Beach," "The Bedford Incident," "Fail-Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." All of them seen well after fully comprehending the meaning of Hiroshima.

"Countdown to Zero" has an agenda: to scare the living hell out of you. But the documentary, directed by Lucy Walker, does it in a first class way---in every way.

"Zero" lays it out. So long as nuclear weapons exist or are not under heavy safeguards against proliferation and detonation, the question is not IF, but WHEN one or more will explode, either by planned launch, terrorist act or accident. The movie has a few, what I call, Gulp moments in it.

Famous people are seen agreeing that eradication of nuclear weapons is really something that shouldn't be put off a lot longer. It's been 65 years since August 6, 1945.

Oppenheimer

The most interesting person I saw in "Countdown to "Zero," is Robert Oppenheimer, the guy who invented the damn thing. I found Oppenheimer's image on the big screen to be as a character from a 40s vintage black and white feature film. Not that he seems phony or contrived, but that Oppenheimer should cast such a striking figure on seeing and hearing him speak his caution---and, let me say---the downbeat predictions he felt about what he created in that peaceful and remote outback of New Mexico, USA.

	Valerie Plame Wilson

Another prominent figure is Ronald Reagan, as well as former Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev (Remember Reykjavik?). Jimmy Carter, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tony Blair, James Baker III, George Schultz and Barack Obama are also seen, along with other notables, standing in agreement.

As strange as it may seem, there'll likely be those who won't go along with any re-initiation to lessen the nuclear threat. Although a 100-square-mile iceberg just detached itself this past week from Greenland, it's still more difficult to discount global climate change than the danger nuclear weapons pose. But even that surely won't quell the predictable opposition for de-nuking the planet: one underlying reason being merely because the opposers won't want to be seen as sanctioning anything certain other people support.

Having been, in the past, one who feels doing away with nukes is not an irrational concept, I've noticed there are many who've been the point of ridicule for taking such a position. It goes with the territory, but the names some people conjure up to call the anti-nuke crowd can really get tiresome.

It struck me, while watching "Countdown to Zero," that hawkish citizens who accuse the more dovish of disloyalty is a lot like the doves thinking their more jingoistic accusers are guilty of treason for caring more about their own partisan victories than what's best on a given issue for the largest number of Americans.

This film allots much time to international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. It begins with a sequence of news footage showing several terrorist blast sites over the past several years. One is the devastation of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

	General Ripper schools Group Captain Mandrake on his philosophy of war.

The only comic relief (if one can call it that) "Zero" allows is a clip from the masterful 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove" by the late director, Stanley Kubrick.

An example of what might happen if a "loose cannon" in military uniform decides to take world annihilation into his own hands (without benefit of presidential order) is made with the scene in which General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) tells Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) that, nukewise, the s#*t will soon be hitting the fan due to the good General's effort. Truly a classic comedic moment in cinema---of catastrophic proportions. Today, the appreciation of humor so black and important is so not-so keen, it's scary.

But, as a banner waving over a deserted street says at the close of "On the Beach," "There's Still Time, Brother."