A few weeks ago, Summit Entertainment released the first seven minutes of The Brothers Bloom online. Normally, this kind of marketing strategy is useful, particularly if the movie isn’t well known. However, it helps for such a movie to have a terrific opening, which grabs the viewer in and makes him/her need to see what happens after that teased beginning. The Brothers Bloom, unfortunately, has an unbearable start, enough that I couldn’t even get through the entire seven minutes. I turned the streaming video off at the 4:24 mark.

The primary cause of my annoyance was the voice-over narration, provided by actor/magician Ricky Jay, a man whose speech is easily recognizable, only not for good reason. His lisped reading, sounding like a poor man’s Wallace Shawn, ruined the movie for me immediately. And I decided within those few moments that I wouldn’t bother to go see The Brother’s Bloom in its entirety.

I later learned that Jay’s narration is only in the film for that seven-minute prologue that opens the film, so I am willing to give it another shot, with hope that it gets better. Due to my initial irritation, though, I’ve decided to share a list of ten other movies ruined by their voice-over narration.
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Out of all the cinematic staples, the so-called “magical negro” is the worst to define and discuss due to it being the mother of all loaded terms. A catch-all phrase used to describe how African-Americans in film tend to be superhuman physically, spiritually or both, it’s currently in the midst of the pop cultural zeitgeist thanks to a crappy song and New Year’s faux-pas.

Anytime someone sees a black character used as a story tool in a film — in the case of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) originally didn’t exist in Fitzgerald’s story — there is a mild cry of “There! There! I see a magical negro in the distance! Yes! There!” One should wonder why Eric Roth deemed it necessary to suddenly introduce the character as a framing device for guiding the CGI Man-Child about, but that’s up to anyone who can be assed to sit through that three hour bore.

So, we’ve taken it upon ourselves—and in full expectation of the eventual backlash that will come from one friend of ours, Odienator at Big Media Vandalism—to deconstruct the favorite crutch of Stephen King, the Wachowski Brothers and whoever else has a problem understanding just what makes the worst stereotype the worst stereotype.

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Yesterday saw the launch of iArthouse, a download-to-burn service offering a large selection of foreign films. According to Scott Kirsner, the site is an outgrowth of an existing service that I’ve never heard of called EZ Takes––Scott calls it “a rebranding of EZTakes.com without some of the schlockier stuff — no ‘Extreme Sports’ category, for instance, and no Troma movies like Toxic Avenger.” Not that it’s all trophy class from here on out––Currently promoted on the front page of iArthouse: Roberto Benigni’s much-maligned The Tiger and the Snow. Scott goes on to note that EZTakes’ traffic currently falls far short of iArthouse’s logical competitor, Jaman.com, although metrics for actual downloads on these kinds of sites are hard to come by.

Meanwhile, in news that’s so related as to seem ironic: today comes the news that both Starz!-owned Vongo and Morgan Freeman-owned ClickStar are shutting down.

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Morgan Freeman was in a car accident last night in Mississippi, and is now reportedly in serious condition in a Memphis hospital. Freeman was apparently driving on a highway with a female companion when he lost control of the car. In addition to currently co-starring in the number one film in the country, Freeman was gearing up to play Nelson Mandela.

By way of sending best wishes Freeman’s way, I’d like to gently rebut the Guardian’s suggestion that the actor “[shot] to fame as Jessica Tandy’s benign chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy“––kids of the 70s and 80s, of course, have deep-seeded memories of Freeman’s work on the Electric Company. See him as Easy Reader above, and as a bathing, singing, spelling Count Dracula below.

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With the New Hampshire primary upon us, and in response to the results of last week’s Iowa Caucus, I’ve been thinking about the possible influence of pop culture on Democratic voters. Is it possible that Obama performed better than Clinton because 24 is a more popular TV show than was the short-lived Commander in Chief? The former has so far featured two African American Presidents, played by Dennis Haysbert and D.B. Woodside, while the latter was about a female President, portrayed by Geena Davis. The next season of 24, which is set to premiere once the WGA strike is finished, will actually feature a female President, played by Cherry Jones, but it may be too late. Americans could already be set on nominating a black man, because they’re more familiar with seeing such a President on both the big and small screen.

And what a crop of African American actors we’ve seen as the leader of the United States: Morgan Freeman (Deep Impact); James Earl Jones (1972’s The Man); Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister (The Fifth Element); Chris Rock (Head of State); Terry Crews (not so well known, but extra points for playing a porn star-President in Idiocracy); and of course Haysbert and Woodside. Now, let’s see who we’ve got for white female Presidents: Polly Bergen (1964’s Kisses for My President); Lisa Simpson (in a flash-forward episode of The Simpsons); Dulcie Smart (a TV movie called Post Impact); Ernestine Barrier (1953’s Project Moon Base) and of course Davis. Which group has more star power? Exactly. Even Robert Zemeckis chose to exclude the female President featured in Carl Sagan’s novel Contact when the director made his film version. Anyway, Clinton at least has a better chance than an African American woman. The only black female Presidents I can find in TV and film include one played by Melanie Henderson on an episode of The Electric Company and reference to one in a deleted scene from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which features the woman as an added fifth face on Mount Rushmore.

***Former GOP leader Tom DeLay issued a serious smackdown against Michael Moore yesterday, after the directer backed out of a TV debate opposite DeLay scheduled for this Sunday. In a message on his personal website, DeLay wrote: “Guess he didn’t expect anyone to seriously take him on. Had I known he was this chicken, I would have accepted on the spot, but at least I can spare myself the agony of watching one of his mockumentaries. Bottom line: his movies, his politics, and his incessant bullying are all an act.” For his part Moore said he backed out of the booking because he didn’t want to provide a copy of Sicko to someone who “has nothing to do with the specific issues raised in the film.”

***UPDATE: Not only did I misread the HR item, but I unintentionally made the same opening joke as NIkki Finke. So: Woody Allen is going to direct an opera in Los Angeles. Let’s move on, shall we? In other mind-blowing news, what’s more of a surprise: the news that Woody Allen is going to star in a Puccini opera, directed by William “The Exorcist” Friedkin? Or the fact that he’s going to do it in Los Angeles? According to The Hollywood Reporter, Allen said he has “no idea what I am doing, but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.

Each morning as I walk around my brother’s too-hip-and-cute Portland neighborhood in search of my next cup of coffee, I’m secretly waiting to run into Morgan Freeman. Yes, he is here, filming at a coffee shop a mere two blocks from my brother’s front door. What could be more Portland than that, for a girl from Illinois? Bringing film and coffee together. Ahhhh yes…

The Lakeshore Enetertainment film that’s causing traffic to be redirected all along Mississippi Street here in Portland is apparently called Feast of Love. Freeman plays a college professor at Portland’s private Reed College, and Greg Kinnear is the owner of the coffee shop, which is in real life called Fresh Pot, but for the sake of the film has been renamed Jitters. (Not a very impressive change, if you ask me.) Anyway, people here are generally excited, gauging from the conversations and blogging going on.

Even Oregon’s governor, Ted Kulongoski, wants to get in on the excitement by taking some credit for the three films now being shot in the state. Something tells me, though, that no matter what the governor of, say Nebraska, did, he would have had a tough time attracting the film.