It started off seeming like a joke. But Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic was legit — even if it then appeared to indeed be “a joke”. And now, because the internet can’t lay off writing about the thing (Bush=traffic), we are able to see just how much of a joke the thing is. Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter’’s Risky Biz Blog, we can read the first three pages of the script (originally titled Bush, now known as W), which looks like it was written by a student in a high school creative writing class (it was in fact written by Wall Streetscribe Stanley Weiser). Well, obviously Bush experts would declare it inaccurate. Are we to really believe that Bush called Karl Rove a “turdblossom”? If the script wanted to get the facts straight, he would have used “butthead” instead.
I’m going to spend about four hours this weekend with my celebrity boyfriend, Young Albert Brooks, at Anthology Film Archives‘ double feature of two of Brooks’ early, still super-relevant films, Modern Romance and Real Life (see above). But if you’re not lucky enough to be in New York, there are three films opening in general release that we covered at SXSW.
Chris already mentioned Run Fatboy Run today. He also reviewed Robert Luketic’s gambling porn thriller, 21: “[I]t’s basically Little Caesar set in the world of card counting, which in fact isn’t illegal, yet in Vegas is viewed as being just as criminal as bootlegging was during Prohibition…[but] nerds just aren’t as entertaining as gangsters and blackjack and brains just isn’t as cool on screen as bank robberies and machine guns.” And then, of course, there’s Stop-Loss. Michael Lerman said MTV/Kimberley Pierce’s Iraq PTSD movie is too centrist for its own good: “Perhaps the performances and plotting would’ve worked better as less of an unbiased study of aggression and more of a critique of the current political situation, as the script seems to be. It’s as if the two things are working against each other and the actors are veering off in a different direction from the themes.”
I’ve seen Run, Fatboy, Runa couple times now (read my SXSW review), and I’ll still recommend it for Dylan Moran alone. But I’ll also agree that it’s far from great. In fact, it has a lot of flaws, most of which stem from the film’s uneven pace (perhaps fitting for a comedy about a marathon?) and the lack of a definite goal (ill-fitting for a comedy about a marathon — the movie has no real narrative finish line, only a literal one). I’ll even concur with the criticisms that it is awfully conventional, though I believe that by nature comedy has to be conventional in at least some way in order to function correctly.
However, the one thing I will not tolerate in negative reviews of Run, Fatboy, Run, of which there are many, is its being called a derivative romantic comedy. Derivative, sure; as I mentioned, it is conventional, and it is predictable, and it does seem very, very familiar, plot-wise (name me 10 classic comedies that aren’t). But romantic comedy? I can’t say exactly how many critics are labeling the film as such, but going by blurbs found on Rotten Tomatoes, there are at least seven, including “top critic” Desson Thomas of the Washington Post. Sorry, guys, but that’s just lazy reviewing from lazy critics who aren’t even paying attention to a film’s story, let alone displaying a basic sense of film study. I may not have seen enough films from before I was born (because, of course, no critic can see enough), but at least I know the definition of romantic comedy. The meaning is right there in the genre name, after all.
There may not be any literal baton passing going on in the marathon-set screwball comedy Run, Fatboy, Run, but the movie, which was directed by Friends star David Schwimmer, is noteworthy for its hand-offs. The first has to do with the writing of the film, which began as an original screenplay by American actor/comedian/writer Michael Ian Black (Wet Hot American Summer) and was later reworked by British actor/comedian/writer Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead). Despite the screenplay credit confusingly indicating the two writers collaborated, it is more a matter of one taking over from the other and going the distance with it.
The second pass relates to the actors. Although Run, Fatboy, Run is sold as a Simon Pegg comedy, the true stand-out is lesser-known Dylan Moran, who supports as Pegg’s character’s best friend. Familiar to most Brits as the star of the Channel 4 series Black Books (which I keep meaning to finally rent), Moran has also appeared in minor roles in the movies Shaun of the Dead, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and Notting Hill, none of which really showcased his talent the way Run, Fatboy, Run does. Because it was probably not intentional for Moran to upstage Pegg, though, it has to be said that rather than a hand-off of the spotlight, this is more a stealing of the show. And boy does Moran make a great getaway towards the finish line. …Read more
Some movies are violent, some are disturbing, and others are just plain wrong. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race is a fun ride with some gnarly crashes, but it can’t hold a candle to its demented predecessor, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975).
Cinema’s favorite weirdo, Cripsin Glover, is taking his film across the country, personally [...]
It started off 
I’ve seen 
