Category: Articles

Weekend Hollywood Update, 8/28

Danny Trejo & Steven Seagal go at it in "Machete."

By Jason Apuzzo. • The Hollywood Reporter is running a big article today on the controversy expected from Robert Rodriguez’s forthcoming Machete, which comes out next week. Essentially, the film is landing smack in the middle of the ongoing immigration debate (particularly, re: Arizona), and here are some of the delightful episodes we can apparently expect to see in Rodriguez’s film:

Among “Machete’s” more provocative elements are border vigilantes led by Don Johnson as a kind of avatar for Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio and fake political ads for an incumbent senator whose platform is built on his “hard line against wetbacks” and a description of them as “parasites.” That the two characters murder a pregnant Mexican woman to prevent her baby from being born in America and then shoot her distraught husband while uttering the line, “Welcome to America,” underlines the point.

What complicates this sort of thing, of course, is that Rodriguez’s films tend to be done in a tongue-in-cheek manner … but it’s difficult to understand how the murder of a pregnant Mexican woman and her husband – mixed with the genuinely cheap, gratuitous “Welcome to America” crack – is really all that conducive to an amusing storyline.

Or to put it another way: this isn’t very funny.

Rodriguez has made quite a nice career for himself in America. Does he ever reflect on that, at all? I’ve generally been a fan of his – even through the weird, 9/11-related anti-military subplot of Planet Terror – but I’m getting the sense he might be pushing the envelope a bit too far in this film. Why? Why does he feel the need to do this?

• In related news, Machete’s Jessica Alba says she’s going to try to start taking more family-friendly roles, now that she’s a mother. It’s getting a little late for that, frankly. The family-friend roles, that is – not the motherhood.

• On the family-friendly front, by the way, the LA Times has a nice little article today on Disney’s new ‘Tinker Bell’ movie series, which Pixar’s John Lasseter and a variety of other talented people are involved in … so check that out.

Earth in the world of "Avatar."

• One of the things I neglected to mention yesterday in my remarks on James Cameron is that he also gives away too much in his interviews. Even if I was interested in seeing in Avatar: Special Edition – which I’m not – it’s become quite plain that a much longer, fuller version of the film is headed to DVD and Blu-ray.  This version of the film, which will include about 16 new minutes (instead of the 9 new minutes in the current version heading into theaters today), is apparently going to include a prologue featuring Sam Worthington’s character on a “polluted, dystopian Earth … shots of lead character Jake in a sports bar” with “polluted, crowded cityscapes.” The picture to the left, taken from this website, apparently gives you the flavor of what Earth looks like in these scenes. I believe the phrase here would be ‘Blade Runner-esque.’

Beyond all this, the new Avatar DVD is also going to have about 45 minutes of unfinished and/or deleted scenes, apparently – so there doesn’t really seem to be much reason to sit through the 3 hours this weekend, except for the fetishists and/or completists.

• No surprises here: a Karate Kid sequel is coming our way. Will the Chinese government get to edit this one, too?

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Katy Perry talks career vs. Christianity today over at Access Hollywood. Sorry, no pin-up today! I promise to make up for it next week …

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on August 76th, 2010 at 2:37pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 8/27

Blue female: Beau Garrett as Jem in "Tron: Legacy."

By Jason Apuzzo. • It would be very easy these days to devote a post per day to James Cameron. He’s everywhere, commenting on everything, seeing analogies to Avatar everywhere, and apparently not turning down many interviews. Perhaps this is what working out of the public eye for so many years does to you. In any case, Cameron is in the news again today for many different reasons on the eve of the Avatar re-release.  In the LA Times he indicates that he wants Avatar to compete with Star Wars, Star Trek and the Tolkein ‘franchise’ on a macro-pop culture scale (it won’t, for many reasons). He also sees analogies to the despoiling of Pandora in the BP oil spill, and now comes word today – and this certainly is no surprise – that the Iraq war represented a major impetus behind Cameron’s writing of Avatar.

Mr. Cameron strikes me as being something akin to a mad scientist from a 1950s sci-fi film, in that there is undoubtable genius at work in what he does … yet this ‘genius’ (which is of both a technical and narrative variety) is put to ends that are, ultimately, insane in their basic conception. The irony is that Avatar reverses so many things that Cameron’s films seemed to stand for in the past in terms of the basic justness of American military interventions abroad – whether one thinks here of Aliens or True Lies or even Rambo II (which Cameron co-wrote). Cameron has gotten lost in his own technology, his own personal Pandora of anti-Americanism, pseudo-mysticism and eco-extremism – and it’s becoming increasingly unpleasant to watch.

• In related sci-fi/fantasy news, check out this interesting interview featuring Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, circa 1980, in which we learn that George Lucas was, indeed, planning his Star Wars prequels even back then (down to the 20 year timeline interval between trilogies). George is nothing if not methodical. Also today: someone has put together a ‘silent film’ version of The Empire Strikes Back, which is a lot of fun; there are also indications that big news will soon be coming out about Peter Jackson’s Hobbit; and Tron: Legacy has a new international teaser poster out, featuring Beau Garrett. I’m really looking forward to this film, and hoping it’s been worth the wait.

Blue female: Riley Steele at the "Piranha 3D" premiere.

• The Wrap thinks movie ticket prices are too damn high. They’re right. The major culprit? 3D. It’s true; I caught a 10am screening of Piranha 3D last week and the ticket cost $9, which is crazy. For that price, the underwater ballet should’ve been at least 5 minutes longer.

• The Academy will be giving honory Oscars out this year to Francis Ford Coppola (Irving Thalberg Award), Jean-Luc Godard, Eli Wallach and Kevin Brownlow … all richly deserved, in my opinion. Coppola and Godard are among my all-time favorites, Kevin Brownlow is easily one of our best film writers … and who doesn’t love Eli Wallach? The funny part of all this is, though, that nobody can find Godard to tell him! Typical Godard. He’s probably living in Alphaville.

• Did you like Frank Miller’s Gucci ad from the other day? Not to be outdone, Martin Scorsese just shot a slick new ad for Chanel.

• Katy Perry looked and sounded great on Letterman’s show yesterday. We’re eager to promote her stuff, in the midst of this bad economy, because we recently learned from the LA Times that the ‘real’ subject of her music is “consumerism.”

• Christina Hendricks is now doing ads for London Fog, which provides trenchcoats for Mad Men. I didn’t think trenchcoats could fight so tightly on a gal.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Piranha 3D’s Riley Steele has a birthday today, which is appropriate considering that she’ll be wearing her birthday suit on screens all across America this weekend.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 6:57pm.

Hollywood Liberal Says: Angelina Jolie a ‘Closet Rightie’ Who Must Therefore be ‘Great in Bed’

By Jason Apuzzo. Earlier today I read what has got to be one of the most unintentionally funny excrescences from a Hollywood liberal that I’ve ever encountered.  Jeffrey Wells today over at Hollywood Elsewhere, a site renowned for its faux-insider musings on the industry – not to mention Wells’ retro-ducktail haircut – engages in some decidedly breathless speculations over whether Angelina Jolie might be … a closet right-winger!

Jolie gets 'politically profiled.'

Who is ‘Salt,’ indeed!

But that’s not all!  In conspiratorial tones redolent of his apparently deep, penetrating insights into female psychology, Wells also speculates on whether Ms. Jolie’s alleged conservatism is somehow responsible for her legendary sexual prowess in bed! Well!

Even if I tried, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Some context here: we’ve been talking-up Jolie’s Salt for months here at Libertas (see here and here) because of that film’s blistering critique of the communist cause – a cause which lingers on today, as we all know, in other guises … both domestic and abroad.  And as regular Libertas readers know, it remains astonishing to me that the right wing media in America continue to ignore Salt while promoting Stallone’s anti-CIA hit job The Expendables, which still isn’t even doing as well at the box office as Jolie’s savvier, more pleasurable film.

So here comes Jeffrey Wells stumbling into the mix, with his conspiratorial musings on whether Jolie is some kind of puppet for her “saliva-drooling Tea Party nutter” father (Jon Voight), along with some Rat Pack-level psychology on the female of the species.  [By the way, all of this comes fast on the heels of the LA Times’ Tom O’Neil political ‘profiling’ of Ernest Borgnine, based solely and exclusively on Borgnine’s refusal to see Brokeback Mountain.]

Here’s Jeffrey Wells, sans irony:

Angelina Jolie isn’t just the once-estranged daughter of Hollywood’s worst saliva-drooling Tea Party nutter, Jon Voight. She may also be a closet ally of Voight’s, at least in terms of despising Barack Obama. (Call this a flimsy maybe.) She also seems to be a supporter of America’s military adventures in Iraq and perhaps also Afghanistan and…well, basically anywhere that the poor are suffering due to the deprivations of war. …

I only know what Jon Voight has said and stands for, and that I saw him standing near his daughter and Brad Pitt inside a roped-off area at the Salt premiere after-party. And the old cliche about the acorn not falling too far from the tree flew into my mind, especially considering her rep as a closet rightie (including her alleged support for McCain during the ’08 campaign) and that “stay the course in Iraq” Washington Post article she posted in ’08. And being…okay, maybe she’s more of an Ayn Rand libertarian, given her interest in making a film version of Atlas Shrugged.

It’s fair to say that if Rush Limbaugh is singing your praises, something stinks in the kingdom of Denmark.

The basic conservative impulse is to bow down and show total allegiance to authority. This obviously links up with the old cliche about right-wing women (like Rand) being especially passionate about worshipping strong males, which is incidentally why they’re said to be so great in bed. This could be one possible explanation for those reportedly overheard sounds that suggested “an animal being killed.”

I’m not one to take unsourced Us magazine quotes as anything to rely upon, but combine the Washington Post op-ed piece with this 11.09 non-attributable quote that Jolie considers Obama to be a “closet socialist,” and I’m at least thinking “hmmm.”

The term “closet socialist”….well, what’s so bad with that? FDR was one, and he had it right in my book. Anyone who uses such a term is clearly a closet rightie. I mean, that’s a symmetrical way of looking at it.

“‘She hates [Obama],” a source close to Jolie told an Us reporter, according to the article. “She’s into education and rehabilitation and thinks Obama is all about welfare and handouts. She thinks Obama is really a socialist in disguise.”

So let me summarize some of what we’ve learned from Mr. Wells here, because it’s really quite fascinating.

• One of the reasons Jolie might be a right winger is that Mr. Wells spotted her standing next to her father at the premiere of Salt.  My, that does seem incriminating!

• Another reason she must be a conservative is that she was interested in playing the Dagny Taggart role in Atlas Shrugged … which, apparently unbeknownst to Wells, famous Hollywood liberals like Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts have also been attached to because it’s a great female role.  Does that make them ‘closet righties’ too, Jeffrey?

Right wing women: "great in bed."

• “The basic conservative impulse is to bow down and show total allegiance to authority,” asserts Mr. Wells. And blissfully unaware of the ironies involved, just a few lines later Wells goes on to praise the presidency of FDR.  I’ll leave that fun little contradiction alone because I don’t believe in shooting turkeys while they’re squawking in a barrel.

• This is my favorite Wells-ism, though: that right-wing women worship strong males, and for this reason are “great in bed.” Well! Among other things, we’re learning here about what Mr. Wells himself apparently thinks makes a woman “great in bed”: namely, the worship of “strong males” … like him? Fascinating!  It’s amazing how retro some of these ‘liberal’ guys can be!

• I also like Wells’ efforts to tie Jolie’s right-wing politics to celebrity gossip about some apparently loud lovemaking (the “animal getting killed” stuff) between Jolie and Brad Pitt at an African resort, from five years ago.  Apparently in Wells’ mind that’s a strong journalistic lead in the hunt to uncover Jolie’s secret, reactionary worldview!

I could go on here, but I think you get the point.  I’m less interested here in whether Jolie is actually a right-winger (I doubt that, frankly) than in a typical Hollywood liberal’s image of what a conservative must be like.

I’m also intrigued by what Mr. Wells’ heated musings suggest about what the average Hollywood liberal really thinks of the female of the species, by the way.  Who’s really the caveman here?  It sounds like it’s you, Jeffrey.  Or maybe you’re just not getting your ducktail stroked enough.

Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 2:02pm.

Mad Men Season Four, Episode 5: “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”

Betty & Edna.

By Jennifer Baldwin. After two blessed Betty-free weeks, the former Mrs. Draper returns in this week’s episode. And wouldn’t you know it, this episode gave us Betty at her worst (the vindictive, Sally-smacking, “I’ll cut your fingers off!” mother from hell) and at her most sympathetic (Betty in the therapist’s office).

I’ve always been sympathetic to Betty when she’s in these therapy scenes. In the first season, her vulnerability with the (duplicitous) psychiatrist was heartbreaking; it was Betty at her most likable and human. Whenever she gets talking on the therapist’s couch, Betty often reveals more about herself than she knows — there’s a very wounded and messed up human being in there beneath the cold, aloof, shrewish surface. This is Betty at her most honest (even if she’s unaware of the honesty bleeding through her pretense) and as a result, it’s hard to hate her in these scenes. Perhaps that’s why I was so anti-Betty last season — we were only given the surface pretense and the outward coldness and very little of the inner, human Betty.

Well, we get human Betty again this week — after a long absence. In a meeting with a child psychiatrist (for Sally), Betty unknowingly starts having a therapy session with the shrink herself. This makes sense, of course, since Betty has been much more of a “child” than the other adult characters on the show (recall her twisted, sometimes tender, but ultimately creepy relationship with young Glenn Bishop). Betty doesn’t really reveal much outwardly, but the little pauses, the half sentences, the tone of her voice and her demeanor all show just how much pain Betty is in — and how much she’s trying to suppress and disguise it. Eeesh. Betty is so screwed up.

However, Betty does make a good point, re: Don. Why did Don plan a date when he knew he’d have the kids? Of course, Don reveals later to Faye in the break room that he doesn’t see his kids enough and he doesn’t know what to do with them when he does. He feels relief when he brings them back to Betty – but then afterward, he misses them. Eeesh. Don is so screwed up.

This episode had weird shifts in tone, from strange and disturbing (the Betty/Sally storyline) to comical and bouncy (all the stuff with Don and Miss Blankenship and the caper involving a rival agency and the Honda account). An uneven episode, and probably the season’s weakest overall (also: the first episode this season to not be written or co-written by Matthew Weiner).

Miss Blankenship.

Which is not to say it doesn’t have some spectacular moments. The trick Don and Co. pull on rival agency CGC is pure delight — accompanied by the kind of swinging mid-60s music that makes it all seem like a Tony Curtis comedy. And everything involving Roger’s WWII service and his continued animosity toward the Japanese is precisely the thing that makes historical drama fascinating. It’s a peek inside the mind of a WWII vet, twenty years after the war. It’s hard for us to imagine now — that lingering hostility towards our WWII enemies — but Roger’s words and actions show how hard it was for some men to forget. Plus it gives us another perfect scene between Roger and Joan. Forget Peggy and Pete, and Don and Betty — Roger and Joan are my all-time favorite pairing.

Other points and observations:

On the weekly Pete front, I must say, Pete’s vocabulary always amuses. Vincent Kartheiser rolls out lines like “A Deerfield chum of mine” as if he’s been saying it his whole life. Also: “Christ on a cracker!” Seriously, where does he get this stuff?! And Pete speaks for many of us when he asks: “Who the hell is Dr. Lyle Evans?” (Is the line a red herring?).

I might be in the minority opinion, but I find the never-ending vaudeville comedy routine between Don and his new secretary, Miss Blankenship, to be a hoot. Yes, it’s rather low comedy, but it’s added a bit of levity to a show that sometimes takes itself too seriously.

Also good for some comedy gold: The Japanese, their translator, and one Joan Holloway Harris.

Honda Honcho (in Japanese, while staring at Joan’s breasts): “How does she not fall over?”
Joan (to the translator, noticing the Japanese staring eyes): “They’re not very subtle are they?”
Translator: “No.”

Bethany — who looks like Virginia Mayo — makes a reappearance this week. Also, who knew Benihana was around in the 60s? Apparently I need to bone up on my cultural knowledge!

Pete & Ichiro.

Continuing Cultural Reference Watch: “A Margaret Dumont-sized disaster” (note that she died just about the time this episode took place); Man from U.N.C.L.E.; and of course, the title of the episode: The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

It’s interesting how the Japanese this season are playing the role the British played last season. Culture clash and the growing influence of Asian culture on American culture: business and entertainment, Honda and Godzilla.

Also of note: I was indeed right — Dr. Faye was wearing a wedding ring. But … she’s not married! It’s basically a “keep away” sign for all the wolves. Of course, now that Don knows the ring is a fake, how long before he and Faye are “doing it,” as Sally would say? I predict it happens in two weeks.

Finally, the closing credits song was “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” as sung by Doris Day. “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” of course, is from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song, made into a film in 1961, and starring James Shigeta and Miyoshi Umeki. Both Japanese.

Posted on August 26th, 2010 at 10:05am.

Hollywood + Classic Movie Round-up, 8/25; Happy 80th Sean Connery!

By Jason Apuzzo. • Sean Connery turns 80 today, and we want to wish him a Happy Birthday.  Connery’s done many great films and created many great characters over the years, but his lasting achievement is obviously going to be having created the most memorable characterization yet of James Bond.  Indeed, due to the combined efforts of both Connery and Ian Fleming, 007 probably became the most iconic literary and /or filmic character of the Cold War era.

Sean Connery.

I just recently was watching Goldfinger and Thunderball, and the thing that struck me most about those films was the studied ease with which Connery mixes machismo, and a dry, urbane wit.  Very few actors have ever been able to combine those things as well as Connery did in his prime.  Daniel Craig and Sam Worthington, please take note: you become an action star by doing more than just sneering at the camera and head-butting your co-stars.  It takes a dash of intelligence, and more than a little humor.  The key factor with Connery is the fun he’s having along with the audience as his character is put into increasingly more insane situations.  That fun is utterly infectious, and is what makes the early Bond films so droll and delightful.  Happy Birthday to the estimable Scotsman.

In related Connery news, somebody in the UK recently dug up a previously-thought-lost copy of the BBC Anna Karenina that Connery did in 1961 with Claire Bloom, just one year before Connery became a megastar with Dr. No.  It will be out on DVD next month.

• There’s apparently going to be a Hurt Locker-based reality TV series that will be following a bomb-disposal squad in Afghanistan.  The show will be titled “Bomb Patrol: Afghanistan,” and will take viewers behind the scenes of a U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit.

I didn’t think reality  TV could be more frightening than “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” but this surely is.  The courage of the men and women who do this sort of thing for a living is beyond anything I can imagine.

• You all know that we’re fans of Frank Miller here at Libertas, and now there’s a bit more to see of Frank’s forthcoming new ad series for Gucci … which has a bit of old-fashioned James Bond flair, perhaps?  Check out the new ad below.  It’s very sexy, love what Frank’s doing here.

• Did you know that vampire-related entertainment properties have brought in about $7 billion to the Hollywood economy? That’s what the Hollywood Reporter is claiming today.  I’m going to assume for the moment that it’s young female audiences who account mostly for this.  As I’ve been saying here for months, I think that the Harry Knowles-style fanboy is slowly in the process of being displaced by romance-starved young women as Hollywood’s primary consumer. This is just another sign of it.

• Speaking of romance-starved young women … do you remember the satiric review I did the other day of Piranha 3D?  The purpose of that review was to satirize how a progressive-Marxist style intellectual might react to that very silly, very fun little film.  Well, would you like to read what an actual, progressive-Marxist style reading of Katy Perry’s new album looks like? Read the LA Times review of Perry’s new Teenage Dream album.  I kid you not: the LA Times reviewer is convinced that Perry’s music is essentially a paean to rampant American consumerism.

Here’s an excerpt from the review below:

More than her Christian background or the chick-lit limits to her take on sexual liberation, what makes Perry a controversial artist is her essential hollowness. “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?” she sings in the power ballad “Firework.” Perry felt like that bag, but then realized what a bag was for: to be filled up with shiny, purchasable things.

Though her lyrics generally recount familiar scenarios on the road to romantic fulfillment, Perry’s real subject is consumerism. [Emphasis mine.]  From the bouncy-house Scandinavian beats provided her by super-producers Max Martin, Stargate and her mentor Dr. Luke to the childlike enthusiasm with which she embraces lyrical clichés to the vocal style that combines sports arena chants with karaoke croons to her Halloween store look, Perry is the living embodiment of what it means to be bought and sold.

Her songs are like ads, with hooks that hit like paintballs and choruses that exhort like slogans; she delivers them with the gusto of a pitchwoman. On “Teenage Dream,” the songs alternate between weekend-bender celebrations of hedonism and self-help-style affirmations encouraging listeners to get an emotional makeover. Either way, acquisition is the goal: of a great love, a happy hangover, a perfect pair of Daisy Dukes.

I think Prof. de Molay will be emailing this reviewer shortly, as they probably have a lot to talk about.

Owen Wilson & Carla Bruni. Note baguette.

• IN CLASSIC MOVIE NEWS … Everybody’s talking about Josef von Sternberg right now because a series of von Sternberg classics are coming to DVD (see here, here and here), and there are some screenings coming up in New York of some of his classics.  I’m a big fan of von Sternberg’s work, particularly his films with the great Marlene Dietrich.  In other classic movie news, there’s a new biography out of Cecil B. DeMille that looks quite good (although I strongly recommend C.B.’s classic autobiography); the LA Times interviews Gone With the Wind’s Ann Rutherford this week; there’s a new rumor about a forthcoming Stanley Kubrick Blu-ray collection; there’s some fun speculation about what deleted scenes might be available on the forthcoming Star Wars Blu-rays; and our friend Patrick Goldstein at the LA Times talk about the new Liz Taylor-Richard Burton biography, Furious Love.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Woody Allen says in an interview that French first lady and Libertas favorite Carla Bruni was “very professional” on the set of his new film Midnight in Paris – and that working with her was “smooth and pleasant.”  We expected no less.  Carla apparently plays a guide at the Rodin Museum, and she was so good Allen’s going to keep all her scenes in.  This may be the first Woody Allen film I see in years.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on August 25th, 2010 at 11:45am.

LFM Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Scott & Ramona.

By Patricia Ducey. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is an action-packed, coming of age adventure that even non-gamers – or those unfamiliar with the original graphic novel – can enjoy. Pilgrim is adapted from Canadian Brian Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels of the same name by writer/director Edgar Wright (of comedy classic Shaun of the Dead) and remains true to the visuals and the spirit of O’Malley’s story. But Wright grabs every film and cultural reference he can and brings the novel to life in a bold and raucous romp through 20-something slackerdom and redemption.

Michael Cera, of Superbad fame and present day reigning filmic geek, graduates in Pilgrim vs. the World into action hero and possibly into mature manhood. Cera plays a 22-year-old bass guitarist living in a one-room shack with best friend/gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin in a fine performance). He and his buddies are trying to break into indie rock stardom with their garage band Sex Bob-omb, while Scott manages or mismanages his complicated, feckless love life.  (The band is actually pretty good, with songs written by Beck.)

Scott lives partly in Toronto and partly in his own fevered dreams. He is a serial heartbreaker who refuses to take responsibility for the trail of tears he leaves behind when he bails. He negotiates the vagaries of a multiculti, multi-sexual limbo of 20-something slackerdom; he and his buddies are adrift, jobless, unable to commit to anything or anyone. His chaste romance with a 17-year-old (and thus unavailable) schoolgirl Knives Chau personifies that emotional paralysis.

His hesitant heart explodes, though, when he spies the beautiful and aloof Ramona Flowers, a woman his own age, whose disinterest proves the headiest of aphrodisiacs. After one date, he discovers the roots of her melancholy withdrawal—a string of mean ex-boyfriends who have wounded her, she fears, for good. To win her, he must first defeat these 7 jealous ex-boyfriends, now allies in the nefarious League of Evil Exes (Axis of Evil?) and release her from the past.  Scott easily vanquishes first ex Mathew Patel, an Indian-Canadian hipster, who then breaks into a Bollywood danceoff accompanied by his demon chick backup dancers. After defeating an angry lesbian and a vegan rock star, Scott approaches the last level and last ex, Evil Exes ringleader Gideon, the one who still holds sway over Ramona’s affections. In a nod to the classic Rushmore, Gideon is played by the grandfather of all lovelorn nerd heroes, a now grown up Jason Schwartzman.

Canadian O’Malley’s Toronto, filmed in lovely tones of winter black and white, proves a lovely palate cleanser when sequences of dazzling special effects and primary-colored graphics threaten to overwhelm.  Wright borrows visuals from PacMan to Wii, the original TV show Batman, manga, comic book split screen close-ups, and even inserts of O’Malley’s original pen and ink drawings from his Scott Pilgrim novel series.

Pilgrim has been described as the first movie for the joystick generation, and it may well be the first ‘post-liberal’ film, as well. The characters exist in the fullness of well-developed character, not as motes in some polemicist’s eye. Wallace’s sexuality is but one facet of his character: he is neither Magical Gay nor Victim Gay. The racial identity of Knives Chau or Mathew Patel is as important to the narrative as Scott’s — which is to say, not at all. Pilgrim also merrily and mercilessly jabs at a few PC targets like vegans, in a laugh-out-loud sequence involving one of Ramona’s exes.

Pilgrim vs. the World at almost two hours may be a couple of villainous exes too long — O’Malley claims they structured the story like a game, with confrontations that lead to higher levels or to doom — but its heart and its values redeem it all in the end. Pilgrim is probably safe for teenagers, with a few sexual references and excesses, but Scott and his buddies learn a few lessons about responsibility and empathy, and the world rights itself.

Kudos to Wright for keeping it PG and exploiting fully the dispensation from cynicism that Hollywood grants to Young Adult fare; for all its techno razzle-dazzle, Pilgrim v. World honors a very traditional narrative that respects its ‘message’ and its young viewers both.

Posted on August 24th, 2010 at 3:29pm.