Tag: James Caan

I was just as shocked as everybody else that The Book of Life and The Lego Movie didn’t get nominated for Best Animated Film. But also, I did give the former a 2 and the latter a 3, only. The two I gave 4’s made it and the other was a 3. So clearly, I was really on my game with the Academy.

But how was I to suspect that some foreign animated films would make it?! Crazy talk!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli movie, which tends to mean quality. I didn’t even know they did movies without Miyazaki, but there ya go!

I would describe this animation style as “moving painting.”

The story begins with an old bamboo cutter (James Caan), being in the forest, cutting bamboo. He sees a glowing plant, and from it drops a tiny little princess girl that can fit in his hands. Shit that’s weird. He obviously brings it back home to his wife (Mary Steenburgen), and bam. That tiny thing turns into a regular sized baby. And hey, his wife suddenly has milk inducing boobies!

That stuff is crazy. The baby grows quickly too, so the local village kids nickname her Little Bamboo. Soon, the princess (Chloe Grace Moretz) is running around with all the kids, singing songs, playing games, going on adventures. Her best friend is Sutemaru (Darren Criss).

But her dad takes her away from the forest to the city. They get a big house with clothes and someone to teach her how to be a real princess (Lucy Liu). That means being a super obedient girl, basically. Seen but not heard. Never showing emotion. Never doing fun things. Terrible.

Kaguya doesn’t want that, no matter how pretty she is. She will avoid suitors at all cost and fight the good fight. You go Glen Kaguya.

Excitingly, the art matches the emotion really fucking well.

The story is actually based on a famous Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Clearly western influence made them focus more on the princess than the boring old wood cutter. It is very close to the main narrative, but in all honesty, this version is probably way better. I see there are tons of movies based on this tale already, mostly live action. But again, this is one is probably way better.

Because this one was fucking awesome!

Like, incredibly. I talked about how crazy The Wind Rises, using “Traditional 2D Animation” but feeling like a 3D CGI wonderland. This one instead felt like a living painting, like I was watching an artist make each individual scene in front of me. Just super quick. I guess actors were hanging around too to talk as the characters. The metaphor isn’t perfect, but the animation is.

Small Apartments is another example of a film I picked to watch merely on the bizarre cover. Nothing really out of the ordinary in terms of subject matter, it was just faces of a few cast members. But those faces? Those faces were weird looking.

A bunch of actors I recognized, just all slightly off. I was ready for a dark comedy, or just strange film. Or at least, I thought I was ready for that jelly.

Basically the first scene of the film. I WASN’T READY!

Franklin Franklin (Matt Lucas) lives alone in his apartment, in an apartment complex of weird people. He isn’t any different. He really loves Switzerland, wants to go there, has the giant fucking horn thing and everything. He also is hairless. Relevant? Not sure. He also has the dead body of his landlord (Peter Stormare) on his floor.

He is surrounded by other odd folk, like Tommy Balls (Johnny Knoxville), a junkie with an almost philosophy degree (who is banging Rebel Wilson on the side). There is Simone (Juno Temple) who sometimes spies on Franklin, and flirts with the local convenience store employee (DJ Qualls). Let’s not forget about Mr. Allspice (James Caan) who I guess is just mean. That’s not really weird.

Shit, I could tell you more, but its just…Weird stuff. Weird stuff happens. Conspiracies, and investigators. Burned bodies and burned bridges (that second part is a metaphor, but the first part is literal). We also have James Marsden, Billy Crystal, and Dolph Lundgren.

I never realized Knoxville had the eyes of an angel.

I think I already said this, but man, this movie was weird. I really wasn’t prepared for it in any way.

Everyone was so odd, I just had such a huge quizzical look on my face the whole time, wondering what was happening and why. This is based on a book. I am going to assume the book is equally odd.

I am going to say that based on how rustled my jimmies were, the movie did its job. The actors, in particular Matt Lucas and Johnny Knoxville, were really excellent in this movie.

The issue is, because of its weirdness, I never really felt like I could get behind it. It didn’t really interest me in watching for a movie, it just piqued my curiosity a little bit. A movie I will remember for a little bit, but forget unless it is specifically brought up. A shame. And I feel weird saying the only reason I dislike it is because I couldn’t really get into it, but hey, it’s my website, so sometimes I have lame reasons. Hah!

Puns. Puns are an often overlooked humor tool that are wildly taken for granted. In fact, some people respond to puns with groans!

Those groaners I have to imagine would not enjoy Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 which has more puns than the number of acupuncturists who also happen to be backstabbers.

I wonder how many animated dicks could fit in his mouth. For research.

CWaCoM2 takes places immediately after CWaCoM, with the town of Swallow Falls in disarray and covered with food. Flint (Bill Hader) and his friends are excited for the rebuild, but they are forced to temporarily move to San Franjose, California, while Live Corp cleans up their island…for science! After all, Live Corp is run by Chester V (Matt Forte), Flint’s hero since he was a kid and the coolest scientist ever. It is usually a good idea to let trained professionals take care of a job.

Unfortunately, the clean up isn’t going as smoothly as they had hoped. The FLDSMDFR device was not destroyed after the first film, and it has created animal food hybrids to take over the island! They are also learning how to swim, and if they do, they will spread out and attack the rest of the world! Scary!

So it is up to Flint, with the rest of his crew to save the day. Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), girlfriend and meteorologist, Tim (James Caan), father, Brent McHale (Andy Samberg), former bully and current idiot, Manny (Benjamin Bratt), jack of all trades, Earl (Terry Crews), security guard, and Steve (Neil Patrick Harris) the monkey.

We also get introduced to Barb (Kristen Schaal), the ape. The fact that she is an ape, and not a monkey, is a very important difference.

Charles V reminded me a lot of Professor Hawk from Dexter’s Laboratory.

When I saw the trailer for CWaCoM2, I knew there would be an overwhelming amount of puns, but I still somehow underestimated how many they would actually throw at the viewer. At one point, the PPM (Puns Per Minute) value had to be greater than 10. Just constant puns, one after another, with hardly any time to comprehend them all.

Personally, I think the film was a bit too short to tell the story it wanted to tell. A lot of the movie felt rushed, especially once they first got to the island. In order to appease the kid viewers, they must have moved quickly to keep their interest. That has to be the biggest negative, not giving enough time to really flesh out the island and “foodimals.”

At the same time, I was equally impressed with the film’s ability to include “background jokes.” Once I saw the first few, my eyes were constantly watching the edge of the screen and I was surprised at how often they appeared. Heck, Joe Townee from the first film was snuck into this film twice. Unfortunately he had no lines this time, because his voice actor, Will Forte, was now voicing a new major character.

This film is filled with its fair share of low brow humor jokes, but an almost equal number of intelligent-ish jokes. I guess the point I am really trying to make is that this film has a lot of jokes, and they vary across the whole spectrum (outside of the adult themed joke territory). Despite the new writers and directors, I think it is a very worthy sequel to this franchise, and I would definitely watch a third one should it ever get made.

There is a good chance I would never have heard about the film Detachment, unless it wasn’t suggested to me by a reader. Well, I might have seen it on my own if I was stalking Christina Hendrick‘s imdb page and watching whatever she was in. But I doubt that would have happened either.

So hooray for people telling me about movies. You know, unless they suck. And all I was told about this movie was that it was a bit “sad”. Alright, I can handle sadness.

Oh, also potential sexy time with a clearly underage girl.

Substitute teaching. For people not good enough to be teachers? Or is it for people who are afraid of getting close to others, and want to move around a lot. Based on the title, you can probably guess about Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody). He is put into a shitty school in NYC that is losing money for bad test grades every year, and teachers who have stopped caring. One teacher goes on and quits, so Henry is brought in to sub the English class for a month before a permanent teacher is found.

Lots of teachers here with their own problems. The Principal (Marcia Gay Harden) pretty much knows she is done at the end of the year, the guidance counselor (Lucy Liu) is tired of kids not caring about their futures and throwing their lives away, one teacher has given up and feels invisible (Tim Blake Nelson). But there are some teachers that still manage to carry on, such as Mr. Seaboldt (James Caan) who uses his own form of comedy to get through and enjoy the day. Ms. Madison (Hendricks) seems like a competent teacher who believes, but might be a bit too rule nit picky.

Sorry for that awkward paragraph explaining most of the minor characters. Had to fit them in!

But also because I don’t want to give too much away. Over the three weeks, he changes the lives of a few students, including Meredith (Betty Kaye) who gets picked on for weight and from a rough home. He also befriends Erika (Sami Gayle), who isn’t a student, but a very young prostitute living on the street, who he lets into his home to help get her back on her feet. Definitely not sketch.

But that is all you get, damn it!

I was also told she was a twat in this movie.

So is this movie sad? No. It’s fucking depressing. I was shocked at how early on I was captivated by the film, wondering where it was going and what would happen to all the characters. About a half hour into it, I accidentally saw how much time was passed and assumed I had been watching the movie for at least an hour. I mean that in the best way since it could be taken bad.

Although I kind of saw what was going to happen with the ending before it did, it still left me with questions about the future of some members. I guess it ended on a little bit of a good note, but barely given the inevitableness of the plot.

This movie made it hard for me to look away and affected my emotions so well, it is either the result of great acting / directing, or just manipulative music. I am willing to bet the former. Definitely a great addition to a drama collection.

Hooray! Another Super CGI movie based on a kids book. Only remotely of course. At least this kids book had a real plot, so making a movie made sense, unlike some others.

Fingers crossed that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is more than just a random kids movie!

Although it might be his goal, dude should watch out. Burger might cram itself right in that mouth.

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is a scientist in Swallow Island, or something like that. But no one likes his inventions, think they all suck! Like Spray on Shoes. But he also just makes a mess. Well, while he was a kid the local sardine can factory went out of business, meaning the town lost its prosperity. They then had to pretty much eat only sardines because of no tourists. His dad (James Caan) doesn’t really approve, show little emotion, and has the most killer moustache / unibrow combo ever.

Well no worries! The mayor (Bruce Campbell) and the Sardine factory mascot (Andy Samberg) are opening up Sardineland to get tourists and prosperity back. But after a tussle between Flint the local police guy (Mr. T), his new invention that turns water into food (kind of sick of sardines) blasts off into atmosphere…and destroys most of Sardineland. Unfortunately this is all also reported on a national weather news channel, by Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), so they are a laughing stock agian.

But eventually, burgers rain from the sky. Everyone is happy! They taste so good! But can it be repeated?

Yes. It can. 3 meals a day (or more), and everyone can be happy! Not the dad though. Thinks it is wasteful. Oh well, scientist becomes the talk of the day. They change the town to ChewandSwallow (from the book) and people even start to like his monkey (Neil Patrick Harris). Blah blah, eventually bad things happen, have to fix, learn lessons, also junk food is bad.

But the coolest person in the movie is this guy, Joe Towne. He is in almost every scene (small town?) and pretty hilarious. Voiced by Will Forte, and he deserves his own spin off.

So the plot was predictable, more or less. Morals and what not. The first half was a bit better than the second half (which seemed “too long” post disaster). But the dialogue was killer. A lot of the lines in the movie are hilarious. A movie parents wont also mind watching. At one point when he makes it snow “ice cream” and has admitted he has never been in a snowball fight. So once he figures it out? A great scene of him destroying so many kids right in the face. Hilarious.

I laughed a lot more than I expected. Not just at Flint’s inability to be social, but they made fun of a lot of things, including normal disaster movie tropes. Also, cutscenes when he was doing “Science!” were very well done indeed.