Recent Casting News

Ed Norton, of fight club fame, is apparently going to be the next Incredible Hulk. Uh. interesting.


Thanks to Peter Chattaway, by way of Jeffrey Overstreet, for the news. Check it.

Also, Shia Lebeouf, a fast rising young actor, is slated to join Harrison Ford on the new Indy film.

And finally, tops at this weekend's box office was Disturbia, starring Lebeouf incidentally, followed by Will Ferrell's Blades of Glory, and animated Disney film Meet the Robinsons.

More Good Stuff

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/pc_article.php?id=7378


Another great Relevant article on art.

On the Absence of Art

"Relevant" and "Christianity Today" film reviewer Brett McCracken recently wrote this article on the idea of absence in art. An absolute must read for anyone who takes their art or any art seriously. Or for anyone who wants learn how to better live.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/pc_article.php?id=7372

300: A Review

Zach Snyder’s new film 300, based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, is the ultimate movie for college students. It is an action packed, erotic, and visually stunning movie. And the movie has proven to be immensely popular: it grossed over $70 million in it’s first weekend. However, is the movie worthy of all the hype?
Following my initial viewing of the movie I thought so, but as I have thought about it I’m not so sure. True, visually it is unlike few movies to date, and it is an exciting portrayal of a story long overdue a telling in Hollywood, but it seems to achieve each of these at the cost of good film making.
300 chronicles the battle of Thermopylae, fought between a group of 300 Spartan soldiers and the massive Persian army. If you know your history no spoiler for the film’s ending should phase you: the 300 Spartans put up a fight for a while, in the name of freedom, until eventually they are defeated when one of their own betrays them. However, while the film is rather historically accurate, it fails to deal with its major themes in any sort of revealing, or even original light. It’s main theme, freedom, is approached with a shallow and even insulting lack of insight. Why is freedom worth having? Why is it worth dying? What about Spartan society, which even the movie portrays as ruthless, is so free anyway?
Further, the script, while more poetic then I predicted, dealt in useless cliché’s. At first I liked it, then I disliked it, then I liked it again, then I disliked it- never a good sign. By its poetry it claimed it had something to say but failed to actually say anything worth while. It is like the high school student who uses big words whose meaning he doesn’t know. Essentially, it was boring.
The character development was weak, outside of the main character, Spartan King Leonidas, played by Gerard Butler from Phantom of the Opera. The frantic pace of the film left little time for such necessities. But this was a mistake for if I am to care, to really care, who lives or dies, who wins or loses, I must care about the characters. When one of the main characters dies mid-way through the film, I barely was effected.
As much as I loved Snyder’s direction on the film and the impressive photography alongside the groundbreaking computer graphics, the movie dealt in excess, it looked far too much like a video game in certain parts to be considered worthy of cinematic sainthood, or even priesthood. From the unrealistically, over-buffed, spandex wearing Spartan warriors (in contrast with the under-buffed Persians) to the useless sex scenes which forget to push the plot or develop characters, instead existing simply to draw college age, over-sexed libidos to theaters, to the almost hilarious way in which limbs and heads fly through the air as if gravity didn’t exist in the Greek world, this is a film which overdoes it. Just like that last sentence.
All that being said, 300 was a considerable achievement of popular entertainment. The acting was decent, and as I said, the direction was adequate. I certainly won’t be recommending it to everyone, and I probably won’t be seeing it again anytime soon. Don’t expect good movie making from this film and don’t expect a realistic or even insightful look at mankind. But if you want a film which is a wild ride, which will be pure entertainment, complete with beautiful people (and some very ugly ones too), fantastic action sequences, and a pace like squirrels driving NASCAR, this is your movie.
Or, perhaps you should just go rent the game; it’s bound to come out soon.
300 gets a C rating from me.


Most of you are bound to disagree with me. If so, let’s talk, argue, debate, however you want to put it. Email me at dakern@uncc.edu

Reign Over Me: A Review

In 2002, funny-man Adam Sandler made a memorable turn in a more serious role, Barry Egan in Paul Thomas Anderson’s oddball dark comedy, Punch Drunk Love. Though, the movie had its share of critics- people either loved it or hated it- Sandler’s role was widely accepted as powerful and arresting, and certainly a surprise from the man who made a name for himself in “Happy Gilmore,” “The Waterboy,” and “Billy Madison.” However, the fact that the role was a more dramatic one turned many of his fans away. The movie wasn’t much of a success at the box office and it seemed that most movie goers simply weren’t willing to accept the former Saturday Night Live star as anything more than a high school drop out turned third grader, Bob Barker-beating golfer, loser turned quarterback, take it to the man, side splitter. Viewers want to laugh at him, that is all. And that is a mistake. Along with Punch Drunk Love, Sandler’s most recent release, “Reign Over Me,” proves that the man can indeed induce emotional empathy from a darkened theater.
Co-starring Don Cheadle (Crash, Hotel Rwanda), Liv Tyler (Armageddon, Lord of the Rings), and Jada Pinkett Smith (Collateral, Madagascar), Reign Over Me is the story of a man, Charlie Fineman, who lost his wife and three daughters in the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Centers. Heartbroken, Fineman lives his life in an attempt to avoid the pain which has thrown itself at him. Instead he embraces solitude and loneliness. He hides behind video games, Chinese food, and monthly remodeling projects. Essentially, he hinds behind the busy-ness and bustle of the New York City streets.
But one late afternoon he bumps into his old college room-mate, Alan Johnson, played by Cheadle. Johnson is a successful dentist with a beautiful home and a beautiful family. However, he feels trapped by the normality and predictability of his mundane lifestyle. Fineman’s disorganized and eccentric personality seems to be the perfect outlet for him and so the two begin to rekindle their old friendship. They drink, they play video games, they rock-out, they go to all night movie marathons. But to Johnson it is clear that Fineman is broken and, as one character puts it, is “experiencing something very profound.” So, he attempts to help his friend as best he can. Fineman, though, doesn’t want to be helped and not only rejects his friend’s kind advances, but does so in angry and sometimes violent expressions of pain. These particular scenes are simultaneously some of the most awkward and emotionally appealing of the entire film.
In the end, both characters are forced to face their shortcomings and accept their lives for what they are.
Reign Over Me, is a movie that asks difficult questions which it doesn’t always answer. But, in some cases that is a good thing. It forces the viewer to engage with the film, the characters, and the emotions. Furthermore, the movie doesn’t answer questions with cheap, cliché answers. We get no simple solutions to Fineman’s pain, nor to Johnson’s discontent. Thus, it is a more realistic representation of life. there are no simple solutions to the problems mankind faces.
Writer/Director Mark Binder does a nice job allowing his actors to act without interference or gimmick. The script is fluid and well paced, though it deals in excess a time or two. The cinematography is one of my favorite parts of the movie. It sets the viewer down in the streets of New York and gives a beautiful tour of the greatest city on earth. We see clearly how Fineman hides behind the stop lights and traffic and houses. The city is as complicated as he is (though paradoxically: whereas the city is complicated and glamorous, Fineman is complicated and broken and lonely. One wonders if perhaps the city is just as lonely as it’s inhabitant. Maybe the true feelings of the city are hidden behind it’s glamour).
Sandler’s performance is the best of his career. There is no question that he can successfully pull off a serious role and I hope that he takes on many more. He looks like a 1970’s Bob Dylan and in many ways is as volatile as Dylan. His is an emotionally charged performance from beginning to end, one which just might be a tear inducer for the truly locked in viewer. Cheadle does a good job as well and is at his best in the more intense conversations with the other actors. He and Sandler are an unlikely pair, but they are completely believable because of the chemistry between the actors. Tyler and Smith do well what is expected of them. And watch out for a memorable cameo from Donald Sutherland.
Reign Over Me isn’t going to be the best movie of the year, and it isn’t going to draw the biggest crowds, but it is a movie with profound and important things to say. Compounded with Sandler, Cheadle, and New York City it is worth seeing. I give it a B+.

The History of Love: a book review

Tom Waits groveled profoundly from two Sony speakers as I sipped my chocolate milk from the carton. I wiped the remains of the drink from my upper lip with my right hand as with my left I turned the pages of the newest novel I was reading, “The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss. It was hot. I flipped a switch and the ceiling fan above me accelerated, spinning quickly like planets revolving around the sun. Soon I turned another page, then another, then another. I opened a window. The pages seemed to be turning themselves, almost as quickly as the fan was rotating. I was oblivious to the heat, to the fan, to Tom Waits, to chocolate milk. I was in the world of “The History of Love” and I was sad to leave it when finally the last page turned and I saw only the book’s summary which hardly does it justice.
Like Tom Waits, ceiling fans on hot days, and delicious chocolate milk mustaches, Ms. Krauss newest novel made me glad to be alive.
It is the quiet, yet elegant, tale of a book called “The History of Love.” Yes, in short, it is a book about a book. But it is so much more. It is the story of the people about whom the book tells; it is the story of the hands into which the book falls; it is the story of the book’s author. But, ultimately, “The History of Love,” is about living.
Krauss guides us through the interwoven lives of several New Yorkers: young teenager Alma Singer, who is named for every girl in “The History of Love“(confusing I know, just read the book); Leo Gursky, an elderly, lonely man, who once wrote a book about his lost love from across the sea; a famous writer with a mysterious secret and a fascination with Spanish literature; and a young boy called Bird who thinks he is the messiah.
Each of the book’s characters are colorfully and carefully painted; clearly Ms. Krauss took great pains to not only make them believable, but also sympathetic and magnetic. The young Miss. Singer and old Mr. Gursky are particularly wonderful characters, each struggling to determine what their purpose is, at opposite points in their lives, and what it means to truly love someone, whether friend or lover. In my recent reading adventures I have found few characters to be as indelibly charming as these two protagonists. Leo Gursky is a new favorite character.
Amidst the mass production of Grishams and Creightons and Kings, books written with the bottom line in mind, it is nice to see young talent taking their art seriously, crafting works of fiction which call to mind the genius of an older generation, a generation of Kafka and Borge and T.S. Eliot. Nicole Krauss is in the class of other young writers like Jonathon Safran Foer who wrote the popular “Everything is Illuminated, and she surpasses the talents of writers like Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity,” “About a Boy”) and Mark Haddon (“The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time). “The History of Love” is the book to read if you have had doubts about modern fiction, it will restore your confidence in the possibilities of the modern writer. If you never doubted their possibilities the book will still a be an exciting and poignant piece of literature.
However, don’t expect the book to help you escape the world as you know it. Rather, it will likely set you down in the midst of that world’s confusion and then set out to make you know your own skin more intimately. In the end you will come out fulfilled. Krauss’s book reminds us, rather effectively, that this thing we call “living” is simultaneously full of pain and full of joy, full of hope and full of doubt, full of beauty and full of ugliness. And somehow, that’s why it’s worth enduring.
”The History of Love” is an emotionally charged, imaginative, and painfully real look at what happens when we allow ourselves to love. Like it’s main themes, the book is at once both heartbreaking and heart-mending. Out of 12 this book deserves a 9.5.

Coming next week: a look at current bestseller “Children of Men” by P.D. James, the inspiration for the highly acclaimed film of the same title.

Beasts Of No Nation: A Book Review

Recent Harvard grad Uzodinma Iweala's new, and first, novel "Beasts of No Nation," is nothing short of astonishing. Ripe with powerful imagery, colorful language, and effectively moving characters, it is the poignant tale of a young, African boy's coming of age. However, it is no "Catcher in the Rye," no "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," no "Great Expectations." "Beasts of No Nation" is a unique and even unusual account of what it means to grow up.
Set in an unnamed West African country, the novel traces a young boy's journey as part of a unit of guerrilla fighters in the midst of a bloody civil war. When his father is killed and his mother and sister kidnapped, the boy, named Agu, is forced to join a violent group of rag-tag soldiers, led by a volatile leader, called only Commandant. Commandant immediately likes Agu and protects the boy from the rough ways of the hardened soldiers around him. As the story progresses Agu is immersed into the world of guns and bloodshed and fear. He finds himself stabbing, and shooting, and being shot at. He finds himself running, and hiding. He finds himself sleeping in trenches filled with water, in pits full of infested dead bodies, in treacherous heat, and on an empty stomach. And Agu finds himself asking some of the most difficult moral questions with which mankind is faced.
He wonders if he is damned since he has killed innocent women and children. He wonders if God will ever forgive him for the violent actions he is forced to perform. He fears he is becoming a monster, a beast; that he will no longer be able to live a normal life, a life as simply a boy. It becomes clear that he will not. He ponders whether killing is ever right, whether revenge is ever worth seeking, and whether any cause is worth dying for. And he desires to know whether there is really any light in this dark world.
This book is a powerfully emotional story.
Iweala presents all this in an original and creative style. Much like William Faulkner did, Iweala writes in the vernacular with which his characters speak. Agu narrates the tale with an obvious accent, leaving various words out, especially articles, and repeating others as someone might whose first language is not English and who is trying to emphasis something. For many readers this might be a deterrent to reading the book, but that would a mistake. This style allows Iweala to narrow in on the internal emotion and pain Agu is feeling; by it readers are drawn deep into the boy's shattered soul: his disconnection with his former life and his disturbed youthfulness . It also allows Iweala to more effectively change the pace and emphasis of the narrative. Should the style make for a difficult read in the books first few pages, as it did for me, fight through it, for I can assure you, that will change. You will be arrested by it by the second chapter.
Iweala has a great talent for putting the reader in the midst of the story's setting. He pays astonishing attention to detail, without boring the reader, and he knows how to appeal to all of the readers senses. It is exceedingly clear what Agu is feeling and seeing and hearing and tasting, and the effect of those sensory experiences are equally as clear.
Readers, keep your eye on the young, talented Iweala. He is an important voice for our generation with a unique moral vision; a resonant and applicable voice for our modern world, one which faces the challenges our world faces head on and which confronts their effects on us. And he dares his readers to engage them alongside him. Remember his name- he will be around for quite some time.
"Beasts Of No Nation" is a novel which effected me like few recent novels have, and it can you too. It is the winner of The L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for first fiction, the Sue Kaufman prize for first fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. It was also named a best book of the year by Time Magazine, People Magazine, Slate Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and New York Magazine. It gets a 9 out of 12 on my own scale.

"Beasts of No Nation" is published by Harper Perennial in a gorgeous new edition. Run to your nearest book store and demand they sell you a copy- immediately.



With comments, questions, concerns, insults, insights, and/or compliments, and recommendations for books to review, email me at dakern@uncc.edu. I like lots of email.