Before I went to see “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” I wanted to get a taste of Wes Anderson’s distinct style.  So I took a friend’s recommendation and watched “The Royal Tenenbaums,” which is this week’s “F.I.L.M.” (First-Class, Independent Little-Known Movie).  I am now officially smitten by the quirky, off-beat humor that people love about Anderson.  He has a very cultish, niche audience, but “The Royal Tenenbaums” managed to make a blip on the mainstream radar.  It made a respectable $52 million (attendance comparable to “The Final Destination”), won a Golden Globe for Gene Hackman’s performance, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  But for a large group of moviegoers who haven’t experienced Wes Anderson, might I suggest renting this?  You’re really missing out if you haven’t.

The film follows a dysfunctional family that has fallen apart, mainly due to the large egos of the three extremely bright children.  Chas (Ben Stiller) is a successful enterpreneur by his early teens, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a skilled playwright who is published by high school, and Ritchie (Luke Wilson) finds great success with the game of tennis.  But for different reasons, they all wind up miserable.  Surprisingly, it is their estranged father, Royal Tenebaum (Gene Hackman) who ends this unhappy spell.  With his eccentric and often manipulative ways, he often infuriates them.  But he has a certain charm that has the power to ease the pain of disappointment and fill the gap he has left in their lives with his absence.

One thing that I particularly enjoyed about “The Royal Tenenbaums” is that I could sense Wes Anderson had as much fun making this movie as I did watching it.  He ornately concocts these bizarre characters that seem so far-fetched, yet they hit home in unexpected and delightful ways.  Anderson makes his presence felt throughout the entire movie.  You can feel it in the cinematography, consisting of deliberately framed geometric shots.  You can feel it in the soundtrack, a mix of folk and rock that really sets the atmosphere for his quirky work.  You can even feel it in the font he uses for the titles.  If you were like me, questioning what could possibly make Wes Anderson so special, watch “The Royal Tenenbaums” to be silenced and completely won over.

A new trailer for Ben Stiller’s upcoming movie Greenburg was released online this week. The film is about Greenburg who tries to put his life back together right after being released from the nuthouse. He can’t find purpose in his life or trying to create a purpose so he decides to do nothing about it. Check the trailer out and tell me what you think!

There’s always something that comes between you and the healthy lifestyle you’ve chosen to start living. This time I was going to get a gym membership, but alas the memberships at my local gym are for six months, and there’s no way in hell I’m paying for a “season membership” that ends in December. This means that I have to wait until January to get a membership. I have been a member at another gym a few times. Canceling your membership is harder than trying to leave the mafia. My former gym wouldn’t accept my resignation until I was able to prove them that I had moved to another city.

I bought a pair of glasses today. The cheapest ones I could find. This is the first time in my life that I buy cheap glasses. My first pair were by Hugo Boss, then I had Giorgio Armani, Chanel, Gucci, Romeo Gigli and J.Lindeberg, which I am using at the moment. I always used a pair until I broke them. Never have I had two pairs going at the same time. These new ones are pretty cool, sort of Larry Davidish round gunmetal frames. Then I bought some DVD’s on Sale. I bought a John Belushi box set, a double-pack with Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers and a movie with Paul Reiser and Peter Falk called The Thing About My Folks. I traded the movies for some animal skins and a dead rabbit. It was a fair trade. The Belushi box set contains Animal House, Blues Brothers and Continental Divide. I haven’t seen Continental Divide, but the other two are classics. I actually bought the box set because of this movie Continental Divide. I might even have a copy of Animal House in my collection. Now I’m just waiting for my wife to come home from work so that we can watch one of these movies. I’ll let her decide, like she usually does, but I’ll be pushing her either The Thing About My Folks or Continental Divide.

THE TRAILER FOR CONTINENTAL DIVIDE… (looks awesome! I’ll write a review once I’ve seen it)

]]> http://untergeschoss.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/versteckte-schatze/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:58:21 +0000 untergeschoss http://untergeschoss.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/versteckte-schatze/

Comedy Central versündigt sich derzeit am Publikum, denn dort versendet man die Serie “Extras” in der Nacht von Sonntag auf Montag um 2.00 Uhr. Dafür gibt es um 20.15 Uhr zum abertausendsten Male “South Park”. “Extras” ist eine Serie aus der Feder, unter der Regie und unter Mitwirkung von Ricky Gervais. Gervais ist auf dem Gebiet der televisionären Hochkomik eine einsame Größe. Er schuf zuvor “The Office”, das unmittelbare Vorbild für unseren “Stromberg”, und spielte dort auch selbst die Hauptrolle. Kennt man das Original, verspürt man gelegentlich ein schmerzhaftes Ziehen in den Zähnen, wenn Christoph Maria Herbst in die Vollen geht.

2005 ließ Gervais “Extras” folgen, eine Tragikomödie aus dem Milieu der Kleindarsteller. In der momentan bei Comedy Central gezeigten letzten Staffel ist Gervais’ Charakter Andy Millman nach langen Jahren der Notdurft mit einer flachen und komplett unwitzigen Sitcom endlich erfolgreich und mit ihm die befreundete Kollegin Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen). Nun kämpft Millman – da dürfte einiges biografisch sein – mit den Folgen des Ruhms und ringt auch mal um künstlerische Anerkennung, so wenn er unter der Regie Sir Ian Kellens in einem Theaterstück mitwirkt.

Der Clou der Reihe sind die Gastauftritte hochmögender Zelebritäten, die meist mit großem Spaß das eigene Image verulken. In den noch ausstehenden beiden Episoden tummeln sich unter anderem Robert De Niro, Talkmaster Jonathan Ross, Clive Owen, George Michael, der TV-Koch Gordon Ramsay (mit seiner 2004 installierten Reihe “Kitchen Nightmares” Vorbild diverser Restauranttester). Auch Orlando Bloom, Daniel Radcliffe, David Bowie, Ben Stiller, Samuel L. Jackson waren sich nicht zu schade, für Gervais vor die Kamera zu treten.

Was neben seiner großartigen Leistung für Gervais einnimmt: Er ist ein Mann mit Haltung. Wofern man einschlägigen Berichten glauben darf, lehnte er nichtsnutzige Nebenrollen in Hollywood-Blockbustern ebenso ab wie hoch dotierte Werbeangebote. Dafür lieferte er einen beeindruckenden Gastauftritt in der Serie “Alias” (derzeit in der Wiederholung samstags bei Das Vierte) und schenkt uns demnächst die Kinokomödie “Cemetery Junction”.

Und wo wir schon bei versenkten Programmgemmen sind: Die US-Serie “Arrested Development” (Comedy Central, samstags nachts gegen 1.00 Uhr) erzählte von 2003 bis 2006 schon von den Folgen der Wirtschaftskrise, ehe die überhaupt begonnen hatte. Grund genug, einen Spielfilm folgen zu lassen, der 2011 in die Kinos kommen soll.

Hi there, do you remember how awesome you thought Zoolander was the first time you watched it? No? Shut up, you’re lying.

Ben Stiller seems to have been continuously screwing his career up over the last 5/6 years or so, I mean, “Heartbreak Kid“, “Along Came Polly“, that film where he and Edward Norton were priests? Christ, before I typed this I had wiped that travesty from my memory, but now its back. Great.

Anyway, “Tropic Thunder” kind of made you remember that he is a pretty funny actor, and can work well with the right material. The trailer for his new ‘indie’ film gave me a warm feeling inside after a long cold horrible day. It may have been due to LCD Soundsystem’s “All my friends” playing in the background, or it may have been that the film could be good, and from a writer who wrote “The Life Aquatic” and adapted the screenplay for “Fantastic Mr. Fox” I hold high hopes. You’ll probably like it for a while too, until you start to hate it, and then ignore it. Much like the entire world has done with “Garden State“, and will soon be doing to “[500] Days of Summer“. The one thing it doesn’t have is an indie darling kooky girl in it, there’s no Portman or Deschanel, but give Gerwig a chance and she could just fit the bill (albeit will never steal my heart like Deschanel has).

Without further ado and with mixed fanfare of Cheers and Boo’s that would make an X Factor crowd blush, here’s the trailer for Greenberg (and yes, it’s a real shitty name for a movie).

AK47

I posted the trailer for this a few days ago and now we have this plain looking poster that I really like.

To put it simply, I’m a big Noah Baumbach fan. While he’s never been able to find success like his contemporary, Wes Anderson, his output over the last decade and a half has been consistently interesting. Kicking and Screaming was a great film about post-college milieu, The Squid and the Whale is guaranteed a spot on my best of the decade list, and while many were left cold by Margot at the Wedding, I admired its tenacity in dissecting its unlikeable characters, and found it to be a really interesting deconstruction of family dynamics. So yeah, I’m really excited for Greenberg, his latest film. Ben Stiller can be a really good actor when he’s not cashing a check (Night at the Museum anyone?), and despite my general distaste for the mumblecore movement, I do think Greta Gerwig has shown a lot of promise as an actress. So check out the trailer for Greenberg, and see it when it opens next March.

This trailer makes me feel nostalgic. Except the thing is, I’m way younger than Ben Stiller, so I have absolutely no idea what I feel nostalgic for.

In hindsight, Y2K made us look like fools.

Think about how trivial it all was.  We were afraid of a software mistake.  How trite in light of all that happened after it.

We survived Y2K and went along with our lives.  Music and film very much did the same, ignoring the coming storm that appeared in the guise of Napster.

Rap metal, post-grunge and teen pop were all the rage.  Justin Timberlake hadn’t yet proven that he was funny and talented.  Britney Spears wasn’t quite yet a train wreck.  For some reason, Fred Durst was still cool and Creed was selling millions of records ripping off Pearl Jam by way of pseudo-Christian grunge.

In film, the first glimpse of the coming onslaught of the superhero genre came with the first X-Men.  Tom Cruise continues his Mission:Impossible franchise, his career and behavior still on the rails, while his future director and savior Ben Stiller began his long slow crawl to mediocrity with Meet the Parents.

For both film and music, 2000 was a progression of the 90’s.  Whatever the new sound was going to be (and there were several sounds that would define the decade) it wouldn’t quite appear, though there were some rumblings in the underground.    But, for the time, there was no reason to change anything.

Times were good.

There wasn’t a President to rail against, a war to protest, or an economy to crush us.

We weren’t prepared at all for what was to come.

Ben Stiller rarely motivates me into seeing a movie.  Even though he is in my favorite movie (guess what that is) and he did quite good in Tropic Thunder, I still don’t feel the need to see any of the movies that he makes.  This is an exception.  He looks quite good in this movie, although he looks like he’s lost a huge amount of weight.

This movie was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who is insisting that he is a good director.  He’s probably right, but it does seem quite forced sometimes.  He did write The Life Aquatic, and he had something to do with the Fantastic Mr. Fox.  He seems to excel at depicting lost 30 year olds (that seems to be a big theme in movie and TV these days).  Anywho, this is another movie with that same situation.

Click the (very small) poster to watch the trailer.

From Apple.

- izi

At a crossroads in his life, Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) ends up housesitting at his brother’s home in Los Angeles. There, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his brother’s assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), an aspiring singer. Florence and Greenberg’s encounters lead to an uncertain and wonderfully vulnerable courtship.

O que eu mais gosto nesse filme? A mania de fazer listas.

Top five things I miss about Laura:  1 - Sense of humor. Very dry, but it can also be warm and forgiving. And she’s got one of the best all time laughs in the history of all time laughs, she laughs with her entire body.  2-  she’s got character. Or at least she had character before the Ian nightmare. She’s loyal and honest, and she doesn’t even take it out on people when she’s having a bad day. That’s character. 3 – miss her smell, and the way she tastes. It’s a mystery of human chemistry and I don’t understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home. 4 – I really dig how she walks around. It’s like she doesn’t care how she looks or what she projects and it’s not that she doesn’t care it’s just, she’s not affected I guess, and that gives her grace. And 5; she does this thing in bed when she can’t get to sleep, she kinda half moans and then rubs her feet together an equal number of times… it just kills me. Believe me, I mean, I could do a top five things about her that drive me crazy but it’s just your garden variety women you know, schizo stuff and that’s the kind of thing that got me here.

E não é só uma mania. Tem todo o cuidado por trás (The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention.  Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules)  e o indescritível prazer de dividir isso com os amigos:

PS1: Esse post é dedicado aos bons amigos e a todas as listas que a gente já fez em uma mesa de bar.

PS2: Eu gosto mais do Nick Hornby na telona do que nos livros. #prontofalei.

PS3: Nada de citar o slogan de Tostines. Daqui pra frente é Alta Fidelidade: What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? 
 

PS4: O Jack pode cantar, mas eu ainda sinto vergonha alheia.

PS4: Quem viu o último American Idol pôde acompanhar a ‘performance’ do Jack com a Gladys Knight, Ben Stiller e o #1 (que, como sempre, roubou a cena né?) para promover Trovão Tropical.

…és amíg ez kijön, Noah Baumbachtól ajánlom pl a “The Squid and the Whale”-t!;)

I still see this as one of my favorite comedies and cannot believe it is now 9 years old, it really does not seem like it came out that long ago!

Meeting the parents is still seen as a big step in a relationship, even bigger for a man meeting the father of the woman he wants to marry. That must be intimidating, but what if that man was Robert De Niro ex-CIA and you want to marry his little girl this is not going to be an easy task. Especially when you are Ben Stiller and everything you touch/say/do seems to go wrong without even trying.

Greg Focker . . . yes you can see what they done their and how many jokes you can fling in just saying his name. He is a male nurse, who wants to marry Pam Byrnes. When he finds out her father Jack is the type of man who would want to be asked first, he plans to ask him before proposing. The couple stay at her parents for her sister’s wedding.

Greg really does try his best to impress the people he wants as his in-laws and family by making things up and inadvertently doing everything wrong. Loosing Jinx the family cat, flushing the toilet which does not work properly, setting everything on fire and pretty much so much damage before the wedding.

I think the main reason I still like this film so much is due to that it still makes me laugh. Yes a lot of it is silly and random but I think it’s a good way to totally release while watching a comedy. Especially when someone makes as many mistakes and cannot do anything right. Everyone can relate to doing things when they should not have.

Seeing Robert De Niro in a comedy and being daft really does make this so much more than other comedies. As he is not really an actor you expect to see in a comedy, especially when he holds the cat-like a baby when getting it back, that is not what you expect from De Niro. I think this does make his scenes funnier than if a different actor had taken on the role.

I always compare Ben Stiller in other comedies to this film and really don’t think he has put in a funnier performance. He was just brilliant as the helpless guy who just wanted to marry the woman he loved, with nothing going right for him.

I bet if a man who comes across a father like De Niro’s character in this film, really would want to run a mile and possibly think twice about wanting to marry his daughter (if they were not 100% sure of course). But it really does make for a funny comedy which will probably always be relevant in having to meet the parents.

I wonder which way round people find it worse? Being the man meeting her parents . . . or being the woman meeting his parents?

2nd edition of Nostalgic Tendencies. During the summer, I had to endure horrid animated sequels and this film was as bad as Guns And Roses’ latest album.

Night of the Museum 2

**

Don’t forget to bring your pitchforks with your torches. The ones that are on fire, that is

Very rarely has a sequel of a film progressed to a point where it has achieved brilliance. The Lord of the Rings; Harry Potter ; GodFather ; Toy Story – films with such depth, intelligence and the ability to channel the wide range of human emotions and ideas.

Forgive me for diving into nostalgia but it is there where I can take solace from this below average sequel that is Night of the Museum 2: a film – which somehow managed to attract Hollywood stars such as Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais and the star of the show, Ben Stiller – that relies too much on CGI and silly gimmicks.

The predecessor was predictable, unoriginal and basically a great way for the cast to earn a lot of green. But here, the film is – well, pretty much the same really. The exhibitions come to life, chaos ensues, great villains of the past in either fact or fiction revived and protagonist Larry Dalley (Stiller) has to make sure everyone is in their rightful, motionless positions before dawn.

Considering the fact that this is a sequel, there is of course a slight “twist.” The exhibits are considered to be behind the times and the Natural History Museum lacked interactive features and technology and are moved to another museum, the famous Smithsonian Institute of Washington D.C. and from there, arises a villainous pharaoh named Kah Mun Rah (Hank Azaria) who seeks to (this is the part where I sighed) take over the world. Larry is aided by Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) and chaotically tries to stop Kah Mun Rah.

Cue the appearances of possible merchandise ranging from Einstein bobble heads to airplanes; mini cowboy figurines to squirrels; Darth Vader to Sesame Street. I’ll give credit where it’s due here: the producers certainly knows how to make a lot of money from a recession. I’ll give more credit if they hired acceptable script writers.

Sadly, this isn’t the case. The inevitable dry humour is present – with the worst offender in the form of The Thinker, acting as a stereotypical jock and exclaiming with a combination of swagger and nasal “firepowa!“ Cringe worthy moment if there ever was one; the dialogue seems to be written by a stuttering anti-social monkey – seriously, my 4 year old cousin has more of an imagination and ability to conjure up realistic script writing. Why an earth does Abraham Lincoln have a British accent I’ll never know.

Anything in store for the adults and teens? A good nap.

And yes, that cursed slapping monkey is present.

Not all of it bad news. It is far more, er, should I say “entertaining” than the previous film and Azaria’s main role gives it a more classy feel.And that seems to be all the good news I can conjure up. Oh wait, at least Stiller’s finances has been injected by enough greens to be kept safe from the Credit Crunch.

Please, don’t forget to visit my Gift Shop: Sequel Ruins.

Another sequel? You bet. Unfortunately, it will be 100% guaranteed to have “crap” written all over it.

Dags för ännu en uppföljare.
Och att spinna vidare på en historia som utspelar sig mestadels nattetid på ett museum där de olika utställningsföremålen får liv måste ju vara en ren önskedröm för ett gäng driftiga manusförfattare!

Den första filmen om, den inte helt i livet framgångsrike, Larry Daley (i Ben Stillers skepnad) hade sina stora och små poänger i all sin överdrivenhet.
Bara idén att låta den fumlige nattvakten försöka hålla koll på allsköns vaxdockor som vaknat till liv inbjuder till en fantasitripp utan dess like.
Natt på museet var rejält rolig och hade begåvats med en lagom dos av både barn- och vuxenhumor.
Stiller är möjligen inte den första man ser framför sig när ordet karaktär ska sättas framför ordet skådespelare, men i filmer av denna kategori har han en naturlig plats. Dessutom har jag alltid gillat Stiller och hans humor.

När hans figur Larry nu återvänder igen i uppföljaren behövs ingen tid spillas på att introducera oss tittare för hur det fungerar med de ostyriga museiföremålen.
Vi kastas rakt in i storyn som den här gången tar en utflykt till ett helt annat museum, The Smithsonian i Washington, dit flera av Larrys “skyddslingar” har flyttats för arkivering.
Larry, som nu avancerat från nördig museivakt till eh…nördig egenföretagare känner förstås ett sting av sorg över detta vid ett litet besök på museet strax innan nedpackning i trälådor förestår.

Ett telefonsamtal senare i manuset är dock Larry på väg i full fart till Washington för att undsätta sina kompisar som är i knipa.
Här växlar nu filmen upp i maxläge och manusförfattarna verkar ha levererat enligt devisen “så mycket som möjligt på så kort tid som möjligt”!
Där den första filmens manus möjligen kunde innehålla något spår av ett mönster i berättandet, flippar Natt på Museet 2 helt ut i en orgie av effekter, humor och våldsamt tempo. Som att sitta i en berg-och-dalbana och hela tiden matas med den ena kurvan värre än den andra.

Men varför ändra på ett vinnande koncept? Filmen återanvänder nästan sin första handling, och gör det oförskämt snyggt. Ut med de flesta av de gamla figurerna (även om Owen Wilsons sköna cowboy är med igen och får lite större spelrum samt Robin Williams korta återkomst som Roosevelt x2) och in med ett par nya karaktärer.
Således får vi stifta bekantskap med en fåfäng general Custer, en sur Al Capone, Ivan den förskräcklige med taskig dialekt och en lättretad Napoleon.
Bäst i gänget som gör allt för att sabotera för vår hjälte Larry är dock Hank Azaria som den läspande (!) skurkfaraon Kamunrah, vilken gör allt för att komma över den magiska tavlan som får dem alla att vakna till liv.
Som Larrys sidekick i denna karuselltur tar den kvinnliga flygaren Amelia Eearhart plats i skådespelerskan Amy Adams fartiga gestalt.

Natt på Museet 2 bjuder inte på några som helst överraskningar eller nyheter, men levererar en snyggt blandad godispåse som inte torde göra någon med fantasin i behåll besviken.
Ett lövtunnt manus vägs upp av skojfriskhet där den vuxna humorn fått ännu lite mer plats, och ett galleri av snygga effekter staplade på varandra. Skådespelarna gör vad de ska med extraplus för Azaria och Adams.

Glöm all eventuell logik och mönster.
Det här är en nöjestur utan ambition att ha något budskap. Vi tittar ju trots allt på museidockor som blir levande…

Och visst är den lilla irriterande apan med igen, i dubbel upplaga!

"Gulliver a chi???"

Giovedì pomeriggio ero in giro per Genova con una sceneggiatrice e produttrice di Hollywood, Heather Hale, ospite grazie al mio zampino della premiazione del concorso internazionale per sceneggiature Endas Screenwriting organizzato da buon Silvio Nacucchi, che per l’occasione ci faceva anche da guida per la città. Inutile dire che tra un bicchiere di novello e un commento positivo sugli scorci italici, sono usciti fuori discorsi interessanti, uno su tutti quello sul “film che fa quadrato”.

Trattasi di definizione legata alla vendibilità di un film, nel nostro caso Una notte al museo. Cos’ha di particolare? L’essere un investimento molto probabilmente redditizio per i produttori, perché in grado di catturare quasi tutte le fasce di pubblico: è divertente e movimentato per i giovani, ma può essere visto anche dai bambini (che hanno il personaggio del figlio del protagonista/Ben Stiller, in cui ritrovarsi); è “giusto” anche per i genitori, che in caso possono andare al cinema da soli o portarci tutta la famiglia.

Il vantaggio di Una notte al museo sta nell’idea, che è adatta a molti gusti in partenza e non ha bisogno di forzature particolari per diventare “un film quadrato”. Molto peggio è quando invece le caratteristiche vengono imposte dall’alto: ne nasce la tipica gag del produttore che chiede allo sceneggiatore di aggiungere alla storia un cucciolo, oppure una bambina malata. Ma sono forzature, prevedibili, di un’industria.

Il film, tra l’altro, è godibile. Nulla di trascendentale, ma neppure un’offesa al cervello di chi guarda. Oggi molti film americani spendono la metà del loro budget in promozione; ma è una consolazione pensare che, prima che tutti quei soldi comincino a scorrere, serve ancora un’idea azzeccata declinata nel modo giusto.

Dustin Hoffman will NOT appear in “Little Fockers”, the third installment to the “Meet the Parents” series. The reason? He wants to be in the movie longer, but the studio only scripted him as a small cameo at the end of the movie, Dustin wasn’t happy about that. He also wasn’t happy with the scheduling and wanted to be payed more.

Barbara Streisand is still appearing and she’s still on for her role.

Entertainment Weekly reports:

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/11/19/dustin-hoffman-little-fockers/

Come on, Dustin, stop being a whiner!!! Where’s your professionalism? Of course, legendary actors like Dustin Hoffman’s ego will get in the way, that they think they are worth millions for films. He probably think he is bigger than Barbara Streisand.

At least, she’s still being a professional and accepting her cameo without whining. Dustin is just being a whiner, that is all. Gotta love greedy rich people!

Kev

I’m going to try to make this a quick review tonight. It’s not because I don’t care enough about the D: on the contrary, I happen to think they’re one of the funniest musical acts in history and one of the best satirists when it comes to the pomposity of rock music. Jack Black’s atrociously charismatic lyricism combined with Kyle Gass’s virtuoso guitar playing makes for comedy that happens to be musically accomplished to boot. I’m just going to make this short because this is the kind of movie where you already know if you’re going to like it. It’s a musical comedy that is rock-oriented and Jack Black oriented. If you like the things they did on the HBO show or their first album, you get more of the same, and if you didn’t, then you’re probably very much in the dark as to why any of this is terribly funny.

We learn here the origins of the D, a rock duo that came together when rock prodigy Jack meets older, more experience guitar player Kyle busking one day and admires his handiwork. Kyle at first is annoyed by this nobody who has seriously latched onto him, but he grows a fondness for the plucky kid, and eventually they learn to rock wonderfully together. They form a bond and a friendship that will carry on through the coming years, and their music perfectly represents this new-found camaraderie. But they need something special to break into the big time, something that will set them apart from the millions of other bands who play open mics nights as their regular gigs. An opportunity appears from a mysterious store owner, who lets them in on The Pick of Destiny, a magical pick made from the horn of the Devil that will allow for any guitarist to play on an entirely different level. The pick is being held at a rock and roll museum, nobody at the museum knowing its true power, and the two hatch a plan to take it from under everyone’s noses. Along the way, their mental alacrity, their physical prowess, and even their friendship will be tested, because the road to the Pick of Destiny is littered with obstacles. But with the assistance of their only fan, Lee, can they avoid death or a break-up and become rock heroes?

It’s a pretty funny flick that really got dropped by fans and casual moviegoers alike when it came out, probably due to all the other Holiday blockbusters edging it out at the time, not to mention the fact that their last album was five years prior, and they were striking while the iron was freezing cold. But still, all things considered, it’s a good comedy. The jokes are pretty strong, most of them involving how pompous they are in the face of their total obscurity and the fact that rock music is so full of shit sometimes. They love to use the idea that you can rock SO HARD that you can change the physical properties of objects, like “I’m gonna ROCK your face off!” or “I’m gonna kill him with ROCK!” like it’s fucking kryptonite. Rock is just as bogus and self-important here as in the real world, and the gags do a good job of representing that. And while there are a few slow scenes that don’t pan out comically, the overall feel is still very positive, especially in the songs that move this musical along. They’re all for the most part, really good songs, well-made and catchy with all the tasty riffage that we expect from Tenacious D. The songs are a little too attached to the movie, sometimes, and can’t really live very long on their own, but as long as you’ve seen the movie once, you can at least cope with it and enjoy without living in total confusion. My favorite song? A little track called Master Exploder where Jack Black actually blows a guy’s head off with his ROCK!

Kyle and Jack have a good rapport together that translates well onto the screen. A big draw to this is their seemingly ad-libbed humor is that they actually like each other, which seems to be mostly a fleeting thing in comedic pair-ups these days. They play well off of one another, especially in the latter half of the movie where they interact more with one another. Like real friends, they just feel right together, and there’s no amount of coaching you can do to get as close and as natural with someone else as you can see with these two. It’s a real buddy duo for a really good buddy adventure movie. There’s action, suspense, lots of ganja, cameos that range from the expected (Dave Grohl) to the surprising (Ben Stiller) to the completely unexpected (Tim Robbins???) that are all pretty good. Don’t be surprised if you’re not a fan of the D to find this movie a little lacking, but even for the uninitiated, I think you can easily find something to laugh at here. Check it out, but don’t expect anything as epic as what you find on the cover and the artwork. It’s just a good-natured comedy with a great sense of humor that will be remembered for its financial failure but should be remembered for its charismatic leads and for fun that really delivers. I give Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny 7 1/2 ROCKED TO DEATH CORPSES out of 10.

Tomorrow we get magical and mystical with the black-and-white version of Beauty and the Beast! Until then!