Mike Judge talks about his work and today’s DVD release of Extract

A second time, with flair

22 DEC 2009  •  by Zack Smith

Mike Judge (left) Photo by Sam Urdank/ Miramax Films

Mike Judge’s comedies have always been a unique mix of the subtle and outrageous, combing cartoonish characters (in both a literal and figurative sense), with an easygoing pace that puts as much emphasis on awkward silences and uncomfortable reactions as slapstick and punchlines.

An interview with the acclaimed writer director for you!

It’s Tuesday — ready for more DVD’s? (Think stocking stuffers, because that’s exactly what the studios & the big retailers are thinking). How about (500)Days of Summer …(super cute indie romantic comedy with genuine bite courtesy of its stars Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt). Perhaps you’ll put District 9 under the tree (the trippy-earthlings-and-mutating-aliens-movie-from South Africa )…or maybe someone you know would like a wrapped up copy of  Extract, (the latest from Office Space/Beavis & Butthead creator Mike Judge with a very  funny Jason Bateman).  Then we have All About Steve with Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper which curiously, may or may not have been a misfire for both its stars. If you happened to have seen it, let us know what you thought.  In Hollywood Nuptial News, it’s official: Carrie Underwood is engaged. The lucky guy? Mike Fisher — a hockey player for the Ottawa Senators. (At first I wondered, but where will they live? And then I remembered that when you’re  a multimillion record selling pop star and you’re marrying a professional athlete, well, um, that’s not the kind of stuff people like that worry about). On a more serious note, Hollywood is still stricken by the devastating news of young actress Brittany Murphy’s death by cardiac arrest this past Sunday morning. Apparently Murphy was suffering from flu-like symptoms prior to her passing, and there is an ongoing medical investigation, during which time her grieving family has asked that their privacy be respected. It seems fitting now to take a look at this young lady’s significant body of work (on both the big and little screens). With this in mind, voice your choice in today’s featured poll and let us know which of the following featured your favorite Brittany Murphy role?

a) Clueless

b) 8 Mile

c) Just Married

d) King of the Hill

• WPIX did a fun interview with Jana Kramer (Alex, One Tree Hill).
• Alloy also has an interview with Kramer.
• Bethany Joy Galeotti (Haley, One Tree Hill) is featured in the new One Tree Hill Connection podcast.
• PopEater has an interview with Tori Spelling (Donna, Beverly Hills 90210).
• Extract writer-director Mike Judge had good things to say about Dustin Milligan (Ethan, 90210).
• The Romantics, starring Katie Holmes (Joey, Dawson’s Creek) and Adam Brody (Seth, The O.C.), will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
• The O.C. is given a shout-out here while the current teen dramas (although not named) are subtly dissed.

Actress – singer dies suddenly at age 32. 

Brittany Murphy, the versatile actress with the girl-next-door good looks and versatile screen persona, died Sunday of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles. She was 32 years old. 

A supporting and leading actress for most of her life, Murphy’s first appearances included guest roles on Murphy Brown and Kids Incorporated before landing regular work playing Dabney Coleman’s daughter on the short-lived 1991 Fox sitcom Drexell’s Class. More television guest spots followed, until in 1995 she gained widespread big screen notoriety by co-starring in the hit comedy Clueless.  She continued working in supporting roles, including memorable performances in the 1999 black comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous and the 2000 drama Girl, Interrupted. 

A prolific screen presence for much of the decade, Murphy’s other film credits include 2002’s 8 Mile, playing opposite rapper Eminem, and the 2003 comedy Just Married, in which she starred opposite then-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher. Following that film’s success she starred in a string of light comedies including Uptown Girls (2003) and Little Black Book (2004). 

Murphy in Clueless, 1995

Her dramatic appearances included noteworthy turns in the 2001 suspense film Don’t Say A Word and the 2005 crime drama Sin City. In 2006 she co-starred in the mystery The Dead Girl, which won several Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature and Best Director. In recent years she appeared mostly in independent and lower-budget productions, but recently finished work on a featured part in Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming The Expendables. 

A busy voice actor and singer, in 1997 Murphy joined the cast of the Fox animated sitcom King of the Hill, voicing the Hill family’s live-in niece Louanne Platter. She voiced the character on and off for twelve years, throughout the show’s run. Her other voice credits include the 2006 animated feature film Happy Feet and the 2008 Futurama movie The Beast With A Billion Backs. She contributed vocals on two of Happy Feet’s musical numbers, and that same year a collaboration with Paul Oakenfeld, the single “Faster Kill Pussycat,” topped the Billboard dance charts. 

Details surrounding her death are still forthcoming. Paramedics responded to a call at her Los Angeles home Sunday morning, after a report that Murphy had collapsed in her bathroom. Attempts to revive her on scene were unsuccessful, and she was later pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. An autopsy is planned for later this week, with an official LAPD investigation also underway. 

Murphy is survived by her husband, Simon Monjack. She had no children.

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Theatrical Release:Sep 4, 2009 Wide

OFFICE SPACE’s Mike Judge directs this comedy that is bursting with talent, from JUNO stars Jason Bateman and J.K. Simmons to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s Kristin Wiig and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL’s Mila… OFFICE SPACE’s Mike Judge directs this comedy that is bursting with talent, from JUNO stars Jason Bateman and J.K. Simmons to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’s Kristin Wiig and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL’s Mila Kunis. Bateman stars as a man who is anxious to sell his business, but his plans are threatened by a strange, unexpected event. EXTRACT’s diverse cast also includes David Koechner, Clifton Collins Jr., Gene Simmons, and Ben Affleck.

The idea that a cultural movement begins or ends with the flip of a calendar is, of course, fallacious. ”60s Music” is an identifier of a specific strain of popular music that really refers to the time period, between 1965 (mid-career Beatles) and 1976 (The Sex Pistols). What we think of as the Golden Era of 70s movies began, arguably, with The Graduate in 1967 (or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the year before) and ended with Raging Bull in 1980.

For now anyway, the 2000s can be called The Netflix Decade, a time when, in theory, more movies were more accessible to more people than ever before. That doesn’t necessarily mean everyone took advantage of this opportunity. Still, the idea that a movie, even one from say, Romania about abortion, can have a second life on video is encouraging. If you’re a stickler for lists, consider this the 90 (or so) best movies of the last ten years. What this era in film will ultimately be called is anyone’s guess, but, many films in this list, particularly those made in the US, reflect life in the Age of Terror, where the country was led by a man whose ambition far exceeded his abilities.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days – Over the last ten years there has been a rush, in relative terms anyway, of films from countries that were formerly behind the Iron Curtain. The best of these was a heartbreakingly frank film about the moral and practical dilemmas of abortion while Eastern Europe crumbled in the late 1980s. A movie of unflinching honesty. (2007)

8 Mile – Don’t laugh. Yes, Eminem played himself, but great movies put the viewer in a time and place and Curtis Hanson’s impeccable direction gives life to the hopelessness of Eminem’s Detroit ring of despair. The performances of Kim Basinger and Mekhi Phifer are first-rate.  The movie looks even more authentic now that Eminem has faded from the limelight. (2002)

21 Grams – The title refers to the amount of weight we lose after we die. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s follow-up to Amores Perros brought together a math professor (Sean Penn), a grieving housewife (Naomi Watts) and a re-born convict (Benicio Del Toro). The story isn’t arranged chronologically and the morality of what’s taking place is apparent before the full impact of the plot.

The 25^th Hour – Spike Lee’s least bombastic work. Three men (Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper) one of whom is preparing for a prison stint, re-assess their lives in New York City while terrorist occupied planes still echo in the background. The request made late in the film by Norton will make you gasp, but then nod in agreement with his logic. (2002)

About Schmidt – When Jack Nicholson’s wife dies he decides to rent an RV and drive around trying to avoid the realization that he’s a selfish creep. Alexander Payne’s portrait of aging shines even brighter when compared to the emptiness of another Nicholson film about old age released several years later—The Bucket List. Hope Davis is brilliant as Nicholson’s estranged daughter. (2002)

Almost Famous – The best fictional account of the rock and roll life this side of Spinal Tap. Billy Crudup hits every note as an ambivalent guitar hero. Philip Seymour Hoffman is hysterical as rock critic Lester Bangs. Cameron Crowe’s movie also launched the career of Kate Hudson, who plays a groupie. Don’t hold that against it. The “Tiny Dancer” sequence on the tour bus is sure to put a lump in your throat. (2000)

Amelie  – Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s fable starring Audrey Tautou is certain to become a beloved classic if it hasn’t achieved that status already. Jeunet and Tautou occupy a world that looks much like our own yet is eminently more just, hopeful and full of love. Engaging from any number of perspectives. (2001)

Amores Perros – The three-pronged story about how lives have been irreversibly altered by a car accident can only be described as awe-inspiring. It introduced the world to the massive talents of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Gael Garcia Bernal and the progenitors of Latin American Cinema. Much as Amores Perros is a child of Pulp Fiction, it is also the father to the acclaimed City of God. (2001)

Away From Her – This tiny movie about a woman (Julie Christie) coming to grips with Alzheimer’s raises challenging questions about the true nature of love, honesty and companionship. That Sarah Polley was only 27 when she directed this counts as a miracle. (2007)

Babel – Whereas Amores Perros’ and 21 Grams’ centerpiece were a singular event, Innaritu’s Babel centers on a singular feeling brought on by a digital, wireless age. It’s one of mutedness. We can speak to more people in more places than ever before, yet we still have no clue what to say. The characters’ eyes tell us everything we need to know about their hollowed-out existences. In Babel, continents are little more than land masses that separate people trying to cope with this new world. Brad Pitt has never been better. (2006)

The Beat That My Heart Skipped – Romain Duris dreams of becoming a concert pianist conflict with his father’s desire that he follow his footsteps into a life of low-level street thuggery. Director Jacques Audiard brings together the disparate physical and emotional universes that Duris occupies. Paris, probably the most-filmed movie locale in the world after New York, is presented in a new, fresh way. (2005)

Before Sunset – Nine years after Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy fell in love on a single night in Vienna they meet again. Except now they’re in Paris. But time has passed and things have changed. Or have they? A great idea executed to perfection by director Richard Linklater and the two leads. (2004)

Black Hawk Down – Mark Bowden’s searing chronicle of the US Army’s disaster in Somalia. Ridley Scott and a strong ensemble cast capture the frantic efforts of well-intentioned men in one impossible situation after another. (2001)

Bigger Faster Stronger* – A straightforward documentary about steroids and American culture by a first time director and former devotee of the weightlifting/bodybuilding scene. (2008)

Bloody Sunday – Made prior to United 93 and The Bourne movies, Paul Greengrass’ re-creation of the events of January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland seethes with anger. (2002)

Borat – Far and away the best comedy in recent years. Although it dutifully serves its  function as a biting social satire, it’s the bar which other comedies strive for: “Yeah, (title) was pretty funny. But it’s no Borat.” (2006)

Bowling for Columbine – With the school shootings still fresh in the public mind Michael Moore’s film about America’s obsession with guns is a tour de force of filmmaking. It’s become the template for countless other issue-driven documentaries, but the original is still the best. Who could forget Moore emerging from a bank, gun in hand as gratitude for opening a new bank account? (2002)

Capote – I tend to resist portrayals of historical figures little more than overwrought imitations, but there are some performances that just throw you back in your seat. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s depiction of the caustic, gifted, tortured Truman Capote is such a performance. (2005)

The Dark Knight – One of the major secular features of Bush Era was rampant self-involvement. Facebook has turned the personal into the global scale. In a landscape where fame goes to those who are willing only to be more extreme than their predecessor, Heath Ledger, as the sadistic Joker tapped perfectly into this pathos while living up to unprecedented pre-release hype. Everything, onscreen and off, about The Dark Knight reflected the culture of entitlement. Mostly though, The Dark Knight delivered on all its promise.  The movie has flaws; Christian Bale’s smoky (or is it gravelly?) voice is an unneeded prop and the stunt make-up of Aaron Eckhart’s character is unnecessary. That said, it performs the near impossible—a summer blockbuster whose story and message stays with you for days, if not weeks. (2008)

Darwin’s Nightmare – A documentary about the perch in Lake Victoria that shows the social and political effects of an ecological nightmare. While An Inconvenient Truth was the environmental movie that bagged the awards and attention, Hubert Sauper’s movie chilled and moved. (2005)

Eastern Promises –  David Cronenberg re-emerged with A History of Violence, but its follow-up was far more entertaining. Naomi Watts’ London midwife stumbles across the Russian mob, as personified by Viggo Mortensen, cultures clash, mayhem ensues–including a grisly fight in a steam bath. (2007)

Edge of Heaven – The best movies of the decade made outside the US addressed the blurring of boundaries among class, race, ethnicity or sexuality. Fatih Akin’s film about a German Turk who moves to Istanbul in order to find his half-sister makes you wonder if maybe boundaries aren’t such a bad thing. (2008)

Elephant – Gus Van Sant’s take on school violence is haunting. The impending carnage looms over the characters to such a degree that, as an audience member, you want to shake them by the shoulders and tell them to run before the bullets start flying. (2003)

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room – The best of its type. A traditional talking-heads documentary that harnesses the national outrage of the Enron collapse and the subsequent dominoes that fell. Names are named and we’re given plenty of reason to hold those mentioned in absolute contempt. (2005)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I resisted this as too gimmicky at first and I don’t buy Jim Carrey doing anything serious, but on a second viewing it struck me as a thoughtful consideration of how memory relates to romantic longing, especially considering it’s a major studio release. The rare instance of  when a blend of a potentially toxic mix of artists–Carrey, Kate Winslet, Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman results in a coherent final product.  (2004)

The Fall – A suicidal stunt man, an eight year old Eastern European immigrant girl who speaks accented English, Charles Darwin, Alexander the Great and many, many others people populate Tarsem Singh’s follow up to The Cell. Reportedly made without CGI, it’s unlike any film ever made. (2008)

Finding Nemo – A father clown fish loses track of his son clown fish. In desperate need of help in finding him, he is assisted by a pang fish with short-term memory. That the movie somehow takes a parent’s worst nightmare and turns it into something cute is a testament to its many charms. Edged Ratatouille and Up for a spot behind WALL-E on this list. (2003)

Garden State – While it’s easy to dismiss the movie as a tool for Zach Braff’s navel-gazing, Garden State appealed to people of a certain age, pre mid-life, who wondered, “What’s it all for?” It owes massive debts to The Graduate and the work of Wes Anderson but it’s a movie of and about its time. (2004)

George Washington – David Gordon Green’s somber sketch on poor black children in North Carolina plays like a Miles Davis number. The movie is all mood, but by the end, you feel like you know the kids in this movie intimately. (2000)

Gone Baby Gone – This may be a blasphemy in some quarters, but Ben Affleck’s directorial debut does Clint Eastwood better than Eastwood himself. It confronts many of the same issues as Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River the difference is the performance of Amy Ryan, as the world’s worst mother. (2007)

Good Night and Good Luck – George Clooney’s paean to an era gone by was meant to be a body blow to the modern media, where rumor and innuendo flourish. More than David Straitharn’s uncanny impersonation of Edward R Murrow, most the high points are the elegant singing of Dianne Reeves that served as a bridge scenes of increasing tension. (2005)

Goodbye Solo – Souleymane Sy Savane is  Solo, a Senegalese cab-driver in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (the Tar Heel State is a new hot spot for American Indie Cinema). He picks up a weary, southern man who asks that a few days from now Solo take him to Blowing Rock National Park, no questions asked. Ramin Bahrani’s movie is so loaded with symbolism it’s easy to overlook what an assured, confident piece of filmmaking it is. If there’s any justice, Savane will pick up an Oscar nomination this year. (2009)

Happy-Go-Lucky – How far does attitude go in life? At first glance Sally Hawkins’ Poppy is gratingly optimistic, but as Mike Leigh’s small masterpiece unfolds we see that Poppy is far more sophisticated than we’ve given her credit for. Furthermore, I can think of no film of this or an era that so lovingly presents a friendship between two women—Hawkins and Alexis Zegerman. They’re co-workers and have each other’s backs in ways that the girls from Sex and the City would never understand. (2008)

The House of Flying Daggers  – Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon set a standard that Zhang Yimou’s exhilarating epic set in the Tang Dynasty surpassed. That’s Ninth Century kids. Two police officers, with differing motives, force a gorgeous dancer to go undercover and infiltrate The House of Flying Daggers, a group of militants who steal from the rich and give to the poor. There’s a sequence where…ok forget that, watch it and you’ll instantly recognize why this movie is on a “Best of” list. (2004)

In America – After WALL-E this was the movie that stole my heart. Jim Sheridan directed a script he wrote with his daughters about a family a lot like their own. It’s the magical story of a family overcoming the loss of the youngest child through great sacrifice and a move to Hell’s Kitchen. Sarah and Emma Bolger, who play the precocious daughters, will steal your heart too. (2003)

In the Bedroom  – Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek have a son (Nick Stahl) who gets involved with an older woman (Marisa Tomei) estranged from her husband. When Stahl gets killed by the husband in a jealous fit Wilkinson must face his own thoughts of revenge in this wrenching drama directed by Todd Field. (2001)

In the Mood for Love – It’s 1962 Hong Kong and Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are neighbors who suspect their spouses of infidelity. Wong Kar-Wai’s film is in the grand tradition of a love story set against a society in upheaval, but simmers with a lust and eroticism all its own. Runner-up to Y Tu Mama Tambien for sexiest film of the decade. (2001)

In the Valley of Elah  – When Tommy Lee Jones’ son goes missing shortly after returning from a tour in Iraq, he sets out to find him. In the course of his quest he’s aided by Charlize Theron and the movie becomes a layered treatise about the war in Iraq, the military and family. In his best roles, Jones face says far more than any word could and that’s certainly the case in this movie, which takes its title from the site of David’s biblical battle with Goliath. (2007)

Into the Wild  – After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Chris McCandless, the child of well-to-do parents, gave away all his possessions and hitchhiked across America en route To Alaska. A wonderful companion to Jon Krakauer’s elegiac account of McCandless, Sean Penn’s movie brings together sweeping natural panoramas, marvelous supporting characters (Hal Holbrook especially) and a pitch-perfect score from Eddie Vedder. (2007)

Junebug – So many films about the clash between urban and rural ways of life resort to easy stereotypes, but Phil Morrison’s movie strikes just the right tone. Now living in Chicago, a son brings his art gallery-owning wife (the stunning Embeth Davidtz) to meet his parents in rural North Carolina. He re-acquaints himself with his brother whose wife (played by Amy Adams in the breakthrough performance of the decade) is pregnant. New conflicts arise as old wounds are re-opened. Celia Weston is delightful as the family matriarch. (2005)

Katyn – The legendary director Andrzej Wajda may have made his best film in his 80’s. It’s the heretofore untold story of the slaughter of thousands of Polish soldiers at the beginning of World War II by the Russian Red Army. Wajda focusses on how the Russians lies about the massacre left a permanent stain on the Polish psyche. The final twenty minutes of Katyn put your heart in your throat. (2008)

Kontroll  – Nimrod Antal’s film about life in the Budapest subway system defies easy description. Every scene and piece of dialogue seems loaded with literal and metaphorical interpretations. And the metaphor can apply just as easily to the main characters as to life in Hungary after the fall of the Soviet Empire. (2005)

 Lilya 4-ever – Abandoned by her mother, 16 year-old Lilya must fend for herself in bleak, gray Estonia. She meets a young man different from the abusive thugs in her neighborhood. He is kind to her and promises to pull her out of her dire circumstances. Hopeful and desperate, she trusts him. Thinking they will run off to a slice of heaven, Lilya is instead lowered into a kind of Hell that can only be borne from the minds of the truly evil. Lukas Moodyson’s film muscles its way into the pit of your stomach and stays there for days.

Little Children  – The decade’s best movie about suburban dystopia and arguably Kate Winslet’s best performance. She plays an educated mother whose marriage is passionless. She begins an affair with Patrick Wilson –The Prom King, as he’s dubbed by the neighborhood mothers—whose marriage is  deteriorating while he attempts to pas the bar exam. Most memorable, however, is Jackie Earle Haley, a sex offender trying to start a new life while under the watchful eye of self-appointed moralist. (2006)

The Lives of Others – An engrossing film about the horrors of life on the front lines of the Cold War. Ulrich Muhe is a member of the Stasi in 1984 who listens in on the conversations of a playwright and his lover. His own life being one of boredom he becomes increasingly engrossed in those of his subject. Florian Heckel von Donnersmarck crafted a film of personal destruction while addressing contemporary issues of privacy in a time of unparalleled freedom. (2006)

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – It will be hard to explain to future generations the impact that this series of films had on a populace put on perpetual edge in the age of terrorism. Thousands of people lined up to watch the entire trilogy, nine hours in total. It did not take much imagination to see the similarities between Peter Jackson’s sprawling epics and the state of world affairs. The stories of honor, mysticism, fellowship and duty in the face of an indefatigable enemy bent on an engineering an apocalypse resonated with millions of people who had never even heard of JRR Tolkien. (2001-2003)

Memento  – How Christopher Nolan began the decade. The taut Guy Pearce is covered from head to toe with tattoos. He’s also written himself hundreds of notes. The ink on both the paper and his skin is critical because he has no short term memory. In normal circumstances this would be quite the conundrum, but it’s worse because Pearce’s wife has been murdered and he’s trying to figure if he did it or if someone else did. Memento was that rare, visceral movie that left the audience in their seats after the house lights came up, catching their collective breaths. (2001)

Michael Clayton  – Where Good Night and Good Luck was a clarion call to a lazy media elite, George Clooney got back in front of the camera in this tightly written drama about corporate malfeasance. He’s a fixer who keeps small problems from becoming big ones. He must prevent an old friend gone crazy (a manic Tom Wilkinson) from jeopardizing a billion-dollar project while keeping the company lawyer (a scathing Tilda Swinton) at bay. Tony Gilroy’s movie recalls 70s classics like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor. (2007)

Minority Report - The back end (after Artificial Intelligence: AI) of a Steven Spielberg double-dip on the dire possibilities of the near future, blisters with energy. Tom Cruise plays a pre-crime officer—criminals are arrested before they commit their crimes—who finds himself caught up in agency politics that have far-reaching implications. Watch it again just to see how prescient it is, based on a Philip K. Dick novel. (2002)

Monster’s Ball  – An extremely graphic sex scene featuring Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton (ick) generated buzz, but Marc Forster’s depiction of troubled lives in the south is harrowing. Heath Ledger, Sean Combs and Peter Boyle are excellent in support of Berry’s raw performance. (2001)

The Motorcycle Diaries – Before he became a face on a t-shirt, Ernesto Guevera was called “Fuser” by his friends. As a student, he and a buddy traveled through South America on a beat up Norton 500. Gael Garcia Bernal is Che in Walter Salles’ exquisite travelogue about idealism colliding with reality. The Machu Picchu sequence is breathtaking. (2004)

Moulin Rouge! – Unapologetically over the top, Baz Luhrman’s was the best musical of the past ten years. A courtesan (Nicole Kidman) falls in love with a would-be poet (Ewan McGregor) much to the chagrin of a duke. This triangle is resolved in a splash of song, color and double-entendres. Jim Broadbent won an Oscar the following year in Iris, but he deserved it for his role as the ringmaster here. (2001)

The New World – Terrence Malick’s lyrical, contemplative rendering of the affair between John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahantas sweeps you up and carries you off to a place that only he seems to be able to construct. When the duties of colonization become too much, the stability of their relationship is threatened. (2005)

The Notebook – The moment you say, “Oh, come on! That would never happen!” you’ve missed the point. Every character in the movie is of a type and that very broadness is what makes the film such a timeless love story. (2004)

No Country for Old Men – Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh immediately joined the pantheon of cinematic psychos but Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding as sheriff trying to make sense of killer whose weapon of choice is a cattle prong. Josh Brolin is up to Jones’ lofty standards as Chigurh’s main target. Kelly MacDonald turns a potentially forgettable role as Brolin’s wife into the moral center of the film. While the movie may have caught fans of the Coen Brothers off-guard, it fits nicely in the canon of the makers of Miller’s Crossing, Fargo and Blood Simple. (2007)

Once  – Set in modern day Dublin, Glen Hansard is a Hoover repair man and Marketa Irglova is an immigrant caring for her mother and daughter. They are both amateur musicians and gradually they write songs together that reflect their growing feelings for each other. A small treasure. (2007)

Pan’s Labyrinth – In order to escape her sadistic stepfather in Franco’s Spain, a ten year-old girl imagines a secret world where she must perform three tasks to prove that she is, in fact, a princess. Fashioned by Guillermo Del Toro, who spent the decade creating worlds that exist just beyond the reach of our own. (2006)

Requiem for a Dream — Four disparate characters succumb to drug abuse. Most frightening in Darren Aronofsky’s film is the descent into madness of a woman collecting social security played by Ellen Burstyn. Far from a lecture, the movie shows in explicit detail how different people become addicted for different reasons.  (2000)

Sideways - In celebration of his philandering pal’s upcoming nuptials, Paul Giamatti takes him on a tour of California wine country. Like any good road movie, Alexander Payne’s film contrives one scenario after another in order to reveal something about the characters. What made Sideways different was the intensity of Giamatti’s portrayal of a man consumed by his own self-loathing. (2004)

The Station Agent – A thoughtful independent film from Thomas McCarthy about a dwarf (Peter Dinklage) who inherits an abandoned train station after his best friend dies. He’s subsequently harangued into friendship by a chatty hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale). The unlikely friends then encounter a woman (Patricia Clarkson) who is in mourning. Well-deserving of the many awards it picked up on the festival circuit. (2003)

Taxi to the Dark Side – Of the many righteously indignant documentaries criticizing the Bush Administration Alex Gibney’s was the best. It’s the story of an innocent Afghan cab driver who was tortured and killed while in US custody. He’s not a casualty of the madness of war, but rather, the victim of carefully vetted policy.  (2007)

There Will Be Blood  – P. T. Anderson’s sprawling epic of greed, oil and religion has a problematic ending but who could forget the opening scene, where Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview, without saying a word, grunts his way into our psyche. He plunges one hole after another into the ground through the force of his personality, creating to a fortune but and future that will, most certainly, be bloody. An instant American classic. (2007)

Traffic  – The War on Drugs from the peripatetic camera of Steven Soderbergh. In his most complete film, he inspects many, if not all, aspects of the struggle and concludes that the effort has been a colossal failure. Sturdy performances by Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Quaid, Don Cheadle and Michael Douglas anchor a somewhat chaotic enterprise. (2000)

Waking Life – Richard Linklater’s mind-massaging meditation on truth, reality, dreams and just about everything else washes over you like a hot shower. The fact that it merges animates live action characters pushes it to the stuff of legend. An exponentially better “alternative reality” film than Mulholland Drive. (2001)

WALL-E – The other major secular strain brought on by the reign of error that was the Bush presidency was conspicuous consumption. Remember that he suggested we go shopping in the weeks after planes were crashed into the financial and political capitols of the country. And we did. Boy did we spend. The magicians at Pixar presented the down side of this approach to calming our collective nerves, while telling a tender love story. If you didn’t go “awwwww” at least once while watching WALL-E may God have mercy on your soul. (2008)

Waltz With Bashir  – Perhaps the first and last of its kind. An animated documentary about an Israeli soldier’s memories of a battle that occurred some twenty years earlier. Ari Folman’s autobiographical story of The Lebanese War had the unique distinction of reminding you of several other films while still being thoroughly original. (2008)

Y Tu Mama Tambien – The sexiest movie of the decade. Maribel Verdu joins Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna on a road trip from Mexico City to a mysterious beach with no strings attached. Much steaminess follows. (2002)

You Can Count on Me  – Before starring in Kenneth Lonergan’s movie Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo had minor roles in minor movies. They play a brother and sister who are connected by a tragic event from their past. Each day is a struggle as they to overcome their flaws and make something out of their shiftless lives. Linney was nominated for an Oscar as a single mother trying to build a life out of perpetual setbacks. The soundtrack features several songs from Steve Earle, who knows a thing or two about turmoil. (2000)

Zodiac  – David Fincher’s story of the serial killer that spooked the Bay Area in the 1970s. Jake Gyllenhaal is a newspaper cartoonist who starts out trying to decode the murderer’s cryptic messages and ends up more obsessed with finding the killer than the police officer (Mark Ruffalo) assigned to the case. Fincher gets the grisliness out of the way early and delivers an unsparing crime procedural; the inclusion of Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man on the soundtrack is inspired. (2007)

They barely missed the cut: High Fidelity, Oldboy, Adaptation and Up

Best Releases Three or Four Decades Late

Army of Shadows – Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic of The French Resistance, released in Europe in the late 1960s made going underground heroic and cool. It ushered in a much-deserved reassessment of Melville’s place in The French New Wave. (2006)

Killer of Sheep – the life of a Los Angeles slaughterhouse worker in black and white with one of the best scores in film history. Charles Burnett’s film sat in a vault at UCLA for 30 years until it was released on video by Milestone/New Yorker Video. (2007)

Underrated, Forgotten or Worth a Second Look

24-Hour Party People – Steve Coogan nails it as the riotously self-possessed Tony Wilson, the television host who sired the Manchester music scene in the late 1970s. Michael Winterbottom adeptly recalls a flowering cultural moment that was both depressing and inspirational. (2002)

The Bridge – Eric Steel’s documentary about why the Golden Gate Bridge has become Ground Zero for suicides. More than that though, it’s about those left behind and trying to make sense of the profoundly tragic. (2006)

The Cell – The acting isn’t much (Jennifer Lopez playing a psychologist and Vince Vaughn playing it straight) and the plot machinations are absurd but Tarsem Singh’s movie about the subconscious of a serial killer is loaded with visual explosions from start to finish. (2000)

The Claim – When you sell off your wife and baby daughter for a gold mine it’s just a matter of time before it comes back to bite you, even in the pre-Information Age. There’s no escaping karma on that one. Michael Winterbottom’s version of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is unforgettable. The icy turn-of-the-century Canadian landscape is the ideal backdrop for this morality tale. (2000)

The Dish – What role did Australia play in the first moon landing? Well, the country put up a satellite interface in a remote desert. Sam Neill plays one of the technicians who helps the locals prepare for and cope with their day in the, uhh, sun. Patrick Warburton is winning as the American liaison. (2001)

Everything is Illuminated – The movie based on what might be the best novel of the decade barely registered at the box office. Eugene Hutz steals the movie as Elijah Wood’s linguistically-challenged guide and Liev Schreiber’s debut behind the camera is extremely faithful to Jonathan Safran Foer’s source material. (2005)

Heaven – It came and went in the blink of an eye, but Cate Blanchett is a bald vigilante aided and abetted by police-officer Giovanni Ribisi. Impossible to categorize as an action pic for the art house crowd (or is it vice versa?), Tom Tykwer’s movie merits another consideration. (2002)

Idiocracy – Mike Judge’s futuristic comedy about what happens to a society that spends decades rewarding impulse and hubris over intellect and honesty. Sound familiar? (2005)

The Illusionist – In pre-World War I Vienna Edward Norton plays a magician who astonishes and taunts royalty (Rufus Sewell) and law enforcement (Paul Giamatti). It was overshadowed by The Prestige which was released the same year, but it is better shot, better acted and without the cop-out ending of Christopher Nolan’s film. (2006)

Innocence – After his wife dies a man looks up his lost love from over forty years ago. She has married and is living a comfortable life. Now in their 70s, they try to pick up where they left off. Paul Cox’s film of hope, death, loss, regret and risk tugs at your heart and never lets go. (2001)

Last Orders – A London butcher (Michael Caine) instructed his best friends (Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings and Bob Hoskins) to throw his ashes into the water at Margate beach. His son (Ray Winstone) joins them as they make the journey, recollecting about what was and what might have been. The type of small, touching film that big stars don’t seem to make anymore. (2001)

LIE – Paul Dano, in a pre-There Will Be Blood role plays a teenager who sits on a bridge above the Long Island Expressway. He has nothing, so when a dubious character, the slimy Brian Cox, offers him some semblance of normalcy, he takes it. (2001)

Made – Jon Favreau’s comedy is a follow up to Swingers which again features him and Vince Vaughan. This time they’re playing wanna-be mafiosos hired by Peter Falk to cut a deal with Sean Combs. The repoire of the castcast is terrific and the movie is even funnier with the audio commentary on (by Favreau and Vaughn). (2001)

Our Daily Bread – A dialogue-free documentary about the mechanized, industrialized nature of food production. Make sure you eat before viewing. (2006)

The Proposition – Set in late 19^th century Australia, the underappreciated Ray Winstone is magnetic as a frontier lawman determined to bring peace to his town. A group of four brothers has terrorized the locals and Winstone urges two of them to turn in the oldest, who is the ringleader. This sounds like a traditional Western but Nick Cave’s bloody and depraved script is accompanied by a setting that invites comparisons to Antonioni. (2006)

Reign Over Me – Almost all of Adam Sandler’s comedic characters are emotionally-stunted man-boys. His character in Mike Binder’s film is also a shell of a man, mumbling his way around New York City on a scooter, donning headphones to keep the outside world away. Don Cheadle is his usual superb self playing a dentist, trying to find out what’s gone wrong with Sandler, his old college roommate. In the course of reaching out to Sandler, Cheadle must face problems in his own life. (2007)

Sweet Land – In 1920s Minnesota a beautiful German woman arrives to marry a Norwegian farmer. He speaks little English and she speaks none. This is the least of their troubles as her ethnicity, in light of World War I, gives the rest of the community pause. Ali Selim’s feature debut is quiet, elegant and assured. (2006)

The Widow of St. Pierre – Patrice Leconte’s tale of redemption set in the (then) French colony of Newfoundland in the 1850s. Emir Kusterica plays a drunk sentenced to death for a murder. But time passes before the guillotine can arrive from France. Slowly, the community, represented by Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil, comes to see the murderer in a different light. (2001)

The Yards – James Gray’s story of corruption in the Queens rail yards was unjustly ignored by audiences on its release. Perhaps it was because the star, Mark Wahlberg, was an unproven quantity as a dramatic actor (Ok, some might say he still is), but he more than holds his own among James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, Faye Dunaway, Charlize Theron and Joaquin Phoenix. (2000)

A Double Feature About Women Living on the Margins

Frozen River and Wendy and Lucy -  Melisso Leo and Michelle Williams try to save their son and dog, respectively, while staring some hard truths in the face. (Both released in 2008)

Actors of the Decade—Gael Garcia Bernal and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Actresses of the Decade – Cate Blanchett, Laura Linney and Kate Winslet

Directors of the Decade – Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Christopher Nolan

Overrated

Brokeback Mountain – A movie more concerned with its message than advancing the story in a cinematic way. The script is clunky (saved by Heath Ledger’s performance) and for a movie intended to bust stereotypes, it’s comprised of supporting characters who are exactly that.

Knocked Up – Where The 40-Year-Old Virgin was a sweet, bromance about the complexities of dating, this was self-indulgent. A stoner who lives with other porn-living potheads hooks up with a successful television producer? That’s a shaky premise to begin with and impossible to ignore whenever the two leads start talking about child rearing. Why weren’t women insulted by this movie?

Lost in Translation – Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are displaced Americans in Tokyo. It’s a Jim Jarmusch movie done by Sofia Coppola. One Jarmusch is plenty thank you very much.

Mulholland Drive – What’s this movie about? No, really somebody tell me.

Movie that’s aged the worst – Crash. Only five years old and the tale of race and circumstance in Los Angeles already feels quaint.

And what of Wes Anderson? – His four films (three live-action and one animated) are entertaining, but they’re all riffs on a similar theme—highly stylized portraits of fractured families done to great soundtracks. They all made my best of the year list when released, but Anderson, so far anyway, has been content to have his characters talk about their struggles rather than show them.

Television (Still a vast wasteland)

The conversation begins and ends with The Wire. If you haven’t seen it you have deprived yourself of storytelling on par with Charles Dickens, but more visual. There’s no point in spilling more cyber-ink on it as countless others have extolled its virtues. So watch it. Now. You’re welcome.

The two best documentaries of the past ten years originally aired on television. Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home revealed every available side of Bob Dylan including a few that Mr. Zimmerman would rather have kept under wraps. Scorsese seemed to talk to everyone who ever had anything to do with Dylan.

The other great doc was Spike Lee’s agonizing, thorough, poetic story of the debacle and failure of our government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. It’s not hyperbolic to call When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts an act of public service.

OK…if I must choose…a baker’s dozen…(I actually already tipped my hand above by adding a clip after the summary)

WALL-E, Amelie, The Dark Knight, Memento, Amores Perros, In America, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Moulin Rouge! There Will Be Blood, The Lives of Others, Waking Life, You Can Count on Me and Lilya 4-ever.

This is the first in a series of posts in which I outline a certain aesthetic fixation on what I am simply calling ’stupidity,’ which seemed to be at the front of my brain when considering this passing decade. I make no claim as to its ubiquity, dominance, or even frequency.

[UPDATED below]

The prophecy was first heard in 2006 , but by then it was mere journalism. America is dumb and getting dumber. Mike Judge’s dystopian Idiocracy assumes the logical outcome of consumer society is cognitive and cultural retardation, encapsulated in an infamous montage where the Fuddrucker’s logo gradually morphs into:

That the film was made a martyr by its distributor 20th Century Fox probably has less to do with its vision of cultural decline (buttressed by the eugenicist argument that the greater popularity of breeding among the lower classes is mass stupidity’s efficient cause) than with this montage sequence, along with the other spoofs on mass market brands — ‘Brawndo’ energy drinks, Pepsi and Carls Jr. as government sponsors, Starbucks gives handjobs, characters are named after brands — crossing the line of acceptability.

These corporate defacements are the best thing about an otherwise unremarkable and poorly conceived comedy, such that it’s perhaps better thought of as an Adbusters-style toolkit for ‘culture jamming’ (sort of how it’s used in the above link) than an actual film.

That said, it was one of the few satires the American film industry managed to produce in the ’00s, and probably the most effective in the traditional sense of the genre. One could comment here on the failure of narrative to capture the complete and total travesty that was American life in the first decade of the new millennium, that only the most fragmentary and/or ad-drenched forms of media (television, the Internet) managed to say anything coherent about the present as a historical moment that didn’t consist of 100% recycled material.

Or one could just watch Southland Tales. Released in 2007 and set in an alternate 2008, also a ’satire’ of sorts, it attempts to reproduce the aesthetics of media ubiquity: a digital interface that handles cutting between different narrative threads (complete with news ticker), an ‘ironic’ cast of B-list celebrities, the cinematography of a music video or luxury car ad (when not via handicam), bad sketch comedy,  old-fashioned metafiction, comic book tie-ins, and lots of stuff happening all the time. Yet as packed as it is, and despite the literally apocalyptic buildup, the film is oddly boring. Maybe because the End Times are already here — the reality the film assumes from the beginning. Director Richard Kelly attempts to provide structure via Justin Timberlake’s interminable voice-over narration (added after its panning at Cannes) and a pointlessly complicated plot that tries to disguise the fact that it has nothing to do with anything and could in fact have been plagiarized from a ’90s postmodern conspiracy novel (itself ripped off of Robert Anton Wilson and/or Thomas Pynchon). As Gerry and I discussed in conversation, it collapses three historical moments into the same ‘present’ — its references are contemporary, its aesthetic sensibility is ’90s, and its nostalgia (as with Kelly’s earlier Donnie Darko) is for the late ’80s, just prior to the End of History. Though perhaps tempting, it’s hard to deny that the film tries to be, now and again, a satire, even a political satire. The attempt fails catastrophically.

It is of course a film that was ‘too big to not fail,’ so all appropriate slack should be cut.  And its failure is an interesting one. Steven Shaviro gives a more positive take here, in what is overall one of his best pieces of online writing:

Booed at Cannes in 2006, and both a critical and box-office disaster in 2007, the film obviously has not found its niche, nor found its cult, nor even made the sort of negative impact that would qualify it as a Cultural Event on the order of all the things that it narrates. I’m inclined to think that this is simply because the film is too prophetic: which is also to say, too real, too close to the actuality of which it is a part and which it anatomizes and mirrors, to be receivable at this point in time. The most alien messages are the ones that point out clearly what is staring us in the face. All the more so, in that such messages can have no sense of detachment, no critical perspective, to provide a justification for what they say. Southland Tales declines to exempt itself in the slightest from the overall situation that it describes; it declines even to overtly criticize that situation, as this would mean having to step outside it, as well as because simply presenting it, in its own compulsive mirroring and feeding back of itself, is already more than enough. Kelly’s film is too weird to be taken up by a mainstream audience; but also too mainstream, too much a part of the so-called mainstream, to please viewers and critics who are looking for either visionary, experimental formalism, or an informed oppositional politics. It also explodes the very being of cinema (including experimental cinema) so slyly and casually that it unavoidably offends most cinephiles.

Toning down this hyperbolic praise, I would say that, at its best and worst, Southland Tales is ‘about’ a very specific sort of stupidity, albeit one that has been building for quite some time, a kind of apocalyptic cognitive failure, what would happen if we lived in Jean Baudrillard’s alternate universe  but with his transcendent, guiding intelligence replaced by the 24/7 cliche flow of a comic book nerd. Because, insofar as the media world of absolute commodification really does ‘map’ reality, then that is exactly what has happened to ‘critical discourse on culture’ in this decade, in which I include satirical and ’serious’ films, novels, visual art, etc. as well as niche genres like academic monographs. If we were to grant all the absurdities assumed by those who have been making such claims since the ’80s (?), it would be even more of a misreading to try to label Southland Tales as creative ‘genius’ or a ‘masterpiece.’ In order to read its intelligence failure as a virtue instead of a symptom — to read it as ‘naive,’ as an epic instead of a failed satire — one paradoxically has to ignore its own botched attempts at distinguishing parodic frame from parodied content. One has to decontextualize it from itself.  Analogous to the way that vital bit of postmodern folklore, “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” is so often taken as the beginning of analysis rather than its dead end. All this leads me to hypothesize an identifiable strategy of misreading emergent in this decade, one perhaps necessary for the application of traditional aesthetic criticism to certain new kinds of material, and again not limited to academic or intellectual critique.

UPDATE BEGINS: An update, if I can call it that, of camp:

55. Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it’s not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn’t propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures.

56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of “character.” . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as “a camp,” they’re enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling.

UPDATE ENDS

As a completed, reified product, Southland Tales is more clearly looked at as a bigger (and thus more ‘epic’) enclosure and/or recapitulation of media forms and stereotypes than would be possible for entry-level users like you and me, its sublime (yet context-minimal) moments no more or less so than any available on the myriad Internet video networks into which they’ve already been displaced. A chunk of media time, regurgitated. And then, (seamlessly) reintegrated.

Why I have decided to review this, I don’t even know.

After realizing that their beloved boob tube is gone, couch potatoes Beavis and Butt-head (both voiced by creator Mike Judge) set off on a cross-country expedition that takes them from Las Vegas to the nation’s capital. Along the way, they’re mistaken for hit men and get caught up in a weapons-smuggling conspiracy as a gaggle of mobsters and lawmen shadow the two morons.

So basically Do America, is an animated road movie, that shows these two in situations that you have never seen them before. I have already seen this movie like 20 times but that was when I was all young. Now that I’m older, I know a lot more of what the jokes are saying, and oh god did I laugh!!

A lot of people never understood Beavis and Butt-head even when it was on MTV. It was a brilliant satire of popular culture and the crudeness, insipidness, and stupidity of it. Beavis and Butt-head are the narcissistic anti-heroes; fourteen year old heavy metal heads who’s life is totally empty without television. The only thing they think about is television and “scoring.”

This is what I found out to be the funniest element of this whole movie. Yeah the jokes may be the same usual dirty jokes, but they are displayed in such a way that you can’t help but laugh. How these two take everything in a different way then it normally was, made me laugh a whole lot more.

I need to say that the satirical element in this film is what is very funny. Not just B&B, but other people like the government, police, and a lot of the politicians are viewed as stupid and sometimes ignorant, which made me laugh a whole lot more.

I just wish that this film had a lot more. It was only 1 hour and 20 minutes and when it was all over I felt like I just watched 3 episodes of B&B. The plot could have expanded into more places, but hey that’s just me.

Consensus: Do America is hilarious, satirical, and at the same time brainless. Though if it went on longer I think it would have been such a better movie.

8/10=Matinee!!!

I think we can all guess how THIS critic would respond to R. Crumb's latest work.

Yesterday I wrote that I fail to understand how any Christian could not welcome R. Crumb’s Monumental “History of Genesis Illustrated.” Naturally enough, a Christian or three wrote to tell me how.

So I thought I’d present the Christian arguments against the book of which I’ve been made aware—and then (in order to save time and space) respond to them between brackets, in lovely, easy-to-read blue.

First off, in an article from The UK’s Daily Telegraph, we have this quote from Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, “a religious think-tank”:

“It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God’s rescue plan for mankind. [Why? What aspect of it is inappropriate?] If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. [Who would argue that?] The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves. [Right. Who would argue that?] Representing it in your own way is all very well and good but it must be remembered that it is a matter of people’s faith, their religion. [Have I bought a ticket to Obvious Fest 2009?] Faith is such an important part of people’s lives that one must remember to tread very carefully.” [Okay, seriously: think tank? The "tank" part, I definitely got. This is just a blanket condemnation followed by four declaratives of the purely obvious---none of which is then connected to anything specific to Crumb's book. Yawn. Based on this statement, I'd bet my house and all its plumbing that Mr. Judge judged Genesis Illustrated without first having seen the work. No one who has spent any time at all with the book would suggest that, of all things, it's not done with the respect Genesis deserves. To claim it is, is, I think, manifestly unthinkeristical.]

Someone also sent to me a link to Cartooning the Word—R. Crumb’s “The Book of Genesis,” written by my fellow Crosswalk.com blogger, Albert Mohler. (Mr. Mohler is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Hi, Mr. Mohler! You’re a great writer! Please don’t get me fired from Crosswalk for writing this.) Mr. Mohler’s objection to Crumb’s book seem to boil down to these three:

1. Crumb, an agnostic, found Genesis to be defined by “a primitive, backward morality,” and thinks it’s insane that millions of people have taken the Bible as seriously as they have. [To show how anti-Bible Crumb is, Mr. Mohler uses quotes from Crumb that appear in this piece published in The Financial Times. What's interesting is that in that same Financial Times article, Crumb is quoted as saying, "I had a very powerful dream in the year 2000 when I saw God, and that (how I drew him in Genesis) is what He looked like.” Speaking at his only European press conference to promote Genesis, Crumb then declined to respond any further to the reporters' excited follow-up questions to his surprising revelation. But I think that quote makes it safe to say that the state of Crumb's mind toward God and/or Christianity isn't as cut-and-dry as Mr. Mohler suggests.

But more to the point: I fail to understand the relevance of a person's personal beliefs or opinions when evaluating work done by that person. If I hire a man to build me a house, I don't care what he thinks about me, or houses, or architecture, or ... anything. I care about nothing else beyond the quality of house he builds. By all accounts Picasso was a real doinknut of a human. Should that fact stop me from being enamored of his art? While lost gazing into the depths of a Jackson Pollack's canvas, should I take pains to recall the great number of his personal failings? Of course not---because that's not what the interaction between artist and viewer is about. If Crumb is anti-God, or anti-Bible, I dare anyone to find a single line stroke in all of his Genesis that shows it. That it's not there is all that should matter.]

2. Crumb is merely a cartoonist. [Though he never explicitly says it, the fact that throughout his piece Mr. Mohler never refers to Crumb as anything but a cartoonist (never an "artist," "comic artist," or "illustrator") renders the appelation "cartoonist" a dig. I assume that Mr. Mohler is unaware that over the years Crumb's work has been taken with increasing seriousness by the established art world (as evidenced by an exhibition of Crumb's work in Genesis showing until Feb. 7, 2010, at the Hammer Museum). If the work in Genesis is mere "cartooning," than Dore was a doodler. "Cartoonist" is hardly an automatic denigration---Art Spiegelman, anyone?---but no one should fail to note that, with regards to the discipline of artistic rendering, Genesis Illustrated is about as solid and deserving of praise as it gets.]

3. To use Mr. Mohler’s own words:
“[Genesis Illustrated] also reveals once again why God gave us words, and not images. Crumb’s newest work may be described as a triumph of the human imagination—and that is precisely the problem. [Respectfully, why is that a problem? Christians have always turned to the creative arts as a means of expressing and reflecting their passion for God and Christ. Are we to dismiss such works as Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Da Vinci's The Last Supper, and Handel's Messiah as trifling works of nothing more interesting than human imagination? What better tool do we humans have to apprehend God but our imaginations?]

“The Bible always lays claim upon the reader. The Book of Genesis demands a decision. [I don't understand that as true. As a 33-year-old non-Christian, I took an extraordinarily illuminating college class titled "The Bible as Literature," in which we fastidiously studied all of Genesis---and I never felt compelled to "decide" anything at all about it or the Bible. I just ... studied it.] The God who reveals himself in these words is not only the Creator of the cosmos, but the judge of every human soul. Genesis not only begins the Bible, it reminds us of our need for Christ. Every single narrative Crumb depicts finds its ultimate meaning in the atonement accomplished by Jesus Christ. [No argument here---nor, of course, from any Christian.]

“But that great fact cannot be reduced to a cartoon. It was never meant to be.” [Respectfully, I think it unfair to, again, dismiss Crumb's work as nothing more than a reduction of Genesis to a cartoon. That's like calling Mt. Everest a bump in the ground. Genesis Illustrated doesn't reduce The Book of Genesis at all. It builds upon it, enhances it, brings it to life; it gives us a wonderfully engaging way to learn, remember, and appreciate one of the most dense, complex, and certainly most important books in the Bible. And, again: if illustrating episodes of Bible is something that shouldn't be done, then we have got a whole lot of artwork we need to start removing from museums, innumerable stain-glass windows we need to shatter, and a mountain of illuminated manuscripts we need to burn. There's nothing wrong with illustrating the Bible. Crumb's book is nothing more (or less!) than an important contribution to the ancient and hallowed tradition by which Christians have always relied upon visual imagery to help them better understand and appreciate the Bible.]

Finally, I received a thoughtful email from Bob Luedke, himself the author and illustrator of a series of award-winning Christian graphic novels entitled Eye Witness. Here’s what Mr. Luedke had to say:

I think that some of the hesitation among Christians toward embracing this work, is Crumb’s past works. Many of his creations (Mr. Natural, Fabulous Furry Freak Bros, et al …) are iconic for many sins that the Christian establishment have traditionally stood against. My thought is they just don’t feel comfortable embracing him now—especially since, as you mention, he regards himself as agnostic. And the work did not arrive with any testimony of birth or re-birth as a believer or man of faith. In fact, I read a quote in regards to this, where Crumb stated (and I paraphrase), “This was just another illustration assignment for me.” The Christian marketplace and media love a good “come to Jesus story,” and they just didn’t get one here.

[Again, since when must one be a Christian in order to do work that is pleasing to God? I have a friend who is a Jewish pediatric heart surgeon. Would any of we Christians dare to assert that God is displeased with the work to which this champion of children's health has dedicated her life? Moreover, who among us knows how R. Crumb's personal story is going to end? Don't we believe in the God of redemption, of forgiveness, of transformation? And don't we know---aren't we proud of the fact?---that God can and does use virtually anyone to fulfill his plans on earth? Have we forgotten that Noah was an incestuous drunk, Jacob a liar, David an adulterous murderer?

Not for nothing does our beloved Paul write (at 1 Timothy 1:16), " ...  I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life."

How does any of us know that won't end up being R. Crumb's song, too?

When I think of Genesis Illustrated---of a man who on the one hand claims he doesn't believe in God, but who on the other diligently applies himself to the creation of an homage to the Bible of (as far as I know) unprecedented breadth and depth---I think of what God himself says at Isaiah 43: 19:

For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?]

**********************************************************************************************************

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12:11 am: What am I doing up?  Drinking Michelob Amber Bock, eating my boogers as I pick them, and wanting to talk to you guys.  What’s up?

12:14 am: Oh yeah, I forgot I don’t have any readers.  It’s sad .  It’s so sad it makes me want to drink the rest of the beer I was already drinking.

12:15 am: Actually, Ruby read my blog.  She seems to be a sweetheart with a noxious dog.  And she writes well and is funny.  If anybody ever reads this, go read her too.

12: 21 am: Palindrome time, cha cha cha!

12:32 am: I’m bored and can think of nothing to do.  Maybe this is why I created the blog?  Nay, this is why porn was created.  I’m not going to get weird right now or anything, though- not after we just had that awkward moment where I tried talking to you about porn.

12:42 am: Adult Swim will have to suffice.  I swear I saw a former residence of mine on the intro credits to Assy McGee the other night, making complete sense with where it was in relation to Williams Street.

12:58 am: The commercials for KGB have got me thinking the number you text your question about if Clea DuVall is a lesbian or not is really a depository for the dumbest, most inane questions asked.  I think they give you the answer to your inquiry but use the data of how stupid you are for something else.

1:06 am: I think I’m high, but I don’t recall smoking pot recently.  Maybe I forget because I’m high?  Weird.

1:16 am: Going on the field today at The Dome was cool.  The cheerleaders being all around was enjoyable, and I was surprised by how the grass felt like crappy Christmas tinsel stuff.

1:29 am: In exactly 2 months from today I will celebrate 2 years celibate.  Why?  It started because ladies are trouble, and are really whackadoo in the brain.  Now I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because I’m lazy.  I’d want sandwiches and silence far too often for anything fruitful to blossom.

1:30 am: But I also think I should go meet someone and get back in the groove of things because I function very well when I have a chick around to kick me in the nethers when needed, and when I have someone to treat well and appreciate and such.  Ehh, I have two months to figure out what I’m doing.  I don’t want to get to that milestone unless I decide to let it happen.

1:49 am: As a child I used to think about the world being made of broccoli and having to eat all of it for some weird reason, because it was my favorite food.  I still do because it’s still my favorite food.  Broccoli is tops.  I doubt it’s a normal thing to ruminate on, but whatever.

2:00 am: I think that if Gaia were a real, corporeal person-god her pubic hair would be broccoli.  I’m serious, and am willing to discuss differing ideas on the subject.

2:07 am: King Of The Hill is so absurd.  Peggy should have been locked up in an asylum instead of being allowed to associate with the sane folk.

2:09 am: Actually, I think people have said that about me before.  The jury is still out on if it is correct or not.

2:22 am: Palindrome time! Again.  Not as exciting this time.

2:26 am: I’m going beddy-bye I love you, check under my bed for monsters please, thank you goodnight

Mike Judge, writer/director of King of the Hill, has been in the business of making people laugh for a long time, and perhaps if his past works hadn’t been such comedic hits, his latest, Extract, wouldn’t have been such a let-down.

Extract tells the story of Joel Reynold (Jason Bateman), a man comfortable in his life as the owner of a successful Extract-production plant, in which he oversees a line of workers with very strong, but very stereotyped Redneck personalities.  After his marriage turns sex-less and attractive con-artist Cindy (Mila Kunis) takes a job at the plant, Joel allows his grubby bartender friend Dean (Ben Affleck) to hire a man to seduce his wife, clearing Joel’s conscience to go for Cindy.

One machinery accident and one lost testicle later, the floor manager, coerced by money-hungry Cindy, threatens to sue, which would put an end to the plant – the last positive thing left in Joel’s life.

Bateman’s acting is the same as it always is — funny, dry, and subtle.  But in this film, it seems his humor is a bit misplaced, as the other actors are over-the-top funny.  Bateman fans are used to his complacent attitude in most of his acting, but in this film — when the audience is watching Joel’s world crashing down around him – the subdued nature that fans find funny (and dare I say, attractive?) becomes nothing short of frustrating and unfitting for the scenes.

Affleck, who I ordinarily hate, is the perfect actor to play a degenerate bartender who keeps a box of pills including horse tranquilizers and a variety of recreational drugs — though he can’t tell the difference between them — under the counter, as well as the phone number for a gigolo programmed into his cell.  As out there as he is, his performance isn’t over-the-top.

I applaud Judge’s attempt to bring together a cast of very diverse actors, but he didn’t do it seamlessly.  Bateman’s acting is poorly matched with Mila Kunis’; I have trouble watching her in anything but That 70s Show and kept waiting for her to come out in bellbottoms and ridicule Fez.

Visually, the film is very bland.  Granted, the majority of it takes place in a flavored extract plant and the blandness matches Bateman’s subdued acting style.  But at times the dry acting and the dry scenery had me looking around and counting the seats in the theater — about 200, and less than a quarter of them full — until something funny but undeniably stupid happened on-screen again.

The plot is believable as a person’s boring — but not bad — life, but the ending is a bit too clean for me.  Certainly, there is an obvious choice for a “safe” ending in a storyline where a wife cheats and the couple separates.  Fine.  But when the husband pays a gigolo — who later carries on a relationship with his wife — to sleep with her, the safe, predictable ending probably should be tweaked a bit.  I wasn’t impressed with Judge’s choice for the ending.

Don’t get me wrong — I laughed a lot in this movie.  At times, it was because something was so stupid that I couldn’t help it.  Often, it was because I appreciated Bateman’s dry humor, and his collaboration with Affleck.  But the woman sitting three rows behind me chomping on popcorn throughout the movie (don’t people usually finish it by the end of the previews?) and laughing like a hyena must have been watching something else.

The movie is strong in the beginning, but as it continues and the story gets more and more convoluted, it just becomes too much.  The acting doesn’t mesh well and the shots are too “safe” and boring.

At the end, Judge tries to bring Extract full circle and give it the same cookie-cutter feel that the beginning of the movie implies it will have.  But the film loses that opportunity sometime around the time the gigolo is paid, and it just isn’t believable.

- Anna Dolianitis

Extract

Extract [DVD]

Extract [Blu-ray]

Director: Mike Judge
Writer: Mike Judge

Starring: Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Ben Afflek

If ever there was a director who always managed to grab my attention with his work it would most certainly be Mike Judge. I find the work of Mike Judge to be very satirical of the world around us. Mike Judge who’s other work includes “Beavis & Butthead: Do America, Office Space, and Idiocracy” now brings us a comedy about an Extract factory.

Jason Bateman plays the owner of the factory which he built from the ground up. Jason’s character is very proud of what he has accomplished but along the lines trouble is brewing. Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) plays a cunning little thief who wants to do what she can to rob people blind. This is where the entire plot comes in to play.

A silly mistake at the factory leaves one of the top employees seriously injured. Mila Kunis hears of the accident in the paper and immediately attempts to shack up with the man who sustained the injury, her idea is to get the man to sue the company and become rich as a result.

The lawyer that gets involved with the lawsuit is beautifully played by Gene Simmons of the band KISS. Simmons portrays a real bad ass lawyer with attitude which leads to some remarkably hilarious scenes.

Like the previous works of Mike Judge this movie fell victim to a lack of proper attention from the movie going public. I however wish to recommend that people give this comedy the opportunity it truly deserves.

While fans of Mike Judge may be quick to write this one off being that it is not quite caliber of Office Space and maybe not quite the social statement film that Idiocracy was, in my opinion this movie still holds strong and should be appreciated for the fun and the laughs that it provides.

My Rating: 70%
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VERDICT:
9/10 Jump-To-Conclusions Mats

Was hilarious before I graduated college and stepped into “the real world”, and now that I’m there…still can’t believe how it true it all is.

Office Space is about a guy who’s girlfriend is probably cheating on him, who hates his bullshit job pushing paper at a software programming company, Initech, who is nonetheless worried about getting fired, and who does absolutely nothing to change his circumstances. Then one day he goes to a hypnotist who sends him into a state of perpetual nirvana, thus prompting this former dull bastard to stop taking orders and do whatever the hell he wants instead.

This is the story of Peter Gibbons – a god among men.

Was planning to post this one on a Monday as a nod to the whole “Looks like someone’s got a case of the Mondays” thing, but, folks, I couldn’t help myself. It’s been a long week.

I was tempted to give this movie an 8 out of 10 for a while there, then it occurred to me that this was and always will be the be-all-end-all satire of corporate America. There’s simply no point in trying to one-up this because no one will ever say it better. Sorry, screenwriters, but this one’s a losing battle.

It’s pretty self-explanatory why this movie works as well as it does, pretty much because work environments like that at Initech are more or less a joke in themselves. And considering that everyone has worked a shitty job in their life, whether it be in an cubicle or otherwise, even if you can’t exactly go “That’s what I’m talkin‘ about!” when Peter and his buddies murder the office printer/copier, you’ll get it and you will laugh.

The writing here is just so damn good and quotable and original, especially for a comedy. It’s not lewd and it doesn’t go for shock value, but rather it cashes in on being painfully observant, has a great cast of characters, and has a slew of freakin’ classic running gags, most of which can be summed up in two words…

Michael Bolton.

And even though this is probably one of the best things Jennifer Aniston’s ever done with her life as Peter’s love interest, I can’t help but totally dig when a cast of unknowns like this works so well. Ron Livingston is great as Peter, Diedrich Bader has some choice lines as Peter’s next-door neighbor, Gary Cole is a rip as Peter’s boss, Lumbergh, and of course I have to give it up to Stephen Root as Milton. Can’t forget Milton – the one and only reason anyone gives a damn about red Swingline staplers. The only backfire here is that, with the exception of Jennifer, this cast will never escape these characters for as long as they live. Might not be the worst thing in the world considering how awesome this movie is, but still, I can imagine how being “That guy from Office Space” could get old quick, let alone being called “Milton!” at every casting call you show up to.

Man, I could go on about this movie, but it’s one of those things that’s actually better to just quote about with friends rather than break down to a science. With that being said, feel free to leave comments on your favorite parts, let’s get a good little discussion going here, m’kay? Great.

Whenever I talk about the guy, my uncle/fellow movie buff always calls Mike Judge “a comic genius”, and while that’s a pretty epic statement, I’ve gotta agree with him. Even if Office Space were the only credit to his career, had Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill never even been created, I think the statement would still stand. Usually after groundbreaking comedies like this come out, there is inevitably an absurd amount of horribly sub-par knock-offs that try to capture that same magic in the following years. Maybe it’s because it was a box office dud when it was out in theaters, but time has been more than kind to this movie since and there still hasn’t been any competition.

When you make something so good that no one even tries to copy it just because they know they can’t, that, my friend, is the mark of genius.

Have a nice weekend, everyone, and don’t forget to show her your “O” face.

On Animation With Jerry Brice.

David Feldman interviewed me last week for his podcast, about my knowledge and experience in the animation business. David Feldman is a producer and collaborator of mine, and is an Emmy award-winning writer,stand up comedian, and highly sought after writer for all the major comedians…and he has bad hair plugs,but what would I know about that. He is the principal behind Studio33.Tv and an avid animation enthusiast, and he is pretty good at it himself. If he comes to a stand up club in your town, make sure that you do not miss him.In the meantime, subscribe to his hilarious…sometimes…podcast. Seriously,he is very funny…lol.

http://www.davidfeldmancomedy.com/about

Jerry Brice is an animator, artist, director, writer, producer and teacher. He’s worked for Disney, MTV, Mike Judge, Motown, and countless animation houses for the past 25 years. In today’s discussion he shares his insight on what it takes to be a great animator. NOT TO BE MISSED…check out some of his animation and directing work by clicking the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/jerrybrice

The homegirl Rain Pryor delivers a funny monologue to start things off, so make sure you check it out before my interview, she is truly proving that the apple does not fall far from the tree.

David and I are teaming up for more animated political gags, and some overall animated mayhem…so stay tooned.

We got big surprises in store for all of you….

Marcie and I were in Boston recently (more on that later) and one night in our cable-equipped hotel room we caught the movie Idiocracy. This was Mike Judge’s low-profile effort in between Office Space and Extract. Idiocracy starts from the Darwinist premise that dumb people are reproducing much faster than smart people, meaning that smart will eventually die out and dumb will take over the world. Technology and societal mechanisms become idiot-proof enough to keep humanity alive before all good sense disappears. As you might expect, Mike Judge’s picture of a future Stupidtopia is hilarious. Ironically, the film stumbles due to the dumbing down of its presentation. Too much is delivered via omniscent voice-over, and the story eventually devolves into a pedestrian and implausible race against the clock.

I had a dream that night in which we watched the same movie, but it was better- a smart, magical realism kind of scenario. There was a group of animals who were beginning to use the tools and technology left idle, evolving to fill the niche for intelligence left vacant by the idiot humans. Then, in their hubris, the humans exterminated the evolving animals, thus sealing the doom of intelligence on Earth. That would have been a good movie, and probably just as profitable.

Mike Judge, creator of Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill and cult white collar cubicle worker movie Office Space, is back at the London Film Festival with his new film, Extract for the first time since Idiocracy graced the festival.  Having seen what happened to Idiocracy which was left on the shelf by the studio to rot, I decided not to miss out a second time and took myself off to see Extract.

Jason Bateman plays Joel, the owner of an food extract factory who is suffering from sexual frustration, disillusionment with his business and the staff that work there and unloads most of this on his best mate, Dean, played in unlikely fashion by Ben Affleck, who is back on his Kevin Smith slacker friend form.  Of all his ennui is brushed aside when sexy temp worker, Cindy (played by Mila Kunis) is recruited to work at the extract plant and seems to take an interest.  Little does Joel know about Cindy’s past or her present for that matter.

What I liked about Extract is that Joel is a likeable lead with whom it is a pleasure to spend an hour and a half.  Equally impressive was the way in which Judge draws his supporting characters in terms which mean that get enjoyment from them no matter how little we see of them on screen and get a sense of what they are really like - from Clifton Collins Jr.’s unfortunate gopher Step to the two old biddies on the production line and J.K. Simmons’ co-owner.  My particular favourite, however, is male gigolo, Brad who makes an appearance when Joel makes an ill-judged decision, a man who is so stupid it is painful but he does provide a hell of a lot of laughs.

Where the film falls down a bit is that the comedy is occasionally too broad and not all of the characters work, in particular Joel’s wife is so pathetic and annoying that you wonder why Joel would ever have gone for her.  However, the film has sufficient goodwill to get over these.

8/10

Seven films to watch while you’re laid up with the cold, H1N1, or whatever else gets you down.

NOT recommended viewing. For so many reasons.

Welcome to cold and flu season! Each years untold millions of people get the common cold, the flu, the stomach flu, and a variety of other painful and discomforting illnesses.Many sufferers cope by parking themselves on the couch and in front of the DVD player , creating some prime movie-viewing time.

Watching a favorite movie is pretty much the best way to spend a sick day. You don’t have to move around, you don’t have to think that much about the plot (since it’s your favorite, you’ve seen it before already) and you can pause the film for trips to the bathroom, kitchen, or medicine chest. For those of you who don’t have a “favorite” movie to help get you through the long, queasy recuperation hours, consider these classics. We’ve tried to include a variety of stuff, representing several genres.

Office Space - If you’re not going in to work you owe it to yourself to laugh at American office culture. Mike Judge’s (Idiocracy) comedy, in which Ron Livingston gets hypnotized into not giving a damn about anything his boss or company wants, remains the perfect way to laugh at all the healthy worker drones spending the day at their jobs. Bonus sick day activity: Drawl like office middle manager Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) to everyone you speak with, as in: “Hello, pharmacy? I’m gonna need you to go ahead and refill my prescription. Yeah, that’d be great.”

In The Good Old Summertime – A favorite among Judy Garland’s legions of fans, this romantic comedy/musical puts her at professional odds with fellow music shop salesman Van Johnson, even while the two fall in love as pen pals when off the clock. Proudly warm and nostalgic for its soundstage-perfect Victorian Era setting, the film features Garland as irresistable as ever and Johnson well-cast as a suitor so straight-laced he seems almost quaint by modern standards. And if store owner Mr. Oberkugen seems familiar, you probably also saw S. Z. Sakall play Carl, the maitre d’ at Rick’s Cafe Americain, in Casablanca. Bonus sick day activity: Sing along with Garland, especially during the showstopping “I Don’t Care.”

The Dirty Dozen - The epitome of classic Hollywood cinema that doesn’t ask too much of the brain, director Robert Aldrich’s fast-paced adventure stays enthralling right up until the last, disappointing final scene. Still, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to see while you’re watching it. Bonus sick day activity: Devise your own resolution to the Dozen’s raid on the Nazi castle, one that doesn’t uphold the Establishment status quo but instead lets Posey (Clint Walker) and Jefferson (Jim Brown) survive.

High Noon - Speaking of guy films, this high-water mark of the Western genre has everything a good Western should: an iconic good guy (Gary Cooper), a ferocious antagonist (Ian MacDonald) and a whole town up for grabs. Director Fred Zinnermann (From Here To Eternity) films the story in real-time, ratcheting the suspense up even further. Not for nothing, but it’s also probably got the coolest theme song of any Western ever made. Bonus sick day activity: Count off the townspeople running from outlaw Frank Miller (MacDonald) on their big clay feet; come up with your own argument to give the sheriff’s wife (Grace Kelly) that yes, sometimes violence is the answer.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – Especially topical this time of year, John Hughes’ masterwork tells the hilarious story of an uptight yuppie (Steve Martin, giving probably his best performance) and an uncouth shower curtain ring salesman (John Candy, definitely giving his) stuck with each other while trying to get home for Thanksgiving. The ending is amazingly touching without falling into hokum, a rare feat in most Hollywood films. Bonus sick day activity: Follow Del Griffith’s (Candy) suggestion and play pickup sticks with your butt cheeks; alternately, wash all your pillowcases.

Stripes - Ivan Reitman’s spoof of basic training and army operations works from such an episodic script you can basically watch the film in ten and fifteen minutes doses. Nevertheless, stars Bill Murray and Harold Ramis put in some sublime comic acting, bolstered by a wide ensemble cast including Candy, Judge Reinhold, Sean Young, Warren Oates and John Larroquette. Fans of the Canadian series SCTV should look for cameos by alumni Dave “Doug McKenzie” Thomas and Joe “Count Floyd” Flaherty. Bonus sick day activity: Teach yourself to march and drill the John Winger (Murray) way, by shouting Manfred Mann songs and making goofy faces.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy – Probably best if you’re going to be laid up all weekend (or for several days, anyway) the monumental LOTR saga has everything you could want from a film series – adventure, intrigue, romance, a metric ton of action – while still remaining approachable and reasonably episodic. The plotlines start to drag a bit at times, and director Peter Jackson’s (King Kong) sense of restraint gets out from under him in the third chapter. Nevertheless, taken as a whole the trilogy delivers hours and hours of riveting viewing, especially the epic Battle of Helm’s Deep. Bonus sick day activity: Take a shot of Vitamin C every time Frodo (Elijah Wood) or Legolas (Orlando Bloom) stare at something in close-up. You’ll be up and moving around in no time.

We’ll be back later this week. Take it easy and we hope you feel better.

- Michael Kabel
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she’s filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I’m collating so I don’t see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.

– Milton Waddams

Mike Judge’s cult classic Office Space is a contemporary look at what the corporate infrastructure is at this point. Ten years later, the movie is still as relevant as it was when it was released in 1999. Except, for the whole Y2K-the whole world is going to end-thing.

Based on his animated short series, Milton, this live adaptation delves into the mundane interworkings at a computer Company, Initech. The action follows Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) on the atypical day as a software developer. Two of his eight bosses, Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) and Dom (Joe Bays) lecture him about TPS reports.

Two follow software workers, Michael Bolton (David Herman) and Samir (Ajay Naidu) are on the same page with Peter. They don’t want to be there dealing with the droning of the receptionist, Nina (Kinna McInroe), staring at their steel gray cubicle walls and getting eye strain from mindlessly pounding the keyboard preparing the company for Y2K switch.. They dread everyday that they have to step foot in the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Their paranoid co-worker, Tom (Richard Reihle) is on high alert that the company has hired efficiency experts to see who could be fired, the Bobs (John C. McGinley, Paul Willson).

Peter’s cheating girlfriend, Anne (Alexandra Wentworth) wants him to see an occupational hypnotherapist, Dr. Swanson (Michael McShane) to help him out his stupor. During the session, the therapist has a heart attack and dies before Peter could snap out of his hypnotic state.

This leaves Peter in a relaxed state that he could ask out the cute waitress from Chotchkie’s, Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), who bound over hating their jobs and their love of kung fu. Peter starts missing work. Without Peter to boss around, Lumbergh sets his sights on the wimpy mumbler, Milton (Stephen Root).

During the course of the firings, Peter carefree attitude with the Bobs granted him a promotion and firing Michael and Samir. That does not sit too well the trio.

I worked in a couple of cubicle in my days. I could relate to the workers at Initech. Sometimes I did have the case of the Mondays, sometimes you daydream that the building would disappear or that you would stick it to the corporate ass kickers that are profiting on your hard work. This is like Norma Rae for the new millennium

Being that this movie is ten years old, it’s a little dated with the hoopla from the Y2K panic at this. There is nothing else negative to say about this movie. The rap music soundtrack strangely fits here. The scenes with the malfunctioning printer are classic.

Judgment: This movie is a battle cry to rise up against the greedy pigs running the corporate world. Just kidding.

Rating: ****1/2

I loved this show as a child and it is still fun to watch these on youtube. Here are a few of my favorites.