An Explanation, an Apology, and Big Words

As a few of you may have noticed, I recently made facebook unbearably annoying.  In my eagerness, I jumped in feet first without paying attention to anything around me.  It’s a terrible habit that I’m not sure I will ever break.  This post is my way of apologizing and trying to explain myself.

What started out as a summer project has become a real and true passion that I would like to continue indefinitely.  Initially, I started Mainstreamin’ as a way to improve my writing skills and entertain people in the process.  However, I’ve discovered that I really enjoy penning these reviews and would like to continue doing so.

            You see, Mainstreamin’ has gone from something that I figured I would do once a week and turned onto a small obsession.  I really would like to review more films and write more frequently.  I want to turn my eyes towards DVD releases, older films and possibly even check out some new music that I would not otherwise go within fifty feet of.  If I can make someone chuckle in the process, I’m all for it.

            Unfortunately, I truly felt that by constantly pimping my updates on my own facebook feed that I was risking annoying those friends and family who don’t share my masochistic tendencies, or just don’t care all that much for cinema.  To that end, I made a facebook page for just Mainstreamin’, and THEN discovered that I am (and will probably always be) a jackass.  So to everyone who was nice enough to accept ‘Mainstreamin’ Reviews’ friend request, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  It must be hard to put up with my goofs sometimes.  I have now created a fan page that anyone can just ‘like’ in order to see my updates, offer their own thoughts, harass me and just generally have a good time.

            I also did this in order to separate myself, Taras, from my work.  I want my personal facebook page to stay that way: personal.  I didn’t feel comfortable making public updates every time I updated Mainstreamin’.  As usual though, I didn’t stop to think how it would look to an outside observer until my patient, ever-suffering wife pointed it out.  For that, I am very, truly grateful.  I knew what I wanted to do and then I just went out and did it.  Unfortunately, I did it all wrong. 

Mainstreamin’ is no longer a pet project, it’s something that I’ve grown to love doing for more than just the laughs.  I actually look forward to deconstructing movies and find myself constantly thinking of things to say from angles that I never see in film reviews, even the least serious of the lot.

To everyone—friends, family and strangers—who have stayed with me and enjoyed my reviews up to this point, thank you very much.  I truly appreciate your support so far and I hope that I can continue to entertain everyone with my particular brand of sardonic charm.

Cowboys and Aliens and Boredom

Trailers I am absolutely sick of:  ‘Mission Impossible 14’ - Tom Cruise still thinks he’s young, and the only reason I don’t vomit when I see this trailer is because the music is actually pretty exciting.

‘The Debt’ - With all this star power, how come you are relentlessly pimping this film before every movie I have seen since March?

‘Immortals’ – One huge friggin’ mess of an action movie, from the guy who brought you some other huge friggin’ messy action movies.

On to the review!

‘Cowboys and Aliens’ has two things that should interest you:  Cowboys, and aliens.  Now, a gritty, relentlessly dark cowboy movie can be really good.  A gritty, relentlessly dark movie about alien invasion can be good.  Making a gritty, relentlessly dark movie about cowboys fighting aliens is actually incredibly boring, especially when you tack on a Hollywood ending and leave no doubt as to how everyone in the movie will fare.

The problem here is that in trying to capture the serious tone of a dark, brooding action film starring a dark, brooding Daniel Craig as our hero with no memory, Jake, director Jon Favreau forgot to add enough detail to make us actually give a shit.  There are some nice scenes later in the film that try to fill out Jake’s life, but by then it is too little, too late.

Harrison Ford actually gets to play the ‘bad guy’ for the beginning part of the film, before the movie forces us to accept him as a good guy who just happens to be a complete asshole with a heart of gold.  His character, Woodrow, is the local rich cattle rancher, and Ford literally phones in his entire role.  Granted, Harrison Ford phoning it in is still better than most people’s best, but you can literally see his ‘not giving a shit’ face in a few scenes.

Sam Rockwell plays a guy named ‘Doc,’ yes, just Doc, and other than Abigail Spencer as the requisite tough lady with a twist, Alice, everyone else in the film exists solely as a plot point.  In fact, I could argue that Alice and Woodrow also exist as plot points, but they at least have a very slight back-story.  I would also like to add that Sam Rockwell is the only guy whose character is asked to do more than brood and look tough.  I would rather just watch two hours of Doc running around, being an actual human being, than sit through the incessant moodiness of Cowboys and Aliens ever again.

The whole plot can be summed up by the title.  Seriously, that’s all you get. You get some cowboys, you get some aliens, and they spend their time fighting it out in New Mexico.  Why New Mexico?  Because the aliens love them some gold.

Yes.

The aliens…a technologically advanced race of supremely intelligent, physically superior creatures, are here to mine for gold.

Who are then defeated by nineteenth century cowboys.

Those are some dumb aliens right there.

I could go on and on about inconsistencies in the plot, the huge differences in acting displayed by much of the cast, or even just how much I now despise it when movies switch from a dark, moody scene to retina-searing whiteness, but I would rather just comment on the theater.

You see, I had the entire week off to go home for the funeral of a loved one.  When I came back on Thursday, I decided to stay home Friday and get some work done around the house.  I took advantage of this free day and caught the cheap noon showing.  The theater was freaking packed, and it was packed with exactly the sort of people you would expect to show up for a movie at noon on a workday.

The couple next to us did not shut the hell up until about fifteen minutes into the film.  Two phones went off and one person was texting while someone else kept checking the time.  There was an actual mentally handicapped person in the theater who, as my wife described it, ‘squawked’ on several occasions throughout the film.  When we first got to the cinemaplex, they had burned the hell out of some popcorn and the whole lobby stank.  While we waited through the credits, the film actually burned up, smoking, and I got to see in person what melting film looks like on the big screen.

None of that was the most surprising.  What really blew me away was that several people actually got up and left during the movie.  One couple walked out the emergency exit a full hour into the movie, and a few people just up and left after the last action sequence, not even bothering to see the actual ending.

I have seen some incredibly shitty movies over the last few months…Zookeeper, Priest, Transformers 3…but this is the very first time I ever witnessed anyone actually getting up and walking out during the film.

As an addendum, it appears my wife really did not appreciate my calling Spielberg’s new movie ‘War Horse’ ‘Glue: The Movie.’  I will be sleeping on the couch if you need me.

Captain America, F*** Yeah

Before I deconstruct everything that was perfect and the few things that were terrible about Captain America, I would like to write about something personal.  In a very odd, tragic and undeniably funny twist, my grandfather passed away while I was in the theater.  He was a great man who had been battling cancer for nearly five years.  This just goes to show how stubborn my family is, considering the doctors gave him 6 months to a year in the first place.

The reason I mention this is because during WWII my grandfather spent some time in a Nazi work camp.  He was Catholic and Ukrainian, so he was not treated *as* harshly as the Nazis treated POWs and Jews.  Even so it was not exactly a happy time. I'll never forget one particular story about his time in the work camp and some of the tragedies within.  Strangely enough this tragedy was not caused by the camp operators, but by other prisoners. 

You need to first understand that Ukrainians and the Polish do not get along at all.  Despite the fact that they were both prisoners forced to work against their will for an occupying force, there was still an impressive amount of enmity between the two nationalities.   

At one point when there was actually a morale boosting event that included a dance held in one of the larger buildings for all the prisoners.  (Like I said, they were treated a little better since they were forced labor rather than so-called enemies of the Reich.)  Well, the Polish decided that this would be a perfect time to trim down on the number of Ukrainians within the camp.  To accomplish this, they had people within the building suddenly yell out ‘Fire!  Fire!’ during the dance.  As everyone came streaming out of the building, men stationed just outside the doors with makeshift knives stabbed out and tried to wound or kill specific Ukrainians as they exited the building.  Yeah, that's freaking ridiculous, but it just goes to show how powerful deep-seated hatred and ignorance can be.

After being freed by the Allied forces, my grandfather used his linguistic talents (at one point he spoke half a dozen languages) to become a translator, working his way westward until he found himself in Wales, where he met and married my grandmother.  They then came here to America and raised a family.  Their children in turn raised their own family and, like it or not, I am a direct result of that second generation.  If it wasn’t for my grandfather’s harrowing early life, his dedication, drive and determination to make a better life for his children and grandchildren…well, I would not be here today.

So what the hell does all this storytelling and reminiscing have to do with watching a movie?  Much like my grandfather, Steve Rodgers was not satisfied with his place in life.  He wanted to do something more than what the world around him thought he should do.  Unlike my grandfather, however, Rodgers was given access to a certain Super Soldier Serum….

After sitting through no less than four superhero movies this summer, it was nice of the studios to save the best for last.  Does Captain America do everything right?  Hell no.  This is still a studio movie, and you still have to sit through a certain amount of useless and mandatory crap that only the dumbest among us actually need, and the most gullible actually want.  Whatever you want to say about this film it’s still an origin story. Marvel just happened to do a fantastic job of making it better than the rest.

Unlike Thor, which forces you to accept the whole multiple-universes angle, X-Men, which has to develop several characters at once and Green Lantern. which failed to be good on any level, Captain America takes advantage of only needing to focus on one man in a realistic setting to become the most realistic and most strikingly human of all the summer superhero films.  

Steve Rodgers was a 90 lb. weakling who was turned into our nation’s greatest hero, giving the American people someone to rally around during the dark days of World War II.  The movie does its best to impart all this in a short amount of time.  Most of you already know the plot and are well aware of how he went from 1940’s war hero to 21^st Century Avenger so I will skip ahead to the acting…..

…which is fantastic.  Chris Evans does a much better job than I had hoped for as the titular hero.  It doesn’t take much to be an action hero, so the second half was not nearly as hard to pull off as the beginning of the film, when his head is pasted on a tiny guy’s body and he is forced to use actual acting and emotion.  The fact that the former Johnny Storm can act so well was a pleasant surprise, and nothing seemed forced or awkward. 

Hugo Weaving showed us once again that he can do a fantastic job of picking iconic characters and making them even better than hoped for.  As our antagonist Red Skull, the man most known for being both Elrond and Agent Smith once again shows why Hollywood keeps calling on him when they need some scenery properly chewed.   Seriously, every early scene that he was in was fun and ridiculous without being campy.

Everyone else seems perfectly cast in their supporting roles, even way-too-old-to-be-on-active-duty-status Tommy Lee Jones as the Army Colonel in charge of the Super Soldier Program.  Then again, at this point Tommy Lee can still make a movie better just by showing up in it.  When he decides to actually act, as he does here, there is no disappointment.  Throw in Tony Stark’s grandfather and a few crazy soldiers to help Captain America pull off a few raids and you’ve got yourself a party.

Special effects were also a nice surprise.  There are a lot of cool gadgets and gewgaws that could have been cheesy as hell but stayed believable and were still cool to look at.  There were a few green screen FX that didn’t quite pull off the awe they were going for, and the 'Chris Evans’ head on a scrawny guy' part was jarring and didn’t quite work from a technical standpoint.  Otherwise you had yourself a good example of how a movie can be FX laden and still look realistic.

The terrible that I could have done without was the painful stormtrooper effect and the incredibly stale ‘mandatory love interest.’  The Hydra soldiers were laughably ineffective and really only existed to add to the action.  The body count was ridiculous on both sides, but as is too often the case in big noisy movies, the heroes easily killed a dozen bad guys for every one of their own lost.  The love interest just irks me because it added nothing.  Especially since much of the audience knows exactly how this particular story ends, having someone fall in love with him over the course of a few minutes' screen time is just irritating.  This can partially be blamed on Evans’ acting.  He did such a fine job of making the theater audience care about Captain America and root for him, as well as making us feel his sense of loss in a later scene, that the love angle was superfluous.

All in all this is a great summer flick and it finally delivers on the promise of all the other superhero movies that came before it this year.

Two stray observations:

-“How the hell do you STILL not know that Marvel has something after the credits EVERY SINGLE TIME, people?  Seriously?”  My wife totally smacked me down when I said this in the theater with her reply of “Not everyone here is a huge nerd, honey.”

-If you have a tiny little plane shaped like a bomb whose sole purpose is to blow up a city with no chance of survival, why the hell would you install an ejection seat?

Harry Potter Movie 8: Book 7 Part 2

Snape kills Voldemort.  Voldemort kills Jesus.  Hermione kills everyone.

All the jokes have been made, but there’s only one true staement: Harry Potter killed at the box office.

Here’s a movie that broken opening-day records around the world before a single showing.  That’s right; freaking preorders made Harry Potter’s final film more money on day one than any other film has ever taken in.  The big question is…..does The Deathly Hallows Part 2 deserve all this cash and praise?

Yeah.  

Mostly.

Granted, I’m not very qualified to be an objective observer.  I actually took a day off work to read the final book when it came out, but I did wipe the drool off my chin often enough to remain critical of Harry Potter as a film and not just as a final farewell to all the fanboys-and-girls.

Was there lots of action?  Of course.  Was the acting good?  As good as the rest of them, and in three cases slightly better.  Were the special effects worth it?  Yes, indeed. 

In case anyone stumbling on this site has lived in a small hut for the last decade and only recently got access to the internet a week after learning how to read, let me sum the film up for you.

It is the 8^th movie adapting a 7 book series that details the teenage life of one Harry Potter as he and his two friends try to destroy the evil Lord Voldemort before he can take over the wizarding world and make everything dark and douchey.  There ya go.

Speaking of dark and douchey, I saw this film in IMAX 3D, and it was mostly absolutely gorgeous.  What stopped it from being perfect was that it looks like the 3D was done in post-production, and suffers from the same pitfalls of all the other post-production 3D films.  It’s way too dark, sometimes blurry at the edges of FX and it sucks some of the color out of the film.  For a movie that’s already the greyest, darkest film in the series, this is not a good thing.  It wasn’t too bad for me, but like I said, I saw it in IMAX.  My wife and I had fronted $31 for two tickets….it damn well better be above your average movie experience.  So if you’re going to see this movie and absolutely must do it in 3D, you’d better not go to a regular screen.  If there’s no IMAX around, just see it in 2D.  I promise you will miss absolutely nothing.

As for the plot they of course made the necessary changes from the book to make everything flow a bit better on screen.  There are no changes that are so big as to be distracting, and what additions were made work out pretty well.

For the most part the acting didn’t change at all, really.  Emma Watson (Hermione), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) and the rest of the kids successfully demonstrated why you’ll probably never hear from them again by being just good enough to not take you out of the movie.  The big three that carried every scene they were in were Alan Rickman, whose Snape did not get enough screen time for my taste, Ralph Fiennes as the deliciously evil and desperately crazy (crazily desperate?) Lord Voldemort, and Daniel Radcliff’s Harry Potter, who really seems to have taken his Broadway and not-Harry-Potter roles to heart by actually showing emotion rather than a vague sense of confusion.

Fortunately, since this movie is called Harry Freaking Potter, and Voldemort is the main villain, there is pretty much a minimum of one good actor on screen at all times.

There is not much else to talk about aside from that.  The theater itself was an interesting experience, since I had never been to an IMAX before.  The 3D glasses they give out are ridiculous, the theater was predictably packed and the redneck jackass behind me talked through the previews and opening credits before loudly shitting his pants during one of the quiet, emotional scenes towards the end.  There are a few parts that had over half the theater in tears, and the movie left everyone satisfied. 

I have, however, finally figured out why previews are so important from a movie-enjoyment perspective.  Yes, they exist to try and sell future product, but they also give everyone watching enough time to settle the fuck down and shut their damn mouths before the feature film starts.  Since we were watching the movie in one of the most technologically advanced settings around, there were lots of stupid exclamations of surprise and awe that people had to get out of their systems.  Much better that they do it during a preview of Happy Feet 2 where baby penguins are ruining two songs that I kinda like in a 30 second span than during the emotional beginnings of a film I paid 15 freakin’ dollars to see.

One final word on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 We Love Your Money and Would Have Stretched The Final Book Into A Trilogy If We Thought We Could Get Away With It.  Yes, the very ending of the book is in the movie.  No, it doesn’t work.  I know many of you whiny purists out there would prefer that 100% of the book be translated into the movies, but sometimes common sense must prevail.  Personally, I would have been fine if they ended the film a few minutes after the final battle and called it a day, or even did some sort of during-the-credits retrospective.  Instead, we are treated to the worst special effects of the film during a completely disposable coda.

Don’t worry though.  If you’re going to see this, you probably already have.  f you haven't seen this, my review will not sway you.  You won’t be disappointed by the overall product, but don’t blind yourself to its flaws just because you love the source material.  I think a movie is even better when you recognize and embrace it, warts and all, rather than pretending they don’t exist. 

Calling All Artists! A new challenge has been unlocked!

The time has finally come!  Like any good unloved, untalented bastard child, Mainstreamin' desires to be legitimate.  That's right, it's gonna have its own website, just like a real boy!
Unfortunately, priorities matter and Mainstreamin' can't be a cool, attractive website without a decent logo sexyin' up the place.
That's where you artists come in.

Because I know my audience (as well as human nature) I am offering something in return.  There will be an actual prize of a real $30 Amazon gift card to the person whose logo is chosen as the winner.  If that doesn't get at least three or four...total...submissions, then nothing will.
The guidelines:  Something that would look GOOD on a banner.  Incorporate the name "Mainstreamin" and make it film-related.  That's really it for the rules.  You can gussy up the word itself or make the background awesomesauce.  Whatever you wanna do.   I'm not going to pretend that I am an art critic of any sort, but please no Comic Sans. Even an overly verbose wordsmith has standards, you know.

Send all submissions to tarasdbutrej at the hotmail.com, title your email "Mainstreamin' Logo" and the winner will be announced August 1.

Good luck artisty types!

Edits/addendums:  Here's some stuff I failed to put into the original post...
1.  Deadline is 28 July because I know how you guys work.  Everyone entering will have it to me at 11:59:58 the night of the deadline, and I need at least a few days to judge all (both?) the submissions.
2.  Some more of what sort of logo I'm looking for include absolutely nothing.  Go for it.  Make it cool.  Make the letters movie-themed, make the letters boring and the background awesome, I don't care as long as the whole logo is impressive.
3.  Don't rip anyone else off.  A gift card shouldn't be enough of a reason to steal someone else's work.  I'm going to run the top picks across people who actually paid attention in art class, so hopefully we'll weed out the cheaters.  I just don't want to find out five years from now that some jackass stole the logo from an obscure Belgian website or something.
4.  Keep it PG at most.  I know I write for adults, but it doesn't mean I want a giant dick hiding in the logo.
5.  While I am looking for downright awesome, don't over-complicate your entry.  Make it cool without trying to reproduce the Sistine Chapel....that's just plain showing off.

Horrible Bosses

Sometimes when you walk into a theater with no expectations, you can walk out pleasantly surprised.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to bitch about the flaws in this film, because it really was heavily flawed.  It's just that the movie itself did a good enough job at being fun to watch and not shitty that I was able to ignore all the dumb and actually have fun for two hours.

If you have managed to avoid the previews for Horrible Bosses and have absolutely no idea what it's about, I will sum it up for you, theoretical Amish person who was uploaded into the internet via a tragic Tron-like accident.
Nick, Kurt and Dale (Jason Bateman,  Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day) have *gasp* really Horrible Bosses.  Dave, Bobby and Julia (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston) are all fairly amusing as they portray the sort of complete jagoffs that normal people would hate to work for.  Jennifer Aniston especially embraces her character's disgusting quirks and delivers her lines with a downright creepy sexual eagerness.  Colin Farrell was virtually unrecognizable as the rich boss's cocked-up son and Kevin Spacey managed to just be Kevin Spacey only a bigger asshole.
As our three titular protagonists face their absolute worst nightmares at work, they become more and more convinced that their bosses are better off dead.  That's pretty much it for plot.
After we are introduced to the three guys and their three bosses, the movie spends about half an hour driving home how much each boss sucks in their own way, and then spends most of the rest of the film letting our comedians bumble about.  It's really not difficult stuff, and there's nothing particularly special.  It's not a brilliant, genius comedy that will completely rewrite humor as we know it.  It IS a fun movie that actually recognizes both its strengths and weaknesses.
Just as Zookeeper was hard to write about for being so incredibly bland, Horrible Bosses is a difficult write-up for being so blandly entertaining.  It appears that everyone in the film had a good time and it's obvious that quite a few of the lines that made it to production were ad-lib.  Everything is absolutely predictable and the movie wastes no time by introducing a single person or item that is not inherent to the plot.
If I had to make one complaint, it would be that the movie never feels complete.  One moment guys are stumbling around, still trying to work up the courage/brainpower to kill them some bosses, and the next there is a final chase scene and a climax.  The movie even ends on a very rushed note.  It's almost like they were having so much fun with the 'let's fuck around and show how inept our characters are when it comes to being serious assassins' that they ran out of time for the little things like resolution and coherency.

I just hope that this sends a clear message to Hollywood:  Comedies are best when they are relatively fresh.  Stop making adaptations from skits/shorts/anything from SNL ever.  Stop making sequels to comedies, because they almost never ever ever ever ever work.  Just get some talented comedians in the room and let them make something half-decent, and you will be rewarded.
I haven't seen Bridesmaids, so I'll state that Horrible Bosses is the best comedy I have seen this summer.  It's much better than The Hangover Part II but it's still no groundbreaking film that could stand up to Annie Hall or Mel Brooks' best.