Staticblog NewsOK.com Blogging Community

1. Jamie Lidell, “Another Day.” Neo-soul’s biggest goofball offers up surplus mouths, eyes and ears to attractive passersby. What a guy.

2. The Go! Team, “Ladyflash.”

3. Anjali, “Hymn to the Sun.”

4. The Bees, “This is the Land.”

5. Mates of State, “My Only Offer.” The second clip from Re-Arrange Us shows indie-rock’s preeminent couple-with-toddlers getting buried in toy balls, which is probably a lot like their home life.

6. Zero 7, “Left Behind.”

7. Nick Cave, “Red Right Hand.”

8. Klaxons, “It’s Not Over Yet.”

9. The Budos Band, “King Cobra.”

10. The Clash, “This is Radio Clash.” Ah-HAA-HAAAAA!

Scarlett Johansson in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” 

Rating: 76 

Woody Allen gets a bad rap for being woefully uneven in his filmmaking, but few major directors are in the business of making one movie a year. So if Allen litters his filmography with “Scoop,” “Anything Else,” “Hollywood Ending” and scads of other lackluster productions but, once in a blue moon, gives us something as entrancing and subtle as “Match Point” or his latest, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” all is right with Allen’s world.

Vicky and Cristina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson) are just out of school and spending a summer with Vicky’s Aunt Judy (Patricia Clarkson), who owns a villa in Barcelona, Spain. For Vicky, it is her last summer before she marries Doug (Chris Messina), a nice, stable but boring man with provincial values and no sense of adventure. Cristina, in contrast, is romantic adventure incarnate, seeking out exciting situations that are practically doomed to end badly.

Shortly after arriving, they are approached in a restaurant by Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a handsome artist who promises a weekend of passion if they will fly with him to a remote, picturesque village. Vicky objects, but Cristina is ready to go. The practical Vicky follows, if only to ensure that Cristina is safe. But it is the beginning of a “love square” rather than the typical triangle, in which Cristina and Vicky are drawn into Juan Antonio’s romantic orbit, one that is shared by Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), his sensuous but deeply unstable ex-wife.

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a simple but entrancing story in which the characters must choose between the wild ride and the easy road. Great performances abound and are expected from such masters as Bardem, Cruz and Clarkson, but Hall is the relatively unknown and surprising element. The British actress takes Vicky from peeved and uptight to romantic surrender with unusual grace, but conveys her fate: She will go with what she knows, even as she sees that Judy’s dissolute marriage to her Uncle Mark (Kevin Drew) will be replayed in her own life.

Johansson also delivers nicely, as Allen offers beautiful close-ups so that we can see the wheels turning inside the impetuous Cristina. Her future seems similarly predestined: She will live an adventurous life but will never find true love. There are no great choices in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” but the richness of Allen’s storytelling makes up for his fatalistic view of relationships.

Woody Allen gets a bad rep for being woefully uneven in his filmmaking, but few major directors are in the business of making one movie a year. So if Allen litters his filmography with “Scoop,” “Anything Else,” “Hollywood Ending” and scads of other lackluster productions but, once in a blue moon, gives us something as entrancing and subtle as “Match Point” or his latest, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” all is right with Allen’s world.

Vicky and Cristina (Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson) are just out of school and spending a summer with Vicky’s Aunt Judy (Patricia Clarkson), who owns a villa in Barcelona, Spain. For Vicky, it is her last summer before she marries Doug (Chris Messina), a nice, stable but boring man with provincial values and no sense of adventure. Cristina, in contrast, is romantic adventure incarnate, seeking out exciting situations that are practically doomed to end badly.

Shortly after arriving, they are approached in a restaurant by Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a handsome artist who promises a weekend of passion if they will fly with him to a remote, picturesque village. Vicky objects, but Cristina is ready to go. The practical Vicky follows, if only to ensure that Cristina is safe. But it is the beginning of a “love square” rather than the typical triangle, in which Cristina and Vicky are drawn into Juan Antonio’s romantic orbit, one that is shared by Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz), his sensuous but deeply unstable ex-wife.

Javier Bardem and Rebecca Hall in ”Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” 

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a simple but entrancing story in which the characters must choose between the wild ride and the easy road. Great performances abound and are expected from such masters as Bardem, Cruz and Clarkson, but Hall is the relatively unknown and surprising element. The British actress takes Vicky from peeved and uptight to romantic surrender with unusual grace, but conveys her fate: She will go with what she knows, even as she sees that Judy’s dissolute marriage to her Uncle Mark (Kevin Drew) will be replayed in her own life.

Johansson also delivers nicely, as Allen offers beautiful close-ups so that we can see the wheels turning inside the impetuous Cristina. Her future seems similarly predestined: She will live an adventurous life but will never find true love. There are no great choices in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” but the richness of Allen’s storytelling makes up for his fatalistic view of relationships.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — When Woody Allen ponders the connection to women he conveys in his latest film, the legendary writer and director recalls a time when he couldn’t understand — or write from — the female perspective.

But things change: Allen now holds press conferences in Los Angeles, a place he described as like “living in Munchkin Land” in “Annie Hall,” and his penchant for setting films in his beloved Manhattan has given way recently to British shoots for “Match Point” and “Scoop,” and a Spanish setting for his latest love letter to women, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

“The interesting thing is, and I’ve said this before, that when I first started I could never write for women,” Allen said at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “When I wrote my first couple of films and did them, and when I used to write my cabaret act and I would write sketches for television, I could never write for women — I always wrote the male point of view. This went on and on for quite a while and people even commented about it at the time.”

That changed in the early ’70s when Diane Keaton entered the picture. They first worked together on Broadway in “Play It Again, Sam,” and as they began dating and moved in together, Allen found his viewpoint shifting. With Keaton as his muse, Allen started writing female characters with depth and nuance, and that continued on with Allen’s personal and professional relationship with Mia Farrow in the ’80s and early ’90s.

“Through some kind of, you know, Socratic osmosis or something, I started writing for women,” he said. “Then I sort of only wrote for women.”

His most recent muse, professionally speaking, is Scarlett Johansson, who starred in Allen’s last three films including “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Allen said that his partnership with Johansson was an accident, but a happy one.

“I had Kate Winslet for ‘Match Point’ until the last week of pre-production,” Allen said, who said Winslet left the production for family reasons. “I knew Scarlett was a great actress and a beauty, but I didn’t know if she was really what I had written. I hired her, and I became totally captivated by her. I thought she could simply do anything.”

“Which is the highest compliment for an actor,” Johansson said the following day during a roundtable interview. “I wish that all the audience felt that way forever and ever — I think every actor wishes that. It’s great to know that he believes in me in that way, and it’s certainly exciting for me because I’ve always been such a huge fan. It was such a part of my upbringing: every time anybody said ‘Who do you want to work with?’ I’d say, ‘Well, there’s always Woody Allen,’ thinking, ‘How do I get in that inner circle?’”

But despite the professional chemistry he finds with female actors, including Johansson’s co-stars Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall, and the insight into women he achieved with Keaton, Allen said that at 72, he has a jaundiced view of how actual love works.

“I haven’t found any answers that you really want to hear,” he said. “I have a pessimistic view of relationships. My view of it has always been that you talk about it with your friends and you scheme and you plot and you see psychoanalysts and people see marriage counselors and people get medicated and they do everything they can, but in the end you’ve got to luck out. It’s complete luck. It’s total luck.”

Brandon T. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder.” 

BEVERLY HILLS — The posters tell the tale: Robert Downey Jr. does not look like himself in Ben Stiller’s Hollywood war movie satire “Tropic Thunder.” Playing a white Australian actor playing an African-American soldier forced Downey to examine just how viewers would perceive this ridiculousness, and whether it would be good for the film, his career, and Downey’s continued well-being.

“It’s like anything,” Downey said during interviews at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “You check your gut and you say, for lack of a better new age California metaphor, ‘Do I feel like the universe is going to support this?’”

As “Tropic Thunder” unspools, it’s clear that Downey’s performance is not “The Jazz Singer Goes to Vietnam,” and that the universe will probably look kindly on it once it stops laughing. Downey plays Kirk Lazarus, a skilled method actor who believes his own press and thinks he is the only person who can play Sgt. Lincoln Osiris. So he underwent a medical procedure to darken his skin.

Much to the dismay — make that red-hot resentment — of his co-star, rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a pompous white guy got the African-American lead in the war epic. Downey said the Lazarus role is about blind ego and bad judgment in moviemaking, and the laughs come at Lazarus’ expense. Downey’s character is just part and parcel of the movie industry portrayed in “Tropic Thunder”: a business where the craving for statuettes and boffo box office can excuse the worst impulses in filmmaking.

“That’s the platform, which is how far-reaching can someone’s narcissism go, and how much that narcissism is coddled by people who hold someone in high esteem,” he said. “It’s like the ultimate crossover. It’s like someone who’s a baseball star who says, ‘But you know what? I really want to be a runway model.’

“It’s entertainment that’s set up by people who are high-minded enough to not be racist or offensive,” Downey said. “Furthermore, the whole film is based on the idea that what we do, at some level, is offensive, and who we are, on some level, is despicable and pathetic. Which is the truth and is not the truth. But the part of it that’s the truth is entertaining.”

Downey, whose career ascendance achieved stratospheric levels with “Iron Man” this summer, is no Kirk Lazarus, and he does his best to deflate any notions that actors in major studio pictures suffer for their work. Filmed in Kauai, Hawaii in the same verdant jungle where ABC’s “Lost” is shot, “Tropic Thunder” might look sticky, humid and brutal, but Downey said the luxury accommodations of a major motion picture shoot make life a lot easier than it looks.

“It was as tough as making a Hollywood movie in the jungle gets. Which is not tough. So I could regale you with stories of how brutal and exhausting (it was) and what a trouper I am for having allowed them to pay me to go be in a great movie and shoot in Hawaii, which as everyone knows is… not where you want to be,” he said with a deadpan look.

Downey’s stratospheric ascendance with “Iron Man” stands in stark contrast to his fading past, when well-documented drug problems and jail time rendered him uninsurable. Like the Biblical Lazarus, Downey’s career rose from the dead and that truth seems to keep him far more grounded than his deluded “Tropic Thunder” character.

So there will be no complaining.

“I’m kind of like… you go to an animal shelter and you get an abused animal, so you know that they were, like, beat up by somebody and mistreated,” he said. “Then you give them a good home. And if you ask that dog, right then and there, ‘What was it like?’ he says, ‘I don’t know — what are you talking about? I’m just glad to be here.’”

Possibly the most forward-thinking and (literally) visceral video I’ve seen in a long time. Watch out if you faint easily. It’s hardly NSFW, but it’s a little uncomfortable FW.

Rating: 96 

Over the course of five seasons, David Simon made a strong case for “The Wire” being possibly the best drama in the history of television. While far more people saw “The Sopranos,” Simon’s Baltimore saga remained relatively obscure, mainly because it was so unflinchingly realistic. If “The Sopranos” and “Deadwood” told criminal sagas with decidedly Shakespearean flair, “The Wire” served another literary master: when Baltimore Sun journalists in “The Wire: The Complete Fifth Season” discuss “the Dickensian aspect” of an unfolding story, they could also be referring to the series itself — like many a Charles Dickens story, “The Wire” captured society at every seamy level.

Season 5 finds both the police force and the local paper facing belt-tightening: Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is being sent on more cases but is armed with fewer resources, and the Sun is facing layoffs thanks to Times-Mirror’s efforts to hike their stock value. Talented people are being replaced at the paper by the likes of Scott Templeton (Thomas McCarthy), a shifty reporter who cuts corners, invents quotes and fudges sources. He and McNulty cross streams when the detective engages in similar dishonesty: inventing a serial killer and faking crimes in order to increase funding for real homicide investigations.

This final season of “The Wire” is less satisfying — but only by degrees — than its heartbreaking predecessor, which focused on crumbling schools and the impact on four teenage boys. “The Wire” boasted the finest ensemble cast on HBO, which is saying a lot, and while few things end well here, the most satisfyingly humanistic story arc belonged to the addict known as Bubbles. As played by Andre Royo, the intense struggle of a man trying to stay right with the world was made frighteningly real, much like the rest of this extraordinary series.

In Either/Or, we take two people in similar pursuits, and you choose between them. It can be based on any criteria: professional ability, personality, intellectual prowess, physical pulchritude, or who you’d want backing you up in a knife fight. It really doesn’t matter: just choose Either/Or.

Either Penelope Cruz of “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”:

Or her co-star, Scarlett Johansson:

Either Ben Stiller:

Or Jack Black:

Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller in “Tropic Thunder.”

“Tropic Thunder,” a satire about self-absorbed actors making a disastrous Vietnam War movie, is prompting a boycott by the state chapter of Special Olympics, citing language in the film referring to people with mental disabilities.
In “Tropic Thunder,” an actor played by Ben Stiller, who also directed and co-wrote “Tropic Thunder,” is depicted as having attempted to win an Academy Award by playing a person with special needs in a movie called “Simple Jack.” That depiction, along with a scene in which the derisive term retard is used repeatedly, has angered Special Olympics organizers, competitors and members of more than a dozen other advocacy groups for the disabled at the national and state levels.

According to Adrian DeWendt, executive director of Special Olympics Oklahoma, the politically correct term for people diagnosed with mental retardation was “individuals with mental retardation” for many years. But recently, he said that terminology has changed to ‘‘individuals with intellectual disabilities,” a change that originated with the individuals themselves.

“They are telling us, ‘We don’t like the term retards. We don’t like the r word. It’s demeaning, it’s inappropriate, it’s not politically correct,’” DeWendt said. Special Olympics along with more than 20 other organizations are protesting “Tropic Thunder” through the boycott and a Web site, www.r-word.org.

Stiller said the primary targets of “Tropic Thunder” are deluded actors and the industry that supports them. One character, a white Australian actor played by Robert Downey Jr., even has his skin pigment altered to play an African-American. During an Aug. 3 press event for the film, Stiller said that “Tropic Thunder” was designed as a satire of blind self-interest and bad judgment in Hollywood.

“This is a movie about actors taking themselves too seriously, actors going too far, an actor playing a mentally impaired guy to try to win an Oscar — that’s not really going to play too well with people also,” Stiller said. “The idea is, how far do actors go? How far is too far?

“I think the movie … it’s like with any of the issues, whether it’s the race issue or the ‘Simple Jack’ issue, we had to be clear about what our point of view was in the movie and stand by that,” he said.

“None of us with intellectual disabilities like the r word at all,” said Amy Wollmershauser, 31, a Special Olympics Athlete from Tulsa. “Just because I learn slower doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad when people use that word.”

She said she would like to see the r word disappear completely.

“It’s just not socially acceptable anymore,” said Georgia Devening, executive director for Oklahoma Foundation for the Disabled, an adult day care provider for people with all kinds of disabilities. She doesn’t plan to see the movie, but said she is not sure she would go so far as to boycott it. She said that people who use the r word don’t always have hurtful intentions. “I think so many times people are just uninformed. They don’t know what the trend is now.”

“When people use the r word, it makes me unhappy. It’s mean, it’s rude and not very nice,” said Chris Paynter, 33, a Special Olympics Oklahoma athlete from Edmond. “I would like to tell people that when they use that word that it hurts my feelings and nobody should use that word in front of me or in front of anyone.”

His mother, Ellen Paynter, said that “Tropic Thunder” should be boycotted.

“I am angered by the whole thing, but I would like to see that this is used as an educational tool to people everywhere that this is just uncalled for and that there are better ways to address people with disabilities,” she said.

In 2005, Special Olympics issued public statements supporting “The Ringer,” a comedy in which a young man poses as an individual with intellectual disabilities in order to participate in the group’s competition. Special Olympics representatives said they believed “The Ringer” could humanize their athletes and bolster the group’s image.

“The risk was that it would further the stereotypes of people with intellectual disabilities as the brunt of jokes rather than the teller of jokes,” Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver told the Associated Press. “But the payoff was even more valuable.”

“‘The Ringer’ was entirely different,” said Ellen Paynter, who said she has no plans to see “Tropic Thunder.” “The people who made fun of the athletes were the bad guys and the athletes showed them how wrong they were. In the end it was a very positive message. I really enjoyed ‘The Ringer.’”

“Our organization provided a lot of input into the scripting of that movie and there were a variety of things changed so they weren’t as offensive but they got the message across,” DeWendt said. “‘Tropic Thunder’ is just using the r word very inappropriately and that’s the biggest difference. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.”

However, the producers and distributors of “Tropic Thunder” stand behind the film’s satirical approach, saying that the characters using inappropriate terms are not portrayed as sympathetic or heroic people.

“‘Tropic Thunder’ is an R-rated comedy that satirizes Hollywood and its excesses, and makes its point by featuring inappropriate and over-the top characters in ridiculous situations,” Chip Sullivan, head of publicity for DreamWorks Studios, said in a prepared statement. “The film is in no way meant to disparage or harm the image of individuals with disabilities.

“We have had productive discussions with representatives of disability advocacy organizations and look forward to working with them closely in the future,” he said. “However, no changes or cuts to the film will be made.”

– George Lang and Heather Warlick

1. The New Pornographers, “Challengers”

One of the Pornographers’ sparser offerings, “Challengers” and its elegantly simple tale of unfaithful lovers spotlights  that ineffable quality that makes this Canadian super-duper band so special.

2. Andrew Gold, “Lonely Boy”

3. XTC, “Are You Receiving Me?”

4. Jack Johnson, “Flake”

By all rights, I shouldn’t dig the music of this surfer-turned-troubadour. Hippie-dippie, laidback pop isn’t exactly my cup o’ hemp, but Johnson’s melodic gifts are the exception to the rule. I never tire of this song.

6. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Hey”

7. The Chi-Lites, “Have You Seen Her?”

8. Barenaked Ladies, “Shoe Box”

After BNL Steven Page’s recent bust for drug possession at a Syracuse, N.Y., apartment with two chicks at two in the morning, I wonder what exactly is under the bed in his shoe box. But, hey, I love, love, love this group and I love, love, love this feisty pop confection — even if the music video’s idea of what a female high school student looks like is, well, dubious to say the least.

9. Led Zeppelin, “I Can’t Quit You, Baby”

10. The Replacements, “The Ledge”

– Chase

Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder.” 

Rating: 78 

Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” slices and dices Hollywood ambition and delivers a raucous satire of movie business egos and war movie clichés. Hardly any sacred cow survives this tipping spree, and “Tropic Thunder” delivers a nearly endless stream of barbed, nasty fun.

Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is a past-his-prime action star when he signs on for “Tropic Thunder,” a Vietnam War drama based on a memoir by disabled veteran Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte in full self-parody mode). All his co-stars have credibility-seeking agendas: Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is a drug-addled comedian known for “Norbit”-style grossout movies; Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) is a white, Australian method actor playing an African-American soldier; and Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) is a rapper looking to expand his brand beyond flashy hip-hop and energy drinks.

But when neophyte director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) gets a wild hair and starts shaking up the set, the pampered hacks plunge into real-world jungle mayhem involving a Thai drug cartel led by a cigar-smoking child (Brandon Soo Hoo). The production veers out of control, leading industry types to ponder whether the film or its stars are worth saving.

This is no punch-pulling Hollywood smear — “Tropic Thunder” is spiked with scabrous insights into movie business pomposity. Downey’s Lazarus is a worst-case scenario for method acting, but he knows his business well. His explanation of what went wrong with Speedman’s bid for Oscar cred, a terrible special needs drama called “Simple Jack,” punctures Hollywood’s exploitation of the developmentally disabled for gold statuettes.

To his credit, Downey takes what could be a deeply offensive character, an ignorant actor who is essentially in blackface, and makes Lazarus a rich depiction of overweening ambition. Downey completely inhabits every faux-empathetic statement he makes, and it helps that Jackson’s Alpa Chino is there to serve as Lazarus’ indignant Greek chorus.

“Tropic Thunder” sinks in and shoots venom into some deserving subjects, but it never feels preachy. Stiller, Downey and company are having too much fun sending their characters into a humid hell in which their own egos and habits are just as personally dangerous as the heroin-smuggling guerillas.

“Tropic Thunder” skewers excess while setting its own standard for it — no mean feat —wringing sharp-tongued comedy out of bad ideas, worse taste and bizarre notions of what works in Hollywood. And it reaches all those heights before Tom Cruise even shows up.