Saturday, May 28, 2005
45-Second Movie Reviews: Desperate Times Edition
It's time for this week's edition of 45-Second Movie Reviews—a very important edition, for it's Memorial Day weekend. That means you've gotta get out there and rescue Hollywood! Movie-theater receipts are down, and the magic-makers need a strong summer to reverse the trend. You'll be doing your part for America if you buy a ticket.
In fact, the summer movie season has a history of patriotism in the United States. During the soviet era, Russian black marketers would only import the most popular box-office hits due to the effort required to smuggle even a single film. When U.S. intelligence caught wind of this, they saw to it, through industry connections, that only the summer movies deemed to possess strong American values could attain mega-hit status.
The idea was to foment unrest in the U.S.S.R. by letting Russian audiences glimpse the glories of capitalism. Thus the list of chosen megahits that circulated in the CIA office each year quickly became known as "the bloc-busters" among spooks. When a Paramount executive overheard this term one day, he found it charming and mentioned it (adding the now-familiar "K") in a memo to the publicity department. The phrase took hold, and the executive was found dead in his swimming pool weeks later.
Now to the weekend's bloc-busters.
Saving Face: A nuanced indie film about a Chinese-American mother-daughter pair who each struggle to reconcile their romantic relationships and their cultural heritage. That's right, another one. Hey, when audiences stop flocking to every thoughtful exploration of Chinese women's culture that hits the big screen, the studios will stop cranking 'em out. For now, with ticket sales in the doldrums, Tinseltown needs a surefire hit, and Saving Face is it. Undiscovered, classically-trained Asian-American actresses are known in L.A. as "Benjamins" because they're money in the bank. Another, less common, moniker: "certificates of deposit."
Madagascar: A bunch of animals, including a lion, a zebra, a giraffe, and a hippo, escape from New York's Central Park Zoo and find themselves on a boat to Madagascar. When they arrive, they set out for adventure, but nature isn't quite what they expected! For one thing, since Madagascar is an isolated island nation, a majority of its 200,000 animal species are unique to the country. The zoo denizens' introduction of foreign disease leads to mass dieoff, and not even celebrity-voiced antics can halt the native animals' excruciating march toward extinction. Take the kids; Ben Stiller stars.
The Longest Yard: Wait! Before you buy your ticket to this remake of the 1974 prison-football classic, have you seen the pre-release coverage at ESPN.com Page 3? It contains vital ESPN information! Take the top feature, "Michael in Motion":
Former Dallas Cowboys WR Michael Irvin finds it hard to believe that ESPN's Sean Salisbury taught Adam Sandler how to throw a spiral. For that and more good-natured ribbing, watch this clip...
See? You almost missed out on ribbing—good-natured ribbing. I'm glad I stopped you. Once you've reviewed the ESPN-approved materials, you may proceed to The Longest Yard as planned. Just promise to savor the ribbing.
