Reviews

Julie & Julia is essentially two films about how passion and food can change peoples lives. Although in Julia Child's case, the bon vivant American cook with French sensibilities changed the lives of a whole nation used to eating convenience food in post war America and beyond. The other Julie of the title is Julie Powell. The only life she is changing is that of her own and she represents the vanity of everyday bloggers who are looking for instant fame and attention. Originally conceived as two separate movies, director-writer Nora Ephron decided that Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France and Julie Powell's blog memoir, Julie & Julia, didn't have enough meat to sustain a 90 minute feature on their own. This is a shame because Julia Child's other life in France is not only thrilling reading, but with Meryl Streep's performance as the passionate lover of life Julia Childs, the film is absolutely riveting and laugh out loud funny. Unfortunately, Julie Powell's life is hardly the stuff of legend and hardly changes lives. Comparing her contemporary life as an unfulfilled writer in NYC to Child's talent, hard work, and genuine need to teach others, is nothing short of insulting. Nora Ephron is no stranger to juxtaposing lives in her work in films such as You've Got Mail (1998) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). Her trademark comic timing and direction will not disappoint Ephron fans. But my heart sank every time Ephron returns to the story of Julie Powell. Amy Adams, Streep's co-star in Doubt, fails to ignite any sympathy or even much care from audiences as her portrayal of Powell as nothing more than an under achiever who is jealous of her friends successes and embarks on a project that she at least hopes she will finish. Adams' Powell is not cooking for the greater good or writing a self-help book, she isn't even teaching herself the fine art of cuisine. But maybe this is Ephron's point all along about how blogs and the internet as a whole, validates our existence, or at least goes to prove that with as little effort as possible, a blogger's mundane life can be pitched against the life of one of the most influential people in America. How many of us rushed to write blogs on hearing of Julie Powell's book deal? How little of us want to put in the hard graft, the real work into being another Julia Child. Ephron's second and by far less interesting story of Powell makes the biggest statement of our 21st century lives. Julie Powell works as temp middle manager in a New York government office, answering calls from distraught 9/11 victims and families. The work is full time strain on her emotions. Living in Queens with her loving editor husband Eric (Chris Messina), she cooks in their tiny kitchen and uses the time as her only escape from the day. Powell is approaching thirty and is constantly aware of her unfulfilled life. Her husband suggest she start a blog about cooking and Powell, with Child's cook book in hand, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, embarks on a year long project to cook up all 524 recipes and blog about her adventure. Back in 1948, Julia Child and her husband Paul, dashingly played by Stanley Tucci, are brought to Paris because of Paul's job as a cultural attaché at the American embassy. The couple's liberal outlook and enjoyment for life and French food, give Julia a reason de'tair. Julia's hobby turns to passion after she becomes the first American to study at the Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. She meets fellow foodies, Simone Beck (Linda Emond) and Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey) to co-write Mastering the Art of French Cooking. There's no contest as to whose life is more appealing and Streep and Tucci's chemistry, united again after their starring roles in The Devil Wears Prada, is a joy to watch.

Will & Grace is undoubtedly one of the best television comedies of all time. In its 8 year run from 1998 to 2006 the show racked up Emmy awards for all of its main cast members, 83 Emmy nominations, 24 Golden Globes, 14 SAG Awards, and 6 People's Choice Awards. May 5th sees the release of two Will & Grace DVD compilations: The Best of Love & Marriage and The Best of Friends & Foes. Each 2-disc set has 16 episodes of the sharpest and funniest moments of the series and features guest star appearances from Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Matt Damon, Kevin Bacon, and Glenn Close.

I was living in London and sharing a flat with two gay guys from Scotland when the show came out. Our Thursday nights were something of a television ritual of late night comedy and copious amounts of alcohol. Will & Grace was laugh-out-loud funny and the gay characters were real. We knew guys like Will and Jack. Hell, even my flat mates were a little bit like the show's gay duo. And we loved the main female characters just as much too. It's rare to find flawless writing coupled with perfectly executed comedic performances. It's rarer still to find all four main characters that are equally funny, equally vain, and equally insecure, and all armed to the teeth with gay in-jokes that only our community could understand. It also showed humanity at its rawest. These characters embraced their dark side and wore their childish tantrums, backstabbing, and one-upmanship like a bold and beautiful Rainbow flag. Will & Grace worked not only because it was spot-on about gay life but also because it never excluded heterosexuals.

To recap the premise of the show, Will and Grace are best friends and share a New York apartment. Will is a successful Manhattan lawyer and Grace is a successful self-employed interior designer. Grace's assistant Karen is a wealthy socialite who works to keep herself down to earth and Will's best friend Jack is over-the-top self obsessed and always looking for work. The series over 8 years has gone through changes in roommates, changes in jobs, and countless changes in relationships.

Will (Eric McCormack) and Jack (Sean Hayes) complement one another in their differences. Will is a professional and is almost a grown up. Jack is fun to be with but also incredibly vein; sometimes you just want to throttle him. In the first season alone he decides to become a singer and a massage therapist, he embarrasses Will at the gym, and agrees to marry Karen's illegal immigrant maid, Rosario (Shelley Morrison). Grace (Debra Messing) and Karen are as equally vein. Grace's insecurities rear up in her work and with her relationship with Will. Her neurotic behavior is only put to past by straight-talking Karen -a no nonsense socialite with airs and graces that only women of her standing get to be. She drinks too much, takes drugs, spends money, and is always up for the thrill. She's the perfect "fag-hag."

Hollywood has flocked to the series with numerous guest star appearances (see above). Debbie Reynolds's reoccurring role as Grace's self-obsessed actress mother provides some of the best mother and daughter tug of war relationships ever to hit the screen. Two of Grace's boyfriends, however, over stayed their welcome. Woody Harrelson's turn as Grace's boyfriend, Nathan, threatened to straighten out the series altogether as the gay dynamic of the show took a back seat. Harry Connick Jr.'s character, Dr. Leo, also took a stab at turning the show from a biting comedy with gay in jokes to just another mainstream show for the masses.

Will and Grace was the only TV show that represented my gay life and the gay people in it. Our London life was full of hilarity, love and friendship, spending money, and dealing with family. Will & Grace represented a multi-faceted gay life that wasn't a tragedy; no one died of A.I.D.S. or committed suicide. Instead it emphasized the relationship with the family: Will's mother, Jack's estranged father. It showed that these issues were just as important to Will and Jack as Grace's love-hate relationship with her own mother.

It's doubtful if there will ever be another successful mainstream gay comedy. I say this because Will & Grace was so successful for so long, that any TV comedy script that even hints at a gay character will automatically be compared to it.

Ginger Liu

http://www.examiner.com/x-2744-Inside-Hollywood-Examiner

A Perfect Getaway is the kind of romp that plays on people's fears of having too much of a good time away from the mundane but at least controllable confines of an American city. Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn are honeymoon couple, Cydney and Cliff, who decide to hike eleven miles to a remote beach. Along the way they meet another couple, Cleo (Chris Hemsworth) and Kale (Marley Shelton), and traveler's Nick (Timothy Olyplant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez). Rumor has it that a couple murdered a pair of honeymooners in Honolulu and are still at large around the islands. Director-writer David Twohy (The Chronicles of Riddick, Pitch Black) provides the kind of fireside spooky story that people love plus a liberal amount of twists and red herrings to warrant a sequel.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2744-Inside-Hollywood-Examiner

Cashing in on the success and popularity of Twilight is HBO's True Blood. The series was created by the executive producer and writer behind Six Feet Under and American Beauty, Alan Ball, and sheds a unique and contemporary twist to the vampire myth by dealing with huge yet every day issues, such as homophobia, racism, and sexism, and dealing with them in a fun and light hearted way.

Balls adaptation of the original novels, Dead Until Dark by author Charlain Harris, started from the stories premise that it sucks to have a vampire for a boyfriend. Anna Paquin (X- Men) is Sookie who falls in love with vampire Bill, played by British actor Stephen Moyer. Bill is turned into a vampire at the age of thirty when he is on his way home from the Civil War to reunite with his wife. Bill carries with him this moral dilemma where he wants to live with humans, not against them. Sam Trammell is Sam and makes up the third lead in their romantic love triangle. He is in love with Sookie but he's too good a guy to play dirty for her affections. Other cast member include, Nelsan Ellis as the fabulous and gay Lafayette, Ryan Kwanton as Sookie's brother Jason, who views the world as his bedroom and has rather a sexual compulsion, and lastly, Rutina Wesley as Tara, a black girl named after a plantation.

The story is set in a small town in northern Louisiana where vampires "come out of the coffin" and are known to all the humans. Here we step in a world where the supernatural is a part of every day life and vampires are treated as sexy, scary, romantic, and other. Vampires lobby for civil rights and drink a synthetic product called "Tru Blood" that serves as sustenance to counteract urges to kill and are ordered from the local drinking bars. Parallels to gay life are omnipresent such as when Sookie watches the news where she sees Evangelicals bash vampires and prohibit mixed marriages.

Ginger Liu

http://www.examiner.com/x-2744-Inside-Hollywood-Examiner

Kathryn Bigelow's(The Weight of Water, Strange Days, Point Break)The Hurt Locker was the winner of last years Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The American war thriller was shot on location in Jordan and is based on declassified information about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team in present day Iraq. Jeremy Renner(28 Days Later) plays the leader of the EOD team who has to defuse bombs while a full on war is exploding around him and his team.

The authenticity of the film hits like an unexploded bomb, as many of the locations were less than three miles from the Iraqi border, plus all of the Iraqi roles in the film were played by displaced Iraqi war refugees living in Jordan. Renner trained with real EOD teams prior to shooting the film. On set, he had rocks thrown at him and even got shot at while filming.

The film also stars Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, and Anthony Mackie, although it is Renner's performance as a man who faces the prospect of death on a daily basis that truly stands out. Bigelow's usual flair for visual poetry and exhilarating actions sequence never skips a beat.

Ginger Liu

http://www.examiner.com/x-2744-Inside-Hollywood-Examiner

When Paramount decided to hold back on the reviewers pre-screening of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, the usual suspicious sniffs of turkey wafted around Hollywood as fast celebrity gossip. But let's not forget that Paramount's very own Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was panned by every critique with any note, only to become one of the biggest box office successes in recent years. Not to make drastic assumptions about young kids reading abilities but I don't think many were taking any notice of what critiques had to say, they just wanted to see some kick ass special effects. Which brings be back to G.I. Joe. For those who have seen it, it packs every CGI punch it can muster in its 118 minute running time and satisfies grown up boy fans of the original 1964 G.I Joe plastic action figures and subsequent 1980's comic and cartoon series. Paramount is going for the juggler with the obligatory toy merchandising tie-ins, just as they did with Transformers. And the cast list is impressive with Channing Tatum, Marlon Wayans, Dennis Quaid, Byung-Hun Lee, Sienna Miller, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Christopher Eccleston, cashing in on what would hope to be a successful franchise of Transformer proportions.

Ginger Liu

http://www.examiner.com/x-2744-Inside-Hollywood-Examiner