I Dare You Not To Love This MAGIC MIKE XXL Teaser

No one was more surprised than me at how much I enjoyed Magic Mike.  My dude-crush on Channing Tatum is now undeniable, as is the majesty of this teaser for the unlikely-yet-impeccably-titled sequel, Magic Mike XXL.

Seriously, this thing is perfect in every way.  From Tatum's bench spasms turned gravity-defying dance moves, to Joe Manganiello opening beverages through sheer cock strength, to the sassy "You're Welcome" title card, to the fact that this will seemingly be a film which attempts to glamorize Myrtle fucking Beach.  But most of all I adore when Tatum tells Amber Heard his name, does a little spin move, doesn't quite stick the landing but MAINTAINS EYE CONTACT and then saunters off like a boss.  You just can't teach that stuff.

Am I a little worried that Soderbergh and McConaughey are both AWOL?  Sure.  But I'm excited at the addition of Heard, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Glover and even Jada Pinkett Smith.  If she does her weird Eartha Kitt voice from Gotham, I'll be over the moon.

Magic Mike XXL will make 50 Shades Of Gray look like a punk ass bitch on July 1st.

Podcast Episode 38: INTERSTELLAR Is Mostly Alright, Alright Alright.

I wanted to love Christopher Nolan's Interstellar so, so much.  A great cast, a talented technical filmmaker at the top of his game, hard science-fiction, space travel, and an exploration of the human condition...this is hitting all my pleasure points.  So it's hard not to feel the crushing weight of disappointment when I say that I only mostly enjoyed the film.  I think it's a beautiful film, expertly shot, featuring largely serviceable performances yet hampered by a script that's too often thematically blunt, emotionally overwrought and narratively adrift.  There's certainly plenty to like and, on the relative scale of Hollywood blockbusters, Nolan's latest is still far better than most.  Complaining about Interstellar seems like an outright luxury in a year in which Transformers 4 will almost certainly remain the highest grossing film in the world.  And yet, Interstellar is simply not the home run I was hoping for.  It's probably more like a double that's been stretched into a triple thanks to fielding error.

Bart, Jamie and I all walked away from Interstellar with very different feelings about the film, making for a pretty good podcast discussion if I do say so myself.  We also talk about the newly minted title for Star Wars Episode VII, Jared Leto's potential run as the Joker, Toy Story 4, The 6 Billion Dollar Man, and the interesting strategy for Hans Zimmer's upcoming score for Dawn Of Justice.

We also discover and immediately dispel the premature rumors of Macaulay Culkin's demise, which quickly devolves into an examination of the gender politics of the Talkboy. 

Next Week: Big Hero 6

Feast Your Eyes On The Final INTERSTELLAR Trailer

A small torrent of different TV spots for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar hit the web few days ago.  I ignored them in an effort not to over-saturate myself in the final weeks before the film's release.  My anticipation level is already absurdly high for Nolan's sumptuous outer space epic.  But then Warners released the film's final trailer and my curiosity got the better of me.

Holy fuck awesome.

I'm glad that this trailer highlights the space travel stuff as opposed to the dust bowl dying Earth stuff.  The very concept of Nolan, the man responsible for the mind-bending landscapes of Inception, getting to play with some truly weird alien landscapes (and perhaps lifeforms?) is enough to tickle all my nerd pleasure centers and from the look of this trailer my excitement has not been in vain.  The water planet with the giant tidal waves will surely provide some thrills, but I can't stop thinking about those upside down mountains.  I'm getting a heavy 2001 vibe off the whole thing and I couldn't be happier about it, although I can't help but imagine what Spielberg's version of this would have looked like if he hadn't dropped out.

Also, SOMEBODY GET ME THAT WEIRD ASS ROBOT!

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB The Latest Milestone In The Golden Age Of McConaughey

"I prefer to die with my boots on."

All right, all right, all right.

I am thoroughly enjoying the second coming of Matthew McConaughey.  I'll always love his Wooderson from Dazed And Confused, and his incredible death scene in Reign Of Fire is the stuff of legend.  Hell I even genuinely enjoy his version of Dirk Pitt in Sahara, despite it being a fairly dramatic departure from the character as written in Clive Cussler's collection of novels.  I'm a fan of the guy, but even I must admit that McConaughey's career has been all over the map.  He tried to chase Nicolas Cage down the rabbit hole of dumb action movies, but to no avail.  He appeared in some real prestige pictures like A Time To Kill and Amistad, but audiences didn't really want to take him that seriously.  So, in a fit of massive over-correction, the guy spent the better part of a decade lost in the wilderness of sub-par romantic comedies.  That was hard to watch.  For a minute there, it seemed like it was time to write off McConaughey for good.

And then a remarkable thing happened.  He stopped trying to conform to Hollywood's expectations and decided to embrace his own peculiar personality.  It started with Surfer, Dude and The Lincoln Lawyer then continued with strong supporting roles in weirder low budget films like Bernie and Killer Joe.  2012 saw McConaughey come back in a big way with Mud and Magic Mike, and by then it was clear that he had essentially turned into the skid and emerged as the guy we all knew he could be after all these years.  He's responsible for probably the second best 10 minute sequence of Wolf Of Wall Street,* he's currently killing it on HBO's True Detective and next year he's going into space for Chris Nolan in Interstellar.  Talk about a hot streak.

When McConaughey got the Golden Globe for his performance as AIDS patient Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club, I wasn't really all that surprised even though it's a crowded category and I hadn't seen the movie yet.  The Hollywood Foreign press is usually a little off-kilter and I figured that he had done some solid work and was essentially being rewarded for pulling his career out of the gutter.  But then a few weeks later he also won the SAG award and suddenly became not just a serious contender but the outright front runner for an Oscar.  I remained a tad skeptical, only because there are just so many strong male performances this year, to the point that a lot of my favorite ones (Joaquin Phoenix, Oscar Isaac, Michael B. Jordan, Tom Hanks) didn't even get nominated.  Could McConaughey really go toe-to-toe with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leonardo DiCaprio giving arguably the best performances of their careers?

Yup.

It would be easy to undervalue his performance because of the jarring visual of his gaunt figure.  Whenever an actor goes through a profound physical transformation, whether it be biological or with the use of heavy prosthesis, there's a tendency to write it off as an attention-seeking gimmick.  "Oh, Charlize Theron made herself look really ugly for this role.  How impressive."  Whether such sentiments are spoken in sarcasm or in earnest, they often hijack the conversation and become the only thing you remember about a movie.  (Honestly, what can you tell me about The Machinist other than the fact that you could count Christian Bale's individual ribs?)  But don't let that happen here.  In fact, I'll assert that the most remarkable transformation that McConaughey undergoes in Dallas Buyers is not a physical one, but an emotional one.

Ron Woodruff is a fascinating and complex character.  He starts off as a hard-partying, homophobic, womanizing degenerate and eventually morphs into a successful entrepenuer and champion of the gay community as he single-handedly takes on the FDA and challenges the medical establishment in their attitude towards AIDS patients.  There's no big, emotional moment of revelation in which Woodruff realizes the folly of his ways and vows to turn his life around and become a more tolerant person.  Instead it's a gradual shift built upon necessity; Woodruff is diagnosed with HIV told he has a mere 30 days to live, but he's determined to prove the doctors wrong and outlive his diagnosis by any means necessary.  He scams treatment out of an experimental drug trial and when the medication proves more harmful than helpful, he heads down to Mexico and discovers a host of treatment options being completely overlooked in the U.S.  Woodruff then sets up shop in Dallas, importing the unapproved-but-not-illegal medications across the border and distributing them to the members of his "buyers club," essentially an end-run around the law to help provide treatment to similarly afflicted patients without being arrested as a drug dealer.

This all took place in the late 80's and early 90's (the film's opening scene features a newspaper that mentions Rock Hudson dying in a French hospital) which means that while I was alive for this era, I remember very little of it.  Like many of my peers, the first memory I have of hearing about HIV or AIDS was when Magic Johnson announced his own diagnosis, which my mother says occurred the day after I served as a ball boy during a Celtics-Lakers game.  By the time I had any appreciation for the disease, it was largely considered, while not curable, at least treatable.  Something you could live with.  But in 1985 when Woodruff was first hospitalized, it was essentially a death sentence surrounded by a cloud of ignorance and misinformation.  There's a documentary on the subject called How To Survive A Plague that I've heard is extremely powerful.  I wish I'd gotten the chance to watch it before my year was up.  The story of the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. is a fascinating one, and one with which I wish I was more familiar.  The fact that Woodruff had to go to court and fight for his right to take non-toxic protein supplements because the FDA was essentially in bed with pharmaceutical companies...I wouldn't call it shocking by today's standards, but that only makes it feel all the more relevant in the age of Big Pharma.

Woodruff not only had to immerse himself in stacks of medical research that was likely way over his head, but he was also thrust into the heart of the gay community, the demographic hit hardest by the disease at that time.  He bonds with another patient named Rayon, beautifully portrayed by a similarly emaciated Jared Leto, and the two of them become not only business partners but also the closest of friends.  It's essentially a shining example of trench warfare - when you're thrown into the shit together, you learn to get over your own prejudices and eventually realize that for all our differences, we're all just people.  The disease doesn't care who you're fucking.

Whether he wins the Oscar or not, (and I think he just might) Dallas Buyers Club absolutely belongs in the pantheon of great McConaughey performances.  It's a must see for anyone who considers themselves a fan of his slow Texas drawl and laconic charm.  If you think that's all there is to the man, Dallas Buyers will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is so much more.  McConaughey is back and better than ever.

And if you're wondering whatever happened to Wooderson, I give you this:

You're welcome.



*The first being the super-lude freakout, obviously.

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Title: Dallas Buyers Club
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner, Steve Zahn, Denis O'Hare, Michael O'Neill, Dallas Roberts, Griffin Dunne, Kevin Rankin
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: DVD

Falling In Love With Channing Tatum Via MAGIC MIKE

"Does this look distressed?"

No, this was not a Wife's Choice.  In fact, Jamie hated the movie far more than I did.

For years the line on Channing Tatum was that he was one of those guys who "killed in the room," which is to say that when he sat down with casting directors or producers he was charming and funny and likable and (obviously) good looking.  Putting him in your movie seemed like a no brainer.  But once cameras started rolling it was Tatum himself who appeared to lack brain activity.  He came off stiff, boring and he had no chemistry with anyone.  The guy was pretty much unwatchable.

When I tell that story to my future kids, they're never going to believe me.

Just a few years later Tatum is not only watchable, he's magnetic.  He's got personality oozing out his perfect cheekbones and on top of all that he's fucking hilarious.  In fact, I find myself inordinately excited for movies like White House Down simply because of Tatum's presence.  There are two movies we can credit for suddenly propelling his career to the next level and they were both released in 2012.  The first is Phil Lord and Chris Miller's brilliant 21 Jump Street, one of the funniest movies released that year.  The second is Steven Soderbergh's stripper anthem Magic Mike.

In Jump Street Tatum is paired with Jonah Hill, playing a physically adept but intellectually stunted cop.  Hill does the real emotional heavy lifting in the film, leaving Tatum free to look cool in the action scenes and be generally hilarious.  That's not to minimize his comedic skills; before Jump Street you could not have convinced me that the man would be able to match humorous wits with Carrot Top, let alone Jonah Hill.  But you can tell that, as opposed to something like G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra, the pressure is largely off here.  Tatum is absolutely essential to the film's greatness but he doesn't have to carry the thing single-handedly.  Without that weight on his shoulders, he's able to really loosen up and be the guy who wins over producers so easily.

There's a similar factor at play in Magic Mike.  The script by Reid Carolin was largely influenced by Tatum's own experiences as a Florida stripper before he got into modeling and later acting.  The fact that he's in a familiar world here goes a long way towards elevating Tatum's comfort on camera, but so does the copious amount of dancing.  Just like we all go to Michael Bay movies to see shit explode, a big part of the draw here is seeing good looking, muscular dudes show off their assets on stage.  But this isn't just grinding and ass-shaking, this is legitimate dancing with impressive choreography and Tatum is more than equipped handle the challenge.  He and the other dancers really shine whenever they're up in front of the screaming ladies of Tampa, dressed in a variety of amusing costumes that range from Tarzan to cowboys to Tatum's shirtless paramilitary getup.

Again, it's as if knowing that he's got a handful of ace dance numbers up his sleeve gives Tatum the freedom to be himself throughout the scripted stuff.  He's got an easy, almost goofy charm as Magic Mike that makes you simply fall in love with the guy as he struggles to leave the stripping life behind in favor of his dream career of designing and building custom furniture.  He's got two love interests in the form of Olivia Munn as his frequent booty call and Cody Horn as the sister of his protege "The Kid" played by Alex Pettyfer.  Tatum has an easy rapport with both actresses and the relationship with the no-nonsense Horn (who's a dead ringer for Missy Peregrym) works precisely because it's kept to a minimum.  We don't get any of the cliched, expected story beats given the set-up (they fall for each other, her brother gets pissed and lashes out, etc) and it never feels like the story hinges on whether or not they get together.  All they have to do is make each other laugh and look hot walking on the beach.

Then again, the story doesn't really hinge on much of anything, which is precisely what drove Jamie up a wall.  The movie sort of meanders around a couple of half-hearted plotlines without ever focusing on any of them.  There's Mike's furniture-based aspirations, his constant hustling at a half dozen jobs, his mentorship-turned-rivalry with The Kid, his double edged relationship with Matthew McConaughey's Dallas* and his romance with The Kid's nurse sister.  Throw in a drug overdose and a violent shakedown with some dealers and you end up with a collection of vapor stories that never quite coalesce into a full-blown plot.  I enjoyed Tatum's performance and Soderbergh's sharp eye enough that I was willing to overlook it to a certain degree, but I can see why Jamie found it so frustrating to watch.  But in a way that seems like an even bigger test of an actor's ability.  Can they give a performance that elevates a mediocre script into a movie worth watching?**  That takes a special kind of something.

I think that Tatum has a lot of room to grow and I mean that in the best way possible. He can clearly handle both comedy and action.  Careers have been built on far less.  I'm actually curious to see Tatum really start to stretch himself dramatically in the future.  He recently did nice work in the high school reunion flick 10 Years, and perhaps he'd benefit by doing some more ensemble pictures where he can soak in the work of some talented veterans.  He was pushed into starring roles pretty quickly when he might have been better served by paying his dues and slowly working his way up the Hollywood ladder.  But I think that the driven aspect of Magic Mike, the guy who's always working and willing to go in any direction and seize any opportunity to achieve his goals is also true of Tatum himself.  He certainly doesn't seem interested in coasting on his success and the guy seems up for just about anything, as evidenced by his absurd appearance in one of this summer's biggest comedies.  Tatum's got the Wachowskis' sci-fi epic Jupiter Ascending coming next year and, after being totally floored by Cloud Atlas, I'm fascinated to see what kind of performance Andy and Lana are able to coax out of him.  No matter where Tatum goes from here, it's sure to be an interesting journey.

And I'm totally on board.




*Also not to be undersold is McConaughey's performance.  Dallas is one of those roles that simply couldn't be played by anyone else - for shit's sake, at one point he comes out on stage with bongos.  The guy is on a cinematic hot streak the likes of which I've never seen and right now I'm just enjoying the ride...

**To be clear, Tatum is only half the reason Magic Mike works as well as it does.  The other half is Soderbergh, whose direction and cinematography are frankly superb.  His adoption of the digital aesthetic really works here, with the dark sheen of the strip club standing in stark contrast to the hazy golden Florida exteriors.



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Title: Magic Mike
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Matthew Bomer, Joe Manganiello
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: HBO HD