Stoppable

Another one bites the dust. A few blockbuster movies have been getting the boot lately, and yesterday, the Denzel Washington/Chris Pine train caper Unstoppable became the latest casualty. Am I disappointed? Um, no. The movie was about an 'aging' engineer who passes on the reins to his younger, equally handsome protege. The transition, however, is interrupted by a locomotive full of explosives.

I'm not a fan of action movies that take place solely on trains. There aren't many options after all. You can stay on the track or derail, and that gets tedious after 120 minutes. I think I've seen 2 good train movies in my life - The Great Train Robbery and World Without Thieves (Andy Lau, Ge You, Rene Liu, Li Bingbing). The first is fascinating for the simple theatricality inherent in the early silents, and the second has a complicated emotional subtext that enhances and balances the action. I also think the action style coming out of Asia is better suited for train sequences. America has mastered big explosions and really punchy, and paunchy, fight scenes. It's one of the reasons why they do well with massive landscapes - leveling cities, obliterating planets, wreaking general havoc; Americans like space and fill it well. But even the oldest, clunkiest trains are slender, snakey creatures. The martial arts influence lends a more streamlined and economical style that's more adaptable to the confines of a train, unlike the raucous Hollywood-style fist fights that seem confined by a train. See some of the sequences in World Without Thieves that capitalize on that flexibility where the train becomes a character rather than a cheap device.

Anyway, hopefully this gives Mr. Pine better options. He really doesn't need to star in another action blockbuster as he's already in the pipeline for another 2 Star Trek sequels. Those will be enough to anchor his big budget credentials. I'd rather see him diversify with projects like Farragut North, a political power play he's doing out in L.A. at the moment, or Bottle Shock, a 2008 indie about 1970s Napa Valley. At least he's out of cheesy romantic teen comedy territory. Those are generally vehicles for B-list starlets and rely on a stash of up-and-coming leading men. And that's enough debate about the career of a person I do not know.

Here's The Great Train Robbery for your viewing pleasure. The music is okay and actually fits the movie well, but I prefer the piano parlour stuff. Silents don't necessarily have an 'official' score as music differed with venue. Anyway, an oldie but goody. If only Pelham 123 took note.

Holding On

It's embarrassing how transparent my train of thought is. It's so easy to pinpoint exactly what I'm obsessing over at the moment and how I got there. After some Sylar action, a bad Chris Pine movie, now we move on to Harold and Kumar. So yes, I am still stuck on Star Trek. I think it shoots out of theatres this weekend, which is unfortunate because that means I won't be able to catch it a second time on the big screen. But we know I'll be all over the DVD release - which can't come soon enough!


Anyway, after having clear exhausted my infatuations with Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine, the next logical step would be John Cho. (Karl Urban is next if I don't lose steam.) Curious, I'm not hot for him. Maybe his having a wife and child alters the equation, though Quinto possibly being gay does not. But I do like John Cho's work. After all, despite the progress Asian Americans have made in entertainment, we can still count the marquee actors on one hand. Gotta support a brother. I popped in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, a movie I thought was obnoxious and overhyped at first. But it's grown on me and really, how do you hate a stoner comedy starring two cool Asian dudes? And by whole country, I guess I mean the under-35 crowd. I think I'm also getting supremely homesick and this is the perfect slice of America that I need. It's not the most flattering - the battleshits scene is out of control - but it captures some of that jaded post-college ethos and leftover frat humor. And it's just damn funny. Oh yeah, and the burgers. When I was a little kid, a regular McDonald's cheese burger was too big so when those marketing gods over at White Castle delivered mini-burgers, that was my idea of 5 year old heaven.

So here is my absolute favorite scene because I LOVED Wilson Phillips. Yes, that's how cool I was. While y'all were listening to Thriller, I was rocking out to Hold On (and Tiffany).

Also some Samuel Barnett news. At long last he has another project that gets to see the light of day. This one is a BBC production called Desperate Romantics, about the Pre-Raphaelite art movement.


Those blokes gave us dreamy paintings like the one posted below that have since become a mainstay for college poster sales. Guys pick up the John Belushi Animal House poster while these Pre-Raphaelite works end up on girls' walls, next to the picture of Tom Cruise from Top Gun. In this mini-series (?), Mr. Barnett plays artist John Everett Millais who is famous for his insane talent and for getting cozy with an art critic's wife. Hooray, Sam finally gets the girl!

BLIND DATING

Blind Dating

There are ways of making low budget romances that don't resort to cheap tricks involving physical disabilities and cultural misunderstandings. Unfortunately this movie forgoes all those methods and instead traffics in stereotypes of the blind and employs the most generic cross-cultural romance. Only the most loyal Chris Pine and Anjali Jay fans should subject themselves to this one, and even that is suggested with extreme caution.

The supposedly endearing premise focuses on Danny (Chris Pine), a sensitive, virginal, Casablanca-loving but sightless bloke whose love life would infinitely improve if only he could see. His gregarious brother Larry (Eddie Kaye Thomas) lends a hand by way of his limo service and some dubious female contacts. Larry sets up his brother with a string of nutty women who exhibit varying degrees of pity, much to Danny’s annoyance. He'd rather normal, if empathetic, girl and finds one in Leeza (Anjali Jay), the new receptionist at his doctor's office. Their budding relationship hits a major and convenient snag though in the form of her impending arranged marriage with a man (Sendhil Ramamurthy) she doesn't particularly love. Danny, however, thinks he's been rejected because he's blind, thus compromising his emotional readiness for an experimental operation that might allow him limited sight. He proceeds with the surgery anyway and his vision is briefly restored. He soon experiences some setbacks, but not before realizing that Leeza is the woman he loves.

For a love story, this movie doesn't break much emotional ground, relying on caricature rather than character. The conflicts sometimes feel tedious, as with the dating scenes, and always feel gimmicky. Everything centers around Danny's blindness, from the laughable - running into trees, spilling wine on his date, wearing mismatched clothing - to the comically offensive. Is the presence of a psychiatrist (Jane Seymour) who regularly strips in front of an unsuspecting Danny funny or even necessary? The cross-cultural romance doesn't help the movie either; it functions solely as a quick plot device and is left unexplored (sorry, Sendhil fans).

Chris Pine's performance is the one redeeming factor in this movie, and he at least tries to wrestle some emotional complexity out of this contrived story. Pine makes a likeable romantic lead for reasons unrelated to his good looks; he demonstrates a fine control over his characters, making moments of emotional unrestraint all the more powerful. This script, unfortunately, doesn't allow for many such scenes. I also like the female lead, Anjali Jay, of Robin Hood fame, but her character suffers from the same inconsistency that plagues the rest of the film.