Jason Mewes has been very busy lately. We know him from cult classics like “Clerks” and all of the Jay and Silent Bob”projects, and earlier this year, Will Harris spoke to him about new TV projects. Now, he’s starring in a new and innovative online TV project on Chill.com called “Vigilante Diaries,” a high energy, fast-paced ride into the dark world of vigilante justice with plenty of guns and blood. The show also stars the lovely Jessica Uberuaga, who you can see in the photos in this post.
For the first 15 years of their existence, Pixar was bulletproof. For the past three years, less so. Following the soaring success of 2010’s “Toy Story 3” was going to be difficult regardless, but 2011’s “Cars 2” and 2012’s “Brave” marked the first time in the company’s history that they released back-to-back films that could be considered disappointments (at least from a critical standpoint; they still made just under $1.1 billion in worldwide ticket sales). With the announcement that their next film would be “Monsters University,” a prequel to 2001’s “Monsters Inc.,” people smelled blood in the water. They’ve run out of ideas. They’re not even trying to be the Pixar of “old.” (That last line is an actual complaint from a fellow critic.) And to be fair, “Monsters University” doesn’t tug at the heart strings the way its predecessor did, but at the same time, how could it? Boo was one of the cutest characters in movie history, and there was no organic way of playing that card in a college setting.
So no, “Monsters University” won’t be anyone’s favorite Pixar movie, but it’s still quite enjoyable, funny, beautifully rendered, and it has a great message for kids about not letting anyone tell you what you can or can’t be. It’s no “Up” or “WALL∙E,” but it’s better than Pixar’s last two films combined, and for that alone, we should be thankful.
Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) arrives on the campus of Monsters University with stars in his eyes. He has wanted to be a scarer since he was a little boy, and has read every book on the subject. Jimmy Sullivan (John Goodman), on the other hand, is a prodigy, a natural born scarer who takes his gifts for granted. After both are kicked out of scaring school because of their obvious shortcomings (Sulley is lazy, and Mike just isn’t scary enough), Mike makes a bet with the tough-nosed Dean Hardscrabble (a pitch-perfect Helen Mirren), where she will let him back into scaring school if he and his oddball fraternity brothers win the annual Scare Games competition. If he loses, he’s expelled from school. Yep, it’s “Revenge of the Nerds,” with monsters, and John Goodman on the ‘nerd’ side of the battle this time around.
“World War Z” has gone through a battle of its own just to make it into theaters. In addition to rumors of a bloated budget and unrest on the set between director Mark Forster and star Brad Pitt, the film’s original release date was pushed back six months to accommodate major rewrites and additional shooting. The studio may not have been able to keep the behind-the-scenes drama under wraps, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the final product, because you honestly wouldn’t know there was even a problem to begin with from watching the movie. Although fans of Max Brooks’ bestselling novel will undoubtedly be disappointed by how much has been changed during the adaptation from page to screen, “World War Z” is an immensely entertaining film that also happens to be much smarter than your average summer blockbuster.
Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a former United Nations worker who specialized in averting international disasters. These days, however, he’s just an ordinary stay-at-home dad living with his wife (Mireille Enos) and two kids in Philadelphia. During a routine trip into the city one morning, all hell breaks loose when people suddenly start attacking others on the street like feral animals, transforming the victims into similar monsters within seconds of being bitten. Gerry and his family barely manage to escape the chaos and are eventually rescued by helicopter and transported to an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after his old U.N. buddy Thierry (Fana Mokoena) pulls some strings. Of course, Thierry has ulterior motives for saving Gerry’s life and wants him back in the field immediately to help track down the cause of the zombie epidemic, and if he refuses, his family will be swiftly booted off the VIP-only vessel.
Sofia Coppola was once heralded as one of Hollywood’s most promising young directors, but over the years, she’s looked more likely to follow in the footsteps of her famous father’s recent work than his celebrated early films. After duds like “Marie Antoinette” and “Somewhere,” Coppola needed to deliver something great to get her career back on track, but while “The Bling Ring” offers an interesting commentary on America’s fame-obsessed youth culture, it’s an incredibly shallow exposé that barely skims the surface of what could have been a fascinating drama. Based on Nancy Jo Sales’ Vanity Fair article “The Suspect Wore Louboutins,” there’s no real point to the movie, unless it’s to say that stealing from B-list celebrities will make you equally as famous, in which case, isn’t it just contributing to the problem?
Though all of the names have been changed, Coppola doesn’t shy away from the fact that it’s based on a true story. If only the studio was as upfront about Emma Watson’s involvement, because despite being marketed as the star of the film, the actress plays a surprisingly small role. Instead, the story is centered on a gay outcast named Marc (Israel Broussard), who meets type-A bad girl Rebecca (Katie Chang) during his first day at a new school and is promptly taken under her wing. After wetting their feet with some petty thefts, Rebecca convinces Marc to break into Paris Hilton’s house when they read on a gossip website that she’s out of town for the night, leaving the pair free to go on a mini shopping spree of the hotel heiress’ massive wardrobe.
When they boast about how easy their conquest was to friends Nicki (Watson), Sam (Taissa Farmiga) and Chloe (Claire Julien), the group of teenage kleptomaniacs returns to Hilton’s house to indulge in their celebrity fantasies, leading to a series of burglaries in the homes of other Hollywood Hills residents like Lindsay Lohan, Megan Fox, Miranda Kerr and Rachel Bilson. (In every instance, one of the doors was either unlocked, or in the case of Hilton, a key was left under the doormat.) And since Coppola intercuts the main narrative with scenes of the rich kids preparing for their big day in court, it’s not a spoiler to reveal that they were eventually caught.
James Gandolfini passed away in Rome, Italy due to an apparent heart attack. He was only 51 years old.
Gandolfini became famous with his portrayal of Tony Soprano. “The Sopranos” is one of the best and most influential dramas in TV history, and the success of the show hinged on Gandolfini’s role as Tony. In many ways the Tony Soprano character lived up to the stereotypes of a New Jersey mob boss, but the brilliance and appeal of “The Sopranos” derived from showing every aspect of Tony’s life, including the small challenges and joys of everyday life. The hook was the idea that this mob boss was seeing a psychiatrist to deal with his panic attacks, but that was just the device to help David Chase flush out this complex and fascinating character.
The writing on the show was brilliant, but it would have gone nowhere without Gandolfini in the lead role. The Tony he created was real, so all the tough guy mob scenes seemed authentic and believable, just like his interactions with his family and friends. Of course, he and the show benefited from an amazing cast, with Edie Falco as Carmela in an equally compelling role. With the two of them, we saw all of the conflicts and contradictions of the lives they lived.
“The Sopranos” helped bring about the revolution in television that saw an explosion of creativity on cable TV, a process that is now broadening even further to streaming original shows on Netflix. Forget about broadcast TV and even most movies – the best stuff is all happening on cable, and that’s been the case for years. In a world where we can access all of these shows on multiple formats and on multiple devices, viewers are much better off watching series like “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad,” “The Wire,” etc. over the latest movies. You can’t underestimate the influence of “The Sopranos” and James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano.
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