Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Jake Kasdan, 2007): Everything about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is just begging for me to love it- a script by Judd Apatow, impressive performances from John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer and it's parody of musical biopics- but, more often than not, the film ended up bugging me more than amusing me. My main problem was the beginning which, instead of finding a subtler way to mock Walk the Line and Ray, it hits the audience over the head with all the references in a way that makes the later installments of Scary Movie seem sly and clever. I mean, couldn't they have found a better way to kill the "good" son than with a machete? Thankfully, as Dewey Cox becomes famous the film finds its stride with the dead on parodies; the innuendo-laden "Let's Duet," the bad-ass outlaw song "Guilty as Charged," the protest song "Dear Mr. President," and the nonsensical Dylan parody "Royal Jelly" are all highlights. Walk Hard also gets bonus points for the cameos of Jack Black, Justin Long, Paul Rudd and Jason Schwartzman as the Fab Four- that scene was utterly hilarious.
Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007): I'm not going to lie, I was a little worried about the beginning of Jason Reitman's follow-up to last year's Thank You For Smoking, Juno. That phone conversation between Juno (Ellen Page) and Leah (Olivia Thirlby) in which one of them actually utters "Honest to blog?" was a little disconcerting and had me worried about the rest of the film. Fortunately for the film (and Diablo Cody's script) it eases back a little bit and the actors all make it work. Ellen Page is a revelation as the pregnant Juno, her cynicism and quick wit masking a needy girl, and Jennifer Garner finally proved to me what an amazing actress she is- that scene in the mall where she talks to Juno's baby in the womb trying to get it to kick was heartbreaking. And let me just add that Allison Janney totally stole every scene she was in as Juno's take-no-prisoners step-mother (leading Juno to proclaim at one point, "Wow Bren- you's a dick!"My Ratings:
Walk Hard ***
Juno **** 1/2
3 comments:
I believe that the quote from Juno was, "Wow, Bren- use a dick!" I believe it's even better now! :)
i just rented the dvd of Juno and just watched it... and i ended up at this blog because i googled:
juno "use a dick" "you's a dick"
and you had the only page in the whole world that had both (according to google)
otherwise half the people think it's "use" and the other half think it's "you's"
personally, i heard Juno say "Bren, you's a dick"... but i wanted to be sure (it's such a great phrase coming from such a pint-sized amazon), so i hit instant replay, turned on English subtitles, and lo and behold, the words at the bottom of the screen said "use a dick"
but... personally i think the subtitles are wrong (and by extension, so is samantha and half the peeps on google search)... but who knows?
well, Diablo knows, or anybody who had access to the real script (are you listening Ellen?)... so please, if you have the real script, please enlighten us...
not that this is such a big deal, compared to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and all, but come on...
if i'm gonna use that phrase with my stepmom, and she calls me on it, and she says "what did you say?" i wanna be able to explain to her whether i meant "you's a dick" or "use a dick"... i mean, is it a streetwise compliment? or a hygienic suggestion? youth wants to know...
btw, a shout out to my local Hollywood Video oracle, Connie... i always trust her judgement and knowledge ("hey Connie, did anything good street this Tuesday?") and i rented Juno at her insistence ... no, seriously, she _insisted_, so i moved it up in my list of flicks to watch... she knows my tastes, knows i enjoy an occasional good chick flick (i'm a guy), so the last 4 dvd's i watched were: AVP, Cloverfield, Shrooms, Juno
Juno was delightfully surprisingly good =) i wanna see more stuff written by Diablo =)
good call Connie, as usual =) thanks =)
and thank you Diva for your great blog =)
I gotta say that I think "use" is funnier. I interpreted it as the end of an implied statement something like "If you're going to $%^& someone that hard, you should use a dick". Juno is saying to Bren, you just verbally raped the Ultrasound tech. That and "cautionary whale" were laugh-out-loud moments for me in this perfect flick.
Post a Comment