Interview: Composer Nathan Johnson

This is impossibly late, but somehow I never got around to posting it anywhere when I conducted it last year (around the time of the film's release). I hope you enjoy it - I've liked everything I've heard from this guy to date, and look forward to continuing to follow his career.

Clark Douglas: We're joined by composer Nathan Johnson. His previous work includes Brick and The Brothers Bloom, and his latest effort is Looper, a sci-fi thriller directed by Rian Johnson and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt and Bruce Willis. Nathan, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

Nathan Johnson: Yeah, definitely, thanks for having me.

CD: Well, this is your third collaboration with your cousin Rian Johnson. I know that every director/composer relationship is different, so I wanted to ask you what your process is like when the two of you begin determining what sort of musical sound is required for a movie.

NJ: It's really fun with Rian. The one great thing about working with Rian is that I come onboard really, really early in the process, which is actually really rare. The composer is usually brought on at the last minute. Yeah, so we start really early talking back and forth about what the world's going to feel like; the sounds that Rian has been thinking about. A lot of times he'll give me references sound-wise; even other composers or musicians and we kind of just dial it back and forth from there.

CD: As you said, composers are generally brought on pretty late in the process, but since you get such an early start on it... do you ever start writing before you've had a chance to see any of the film, or do you prefer to wait until you've seen some footage?

NJ: Yeah, yeah, no, I actually do start writing early sometimes. I will have read the script a number of times. For instance, with The Brothers Bloom I was out in Serbia while they were filming it; hanging out on set. But then, during the day back at my hotel room I'd be working on themes and showing those to Rian. So with Bloom, we actually established the main melodic themes really early on before they even had a rough edit of the film.

CD: Now that's really interesting - you get the opportunity to spend some time on set, and that's something most composers don't get to experience on a regular basis. Does that help you in any significant way during the writing process?

NJ: Yeah! It's really nice to just kind of steep in the feel of the world. It's also really great to see the performances live as they're happening, to see the sets, to be on location... I think it's sort of a luxury, but the more you can put that into your musical world, the better.

CD: There are quite a few distinctive sounds present in this score. I understand you essentially created some new instruments for this movie. Can you tell us about some of the musical experiments you've conducted?

NJ: Yeah, one of the first things Rian and I talked about for Looper was, "How can we create a score for a big action movie without going down some of those well-trodden roads?" So we talked about the idea of gathering field recordings. I actually went down to New Orleans where they were shooting the movie, and I just wandered around the city with a field recorder and a pair of headphones recording anything that I thought was interesting. Some of that was on set; recording mechanical things around the set, but then also wandering around the city recording industrial fans... I did a lot of stuff with the treadmill in our hotel. Then we took all of those sounds, manipulated them, sped them up, slowed them down and spread them across the keyboard so we could actually create the core fabric of the score from these organic; real-world elements.

CD: Those sounds seem to play a particularly dominant role early in the score, but as it moves along you seem to transition into more traditionally musical material.

NJ: Yeah, and it kind of parallels the feel of the movie. A lot of the movie happens on a farm as we go on; that sort of dominates during the second half of the movie. The first sound you hear - the first cue - doesn't have any real instruments in it. It's all stuff that we created from the field recordings. That sort of develops and by the time you get to the very last cue, the last thing you hear is a live celesta being played alone in a room. So it kind of moves along and eventually strips everything back; which sort of operates in parallel with the emotional core of what's going on.

CD: I'm curious, what's the total size of the ensemble? Because at certain points, it does sound like a very big score but for the most part has a more intimate feel than many traditional thriller scores do.

NJ: We kind of split it half and half. The main fabric - what we started with - was built from these created things, but then we worked with the Magic Magic Orchestra (which is this great modular orchestra in San Francisco) and we worked with 14 amazing string players, 3 horns. We had them play like normal string and horn parts, but also had them create textures and atmospherics. There's piano and celesta, and another violinist that I worked with just to create sounds from his violin that I could use atmospherically. Then there's percussion and drums... so it's fairly small, probably twenty-five pieces when you add everyone up. But it's definitely approaching it in a constructed way rather than just a purely capturing than a room approach.

CD: It does seem you've got a pretty diverse array of ways to capture this music. As you say, not just putting a bunch of musicians together in a room, playing and recording and then you're done - there's a lot of additional production involved in an effort like this.

NJ: Yep. Yeah, definitely.

CD: When you begin a project, do you tend to start with your thematic material and then work from there, or do you prefer to figure out the general tone before you start hammering out themes?

NJ: Yeah, I almost always start thematically, but Looper was the first time that I didn't start thematically at all. It was completely tonal and atmospheric on Looper. Rian actually sent me two scenes when we were really early in the editing process, and said, "Hey, we're having trouble finding temp music as placeholder stuff for these. Do you want to just dive in and see what you come up with for this?" So I did that, but that actually felt very much like going down a dark, unfamiliar path for me. Usually, I have the whole thematic arc sketched out and all the different melodic themes, but I knew that this was gonna be so different. I kind of just dove in with those. The demo sketches that I made for those two scenes are almost without change exactly what you hear in the final cut. Rian listened to them and said, "This is it. This is what Looper sounds like; you've found it. This is what we start from."

CD: Is this the first time that you've started on a feature without having some sort of temp track in place to reference at any point?

NJ: Well, those were only a couple of scenes that didn't have temp music. There was temp music for everything else. But yeah, so far all of the features I've done have started with temp music.

CD: One of the interesting things about this score - as we talked about a little earlier - is that while there are those large parts, it often feels more intimate and personal than typical scores along these lines. Was there ever any pressure from the studio or others to create a bigger, more traditional action score or were you free to do whatever you wanted to do?

NJ: Rian does a good job of - if there is that sort of pressure - of insulating his team from it. So if there was, I wasn't that aware of it. We were up in Toronto recently for the premiere, and someone asked me if I felt nervous. At that point, I actually truly didn't feel nervous; it was just excitement. For me, when I'm working on something like this, the director is the only person I'm concerned with satisfying. I get nervous when I'm sending music to the director, and once it feels to them like it's the right tone and like it's telling the story that they're wanting to tell... that's the main thing I care about, helping them advance their vision.

CD: So you're writing music for an audience of one, essentially?

NJ: Yeah! I know that theoretically it's more than that, but I really feel like - even in a way that's different from writing music for my own projects - this is all about bringing one director's vision to the screen.

CD: How much do you think about or worry about creating music which is a satisfying experience on album divorced from the movie? Is that something that enters your mind, or are you just focused on creating something which is effective when married to the images in the film?

NJ: I mean, I definitely think about it. You kind of want to not think about it too much. The thing is, I know there's going to be a soundtrack album. The soundtrack album is kind of a secondary thing, but it crosses my mind. One of the things we did on Looper is once we had mixed the movie, we took a break and came back to revisit everything. I kind of stitched things together and expanded other things so that it worked a little better as an album that you could sit down and listen to; so there weren't twenty thirty-second cues on the record.

CD: Are there any film composers past or present who have influenced you or been a source of inspiration for you?

NJ: Yeah, yeah, quite a few! I mean, Morricone and Nino Rota are two of my favorite classical-type composers. Obviously some of the big boys like John Williams. I grew up loving Star Wars as a kid, and John Williams was kind of my first exposure to film music where I was really aware of what was happening and how into it I was. There are lots of guys working right now, too... I really enjoy some of the stuff the guys who come from more of a songwriting or band background are doing. Obviously, Jonny Greenwood; I'm a big Radiohead fan, anyway. Jon Brion. I thought Trent Reznor's scores for The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were really fantastic, as well.

CD: You've mentioned that you've written music outside the film music world - was film music always the dream, or just sort of something you slipped into?

NJ: No, I actually came from a performing/songwriting/producing/band background. When Rian was doing Brick, I had just finished this concept narrative record with my band. It told a story and had a graphic novella that went alongside it that my brother had illustrated. Rian actually heard that and put two and two together in his head and asked if I'd be interested in taking a stab at doing the music for Brick. I had never thought about the idea of being a film composer. I was obsessed with the idea of narrative storytelling and I grew up just loving movies and music, so looking back I can see the thread, but it wasn't something I dreamed of being when I was a kid.

CD: Just over the course of the three feature films you've score for your cousin, you've the opportunity to explore a pretty wide range of sounds and styles...

NJ: Yeah (laughs).

CD: Is there a particular type of score or project you're eager to try your hand at someday?

NJ: I'm not sure. I guess the answer is that I don't really have a checklist of, "I'd like to do this type of score." The great thing about working with Rian is that when I get a script, I know it's going to be a new, different world. What goes hand-in-hand with that is figuring out a totally new, different approach to the music - which has been really fun and challenging on all three things we've done so far. I guess the "sort-of-answer" to your question is that I'm a lot more interested in the quality of the work than the genre or style of film music.

CD: So as long as it's worthwhile, it doesn't matter what type of music you're doing.

NJ: Yeah, totally. It's so thrilling to be involved with something that you're really excited about artistically. I guess it's a bit like an actor; you get a chance to put on a different hat. Your stamp is always on the music, but it feels really fun to step in and out of different worlds. That's one thing which is very unique to film music which is different from being a performer or in a band.

CD: The comparison to acting is interesting, and perhaps particularly apt in your case and your cousin's case given the diverse nature of your work so far. Brick, The Brothers Bloom and Looper are such wildly different efforts that the average person wouldn't look at them as a group and think, "Oh, all of this came from that guy."

NJ: Right! (laughs)

CD: Was one of those projects more satisfying than the others, or have the experiences been pretty comparable?

NJ: I don't know if as a sum total one was more satisfying, but they were definitely satisfying in different ways. Bloom was extremely satisfying in terms of melody and a songwriter's perspective, whereas Looper has very little of that. But Looper was very satisfying in terms of trying something brand new and seeing where that went. I mean, there isn't much melody in Looper, but it feels very satisfying to have gone down this rabbit hole of building new sound and taking a tonal approach to the world.

CD: Looking ahead, what's next on the horizon for you?

NJ: I've got a couple projects that I'm working on that I'm really excited about, but I don't think I can publicly talk about them yet. They will become apparent very soon*, and I think they're gonna be really cool. (Laughs)

CD: Fair enough. Nathan, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us about your work.

NJ: Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

*Mr. Johnson is scoring Joseph Gordon-Levitt's forthcoming directorial debut Don John, which hadn't been announced at the time of this interview.

Back at ya later

A Few Thoughts on Roger Ebert

It took a few minutes for the news of Roger Ebert's passing to sink in. This couldn't be right. Sure, Mr. Ebert had faced a number of severe health problems over the course of the last decade, and he had recently revealed that his cancer had returned. However, when addressing the matter, Roger spoke as if the cancer was nothing more than another obstacle to be overcome. He had successfully beaten one health problem after another, and continued to remain active in the realm of film criticism despite the fact that most men in his position would have called it quits. He had every reason in the world to hang it up and relax, but his love for his profession demanded that he keep writing until he reached the point where he was physically unable to do so. Even as his physical form deteriorated into an unrecognizable version of its former self, he retained his unmistakable voice as a writer.

The realization that I would never again read a new Ebert review was nothing short of alarming. The man is more or less single-handedly responsible for my interest in film criticism. During my teenage years, I would quickly follow each movie I watched with a visit to Ebert's website to read his review. Sure, I read reviews by other critics, but my relationship with Ebert was on a different level. There was something about the deeply personal, candid, unpretentious way that the famed Chicago Sun-Times critic expressed his views which really resonated with me. His work had a conversational quality; a plainspoken sincerity which made him stand apart from the crowd. He marched to the beat of his own drum regardless of where critical consensus drifted, and permitted his emotions to drive his reviews to an extent that few other critics seemed comfortable with. On many occasions, this approach permitted Ebert to develop a reputation as a man ahead of the curve (after all, he was one of the first critics to endorse Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey - movies which are regarded as classics today but which were hotly debated by critics upon their initial release). At other times, it made him look out of touch (such as when he panned A Clockwork Orange and labeled Godfather II as a disappointment in contrast to its predecessor). Even so, there was never any doubt that he was always delivering his honest opinion, critical trends be damned.

I have to admit that there's a good chance that I love many of the films I love simply because Ebert loved them. Ebert was a great entertainer, and his negative reviews were often delightfully savage (so memorable that Ebert saw fit to compile many of them in collections endearingly titled Your Movie Sucks and I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie). However, he was at his best when he was praising a movie, which isn't something which can be said of many critics. As Steven Soderbergh recently noted, critics tend to be immensely creative when they're crafting insults but turn dull when they're trying to describe a film's greatness. Not in Ebert's case. When the man was passionate about a movie, his enthusiasm was infectious. On literally hundreds of occasions, I would read a four-star Ebert review and excitedly head to my local video rental store to see if they had that particular title in stock. I'd watch the film, form my own opinion and then go back to re-read the review. I had some of his particularly thought-provoking reviews more or less memorized.

Movies have been an integral part of life, and Mr. Ebert guided me to so many of my most rewarding cinematic experiences. Yes, there were plenty of established classics (2001: A Space Odyssey, Taxi Driver, Vertigo) that I probably would have gotten around to eventually, but there were also countless smaller, more obscure films that Ebert championed with equal gusto: Gates of Heaven. Ikiru. Winter Light. The films of Werner Herzog, Ramin Bahrani and Krzystof Kieslowski. He was such a champion of cinematic underdogs that he even began Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival, devoted to spotlighting recently-released films which he felt hadn't received the level of praise and/or attention they deserved. It was through his accessible, thoughtful reviews that myself and countless others began to explore movies beyond the major studio fare and learn how to regard movies critically. Some have declared that Ebert dumbed down film criticism when he and Gene Siskel introduced the thumbs up/thumbs down system, but anyone who feels that way neglected to hear the words which accompanied the thumbs. More than any other critic, Ebert worked hard to expand the horizons of the average viewer.

Visiting his website each Friday was a weekly highlight, as I would eagerly devour his latest batch of reviews (and would often use them to help determine which two or three movies I would see over the course of the weekend). I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent many Thursday nights hitting the refresh button and impatiently waiting for Mr. Ebert's reliable editor Jim Emerson to upload the week's new reviews. Reading his work gave me a hunger not only to see new films, but to write about them myself. Had I never discovered him, I doubt I would have begun dabbling in the realm of film criticism.

I never had anything resembling a personal relationship with Mr. Ebert. We exchanged e-mails on a few occasions over the years (he was gracious enough to reply to a handful of compliments, complaints and questions I sent his way - and he treated an unknown nobody like myself as if I were one of his peers), but that was the extent of it. Even so, I can't shake the feeling that I've just lost a good friend. I know there are countless others who feel the same way. Over the past few years in particular, Ebert invited his readers into his personal life and took them on a step-by-step journey through his assorted medical battles. Even though his reviews grew increasingly erratic in his final years, he did some of his best writing on his personal blog, where he tackled any subject he felt inspired to tackle: politics, religion, sex, evolution, death, books, travel, movies, food, music, health, etc. It seems appropriate that the title of his memoir is Life Itself, as the man had valuable, thought-provoking things to say about nearly everything. He was a fine film critic, but more importantly, he was a great human being.

There are so many other things I'd like to say, so many other anecdotes about the various ways in which Ebert's work has affected my life - but for now, I'll simply say that I miss him so very much.

In conclusion, a few words from the man himself which are well worth remembering:

"Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. I didn't always know this and I am happy I lived long enough to find it out."

They Just Fade Away

The story I'm about to tell you isn't the sort of story I generally tell. Most of the encounters I talk about on Facebook are of the humorous or unusual variety; attempts to take snapshots of peculiar encounters. However, the story I'm about to relay is a story of romance, nostalgia, heartbreak and regret. It's a bit messy, because I've tried to preserve this story as it was told to me without grammatical or structural embellishment. I have left out specific names, however.

I spent a large portion of this morning in conversation with a 92-year-old World War II Veteran. He called the station and asked for me by name. He told me he just wanted someone to talk to. I asked why he had asked for me specifically, and he told me that he had heard me on a few programs and that I sounded like, "a pretty nice guy." He had a story he wanted to tell me.

"I was in the army in World War II," he said, "I never did see any action, but I suppose that's a good thing. I would have been ashamed if I hadn't at least been ready to fight, though. I spent most of my time in the military right here in the U.S. After the war I was stationed in Alabama, and while I was there I met a beautiful girl. You know that Blueberry Hill song? The one about the guy who found his thrill on Blueberry Hill?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well, that song pretty much describes everything you need to know about what happened between us. It's basically our story. Sometimes I think whoever wrote that song must have been spying on us, but I know that ain't true. Anyway, before too long she was pregnant. Now most fellas would be pretty scared if they found out their girl was pregnant. But I wasn't scared. I was in love with this girl and I was happy. She was happy, too. We were going to get married - we wanted to do it pretty quickly before anybody really knew that she was pregnant. And I thought everything was going to be just great. Unfortunately, I had a nemesis."

"A nemesis?"

"Yeah. The sergeant above me. He was the meanest S.O.B. who ever lived. He hated most everybody, but he especially hated me. He always said I wasn't man enough for the army and he would make me do all the dirty work around the base. Anyway, my captain liked me and wanted to give me a promotion, but the sergeant wouldn't go along with it. So the captain waited until the sergeant was on furlough and then he got me a promotion. When the sergeant found out about that, he was really mad. All this was before me and the girl were going to get married, you understand."

"I see."

"Well, when he found out we were going to get married, he decided he was going to get revenge on me because I got that promotion. He told me that I was being transferred immediately and that I needed to leave the next day. Now, this was on a Tuesday, and I was supposed to get married on Saturday. She had gone out of town to visit her family for the week, and she was supposed to meet me back at the base on Friday. Now, believe it or not, I didn't even know where her family lived and I didn't know how to get in touch with her. I asked the sergeant if he could give her a message and tell her where I'd gone when she got back in town so we could make new arrangements. He grumbled about it and said I was a fool for getting married, but he said he would tell her.

"Anyway, I got transferred to a base in South Carolina and I didn't hear anything from her. I was worried, but back then I didn't have a way to get in contact with her. I was worried sick for a few weeks. Finally I was able to get enough time to drive back to Alabama for a couple of days. After I did some looking around, I discovered that she was still there - but she was married to one of my buddies! I was so upset I didn't even know what to do. I went marching over to see my friend and I was all ready to get into it with him. We almost started fighting, but he explained what happened. He said that the sergeant had told the girl that I had left and that I never wanted to see her again. Then my Buddy explained that he had seen her crying and asked her what was the matter. She told him what she thought I had done to her, and he felt real bad for her. He had a crush on her when I'd been seeing her, so he offered to marry her. She took him up on the offer 'cause she wanted to be married when she had her baby.

"My friend was real nice about it and all - he said that he didn't intend to let her go now that he was married to her, but if I wanted to talk to her alone and explain the situation he wouldn't object. But I said no. I couldn't bear to see again and know that I couldn't have her. I told him that I wouldn't want to do anything to interfere with his marriage and just asked him to tell her that I wished her all the luck in the world.

"Well, after that I was just in agony for a while. I wasn't really religious then - I'm saved now, but I didn't get saved properly until a few years ago - but anyway, I was praying all the time asking God to help me forget. Then I had a stroke and it really messed me up for a while, but it definitely took my mind off the situation. I don't know if that's something that just happened or if that was God answering my prayer in some funny way. But that happened. And after a while I was able to forget all about it. I never did get married, because any time I thought about romance I thought about her, and I didn't figure it would be fair to any other girl to get married when I was still in love with another woman. So I just focused on my work and my hobbies and other things."

There was a long silence.

"I don't know what to say," I said. "That's an incredibly sad story."

"Well, it was tough for a while," he said. "But I thought I had gotten over it. That's actually the reason I wanted to tell somebody - I've been having these dreams."

"What kind of dreams?"

"Dreams about her. Almost every night now. I keep thinking about her and wondering if she's still out there somewhere. She might be gone by now - I'm 92 and she'd be in her late 80's. But I don't know why, after all these years, I've started thinking about her again. Maybe once you get towards the end of life you start thinking about all the things you missed out on. Are you married?"

"Yes," I said.

"Are you happy?"

"Very much so," I said.

"Well, that's good. If I could tell young folks one thing, it would be when you find the love of your life, you should hold onto 'em no matter what. Doesn't matter if it costs you your job or your reputation or anything; none of that stuff really matters."

We talked for a while longer, as he filled me in on some of the other chapters in his life. He talked about how long he had been listening to the radio station, and that tuning for a couple of hours each morning was a part of his daily routine. He said he felt like everyone at the station was a personal friend, even though he hadn't even spoken to most of us. I asked him if I could share his story with others.

"Oh yes, please do," he said. "If it just helps one person out there, then that'll make me happy. That'll make me feel like at least some good came out of it, you know? Because right now it just feels like there's nothing good about it at all."

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You: June 2012

Hey folks,

It's been over a month since my last post, though that isn't due to lack of writing. There are about five different semi-completed drafts waiting to be fine-tuned, finished, reconsidered or scrapped entirely. Hopefully at least a couple of those will see the light of day at some point, but in the meantime, let's move on to our monthly look at the films coming up over the course of the next month.

June 1st

"Ha! Look at David Hasselhoff satirizing his Baywatch image!"  - Something no one says anymore due to how often The Hoff has done this in recent years

I've been slowly but surely warming up to the idea of Snow White and the Huntsman, as the marketing has gotten progressively better and the buzz has been encouraging. Additionally, considering how many sarcastic reworkings of fairy tales we've gotten in the post-Shrek era, it's kinda nice to see a movie erring on the side of taking things a bit too seriously. It's only wide release opposition is Pirahna 3DD, which... yeah. Elsewhere, there's the "teenagers compete with each other in a dance competition" flick Battlefield America and a movie about stoned teenagers aptly entitled High School. Basically, that Snow White movie looks better by the minute.

June 8th

Glad to see the franchise hasn't lost its subtly witty touch.

There's probably no way that Prometheus can possibly live up to the expectations which have been placed upon it, but I'm incredibly excited about seeing Ridley Scott return to science fiction (the genre which produced his two finest films to date). For the wee ones, there's Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, though I still can't force myself to demonstrate any interest in that tedious series (and this is coming from an animation junkie who will probably watch yet another Ice Age movie in the theatre later this summer). Again, the choice is pretty obvious. In limited release, we have a diverse slate of options: the Aubrey Plaza comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, the Robert Pattinson-starring period piece Bel Ami, the Greta Gerwig comedy Lola Versus and Jane Fonda's return to theatres with Peace, Love and Misunderstanding (a sigh-inducing title if ever there was one).

June 15th

How is it possible for Paul Giamatti to look even more Paul Giamatti-ish?

The musical comedy Rock of Ages has a terrific cast, but so did Mamma Mia! and look what happened there. Also, in the wake of M:I:IV, it seems like the public might just be ready to embrace Tom Cruise again, but I'm not sure this is the path which best suits him. Adam Sandler also continues his ambitious attempt to determine just how little effort the American public is willing to tolerate with the inevitable future Razzie nominee That's My Boy. In limited release, the Ethan Hawke thriller The Woman in the Fifth is arriving (and has generated solid early reviews) alongside Lynn Shelton's indie comedy Your Sister's Sister (starring present-day indie staple Mark Duplass).

June 22nd
 

A still from Impenetrable Fog: The Movie

Fingers crossed that Brave represents a return to form for Pixar. No, Cars 2 wasn't an abominable disaster, but it was the first of their films which felt like it could have been made by any major animation studio. Honestly, the Brave trailers haven't done a lot for me, but Pixar's marketing campaigns have traditionally been pretty poor indicators of the final product's (usually impressive) quality. Its biggest competition is Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which I suspect will turn out to be one of the summer's most ill-advised experiments. It's a cute idea for about 30 seconds, but the trailers make it look like an exceptionally tedious long-form joke. I'm far more interested in the comedy/drama Seeking a Friend at the End of the World, which looks like it might actually bring some fresh ideas to an increasingly overused idea. Finally, Woody Allen delivers his annual feature with the comedy anthology To Rome with Love. Considering Allen's track record, he'll undoubtedly follow his unexpected Midnight in Paris success with a film which disappoints viewers and causes them to dismiss the prolific director for the umpteenth time.

June 29th

Eugene Levy and Tyler Perry in a playful scene from Formulaic Adventures Test Market Audiences Enjoy: The Movie

The final weekend of the month offers a blend of peculiarities, beginning with Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, a romantic comedy set within the world of male strippers. Former real-life male stripper Channing Tatum removes his shirt (and more, presumably) alongside such other frequently-shirtless actors as Alex Pettyfyr, Matthew McConaughey and Olivia Munn. If nothing else, it once again demonstrates that there's nothing Soderbergh won't try at least once. Tyler Perry delivers his latest in the form of Madea's Witness Protection (this time bringing Eugene Levy along to do yet another variation on his "square white man" routine), and Seth McFarlane takes one of the year's biggest risks by spending $100 million on Ted, a movie in which Mark Wahlberg gets into hallucinatory R-rated adventures with a stuffed bear. Good luck with that, pal. In limited release, the critically-acclaimed Beasts of the Southern Wild is finally arriving in theatres. Several folks have described it as a live-action Miyazaki flick, which sounds amazing. Also, Transformers/Star Trek/Fringe writer Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci turn their attention to robot-free drama with the Chris Pine vehicle People Like Us. Curious to see how well these two fare when dealing with more down-to-earth material.

Picks of the Month

3. Seeking a Friend at the End of the World

Starring Keira Knightley and Rick Santorum.

2. Beasts of the Southern Wild

Childlike Whimsy: The Movie

1. Prometheus

Welcome back, creepy H.R Giger-designed visual metaphors.

What are you looking forward to?

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You - May 2012

Summer movie season is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. Let's take a look at some of the big blockbusters on the horizon (along with some of the smaller movies which will be quietly pleading for your attention).

May 4th
 

Actor Tom Wilkinson, seconds before snapping into a violent rage after a nosy photographer interrupted his afternoon prayers.

Summer kicks off in grand fashion with Joss Whedon's The Avengers. Most of the Marvel movies have essentially been feature-length trailers for this star-studded spectacle, so expectations are understandably high. Happily, early buzz is quite strong and many are suggesting that Whedon has managed to keep his own distinctive voice intact. I'm looking forward to it, even if we're now on our third big-screen Bruce Banner of the 21st Century. A smart piece of counter-programming is being offered in the form of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a romantic comedy for viewers of a certain age who would much rather watch Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith wander around India than witness Iron Man and Thor punching each other. Seriously, it does look like a nice movie. And for the people who no interest in either of those, there's a movie called LOL which stars Miley Cyrus as a heartbroken teen named Lola. And the sequel will probably be called LOLA, and the trailer guy will say, "Get ready to Laugh Out Loud Again!" And I will sigh heavily.

May 11th

Because nothing says "deadly psychopath" like a pony sweater.

Tim Burton returns with Dark Shadows, a goofy updating of the moody vampire-themed soap opera. I can't exactly say that I'm excited about it, but it at least looks like a step up from Alice in Wonderland. The Danny Elfman score is enjoyable and the cast is talented. We'll see. Not much of note competing in wide release, though in limited release we'll see the lightweight Eva Mendes vehicle Girl in Progress and the hotly-debated-even-though-most-people-haven't-seen-it-yet comedy God Bless America, in which a middle-aged man and a teenage girl wander across the country murdering people who annoy them. In other words, it looks a bit like the movie an internet message board might make if internet message boards were people who made movies.

May 18th

A scene from the forthcoming epic Battleship: The Musical 

The world has already decided that Peter Berg's Battleship will not be good, and early reviews have drawn unfavorable comparisons to Michael Bay's recent work. Eeesh. Then again, Michael Bay's recent work has done quite well at the box office, so maybe Berg and John Carter star Taylor Kitsch shouldn't start crying into their beer just yet. What to Expect When You're Expecting looks terrible in an entirely different way, though that's not really a surprise: no one other than Woody Allen should be permitted to make movies based on self-help books. Sacha Baron Cohen returns to theaters with The Dictator, which is his first traditional feature. Cohen's a talented guy, though his material does a lot less for me than it does for many critics (I found Borat overrated and pretty much hated Bruno). He's subtler and funnier in his more reserved turns in Hugo and Sweeney Todd. Finally, we have the period comedy Hysteria, which stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and documents the invention of the vibrator. Expect many scenes in which elderly British actors (hey, Jonathan Pryce!) raise their eyebrows in astonishment.

May 25th
 

Because nothing says "terrifying cinema" like the letter R printed backwards.

Hey, here's Men in Black III! This probably would have been a huge hit in 2005 (y'know, instead of a full decade after the last Men in Black movie), but now? I dunno. This should be a valuable indicator of whether Smith is still an unstoppable force at the box office (some people said that Seven Pounds proved otherwise, but c'mon, no actor on planet earth could have turned Seven Pounds into a megahit). The trailer doesn't exactly look promising, but I must admit that casting Josh Brolin as young Tommy Lee Jones was a smart move. Also: where else are you going to find Michael Stuhlbarg and Lady Gaga in the same movie? Chernobyl Diaries looks like straight-to-DVD material to me, but one can rarely predict what audiences will go for when it comes to horror (remember how The Devil Inside made a killing at the box office earlier this year?). In limited release, we have Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which I can't wait to see. Anderson's twee, formal style is easy to mock, but the sheer soulfulness of his movies is often overlooked. He's an enormously gifted director who seems to grow just a little bit more with each new effort, and this one looks like another winner.

Picks of the Month

3. Men in Black III/Dark Shadows (Because one of these has to be decent, right?)

Actor Will Smith, revisiting Men in Black II for the first time in years and realizing that it really wasn't his finest hour.

   

Actor Johnny Depp explains how he used Roseanne Barr, Count Basie, Andy Warhol and a beetle he found behind the sofa as models for his latest performance.

2. The Avengers
 

A forgotten classic returns to theatres in 3-D!

1. Moonrise Kingdom

Actor Bruce Willis, using glasses as a way of denoting that he is actually making an effort to act.

What are you looking forward to?

Back at ya later

Should I Be Concerned?

One of my co-workers - an energetic, middle-aged man who has a rather contentious relationship with technology - asked me if I could do him a favor.

"Sure," I said. "What's up?"

"Well, see, you're good with all of this equipment around here. Could you help me patch a song through to a girl's answering machine? Today's her birthday and I'd like to butter her up; make her feel good."

"Yeah, I can do that. This your new girlfriend?"

"Well... I mean, we see each other now and then. You know how it is."

"I see. So what's the song you're looking for?"

"Well, that's the other thing I need your help with," he says. "It's this birthday song... all about birthdays..."

"I assume you're not talking about the usual birthday song..."

"No, no, no, it's this other birthday song from back in the day."

"Is it the Beatles song?"

"No, not that one. It's a guy singing to his little girlfriend - something about teenagers, sweet sixteen, happy birthday..."

"Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen?"

"Yeah! Who did that one."

"Neil Sedaka, I think," I replied, quickly turning to Google to confirm my suspicions. "Yeah, Neil Sedaka."

"Yeah, so that's what I wanna play for her."

"Okay. I hope it's not actually her 16th birthday?"

"I'm not sure which birthday it is. She lives on her own in Atlanta, though, so she's old enough. She made me some cake on my birthday, too, and that's definitely a grown woman thing to do."

"Your evidence seems pretty unshakable."

"Oh, that reminds me - when you dial the number for me, be sure to press *67 so nobody can look at her phone and see who's been calling."

Back at ya later

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You - April 2012

April is generally an intriguing month, as studios push out products they actually have some faith in but which probably wouldn't survive against the heavy May/June/July competition. Let's take a look at what we're getting.

April 6th

"Did you ever think this series would be, like, our legacy?"

In recent years, the American Pie franchise has grown irrelevant. The former pop culture phenomenon has devolved into a series of increasingly miserable-looking straight-to-DVD affairs marketed towards easily-amused jocks without internet access. Still, that's not going to stop anyone from attempting to recapture the old magic (?) with American Reunion, which reunites the original cast and provides them with undoubtedly contrived reasons to behave badly. The only other wide release it will compete against is the re-release of Titanic (in 3D, natch), and I wouldn't be surprised if the latter ends up sinking* the former.

*I apologize.

April 13th

Curb your enthusiasm. Seriously.

I keep hearing good things about the horror/thriller Cabin in the Woods, and I keep being informed that the less you know, the better the film will be. I know very little about it, aside from the fact that it was penned by Joss Whedon and reportedly features a cabin in an area filled with trees. Speaking of horror, the Farrelly Brothers are bringing The Three Stooges back to life. The terrible trailers combined with Peter and Bobby's weak track record in recent years have thoroughly scared me away. Lockout looks like a decent slice of genre fun, though its producers can't seem to figure out whether it's "Taken in space!" or "Escape From New York in space!" Either way, it's definitely recycled material. In space. Finally, T.D. Jakes follows up his cinematic version of Woman, Thou Art Loosed with a sequel awkwardly entitled Woman, Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day. I hear it's a combination of Taken and Why Did I Get Married, but it's probably less fun than that description makes it sound.

April 20th

"Are you sure people are gonna believe that I drive a pickup truck filled with bags of fertilizer?"

The Lucky One is a Nicholas Sparks adaptation which stars Zac Efron. Odds are that sentence either fills you will unspeakable joy or makes you physically ill. We also get an adaptation of Steve Harvey's relationship book Think Like a Man (advice I've found helpful on multiple occasions), though it has a metatextual twist: it seems the male characters get upset because they've discovered that the female characters have been using the advice in Harvey's book against them. No word on whether Steve Harvey plays himself, but it seems that Ron Artest does. Remarkably, we also get two competing nature documentaries, both of which will undoubtedly remind us that A) animals are adorable, B) are just like us and C) do the darndest things. You can either check out Chimpanzee (narrated by Tim Allen) or To the Arctic 3D (narrated by Meryl Streep).

April 27th

"While I nodded, nearly napping/they placed me in these period trappings."

First up, we have the romantic comedy The Five-Year Engagement. It's another collaboration between director Nicholas Stoller and actor Jason Segal, who made me laugh with both their surprisingly enjoyable Forgetting Sarah Marshall and their screenplay for The Muppets. On the more dramatic side of things, we have V for Vendetta helmer James McTeigue delivering the From Hell-on-Steroids thriller The Raven (which amusingly features the increasingly droopy-eyed John Cusack as Edgar Allen Poe). The Pirates! Band of Misfits doesn't have a great trailer, but Aardman Animation has a strong track record. Whether it's good or bad, it will be absent one mildly amusing leprosy joke. Finally, Jason Statham's latest installment in his Film-of-the-Month club is Safe, which involve the Russian mafia, a kidnapped Chinese girl, corrupt New York mobsters and other elements which blatantly appeal to specific markets around the globe.

Honestly, another weak-looking month. I'm not one who regards blockbuster season as the highlight of my cinematic year, but summer 2012 can't get here quickly enough.

Picks of the month:

3. The Five Year Engagement

That moment when a roaster finally crosses the line and no one else notices.

2. Lockout

"But seriously, my favorite weapon is sarcasm."

1. Cabin in the Woods

A strong indication that the film will deliver what it promises.

 What say you, folks?