Friday Night at the Movies

Now that the 2007 Academy Award nominations have been announced, many of the critically acclaimed films that were released late last year are now reaching Charlottesville.

This weekend's movie menu is rich and deep. There is Volver, with Penelope Cruz, at Vinegar Hill. The Regal Downtown has five Oscar-nominated films on its six screens: Babel, The Last King of Scotland, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Notes on a Scandal. The Regal Seminole Square features Dreamgirls and The Pursuit of Happyness. And The Queen is at the Carmike.

So what did I choose to spend my $8.75 ticket price on?

I went to see Epic Movie. Or, as Bill the Cat would say, "Thbbbt!"

To tell the truth, with all those heavy dramas in town, I was looking for an easy laugh or two. And that's what I got.

Perhaps I should not be so unkind. Epic Movie has more than a couple of laughs in it. I chuckled several more times than that. Most of the humor is rather subtle, which is odd, because Epic Movie is produced in an ostentatiously over-the-top fashion.

Most of the plot -- such as it is -- hangs on the scaffolding of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are four "orphans" named Peter, Susan, Edward, and Lucy who find the magical land of Gnarnia when trying to hide in a mysterious wardrobe. Mayhem ensues.

Epic Movie, like Scary Movie before it (along with its sequels), is a descendant of Airplane! Sadly, each generation of this genre -- using references and allusions to other movies and pop-culture phenomena -- finds itself lacking more and more of Airplane!'s DNA. Nowadays, Family Guy does it better than any of the movies do.

While our four principals are fighting their way to the Gnarnian throne, we get long sequences based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Pirates of the Caribbean. (Does Johnny Depp get extra residuals for being sent up twice in one parody?) There are references to MTV's Cribs, American Pie, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (Kal Penn, who played Kumar, is "Edward" in Epic Movie), even Borat. Snakes on a Plane, Nacho Libre, and the X-Men series also get screen treatment. James Bond and Chewbacca make brief appearances, as does a drunken Mel Gibson.

Most of the people who saw the movie with me are going to go "Wha-?" when they read that last reference. As soon as the credits began, more than 95 percent of the audience left the theatre. (Perhaps they were commenting on the quality of the film, but I don't think so. They were just in a hurry.) Consequently, they missed some of the funniest bits the movie had to offer -- interspersed with the end credits. One of them had a Mel Gibson lookalike in a prison cell with Edward. Another was a complete musical number featuring the Oompa Loompas and Willy Wonka.

To be fair, there are two quite remarkable performances in Epic Movie that deserve noting: Crispin Glover is absolutely creepy as Willy Wonka and Darrell Hammond is absolutely unrecognizable as Captain Jack Swallows. (Johnny Depp must be terrifically inspiring.)

Were I to give the producers the benefit of the doubt, I might suggest that they are serious about their art. This would be demonstrated by some of the more subtle jabs at film conventions in Epic Movie. For instance, there is no attempt to hide the use of stunt doubles (or even dummies) in fight sequences. Displaying the artifice like this is winking at the more alert members of the audience. It is, in itself, an acknowledgement of what the Germans might call "die Hörerschaftkeit," or audience-ness. ("Ha, ha -- we know you're out there! And you paid $8.75 to see this, too!")

Allow me to vent, briefly, about rudeness in the theatre. Would you believe that a woman a few rows behind me actually answered her cell phone about ten minutes before the movie ended!? She carried on a conversation that was audible to the entire theatre. (From what I could gather, she was making plans to meet in the lobby someone who was seeing a movie in a different auditorium.)

So, if you attended the 9:30 p.m. showing of Epic Movie at the Carmike Cinema in Charlottesville on Friday, January 26, and you recognize yourself as the person who talked aloud on her mobile phone -- you deserve to be slapped around and should never show your face in public again. Ever.

Etiquette aside, Epic Movie just does not measure up.

'What Were You All Doing in the Wardrobe?'

Virginia Film Festival, 2006 -- Day Three:

The morning began sunnily but inside the Regal Cinema it was winter, with a screening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Disney's 2005 blockbuster. The movie was followed by a panel discussion moderated by the ubiquitous David Edelstein and featuring the film's producer, Mark Johnson, and its star, Peter Pevensie himself, young British actor William Moseley:

After an informative give-and-take with the audience, Mr. Moseley yielded to the desires of his (mostly female) teenage fans by signing some autographs in the lobby:

I left Narnia to see Cecil B. DeMille's silent version of King of Kings at the Paramount, but the toll of too many films on too little sleep began to affect me, so I ducked out after 20 minutes -- I stayed for the conversion of Mary Magdalene -- and took a break at home. Missing the live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton was a disappointment, but I needed some time to breathe.

Returning to downtown Charlottesville, I caught Michael Tolkin's The Rapture. The discussion with the director/screenwriter that followed this silly and pretentious movie was far better than the film itself.

Rushing to Newcomb Hall on the grounds of the University of Virginia, I saw last year's Everything Is Illuminated, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, which was followed by a Q&A with the film's director and screenwriter, Tony-winning actor Liev Schreiber. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but let me just suggest this as a something to send to U.S. Senator George Allen as a Chanukah present this year.

I raised one question, which seemed to embarrass Mr. Schreiber, though he shrugged it off with aplomb.

I noticed that, in the movie, the Ukrainian tour company (and the family that runs it) is based in Odessa. But the character of Jonathan (played by Elijah Wood, in an understated yet neurotic performance) arrives at and departs from a railroad station in Lviv, some 388 miles northwest of Odessa. (Odessa is on the Black Sea; Lviv was once the Polish town of Lvov.) This wasn't something obscure that I caught: the name of Lviv is splashed in letters at least 12 feet high on the front of the railway station building.

In reply, Liev Schreiber tried to weasel out of this gaffe by saying that Odessa is an expensive city to live in, so even though the family owns a business there, they live "on the outskirts, in Lviv."

All I can say is, that's quite a commute.

After the discussion, Liev Schreiber -- whose mother lives in metropolitan Charlottesville, he said -- enjoyed some informal banter with fans:

After Everything Is Illuminated, we were treated to the world premiere of the first trailer for Evan Almighty, the sequel to Bruce Almighty scheduled to be released next June. Evan Almighty was filmed in and around Charlottesville (most particularly in a new housing development near Crozet). Consequently, about three-quarters of the audience Saturday night to watch Bruce Almighty had been in the picture as extras. Director Tom Shadyac paid tribute to them and promised that Evan Almighty will have a big premiere in Charlottesville next year, in the form of a fundraiser for local charities.

Here are some photos from another busy day at the Virginia Film Festival:

Peter (William Moseley) defends his sisters in a scene from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
(Photo courtesy the Virginia Film Festival)

William Moseley signs autographs for fans

Actor-director-screenwriter Liev Schreiber mingles with Virginia Film Festival participants

There's still one more day to chronicle, but I'm absolutely knackered right now. I discovered that, after four days of the Virginia Film Festival, I have 66 pages of notes to review before writing something more substantial than what you've seen here so far.