Quick Take: Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee

If you're getting a little tired of the complicated, bombastic and over stuffed blockbuster movies of the summer, then we have something for you. A break, if you will, from the loud noise of the summer movie season.

Jerry Seinfeld is back with a new series. One strickly for the web. It is called, simply, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. The title explains exactly what the show is. Seinfeld picks up a familiar comedian, in one of his classic cars from his vast collection. The two then proceed to talk, go get coffee and talk some more. It's such a simple premise, bare bones to its core, and thats the point. It has no plot, just two funny people talking about whatever is on their minds.

Here is the first episode which features Larry David. Hope you enjoy.

Quick Take: Critic Gets Death Threats For Not Liking "The Dark Knight Rises."

The Dark Knight Rises has just gained its first accomplishment. It is the first movie to have its comment section suspended on Rotten Tomatoes due to death threats towards a critic. And the movie hasn't even opened yet.

Marshall Fine of the movie blog "Hollywood and Fine" gave the first negative review of the much anticipated superhero movie. He then, in the next 10 minutes, received 200 replies from angry fans of the movie. Some were of course meant to be taken as slight jabs merely hinting at the backlash he might get. Other commenters however, were not so nice. The site at first started deleting these hateful comments, however it eventually got so jammed (it closed in on 1000 replies by Wednesday afternoon) that the site just decided to suspend the comment section completely.

I understand the circumstances that this movie has for some people and it's interesting to see that a lot of the internet crowd has a good grip on reality. But for the ones that don't I'd like to quote Alfred Hitchcock in saying "it's only a movie."

The rating a movie gets on a site does not and should not effect how you personally feel about the movie. We sadly live in an age that if your film does not receive the rating you think it should get by even a single critic, you either feel betrayed or, worse, your opinion may be wrong about the movie. What makes this even worse is that most of the commenters haven't even seen the movie yet.

Some critics are not going to like this movie. Quite a few people are most likely not going to enjoy this movie. For whatever reason. It doesn't matter. Everyone has an opinion and they should be shared, not attacked for not being exactly like yours. Or else, what's the point of creating art at all if just to make everyone happy?

Quick Take: Movies Are Meant for the Theatres, Nowhere Else

Movies are meant to be watched on the big screen and beg to be watched in groups, so when we have a generation of movie-watchers delving into cinema through the 4 inch screens of handheld devices, I weep inside. People like watching movies of all kinds, and instead of trying to bring people to the theatre by developing worthless gimmicks like 3D, they should be creating an atmosphere that allows for the love of CINEMA, not just what’s new.

I just went to theatres to see the most classic of all theatre-films, Jaws. I was one of two people who dared to go alone, but surprisingly, even on a Monday evening there were roughly 30 people who came out for the thirty-seven year old movie. It was an amazing experience and I thank theatres like TIFF Lightbox for doing what most theatres don’t. Which brings me to my question, why don’t more theatres show older films?

I would gladly pay 10+ dollars to watch Terminator 2: Judgement Day on the big screen, or Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, etc., but I hesitate every time I have to pay 15 dollars to watch a movie in 3D. We don’t need new technology to draw us into the theatres, because 3D doesn’t make a movie any better, it just changes the texture of what we’re seeing.

What we need is the theatre to be the central hub of film-lovers. Bring us back to the theatre with great movies, movies we’d actually pay again and again to see the way it was meant to – that’s how you’ll win our hearts. I can't wait to go back and watch more, and if you're in Toronto, I implore you to go to the TIFF Lightbox and check out the older screenings. If you're not, find a theatre near you that does and bask in what so few of us are able to nowadays. 

“Show me the way to go home.”

The Quick Take: Star Wars Radio Play - Just Watch It

If you haven’t watched it yet, then for the next hour and a half you’ve got something to do, kid.

At the Emerald City Comic-con on March 31^st 2012, there was a gathering of some of the greatest voice actors of our generation. Introduced one by one, they proceeded to sit in a row in front of an ecstatic crowd, each with a shortened script of the first Star Wars trilogy laid out in front of them, and they read it. Not as themselves of course, but as Zoidberg, Christopher Walken, Yakko, Raven, Batman, Bender, Brain and a whole host of other characters that these gods-among-men are able to produce in a moment’s notice.

Who are these gods, you say? They are known as Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Tara Strong, Jess Harnell, Billy West, John DiMaggio, and Kevin Conroy. My friends, these are the ingredients to one of the funniest performances I have seen in a long, long time.

The best parts aren’t even when the voices the actors perform don’t match the script characters (such as when Bubbles voices Darth Vader right out of the gate). It’s when the actors are riffing, making each other laugh, bringing back favorite phrases from childhood memories – NARF! – or just screwing up the lines. When they go beyond the script, they show the reason they’re the best in the business. It’s 80 minutes of pure, laid back hilarity.

What’s so fascinating about voice actors is their ability to transform into beloved characters instantaneously. Rob Paulsen positions his jaw differently and he becomes Pinky. Jon DiMaggio throws his head back and he is Tracy Morgan. Maurice LaMarche jerks around and physically overacts to he becomes Calculon.

There are very few live actors, and they are most often impersonators, who can change into character and have the audience really believe the transformation. Even if they can achieve it, there is something lost in the performance. They are older, or too fat, or too thin, or what have you. When Billy West voices Stimpy, his pitch and clarity is absolutely perfect. You wouldn’t know that even a day has gone by since the show ended.

But if it isn’t for the laughs, watch this reading simply for a brilliant, albeit rare demonstration of what cartoon lovers always want: actually seeing voice actors perform. Too often is the face behind the voice left in the dark. We only get short featurettes on DVDs showing actors in a sound booth, or a grainy video online of an actor doing a line or two. This video is clear, and best of all, its long.

Granted, perhaps there is a reason we shouldn’t see the actors themselves that much. If we did it would start to ruin the illusion of the cartoon. But don’t listen to that now. Watch this video and just enjoy it.

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBzRmWeC6Ds

The Quick Take: "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" Retreats

For a sequel to a film that really didn’t do all that well with critics and did just okay at the box office, G.I. Joe: Retaliation has a lot of buzz going for it. A slick marketing campaign, heightened sense of visuals and an almost completely new cast, things were really looking up. And they still might be, just not till March 29, 2013.

Announced today, G.I. Joe: Retaliation has been moved back nine months from its June 29 release date for a... wait for it... 3D conversion! This came by surprise, since the movie was a month away from release, had a ton of buzz and seemed not into the 3D idea.

One can only speculate why the studio (Paramount) has decided to do this, but there are a few things we can rule out. It can’t be from the quality of the finished product, since you would be able to tell the quality of your film much earlier than a month before the world sees it. A slight factor may be it’s competition (The Amazing Spider-Man opens the week after) but the studio had this release date for some time.

Actually, it may have come down to a film that just opened last weekend to poor box office results. Battleship, a non-3D movie, made slim pickings domestically and while it has been doing well overseas, Universal is looking at a $150 million loss. Now, if it was in 3D we might be looking at a much smaller number.

If you’re a Paramount executive and you see the possibility of only one big weekend for your movie before you get lost in shuffle of a stacked July, yeah, you would want that extra two dollars a ticket during a slower month.

Watch the trailer for G.I. Joe: Retaliation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ip8CgUplzk

The Quick Take: "The Master" is Revealed

Joaquin Phoenix in The Master

My brother walked into my room, telling me he needed to commandeer my computer and two minutes of my time. Being the endlessly generous man that I am, I conceded. He turned the computer away from my view and said, “don’t look yet, you need the full experience”.

So I sat down, only sure that I was about to watch a trailer of some kind, but unknowing of what movie. My brother begins the video, which he has expanded to full screen, and for the next one minute and forty seconds, I was blissfully introduced to the illustrious world of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.

The Master is the latest film from PTA since his 2007 release There Will Be Blood. With the footage present in the teaser released yesterday morning, it seems PTA might have squeezed out as good of a performance from Joaquin Phoenix as he did from Daniel Day Lewis. Phoenix is captivating, like he often is, bordering on hypnotic.

Watching the teaser, the twisted face of Phoenix peers past the camera, his gravelly voice overlays images of a beach and what appears like the inside of a navy tanker, and a Waitsian, somewhat out of tune beat drives the intensity of the scene like the rhythm of a fluttering heart. But it is with this simple construction that we see PTA has created one of the most enticing teasers in a long time. This is how you make a great trailer.

But one thing we believe here at The Alternate Take is that you should watch trailers until you’re sold on the movie. If the first one does it for me, I won’t be watching any more. So for me, I won’t be seeing any other footage of The Master until I’m sitting in the theatres. I suggest that no matter what the movie, don’t ruin the final experience for yourself by being over exposed to images or jokes you’re eventually going to see anyway. Be patient. This one will certainly be worth the wait.

Go experience The Master for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WTM8eO1Oec

The Quick Take: The Community Shake-Up

Dan Harmon

Dan Harmon, the creator, show-runner and creative force behind the NBC show Community, has been unceremoniously fired from his position. This came as a sort-of-shock to most people, as his feud with Chevy Chase (one of the stars of the show) and his intense way of running a show didn’t score him a whole lot of points with NBC. News of this broke even before Harmon himself knew. His status with the show now, as either a creative consultant or other wise, is TBD. Oh, and Community just recently got picked up for a fourth season. So firing the show-runner makes sense, right?

While you can get into the specifics of who is right and who is wrong in this situation, the main issue with this is: Networks believe that if you have a problem with viewership, talent, or any other type of issue, replace the man in charge. Even if the show is a critical hit. Community has the problem of being a very-specific type of show. It has its own sense of humor. Networks hate this because it doesn’t appeal to everyone, so it doesn’t do as well in the ratings. Networks need to understand that if one person is the driving force of a show, it is going to be a specific-type of show. Taking something that is unique and trying to make it broad just makes it like everything else on TV that is decided by committee: Boring. Just ask the people over at another NBC show, The Office. In an age where sticking to source material seems to be a perfect way of catering to your audience, firing the individual with the vision and doing something new seems like the worst possible idea.