Vanessa Williams to Be Wicked Housewife

Apparently, ABC has announced that Vanessa Williams, just off the recently cancelled "Ugly Betty," will join the cast of "Desperate Housewives" for its seventh season in 2010-11.  I'll post ABCs fall lineup as soon as I find it.

Review: Eddie Murphy Made the Excellent "Shrek" Even Better

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 16 (of 2002) by Leroy Douresseaux


Shrek (2001) – computer animated
Running time: 90 minutes (1 hour, 30 minutes)
MPAA – PG for mild language and some crude humor
DIRECTOR: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson
WRITERS: Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S. H. Schulman with additional dialogue by Cody Cameron, Chris Miller, and Conrad Vernon (based upon the book by Shrek! William Steig)
PRODUCERS: Jeffrey Katzenberg, Aron Warner, and John H. Williams
EDITOR: Sim Evan-Jones
Academy Award winner
ANIMATION/COMEDY/FANTASY and ADVENTURE/ROMANCE/FAMILY

Starring: (voices) Michael Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow, Vincent Cassel, and Jim Cummings

Shrek (Michael Myers), a reclusive ogre, suddenly finds his home in the swamp beset by the denizens of hundreds of fairy tales. They are refugees of a hate campaign by a little despot named Lord Farquaad of Duloc (John Lithgow). Farquaad promises to remove the fairy tale beings from his home if Shrek rescues Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from a fearful fire-breathing dragon. By marrying a princess, Farquaad would become a king. The talkative Donkey (Eddie Murphy) joins Shrek as his faithful steed on the quest to rescue the princess for Farquaad, but love has other plans.

From Pacific Data Images (PDI) and DreamWorks, respectively the computer animation studio and movie studio behind Antz, Shrek is a lively and funny cartoon that kids can watch but that is really aimed at adult viewers. With the requisite toys and novelties, the film is sure to attract children, and the film contains enough gross and childish humor to keep their attentions. Shrek’s success, however, is in its ability to tap into grown-up sensibilities. Literally having a pack of writers working on the script gives Shrek’s story multiple layers. The movie is filled with pop culture references, film references, bawdy humor, sight gags, and sly asides, and the romantic and sentimental aspects of the film are quite convincing.

The voice actors really carry the movie. Myers is, as always, able to create several character voices, and he creates two others in this film besides Shrek: the Narrator and one of the Three Blind Mice. Ms. Diaz has a nice performance as the princess, but she saves her best work for the film’s last quarter. John Lithgow, an accomplished actor who has played a few wacky villains in the last decade, revealed his comic chops in the television series “Third Rock from the Sun.” He doesn’t fail to please here; his Farquaad is nasty, petty, deceitful, and quite vindictive – a potent little menace who really deserves his comeuppance.

The star of the show, however, is Eddie Murphy as Donkey. We’ve come to take Murphy for granted. He hasn’t taken on oh-so-serious roles like other comedians, so many critics and moviegoers don’t think of him as a good actor. His Donkey is a jiving talking huckster, at one moment cowardly, brash the next, and a mentor when he has to be. The role fits Murphy like an old glove, but he makes Donkey so vital, so fresh, so funny. Like one of Robin Williams’s caricatures, Murphy is a chatterbox, but he doesn’t wear thin; even his mumblings are funny. His verbosity never annoys, and Donkey is the axis upon which this story turns. Lose him and you have a passable, middling movie.

Shrek is a surprise, and it went on to win the first Oscar® for Best Animated Feature. It is truly for all ages. Funny and touching, it is Hollywood product that is near perfect entertainment – well put together by its cast and creators.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
2002 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Best Animated Feature” (Aron Warner); 1 nomination: “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published” (Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S.H. Schulman)

2002 BAFTA Awards: 1 win: “Best Screenplay – Adapted” (Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S.H. Schulman); 5 nominations: “Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music” (Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell). “Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects” (Ken Bielenberg), “Best Film” (Aron Warner, John H. Williams, and Jeffrey Katzenberg), “Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role” (Eddie Murphy), and “Best Sound” (Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer, Wylie Stateman, and Lon Bender

2001 Won BAFTA Children's Award Best Feature Film (Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson, Aron Warner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg)

2002 Golden Globes: 1 nomination: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy”

"Cross Game" Anime Streaming at VIZAnime.com

VIZ MEDIA STREAMING NEW ANIME SERIES CROSS GAME ONLINE AT VIZAnime.com

Joining The Highly Anticipated Preview Of The Manga

VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced the very special North American premiere of the new anime series - CROSS GAME, a story set against the backdrop of baseball that explores the bonds of love shared between family and friends. CROSS GAME is streaming free on VIZ Media’s VIZAnime website (www.VIZAnime.com) beginning today.

The news follows an announcement last month of VIZ Media’s planned preview of the CROSS GAME manga series, which is scheduled to also go live today, on the company’s Shonen Sunday website (www.ShonenSunday.com). The manga series, created by Mitsuru Adachi, is scheduled for release under the Shonen Sunday imprint on October 12, 2010.

CROSS GAME is a moving coming-of-age drama that is heartfelt and true and flows delightfully with a light and amusing touch. The series centers around a boy named Ko, the family of four sisters who live down the street, and their shared passion for the sport of baseball.

“VIZAnime is a convenient new one-stop web destination where visitors stream hundreds of episodes from not only classic VIZ Media anime properties, but also brand new series like CROSS GAME,” says Andy Nakatani, Editorial Manager, VIZ Media. “CROSS GAME was created by one of the most talented names in manga and the anime counterpart is a wonderful adaptation of the well-crafted story of baseball, adolescence, tragedy and newfound love. We invite fans to explore VIZAnime and see what the growing buzz is all about.”

VIZAnime is a free-to-use interactive web destination that is now the permanent home to some of the company’s best-loved animated series. New content is now added on a weekly basis.

Series currently featured on VIZAnime includes BLEACH, BUSO RENKIN, DEATH NOTE, HONEY AND CLOVER, HIKARU-NO-GO, INUYASHA, INUYASHA: THE FINAL ACT, KEKKAISHI, NANA, NARUTO, NARUTO SHIPPUDEN, ONE PIECE and THE PRINCE OF TENNIS.

To view subtitled CROSS GAME animated episodes (rated ‘T’ for Teens) and other VIZ Media animated titles please visit www.VIZAnime.com.

For more information on the CROSS GAME manga (rated ‘T’ for teens) and other titles from VIZ Media’s Shonen Sunday imprint, please visit http://www.shonensunday.com/.

Review: As Ever, Queen Latifah is "JUST WRIGHT"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 34 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Just Wright (2010)
Running time: 101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
MPAA – PG for some suggestive material and brief language
DIRECTOR: Sanaa Hamri
WRITER: Michael Elliot
PRODUCERS: Shakim Compere and Queen Latifah
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Terry Stacey
EDITOR: Melissa Kent
COMPOSERS: Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin

ROMANCE/DRAMA/SPORTS

Starring: Queen Latifah, Common, Paula Patten, James Pickens Jr., Phylicia Rashad, Pam Grier, Laz Alonzo, Mechad Brooks, Michael Landes, Dwight Howard, Dwayne Wade, Jalen Rose, Kenny Smith, Mike Fratello, and Marv Albert

At first glance, the romantic sports drama, Just Wright, is special because it is a screen romance in which both the female and male leads are African-American actors. What makes Just Wright extra special is that it is a Queen Latifah movie. The Queen, with her lovely, open, and joyous film persona, always delivers a good time – even if she has to carry the movie, and she is indeed the leading scorer in this basketball love story.

The film focuses on Leslie Wright (Queen Latifah), a straight-shooting physical therapist; with her, what you see is what you get. Everyone thinks that Leslie is just the bee’s knees, even the men Leslie dates, but none of them will commit to her beyond just being a friend. A diehard fan of the professional basketball team, the New Jersey Nets, Leslie has a chance encounter with the Nets’ NBA All-Star, Scott McKnight (Common). The two surprisingly strike up a friendship, and Scott invites Leslie to his birthday party. At the party, however, Scott is immediately attracted to Leslie’s gorgeous cousin, Morgan Alexander (Paul Patten), who has her sights set on being an NBA trophy wife.

Then, Scott tears ligaments in his knee, threatening the future of his NBA career, and Scott becomes frustrated and withdrawn. Leslie eventually takes the job of helping Scott rehab his knee, but it is a full time job. Leslie begins to have strong feelings for Scott and he for her, but is Leslie destined to be a “best friend” or Scott’s true love?

Just Wright is a formulaic romantic drama. It is kind of a Cinderella story with Queen Latifah’s Leslie Wright as Cinderella, and Paul Patten’s Morgan as Cinderella’s stepsisters wrapped into one radiantly beautiful body. In this scenario, Cinderella is everybody’s best friend, but no one’s true love. The handsome prince is the rich, basketball star, Scott McKnight, who is dazzled by the beauty of the conniving Morgan.

Of course, Just Wright is selling Leslie Wright as being “just right” for Scott, and the film’s script, written by Michael Elliot (Brown Sugar), does everything to make Leslie look better and better as the narrative unfurls and to make Morgan look like a vacuous gold-digger who seems almost sociopathic. Morgan’s character would be a joke except for the fact that the underrated Paula Patten gives the kind of high-quality performance that will make the audience want to see more of Morgan. On the other hand, the script doesn’t do much with Scott McKnight other than make him a good catch as a husband – rich, loyal, and kind-hearted. Even Common, in an awkward and uneven performance, doesn’t make McKnight seem like much more than something nice for a girl to have.

Maybe it is Queen Latifah’s fault. Compared to many rapper-turned-actors, Common is usually good in the movies in which he appears, but screen presence of Queen Latifah (another rapper-turned-actor) often overwhelms her costars’ presence. Whenever she is on television or the big screen, Latifah seems to have a natural sunniness about her, and in comedies, she radiates cheer and poise. She carries herself with confidence and projects that she is comfortable in her own skin. Latifah is Just Wright; the movie clearly exists for her to entertain us. Even Paula Patten and appearances from two wonderful sisters like Phylicia Rashad and Pam Grier cannot change the fact that this is all Latifah, all the time.

When a formula works, it reminds us of why it is a formula; we can rely on it. Just Wright uses the romantic formula with decent if not always good results. But in the end, the lovable Queen Latifah makes it all right.

6 of 10
B

Monday, May 17, 2010

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Louie Psihoyos Talks "The Cove" - A Bits and Bites Extra

This year's Academy Award winner for "Best Documentary" is a film called The Cove.  Directed by renowned National Geographic photographer and first-time filmmaker, Louie Psihoyos, the film documents an annual ritual in a small coastal Japanese town called Taiji, in which thousands of dolphins and porpoises are slaughtered by the residents.  The residents even capture dolphins that they sell to U.S. marine mammal parks for upwards of $200,000.

Apparently, there have been efforts on the parts of the Japanese government and the U.S. military to ban and cancel screenings of The Cove in Japan.  Psihoyos gave an interview to Your Call, a daily radio call-in show broadcast in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, in which he discusses The Cove's success, whaling, and environmental issues.  Go here to listen to the interview.

"The Spy Next Door" on DVD Tuesday

From Lionsgate:

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Acclaimed martial-arts superstar Jackie Chan (The Forbidden Kingdom) is back to kick up the action and bring in the laughs with his latest film, The Spy Next Door, making its way onto a 2-disc Blu-ray Combo Pack – which includes both Blu-ray and DVD – and is also available as a separate DVD and for digital download. From the director of Snow Dogs, the film features a star-studded cast including Amber Valletta (Hitch), Billy Ray Cyrus (Disney’s “Hannah Montana”) and George Lopez (Valentine’s Day), and grossed over $24 million at the box office. This KIDS FIRST!-endorsed action-comedy which also received the Dove Foundation Seal of Approval, contains bonus features the whole family will enjoy – including a blooper reel and two fun featurettes that bring audiences up-close and personal with the cast.

In true Jackie Chan fashion, The Spy Next Door delivers incredible stunts, fast action suspense and hearty family entertainment. When Bob Ho is called to babysit his neighbor’s unruly children, they accidentally blow his cover as a spy by downloading secret codes on his computer. Suddenly Bob has to kick into super agent mode and take the kids on an action-packed adventure that turns suburbia upside down. Bob fights off assassins and arch villains, narrowly escapes traps and outsmarts double-agents while somehow managing to keep the kids out of harm’s way. The film is “High-flying family fun” (movieweb.com) and “Zany action for the whole family” (nycmovieguru.com). The Spy Next Door will be available on Blu-ray Combo pack for the suggested retail price of $39.99 or on DVD for $29.95.

*BLU-RAY COMBO PACK/DVD SPECIAL FEATURES
• “Jackie Chan: Stunt Master and Mentor” featurette
• “Adventures in Acting with the Kids from The Spy Next Door” featurette
• Blooper reel
*subject to change

CAST
Jackie Chan: The Forbidden Kingdom, Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon, The Tuxedo, Rumble in the Bronx
Amber Valletta: Hitch, Gamer, Premonition, Transporter 2, Raising Helen, The Family Man, Duplex
Madeline Carroll: When a Stranger Calls, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, Swing Vote
Will Shadley: TV’s “Dirty Sexy Money,” Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Magnús Scheving: TV’s “LazyTown”
with Billy Ray Cyrus Hannah Montana: The Movie, Mulholland Drive, Bait Shop, TV’s “Doc” and George Lopez Valentine’s Day, Swing Vote, Balls of Fury, Real Women Have Curves

PROGRAM INFORMATION
Year of Production: 2009
Title Copyright: © 2009 Spy Next Door, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Type: Theatrical Release
Rating: PG for sequences of action violence and some mild rude humor
Genre: Action/Adventure, Family, Comedy
Closed Captioned: DVD - English Closed Captioned
Blu-ray – English SDH
Subtitles: English and Spanish
DVD Format: 16x9 Widescreen (1.78)
Blu-ray Format: 1080P High Definition 16x9 Widescreen (1.78)
Feature Running Time: 95 minutes
DVD Audio Status: 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital
Blu-ray Disc Audio Status: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio

Review: "Something New" is Quite Cool

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 135 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Something New (2006)
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for sexual references
DIRECTOR: Sanaa Hamri
WRITER: Kriss Turner
PRODUCER: Stephanie Allain
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Shane Hurlbut
EDITOR: Melissa Kent
Black Reel Award winner

COMEDY/DRAMA/ROMANCE

Starring: Sanaa Lathan, Simon Baker, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Mike Epps, Taraji P. Henson, Donald Faison, Alfre Woodard, Blair Underwood, Golden Brooks, Earl Billings, and Matt Malloy

Kenya Denise McQueen (Sanaa Lathan) has carefully calculated her professional life, and the young African-American accounting executive is up for partner at the firm for which she works. Still, she’s concerned that her personal life doesn’t measure up to her professional success. She accepts a blind date coordinated by a colleague, but the blind date turns out to be a white man named Brian Kelly (Simon Baker). She brushes him off, but that’s not the last she hears from Brian. He also turns out to be the sexy, free-spirited landscape architect a friend recommends. A relationship develops between Kenya and Brian, but though he’s comfortable with her, she can’t get past the fact that he is a white man. She’s later meets the IBM, the Ideal Black Man, a tax attorney named Mark (Blair Underwood), and they seemingly hit it off. Although Mark seems like her dream come true, Kenya’s heart might be somewhere else – regardless of what her friends, family, and the rest of society have to say.

Something New is the latest film about interracial (an absurd term) dating. The best-known recent examples include Spike Lee’s infamous Jungle Fever and the Julia Stiles hit, Save the Last Dance. Something New is not as incendiary as the former, nor does it have the youthful passion of the latter. The film by director Sanaa Hamri and writer Kriss Turner (a TV scribe whose credits include “Whoopi” and “Everybody Hates Chris”) is rather tame, but gets its energy from a willing cast. We know what the film is supposed to be about – unexpected love, but we know what this film is really about – a black girl dating a white guy. The actors grapple with that, and all they have to work with is Turner’s screenplay, which doesn’t know if it’s a love story or a lesson planner. Everything seems a little too loose, in a subject matter that demands structure (although I may be wrong) Still, what Turner’s script and Hamri’s directing offer would be enough to make this a good film. The actors make Something New a little better than just “good.”

One really impressive thing about this is that it showcases so many talented Black actors, whom we’d normally not see, at least not more than once a year. Alfre Woodard is fantastic as Kenya’s mother, Joyce McQueen, and one can only assume that being a Black actress has more often than not been an impediment to her career. Here, she shines as a woman madly wedded to her social status and to the idea that her children should live up to it – or so it seems. Wendy Raquel Robinson is equally good as the friend/voice of reason, Cheryl.

Leads Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker do have screen chemistry, mostly because they play their characters so well, knowing exactly what to give their characters respective to the needs of the story. It’s their performances, in particularly Sanaa Lathan’s that gives this film its juice. Lathan practically emanates career obsession and embodies the hard-working, professional black woman tightly holding it together in all the ways it takes to climb the corporate ladder. At times, it is uncanny how true she makes Kenya’s reactions to people and situations. Her acting in the Starbucks’ scene when Kenya first meets Brian is uncommonly good – the art of verisimilitude with an attention to detail that gives this scene a documentary feel. It’s everything she does. Kenya’s vainly subtle ticks when she’s in public with Brian seem like painful compromises with strangers so that they won’t sneer at her for being with a white man. Those things that Lathan does make this a genuinely moving picture.

Baker is perfect as the laid-back, free spirit who just won’t hide his disdain for social hang-ups. In the end, he tips the balance and makes this movie seem, if not quite real, honest in its intentions. Something New makes its points in a gentle way while offering several entertaining supporting characters and then occasionally gives the viewer a hard nudge thanks to fine situational acting. Something New is the good choice for those wishing to either make that leap to the other side or just see how cool things could be if we all just got along… or at least the few of us who get along no matter what the hell the others have to say

7 of 10
B+

Saturday, June 24, 2006

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