Hollywood

Enter: the MyHeritage Face Recognition program. This AJAX-based program actually analyzes the facial features of any frontal face shot you submit and returns a list of celebrities whose features best match yours. Check it out, it’s pretty sweet. And for the record, I now have a strong similarity to Brendan Fraser. Huh.

Instead of casting pretty boy hillbillies and highly trained and efficient soldiers, how about casting everyday people. When Werner Herzog needed a crazy dude to play Kaspar Hauser, did he just hire some sexy German dude? No, he got himself an actual crazy dude. That’s the way action-adventure movies should be made. Instead of people like Matthew McConaughey and Matt Damon, it should be people like me starring in action-adventure movies. I think I would make a dynamic action hero. I am beguiling, enthralling and beloved by rocking teen combos throughout Central Jersey. And I work for sandwiches. What’s not to like? I’ll admit my acting experience is limited (I’ve performed as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a German version of The Empire Strikes Back and I played six different roles (4 speaking) in a German version of Back to the Future) but I’m a quick learner. And I can’t be any worse an actor than Brendan Fraser or AntiChrist Affleck.

I will be featured in the movie The Last Time, starring Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton, this movie has not yet been given a date.

Now as you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been spending a large amount of time in my own company lately. Frankly, I’m sick of me. So I rang Troy up this afternoon to see if him and Di wanted to catch a movie. We had two options, Broken Flowers which I wasn’t incredibly keen on because, like Steve Martin, Bill Murray lost something mid way through the 90’s that he’s never really been able to regain. I think it happened when he made Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Toons. Sure fire way to ruin a career…look at Brendan Fraser, have you seen him since he starred in Looney Toons Back in Action? Well have you?! I rest my case.

Crash is the kind of movie that deals with a very well documented topic, and it can’t be easy to make a movie that is 100% about racism and have it ring true throughout. But Crash almost never rings true. Ludacris plays a carjacker who makes a 180 degree turn in his life after one of the people he carjacks (Terrence Howard) has a meltdown and almost causes a police shootout. Howard’s character’s wife intersects twice in 2 days with a racist cop played by Matt Dillon, each time with starkly different results. Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock play the LA District Attorney and his wife, respectively. They are carjacked by Ludacris, which allows Bullock to rear her ugly racist head (directed at her Hispanic housekeeper and the man who is changing her locks, also a Hispanic). By the end of her movie (remember this all happens in 36 hours), Bullock has seen the errors of her ways and loves all Hispanics. That same locksmith turns out to be quite a family man, but his life is almost ruined by an Iranian whose store is victimized by racists. Ryan Philippe plays a cop who can’t put up with Matt Dillon’s racist ways anymore, but engages in the most inexplicable racial act in the whole movie. Got a headache? Me too.

High concept gimmick movies can go either way – they can be works of sublime genius, or confused, muddled messes. Twenty Bucks (Sony, Rated R, DVD-$24.96 SRP) – which follows a $20 bill from the ATM to the bank shredder, and all the lives it touches in-between - is of the former category. The gimmick works in large part to the cast – which includes Christopher Lloyd, Brendan Fraser, William H. Macy, Elisabeth Shue, Steve Buscemi, and Linda Hunt – with a few genuine surprises, and a lot of comedy, along the way. The DVD features a pair of audio commentaries with the cast & crew, and a pair of behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Last night on Queer Eye they worked on a nudist! Not an attractive nudist, and his friends were all pretty scary too. The reactions from the 5 boys were hilarious! Carson went nude, he didn’t care, but Thom was horrified, it was soooo funny! The episode ended with a nudist party and wow, it was so disturbing because, again, the wrong people are the ones who insist on being nudie. The most alarming part was when the dancing started. IT was just wrong, WRONG!! Thom commented “You know, whatever people are into is fine, as long as they’re not hurting anyone… but…I’m a little hurt!”

All the nudity prompted an encounter with Brendan Fraser, circa George of the Jungle physique, in the buff. Oh thank you goddesses of dreamland!

George Clooney and Brendan Fraser were considered for the part of Reed Richards.

And it’s obvious that Fraser and Bullock are there to represent the perspective of a pampered upper class white family touched by crime, but their perspective is used in a vary limited fashion and really adds almost nothing to the story. I’ve always found Fraser to be a very good actor when he plays serious. One needs only to check out Gods and Monsters to see the man CAN act as well as be the handsome leading man. But he’s barely there in this movie and Bullock just comes off as a whiny bitch. The way their plotline is resolved doesn’t really have much meaning at all in my mind in the larger context of the film.

The film aims to prove that racial tension is not limited to one particular race against another. Unfortunately, in reality, racial tension spreads across all races, all cultures, all steps of the social hierarchy. People live their lives in fear of what they do not know or understand, highly lowering their own quality of life. The characters in “Crash” (amazing performances by Don Cheadle, Jennifer Esposito, Sandra Bullock, Ludacris, Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser) are all on the brink of some kind of personal disaster. The only way out, the only way to connect in life, is to collide with other people (whether the collisions are negative or positive).

So on to my day. It was magical. Didn’t do anything particularly special but it just reminded me why I am doing this in the first place. I need a break. I was so happy just being in the car alone. Some people can’t stand to be alone. I crave it. I went to a 12:10 showing of CRASH. My sister had mentioned how much she liked this movie and then when Erin was here (EKD!) she too said she loved it. I don’t even know how to describe it. It was literally intellectual yoga. It was raw, thought provoking and powerful. It...

Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter (Larenz Tate) converse casually about the unfair racial stereotypes applied to blacks, and then reinforce those very stereotypes by carjacking an SUV--District Attorney Rick (Brendan Fraser) and his wife Jean's (Sandra Bullock) SUV, as coincidence would have it. Jean's distress becomes wrath directed at her Hispanic housekeeper and a locksmith named Daniel (Michael Pena). Meanwhile, the stolen vehicle triggers bigoted Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) and his green partner Officer Hansen (Ryan Phillippe) to pull over black TV director Cameron (Terrence Howard) and his mixed race wife Christine (Thandie Newton) who drive a similar looking vehicle. Using the pretext of the law to sexually molest Christine, Ryan patronizes Cameron who is unable to stand up against the humiliation.

There were a few scenes that I think played out really well - Brendan Fraser's DA thinking of race in strictly electoral terms and Tony Danza's producer telling black director to make sure one of the characters talks "black" because he's not supposed to be the "smart one" were both pretty realistic and at least could be argued from both sides. The hitchhiking scene is also pretty compelling stuff, although Ryan Phillippe was absolutely the wrong choice for this. I think he's pretty much the wrong choice for every movie except Cruel Intentions though. He's only got one note, and that note is smarmy. These are basically the only three scenes in the movie that aren't preachy or sanctimonious.