MovieMonday: The Angry Birds Movie 2

As one who was surprised that the makers of the silly Angry Birds game could cobble together enough material for a whole movie in 2016, I was gobsmacked to learn that a follow-on was planned this year.  So of course I went.

The result isn't going to make anyone forget Citizen Kane, but in fact it's pretty darn fun.

As we all know, Angry Birds live on Bird Island, just a short catapult ride from Piggy Island.  The birds battle to protect their eggs from pig predation, the conflict in the game and the first film.

This movie introduces a hitherto unknown third island, a frigid rock called Eagle Island, whose volcano has been pelting enormous ice balls onto Pig Island in an effort to depopulate the place and make room for an eagle takeover.  The pig leader, Leonard, travels to Bird Island to negotiate a truce with Red, the black-eyebrowed hero of the first movie.  When Eagle Island ice balls begin to arrive on Bird Island as well, the former enemies join forces to confront their mutual enemy on its own territory.

That's the set-up, which is almost beside the point.  The point is silly antics -- a Trojan horse of an Eagle careening around the Eagle police force, pigs who mishear the term "Plan X" and garb themselves in pink spandex, break dancing eagles and much, much more. 

A second subplot trails three little chicks guarding, badly, three eggs bearing one of the chicks' "vewy cute" baby sisters.  The eggs are lost and found, again and again, a pretty straightforward effort to appeal to sentimental younger moviegoers, and funny as well.

This movie has more in the way of plot and character development than its predecessor, including a really smart love interest for Red and a female leader of Eagle Island, Zeta, whose brittle superiority complex is something like Red's insecure attachment to his hero persona and resistance to teamwork.  Female agency and group cooperation are proper themes for today's juvenile audience, and, happily, are leavened here with plenty of generous humor.  

In all, the whole thing is nicely assembled and full of laughs.  If you liked the first Angry Birds movie, you'll probably like this one even more.  


But

Is there room in filmdom for another Angry Birds movie?  This one's release date, in the  late-summer doldrums season, suggests distributors are not so sure.  In its first weekend, Angry 2 attracted far fewer moviegoers than its predecessor, which was released in late spring in a year when many people still remembered the Angry Birds computer game, which was an unexpected international hit.  

MovieMonday: Good Boys

This is a seemingly heartfelt but unusually vulgar coming-of-age comedy about 12-year-old boys.  It follows in the footsteps of 2007's much-admired Superbad, hitting the usual notes of awkwardness and long-term friendships that are tested when the main characters' interests diverge.

The boys here have just started sixth grade, a big deal for them, and one wants to attend a "kissing party" in hopes of kissing a girl he admires.   Instead of googling the phrase "how to kiss," which is suggested early on and would obviate the need for the whole adventure, he and his friends send his father's off-limits drone to spy on older teenagers in the act of smooching.

The drone gets confiscated by outraged neighbors, which leads to no end of trouble.  Along the way, we learn that the boys don't understand the concept of sex toys, the definition of nymphomania, the purpose of tampons, what Molly (ecstasy) is and whether they can hold three swigs of beer.  Not surprisingly, they try to bluff their ways through situations they can't quite fathom and sometimes are taunted for this, mercilessly, by classmates.

Grownups may enjoy watching this mishmash and perhaps reminiscing about their own earlier years.  No such luck for tweens facing similar situations, however; the film has been rated R and is too risqué for delicate young'uns.

The three young actors acquit themselves well in a script that assures they don't get into any serious trouble.  They also say "fuck" less often than adults in movies.  Still, in a time when most comedies are R-rated, is there any room for a funny story about adolescents that doesn't shoehorn in some nasty stuff?  That is perhaps more faithful to their typical experiences?

If the audience at the theater where I saw the movie was typical, the demographic most interested in Good Boys is grown men, who perhaps were interested after seeing the dildos, anal beads and sex swing in the above trailer.  This is speculation, of course, but also a little concerning.

The movie was the most popular last weekend, which may be more a reflection of the limits of late-summer film offerings than anything else.

On the other hand, it sold almost as many tickets in one weekend as the entire 11-week run of Booksmart, a female version of Superbad that was much more critically praised.  Is it possible that the audience for girl-themed vulgarity has yet to be developed?

Noonan, News Reporters and Jeffrey Epstein

 Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist, today channels her inner Jimmy Breslin and takes on the press coverage of Jeffrey Epstein's suicide in a federal jail.  She contrasts traditional journalism and current journalism, and she makes good points.

-----

Her traditional alter-ego reporter says this:

        I’m thinking but this is the story with everything. Wealth, power, darkness. Princes and presidents. People with secrets. Rumors of spying. Even an English aristo moll on the lam.
        He’s the most famous prisoner in America! They put him in a jail, where he supposedly tries to kill himself. So they move him to a special cell, heavily guarded 24/7. Don’t worry, he’s safe, he’s gonna face the music!
        Then dawn on a Saturday in high August. Everyone important is away. It’s an entire city run by the second string—novices, kids and pension-bumpers at the police desk, the news desk, the hospital. It breaks like sudden thunder: Epstein is dead, he committed suicide in his cell!
        And then, like, silence. Thunder’s followed by fog.
        Government dummies up, no one knows nothin’. Finally on Monday the attorney general has a news conference. He’s very upset! What incompetence! That jail don’t work right!
        But incompetence proves nothing, right? If Epstein killed himself, he chose the time he knew the guards were asleep. If Epstein was murdered, his killer chose the time he knew the guards were asleep. Incompetence is completely believable but insufficient.

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Read the whole thing.  The tone is amusing, and the critique is on point.

Noonan has an honest question for newshounds:   Can't anybody here play this game?  Why so little interest in a second famous prisoner's death in a federal prison in less than a year?

The most prominent federal prisoner of 2018, Whitey Bulger, was bludgeoned to death by one or more other inmates almost immediately after he was transferred from another facility to a "high-security" federal penitentiary in West Virginia late last year.  Did the prison administration post a weekly "New Felon List" that let the other prisoners know he was coming?  Of course not. 

Clearly Bulger's killer(s) had a plan in place by the time Bulger arrived.   Does anyone doubt that there was, and still is, a robust communication network of "banned" cellphones connecting mobsters in prisons across the country?  (I don't know much about prisons, but even I know that providing burner phones to prisoners is a lucrative side hustle for prison employees, often guards.)

As in the Epstein case, Bulger died out of the view of guards and a presumably extensive camera system at the "high-security" facility.  Curious, eh?

Recent reports, from the feds of course, suggest the feds soon may identify who killed Whitey Bulger, perhaps within a year after he perished in a "high-security" federal facility. Agatha Christie never would have let Hercule Poirot take more than a weekend to solve even the most intricate locked-room mystery. 

Yes, truth can be messier than fiction, but that killing made the federal prison system look bad; it's surprising that news organizations didn't press that point months ago.  We can hope the latest incident will cause news organizations to raise the issue, finally, in coming weeks, assuming they can tear themselves away from the important job of fulminating on the Twitter ramblings of politicians and celebrities.

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Neither Bulger nor Epstein will be mourned by many, but it is hard to accept that either man's case was handled well.  It took the feds 15 years to find Bulger after he went on the lam -- he was hiding in plain sight in an apartment near the beach in Southern California -- and almost 20 years to gin up a serious prosecution of Epstein after years of stories about his sleazy predilections and behavior.  

Now the autopsy report says Epstein killed himself, and the finding is reported as a straight fact.  Given all that went before, why shouldn't the press be suspicious?

The incuriosity is even more remarkable because Epstein died in New York City, which has more reporters and news outlets per square mile than any other place on the planet.  

If you were a reporter in Gotham, wouldn't you want to track down some of the many people who knew Epstein and find out what they had to say? Wouldn't it be worth your time to wait outside his jail at the end of a shift and try to buttonhole workers before they went home?  Or to pester leaders of the prison guards' union, prosecutors and defense lawyers, daily, by telephone?

If not, you would want to consider whether you are in the wrong business. 

Grandma's Celebrity Gossip

Thoughts about celebrity misbehavior and its costs, or perhaps lack thereof.   Plus an Aniston family scoop.


O.J. Simpson is out of jail. This we need? Two people he murdered – his ex-wife and a nice Jewish boy. The trial, it lasted a whole year with a farchadat jury (whose members admitted afterward) that all had decided in the first month to find him not guilty because -- hoo-ha! -- he’s such a celebrity. This they call justice?

Later, to jail he went in Las Vegas for selling sports tchotchkes or some such opfal. Thirty-three years was his sentence, but him they let out after nine years. So now O.J. Simpson is on the Tweety Bird (Twitter) with 850,000 followers. But he should be so lucky. It turns out a good number of them are not fans, and they muschn him like the farseenisch that he is. Okay by me. They say he spends most of his time on the computer playing the Fantasy Football. If it were up to me, he’d be doing hard time on a Sing Sing chain gang or stamping out license plates.

John Aniston, who plays the crazy billionaire Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives is leaving the show. His daughter, Jennifer Aniston, who was on Friends is going to play a part in the soap opera with her father. Mazel!

Sunday evenings I never miss the 60 Minutes, and I enjoy the current pack: Lara Logan, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley and Steve Kroft. Then not so long ago I noticed that Steve Kroft had gone missing.  It’s because he was caught cavorting with a floozy in a seedy hotel room while his wife of 27 years sat home knowing nothing. So, before he was fired, he quit.

And one more thing about 60 Minutes. I miss that old kvetcher Andy Rooney, but not those bushy eyebrows.  Oy, why didn’t make him trim them? Were they afraid of what they’d find in there? Dandruff? Chinch Bugs? The Lindbergh Baby?

I’ve said enough already.


Vocabulary

farchadat -- confused, distracted, dopey

farseenisch -- ???  It was difficult to find a definition for this term.
           The context suggests the word may be a synonym for  farbrecher, which means a crook or a con man.  To be fair, Yiddishisms are not always blends of Hebrew and German, but also include Hebrew-Russian and Hebrew-Lithuanian origins.  Results may vary by community.

opfal -- trash, garbage

floozy -- a woman of low character
          There are at competing claims about this word's origin.  In one case, it is said to have been derived from the English word "flossy," which seems like a bit of a stretch. 
           In the other, it is said to be Yiddish; its first recorded use dates to the early years of the 20th century, a period when Jews were fleeing pogroms for the less dangerous Anglosphere.
            I'm going with Grandma here.


Notes

Orenthal James Simpson was convicted in 2007 for participating in the holdup of a memorabilia dealer at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.  Simpson claimed the items taken had been stolen from him and that no gun was involved in their recovery.  The jury found him guilty on 12 counts.  It was his second brush with the law.

-----

Grandma is not the first person to comment on the late Andy Rooney's abundant brows.  His stock answer when people raised the matter:

"I don't know what to do. I try to look nice. I comb my hair.  I tie my tie.  
I put on a jacket. 

"But I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got."

MovieMonday: Martin Scorsese

The new movies this weekend looked unappealing.  So I did a little catching up on director Martin Scorsese instead.


Mean Streets 

This is the 1973 breakout movie in Martin Scorsese's considerable film career.  The director spoke its opening words:  “You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets.”

Effectively this is the challenge for the main character, Charlie (Harvey Keitel,) a Catholic-raised son of New York's Little Italy neighborhood who seems to have drifted into his job as a collector in his gangster uncle's crew.  Charlie and his friends hang out in bars, play pool, do small heists, get into fights and, when necessary, pay off venal police officers.  To the extent he has an ambition, it may be a fantasy wish to take over and perhaps revive a failing restaurant whose owner cannot repay money borrowed from Charlie's uncle.

Charlie's world is necessarily a small one, and if he does not seem troubled by the work he does, he does worry about the behavior of his undisciplined friend, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro,) who is reckless, possibly to the point of insanity.  Johnny shoots a gun into the air from a building's roof, tosses a bomb into a mailbox and, more dangerously, never makes a payment on the large debt he owes to a loan shark, even after Charlie fronts Johnny some cash.  Charlie also is involved with Johnny's cousin, Teresa, perhaps more to protect her than out of love.

Tensions rise, and events lead to an inevitable conclusion.

Seen all these years later, Mean Streets looks less fresh than it must have been in its day, most likely because it has been so imitated.  Many films now use pop and rock music as their background.  Many movies' plots involve crime syndicates and their activities -- the opportunities for conflict, betrayal and battle are catnip for screenwriters.

If there is a weakness in this movie, it is the character of Johnny, who is crazy for no apparent reason other than to provoke Charlie's protective nature.  In fact, De Niro's portrayal of Johnny made him a bigger star (Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull followed shortly afterward) than Keitel's depiction of the more careful and internally conflicted Charlie. 

Over his career, Scorsese has delivered films of various types, including documentaries about the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, the musical New York, New York, an Edith Wharton story of cultural conformity and sublimated love (The Age of Innocence) and religious narratives (The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun and Silence) that seemed to matter more to the director than audiences.  Virtually every Scorsese film has been applauded by critics.

Still, he is likely to be remembered most for his movies about gangsters -- GoodFellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, and The Departed.

Scorsese's next movie, The Irishman, is in the same vein.  It is based on the biography of a Mafia hitman and stars Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.  The production is being funded, lavishly, by Netflix, which plans a limited theatrical release later this year, rather as it did with last year's Roma. 

Note

From time to time, the Id's social calendar coincides with uninteresting new film releases to preclude a MovieMonday post.  This is one of those times. 

Please check back for MovieTuesday tomorrow.

MovieMonday: The Farewell

This film is rolling out slowly across the country and is well worth a look.  Its story encompasses family love, family tension, and the push-pull and east-west conflicts in family members separated for a generation on different continents.  It is alive with humor and sorrow and love, a moving piece of work.

The trailer above gives the basic outline.  Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen,) a widowed matriarch, has been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and is expected to die within three months.  Nai Nai's sons, who live in New York and Japan, are informed by their aunt, Little Nai Nai (effectively Little Grandma, played by Lu Hong,) and the sons agree not to tell their mother this bad news because such is "not Chinese."

When Billi (Awkwafina,) Nai Nai's granddaughter in New York, is told of the plan, she objects that Nai Nai deserves to know the truth.  She has fond memories of her grandmother, whom she has not seen since the age of six, and she feels the conflict between her Chinese and American identities.

The family sets up a farewell reunion in China -- saying instead that they are gathering for the wedding of Billi's cousin and his pregnant Japanese fiancée.  Billi's parents order her to stay home, however, because they fear her sadness will reveal the secret and make her grandmother's life more difficult.

After Mom and Pop leave, Billi changes her mind.  She gets on a later plane and surprises the family at Nai Nai's apartment in Changchun, where happy talk abounds.

What follows is mostly the story of Nai Nai and her favorite grandchild getting reacquainted.  Nai Nai is charming, cheerful, preoccupied with planning a fine wedding banquet and quite certain that her "new medicine" is making her feel much healthier.  She calls Billi "stupid girl" several times, which in Nai Nai-speak means "beloved child."

For her part, Billi finds the city of her birth is much changed but the grandmother she remembers is not.  Meanwhile her father and uncle still have much in common after a separation of 25 years.  There are excursions to visit Nai Nai's doctor and her husband's grave, both in Chinese style, and finally a long wedding feast with many guests and many diverting moments and, also, where Nai Nai promises an even bigger party when Billi gets married.

Through it all, Billi struggles with the original tension -- whether to speak the truth about her grandmother's disease in the American fashion, or "to carry the emotional burden" as her Chinese elders expect her to do.

The writer/director of "The Farewell" is Lulu Wang, a talented Chinese immigrant raised in the U.S., and the plot is drawn from an experience in her own life.  The opening credits say it is "based on an actual lie," a comment whose meaning is revealed much later. 

The film is mostly spoken Mandarin with English subtitles -- and, yes, Billi apologizes for her limited fluency.   Another version, with Mandarin dubbing of English speech, is being readied for release in China.  It will be interesting to learn whether it strikes a similar chord there.


Awkwafina

This Chinese-Korean actress from Queens is coming into her own.  Her origins are humor -- she says her "government name" is Nora Lum -- and she was fun to watch in last year's Crazy Rich Asians.  Earlier, she was the scene-stealing pickpocket in the gender-switched version of "Ocean's 8."  Now she's demonstrated she also can handle serious roles very well.

Before launching her film career, she blended rap and humor, as demonstrated in this piece from her 2014 album, "Yellow Ranger."



One thing I like about the piece above is Awk's repeated reference to a book she's reading, obviously one by Joan Didion, the masterful essayist.  (I don't like every single thing Didion has written, but I do like almost all of it.)  Ms. Fina seems to have good taste across many disciplines.  I look forward to seeing and hearing more from her.