Digital Divide: April 2010

Attack Of The Clooneys

To paraphrase Dennis Miller: I was watching home movies the other night and damned if George Clooney wasn’t in ’em.

In his eternal battle to appear in every piece of filmed entertainment released in the northern hemisphere, Clooney’s ground forces staged a major offensive that reached the gates of the home-video market with three films releasedon Blu-Ray.

First off, there’s Up In The Air (Paramount), director Jason Reitman’s follow-up to his surprise hit Juno. Air fares better, and is actually a stronger film for the most part, simply by not having to work around Juno scribe Diablo Cody’s oh-so-hip, look-at-me dialog.

The film centers on Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, a corporate hatchet man whose job it is to fly around the country telling people they’ve been sacked when their Fortune 500 bosses don’t have the cajones.

Bingham has no attachments per se — his life being airports and hotels — and he likes it that way. Of course, the cost of this kind of lifestyle begins to weigh on the parent company, so when earnest college grad Natalie comes into the fold with a plan to conduct the firings by video conference, Bingham’s world is in danger of being turned upside down.

Since Natalie has no experience in the firing game and the effect it has on the people involved, Bingham persuades his boss (the always entertaining Jason Bateman) to take her on the road with him to get a taste of what the real world is like.

Solid performances all around, which included Oscar nominations for Anna Kendrick as Natalie and Vera Farmiga as Bingham’s frequent on-the-road hook up, as well as nominations for best picture and director.

The special features available on the Blu-Ray include a few deleted scenes and commentary, but not much more worthwhile.

The next wave of the George invasion is The Men Who Stare At Goats (Anchor Bay), a film based on a true story that desperately wants to be a Coen Brothers film, yet lacks the advantage of having any . . . you know . . . Coens.

Here, Clooney plays second fiddle to Ewan McGregor’s Bob Wilton, a reporter who uncovers a government program designed to explore psychic techniques on the battlefield. These techniques include mind-reading, passing through walls, and killing goats by stopping their hearts by staring at them.

As Lyn Cassady, Clooney is a former member of the “Warrior Monks,” as they referred to themselves, who shepherds Wilton through the desert during the Iraq war. The running joke of the picture is that not only did they refer to themselves as warrior monks, but Jedi warriors. (Get it? ‘Cause McGregor played Obi-Wan in the Star Wars pics? Nudge, nudge…)

Alas, like most of the jokes in the film, that one falls flat after the first couple of times. The film’s main problem is it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. You can tell it wants to be a full-blown satire, yet it takes turns into seriousness that weigh the whole thing down.

Blu-Ray features include a look at the actual figures involved, deleted scenes, and commentary.

Then there’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (Fox Home Entertainment), from a story by the great Roald Dahl. In this stop-motion animated flick, Clooney voices Mr. Fox, a canine living the domestic life with his wife and son, voiced by Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman, who, despite promises to the contrary, can’t keep the urge to steal chickens in check.

After raiding the local farms, Fox’s actions bring down wrath on the entire animal community, which causes them to go on the run from said farmers.

Director Wes Anderson, no stranger to oh-so-hip himself, has never been one to play it safe, and here it pays off big. With great voice work by Anderson regulars Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson, Fantastic Mr. Fox ranks as one of his best.

The Blu-Ray set comes with a DVD and digital copy, as well as features on the animation, the cast, and Roald Dahl.

Up In The Air: ***1/2 Features: ***

Goats: ** Features: **1/2

Fantastic Mr Fox: ***1/2 Features: ***

Also Available . . . I was all primed and ready to give a probing, in-depth analysis of Twilight: New Moon (Summit Entertainment) and its place in the pantheon of film history. However, the plans were scuttled when I remembered I wasn’t a 13 year-old girl.

— Timothy Hiatt

Category: Columns, Digital Divide, Monthly