The big green ogre can't compare with Nemo, Woody, and Buzz. Elsewhere, Brad Pitt doesn't embarrass himself, and Dizzee Rascal makes the most of his 19 years.
The biggest cultural happening of the last two weeks won't be available to me for months. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and we'll have to wait until at least July to see if the award was for the film's politics or because of its moviemaking élan. I won't resuscitate my grievances against Moore here now, but I will say that I'll keep an open mind until I see the damn thing. In the meantime, let's talk about some movies that are actually playing in this country.
Shrek 2 (Dreamworks Pictures)
Pixar has nothing to fear. While the animation never stops impressing, this sequel to the mega-hit gets hamstrung by the same problems that no one wants to mention hurt the first one. Namely, that dissing Disney isn't the same as outdoing Disney. And that pop-culture references only date your film. And that postmodern attitude shouldn't get in the way of heart. In truth, I prefer the sequel with its insistence on solid gags over the original with its utter certainty that it was the brilliant merry prankster reinventing the wheel. In total, these two massive moneymakers think being smart means you don't have to worry about anything else. And I'm predicting right now that their zeitgeist zip won't mean a thing 10 years down the road. Meanwhile, we'll still be talking about Toy Story and Finding Nemo then.
Troy (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Not a pleasant surprise on the order of Pirates of the Caribbean, but not as brainless as the reviews would lead you to believe either, Wolfgang Petersen's film dances between Hollywood conventions and telling a layered story. At heart, this big, fat epic brings us the news that war is hell, but David Benioff's script finds articulate, varied ways of proving it. Gladiator outclasses it because Ridley Scott had a style and a mission for his film — it was all of a piece. Here, Brad Pitt struggles honorably in a part too serious for his easy rakish charm, but he makes do. And, besides, he's got a great cast around him, most notably Eric Bana who deserves a big, fat epic of his own someday.
Kill Bill — Vol. 2 (Miramax Pictures)
It's not a comic book. It's not a martial-arts film or a spaghetti Western. In fact, it's barely a movie at all. It's just Tarantino taking everything he likes about everything and trying to jam it in together, whether it fits or not. No substance, no context, no depth, no character involvement, no nothing. David Carradine isn't Robert Forster and he isn't John Travolta, and Q will never get him there as long as he tries. Again and again, we get scenes so overlong and so overwritten that I found myself wishing for the headlong, maniac verve of the first film. Being out of touch with reality is a common problem when filmmakers start to believe their own hype. Being so lost in the movies that you don't even remember pacing, logic, and flow anymore is a much direr predicament.
Dizzee Rascal, Boy in Da Corner (Matador Records/XL Recordings)
Why do even his supporters caution you to give this album some time, warning you that its Byzantine rhymes and dense beats don't ingratiate immediately? After all, one of this album's chief strengths is how immediately, obviously terrific it is. Not even Mike Skinner's Original Pirate Material so thoroughly fleshed out worldview and you-are-there reporting through the music itself as Dizzee does here. At 19, Rascal is too young to attempt artful autobiography or social critique; he's just spitting about the stuff he sees around him. And, no, I don't think the rhymer's exotic locale of East London has anything to do with the originality of the lyricist. American hip-hop lives and dies (mostly dies) by its evocation of hardness; Skinner and Rascal eschew hardness (or, holy shit, realness) and focus on journal-writing of a very high order. "Fix Up, Look Sharp" opens the door, celebrating a sound ready to take over the world. The rest of the way, Rascal tells us what he knows over music chaotic and frenetic, exciting and limitless.
Death Cab for Cutie, live at the Wiltern LG, May 21
Peaking with the gorgeously lyrical Transatlanticism, Ben Gibbard cannot escape his wimp image because it's what's made him so great. Live, though, his ineffectual delivery overruns the precise, delicate, always surprising production that elevated his most recent album beyond the whiny mush that marked everything before. Nobody's asking for Radiohead, but Transatlanticism stuck a finger in the eye of anyone who said emo couldn't express anything more meaningful than a dork's heartbreak. The Postal Service showed Gibbard that sideways structures and moody shading mean more for a song than the most plaintive of lyrics. Now he needs to fully integrate that into his band's road show which has yet to shoulder the challenge Transatlanticism makes possible.
Paul Simon, "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or, How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)" (from The Paul Simon Songbook, Columbia/Legacy)
Now safely at legendary-icon status, Simon gets embalmed in serious box sets, greatest-hits tomes, back-from-the-dead reissues, and occasional comeback live shows. His legitimacy as an artist, though, is in the casual, in his laid-back self-obsession and writerly instinct for the universal image. None of those strengths you'll find here on this forgettable protest song first recorded on a forgettable album that only now returns to your record store because Columbia is cleaning out the vaults to make bucks. Simon doesn't do protest well; when he strains for meaning, his nerdish lilt confirms how uncomfortable he is. If a completist you must be, seek this out on the used-record shelves. The chances are good it's there already.
Melissa Auf Der Maur, Auf Der Maur (Capitol Records)
Suitable for goth chicks, Hole fans who thought Melissa was the real hottie, theater majors, creative-writing rejects, guitar-solo wankers, Smashing Pumpkins fans who can't believe Billy's gone acoustic, supporters of solo albums by bassists, and hopeless '90s kids. And you know who you are.
Trading Places (Paramount Home Video)
Or, Where Eddie Murphy Developed His Characterization for Shrek. This nothing '80s comedy has little going for it. Jamie Lee Curtis can so rarely find a role deserving of her talents, John Landis has no instincts for comedy, and Dan Aykroyd can't carry a film on his own. But to revisit this flick is to be reminded that Murphy used to be a very volatile talent, the type of high-watt genius a film couldn't hope to contain. The fact that he's found renewed success and riches slumming in Shrek reprising his minstrel persona doesn't exactly melt the heart.
Consumables is a regular overview of popular culture.
