I come from the near future with an important message: It’s not in any way essential that you see “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” but if someone you like a lot wants to see it, it won’t kill you to watch it and you might actually like it a little.

Based on the very successful 2003 bestseller by Audrey Niffenegger, this science-fantasy tearjerker is the story of Henry (Eric Bana), a research librarian cursed with a really, really, really rare genetic condition which makes him randomly travel through time, mostly at important points in his own life or the lives of those closest to him. That’s the bad news. The worse news is that only his body makes the chronological jump, so wherever he goes, he goes naked. The even worse news is that he lives in Chicago, so if the cold doesn’t kill him, the people he is forced to steal clothing from might. The worst news of all is that, for whatever reason (probably just to keep the story from turning into “The Terminator Finds Love”), he’s unable to prevent such personal tragedies as the accidental death of his mother (the excellent Michelle Nolden).  Also, while he occasionally encounters slightly older versions of himself, he’s never confronted by a naked and elderly Henry, which would be as reassuring as it would be weird.

On the plus side, he accidentally creates a very strange dating opportunity for himself when he starts popping up in the garden of Clare (Brooklynn Proulx), a young girl from a well-off family who naturally falls in love with the handsome occasional visitor who keeps hiding in the shrubbery. About ten minutes into the film, the grown-up Clare (Rachel McAdams) finds him and, even though he doesn’t remember her yet (the visits start later in his life), she all but forces him into bed and a marriage soon follows.  Relationships are hard, however, especially when one partner frequently disappears only to reappears minutes, days, or weeks later and often in need of some first aid. And, then there’s the very painful question of how to have children with a man whose genetic affliction means that his progeny are likely to time travel out of the womb.

READ THE REST AT BULLZ-EYE.COM

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[Today’s entry at Premium Hollywood had some FtY suitable material, so here it is again.]

Filthy lucre is today’s theme in movieland. Really, it’s every day’s theme, but it’s on my mind today.

* Nikki Finke, who actually makes money blogging, notes a pay cut for William Morris assistants, who already work ridiculously hard for the hope of decent money some day, and are expected to work a minimum of fifty hours a week. Presumably they get some overtime (though one wonders if they’re not working actually quite a bit more — Hollywood and Walmart have been known to have a few things in common in the past). They’d better because their boss’s brother is the White House chief of staff. Could get messy, otherwise.

Finke also has an interesting — inasmuch as I can follow it — look at some silver linings amidst the major studio’s fiscals clouds.

* A noted casting change in the third “Twilight” will probably not affect grosses perceptibly, but there’s no stopping those wagging tongues.

* And with all the fuss at Comic-Con, the appearance of anime genius Hiyao Miyazaki got all but ignored by the media, as far as I can tell. “Princess Mononoke” beat “Titanic” in Japan. If it had done so here, it’s fair to say he wouldn’t have been a relative afterthought.

* What of “District 9″? Given one of a few strong early reviews by Justin Chang, will politically trenchant, if thoughtfully violent/icky, Sci-Fi set in South Africa find a big enough American audience? (H/t Jeffrey Wells.)

* For those of you who live outside of California, it might be interesting to note that while mass chaos seems far away here, the state’s fiscal crisis really is effecting everything and everyone to varying degrees. People I know who work in the public sector out are personally experiencing furloughs and pay cuts to go with them, classroom sizes are ballooning absurdly and on it goes to some pretty scary and sad places.

It may not be directly related, but the Los Angeles Times report that the L.A. County Museum of Art is ending its weekend programming hits me where I live. As Anne Thompson points out, some of that may be due to some very canny competition from the terrific Los Angeles Cinematheque, a relatively very young organization that has actually come to the fore during the DVD era with two theaters at opposite ends of town offering some pretty great programming.

The Times‘ John Horn strikes a perhaps overly drastic or even borderline intellectually snobbish note on that point, though it’s true that this is not a golden age for art movies. LACMA was more prone than any other venue to offer works by such cinephile-only filmmakers as Bela Tarr, whose best known movie is the 7.5 hour “Satantango,” and will be closing out with the far-from-Frank Capra Alain Resnais.

Nevertheless, the museum’s Bing Theater was certainly not above offering crowd-pleasing fare from time to time and, indeed, not doing so would be to ignore a huge part of film history. Still, a cannier mix might not have hurt so much. Since they are talking of tie-ins with museum shows, programs similar to (or identical to) New York’s MOMA collaboration with Tim Burton might be in order. If regular film programming ever does return to MOCA, a little more Charlie Chaplin and a little less Maoist-period Godard might not be the end of the world, either.

Up to now, I’ve been a no-show at the several cinephile exams that have been hosted over the last couple of years at Dennis Cozzalio’s legendarily brainy film geek blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Well, before splitting for a hard-earned vacation, Dennis has posted a new exam on film-related matters, up in honor of the cartoon dog genius, Prof. Peabody, which you’re all encouraged to take.

I’ve posted my responses in the comment thread over there already, but now that I’m a SLIFR slacker no more, I thought I’d make ‘em do double duty here because we know that my opinions matter, or something.

Here goes….

1) Favorite Biopic

“Lawrence of Arabia” – an obviously great film and a rather pedestrian choice given that I really like biopics, sometimes the cheesier and and more ridiculously fabricated the better. Therefore, quasi-demi-honorable mention is alluded this triumvirate of absurdly wrong biopics – “The Jolson Story” (it’s amazing how much Al Jolson’s life was just like the plot of “The Jazz Singer”!), “They Died With Their Boots On” (the love affair between Custer and the Indians your socialist history teacher doesn’t want you to see!) and “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” (he didn’t just appear in action movies…he lived them!).

2) Dyan Cannon or Tuesday Weld?

It’s close, but I give it to Dyan Cannon for being hilarious onscreen and genuinely wacky offscreen.

3) Best example of science fiction futurism rendered silly by the event of time catching up to the prediction

The Jetson’s treadmill? I’m drawing a blank here.

4) Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon or Troy Donahue & Sandra Dee?

Frankie & Annette – I grew up watching those movies on channels 5 & 9 (I think) out here up to age 10 or so. Not that those movies are in any sense “good” (I wonder if I could sit through any of them now?), but F&A at least have a certain amount of charm and sense of humor, which I really can’t say about Troy Donahue, at least.

5) Favorite Raoul Walsh movie?

Not really “White Heat,” and no, definitely not “They Died with Their Boots On”… The winner is “The Roaring Twenties” – by far. Just a magnificent entertainment. I need to see that one again some time soon.

6) Sophomore film which represents greatest improvement over the director’s debut

This is tough, but I guess I’m going to say Polanski’s “Repulsion” as it’s brilliant and “Knife in the Water” left me feeling merely 90 minutes older after it was done. Though, that was in college and I might have a very different reaction now. (Another possibility is “Rushmore” – though I loved “Bottle Rocket” quite a bit, so it’s dicey.)

7) Ice Cube or Mos Def?

Mos Def – because he convinced me he was actually English in “Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Favorite movie about the music industry.

Many, many fun movies in this category, but I guess I’m going to have to go with “Nashville.”

(more…)

The coincidence of this coming so soon after the death two weeks back of Ricardo Montalban was not lost on the Robot Chicken staff, who dedicated the last episode to him, but I would like to think he would have loved it.

I was just starting the Patrick McGoohan RIP below this when I saw the news that another seriously underrated and really interesting actor with an extra dose of geek appeal had passed on. And sad news it is.

The Spy Kids have lost a grandpa. Capt. James T. Kirk has lost his showyest and most poetic adversary and the LAPD’s Frank Drebbin is sans  his suavest foe. Fantasy Island is without a leader, and Corinthian leather will never, ever be quite as rich. Ricardo Montalban, the kind of wonderfully dignified ham actor who gave overacting a good name — sometimes a great name — has left our earthly sphere at the age of 88.

What I love and genuinely respect about Montalban was his embrace of artifice, which became more effortless and enjoyable over the years, whatever kind of movie (and there are more than I can possibly recall) he was in and whether the quality was outstanding or, as in the case of Fantasy Island, pretty much beneath contempt. As per Wikipedia, it was actually “soft Corinithian leather” the Mexico-born Montalban spoke of in that notorious car commercial…and said leather was actually produced in New Jersey.

That’s show business and few performers have expressed such a smooth grasp of the unreality of dramatic reality. Of course, he emerged in an era where, for a minority actor, a certain stealy determination to do anything was probably needed. It worked. Starting his U.S. career as a 1940s “Latin lover” (relieved only by occasional dramatic turns, like Anthony Mann’s eternally topical Border Incident), Montalban transformed over the decades into one of Hollywood’s most reliable utility actors and undoubtedly the best known Latino thesp of his generation (though Fernando Lamas was always snipping at his heels).

The geeksphere will no doubt be celebrating his twin Star Trek appearances as Khan Noonien Singh in one of the best regarded episodes of the series as well as the most popular of the many films in the franchise (and others are still obscessing about the provenance of his apparently miraculous sixty year old physique in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan). But, as much fun as his performance is there, it’s not my all-time favorite Montalban role. I’ll take his supporting part as an egocentric but basically decent Italian-like film star in that FtY favorite, Sweet Charity.

He neither sang nor danced in that film, but he did both in a number of lightweight MGM musicals and comedies he appeared in during his first flush of stardom alongside Cyd Charisse, Jane Powell, Esther Williams and others where he showed he could hold his own as hoofer alongside pretty much anyone. Like any minority actor in his day, he had to be three times better and more professional than the typical Anglo performer, and he was. Sometimes four or five times better.

As he aged — and he aged about as well as any human — Ricardo Montalban was a link to another time. Sillier, of course, but also in many respects more courtly, elegant, stylish and fun than our own era of entertainment. As a person, L.A. Times obituary writer Lorenza Muñoz reminds us of traditional religiousity as well as his activist side on behalf of Mexican and Latino actors — he was irritated that he rarely played actual  Mexicans (his enormous IMDb listing includes the character of Nakamura in Sayonara).

All in all, Mr. Montalban was a gentleman of the old school, and that’s something to celebrate.

Sad to hear about the departure of an actress who gave a nepotism a good name throughout the Star Trek franchise. She was originally going to be Kirk’s second-in-command (the original “Number 1″) but sexist network execs balked, and so she became Nurse Chapel on the original series, the voice of the ships’ computers throughout, and, my personal favorite….

Check out the E obituary, which includes an extraordinary scene, with probably some of the series’s best acting, from Amok Time, written by Theodore Sturgeon.

And, just for fun, here’s some more Lwaxana Troi and Capt. Picard/Patrick Stewart. Ham is uncanned; fiberglass scenery is chewed….

It’s the very early 50s, the Cold War is less than half a decade old, and it’s already gone to the hot place in Korea. Even more frightening, the burgeoning U.S./Soviet nuclear arms race is threatening to take the entire world to a permanent hot place. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Americans are convinced of a major threat from within the nation, and a popular young senator has recently charged that the U.S. State Department is riddled with Bolshevik infiltrators. In Hollywood, noted entertainers, writers, and craftspeople are losing their careers because of their political beliefs, past and present, real or imagined. And now, a gigantic flying saucer has landed in the middle of the capital mall in Washington, D.C. and there’s a suave spaceman inside it assisted by a very large, very powerful, robot. The alien has been shot by a scared soldier, but he recovers with alarming speed and is soon demanding a meeting with all the leaders of the whole, angry, messed-up world – or else.

Though it’s as full of political and historic subtext as any genre film ever made, you don’t have to understand any of it to appreciate the 1951 original version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” The first major Hollywood film to posit a benevolent, if also authoritarian, alien visitor, is best known as the source of eight of the most memorable nonsense syllables to ever emanate from Hollywood: “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!” But its DNA has infected vast sections of the sci-fi universe, influencing innumerable friendly alien movies, including “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” and “The Iron Giant.”

Directed by the supremely versatile Robert Wise (the back-to-back helmer of both 1963’s “The Haunting” and “The Sound of Music”) and written by Edmund H. North (“Patton,” “Sink the Bismarck!”), “The Day the Earth Stood Still” stars British stage actor Michael Rennie as Klaatu, the well-spoken alien on a mysterious mission of peace, who escapes government custody and finds his way to a Georgetown boarding house where he befriends a fatherless boy (Billy Gray) and his young mother (Patricia Neal). Facing stiff resistance from the State Department (Joe McCarthy’s commie infiltrators at work, no doubt) and fearing a very nasty fate for what seems to be a relatively decent planet, he enlists the aid of a great scientist with a suspicious resemblance to Albert Einstein (Sam Jaffe). If he can only persuade the world of the seriousness of his intentions – and avoid being found either by the government or the beautiful widow’s vaguely jealous fiancé (Hugh Marlowe) before he does so – he might avoid a dire fate both for himself and the earth.

Read the rest at Bullz-Eye.com.

And a special FtY extra. After you’ve read my review, listen closely, and find my musical mistake!

Another extra: The Theremin — it’s what’s for Christmas!