This Is 40 ( Yas 40 )

This Is 40
Yas 40
Yapım Yılı : 2012
Lisan : Turkce Altyazı
Tür : Komedi
Yönetmen : Judd Apatow
Oyuncular : Paul Rudd / Leslie Mann / Maude Apatow / Iris Apatow / Jason Segel / Annie Mumolo / Robert Smigel / Megan Fox / Charlyne Yi / Hugh Fink / Graham Parker
Yönetmen ve yapımcı Judd Apatow benzersiz evrenine orta yaş krizindeki bir çiftin, 'Knocked Up' filminden tanıdığımız iki karakter olan Debbie ve Pete'in trajikomedisini derinlemesine işleyen bir hikayeyle geri dönüyor.  Pete ve Debbie'nin 40'lı yaşlarda, büyümekte olan çocuklarıyla ve evlilikleriyle baş etmeye çalışırken, yönetmen evliliğin ve aile kurmanın iniş ve çıkışlarını resmediyor....

New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 3/19/13

ZERO DARK THIRTY wasn’t completely shunned by the Academy last month, it won one Oscar (for Best Sound Editing), but Kathryn Bigelow’s thriller about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden still seemed to get a chilly reception. You know, because of the whole torture thing. Folks who missed it in its theatrical run can make up their own minds about its supposed political stance today as it releases on Blu Ray and DVD.

The film is highly recommended (it’s #10 on The Film Babble Blog Top 10 Movies of 2012), but if you’re looking to purchase it, I’d wait for a different edition as there are no Special Features to speak of in the standard Blu-ray/DVD Combo + UltraViolet Digital Copy package. Surely, a deluxe version with commentary, featurettes, etc. will come out later. So just rent it for now.

A beautiful movie that was completely shunned by the Academy, but still got its share of awards season love, also arrives today on Blu ray/DVD: Jacques Audiard’s RUST AND BONE (read my review). Special features: a commentary with Audiard and screenwriter Thomas Bidegain, “Making RUST AND BONE: A Film by Antonin Peretkatko,” a batch of deleted scenes, and a few featurettes.

A divisive musical epic if there ever was one, LES MISÉRABLES is out today (2-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet/1 Disc DVD) with a bevy of Special Features, including Commentary with director Tom Hooper, a few featurettes, and a mini-documentary entitled “The Original Masterwork: Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.”

Another release today that fans may want to skip over for a better future edition is THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (3-Disc Blu-ray, DVD, UltraViolet Digital Copy). Peter Jackson’s epic, ridiculously the first of a new trilogy, is outfitted with a fair amount of extra fluff: game trailers, video blogs, and the featurette “New Zealand: Home of Middle Earth.” None of this stuff looks very essential, so yeah, wait a few years for the grand box of all three HOBBIT monstrosities.

For those who thought Judd Apatow’s THIS IS 40 wasn't long enough at it 141 minutes, its new Blu ray (2-Disc, Digital Copy, etc.) has hours more of that Apatow family fun. The extensive Special Features: the unrated edition, deleted scenes (extended and alternate as well), “Bodies by Jason” commercial, and eight featurettes: “The Making of THIS IS 40,” “This is Albert Brooks (At Work),” “Graham Parker & the Rumour: Long Emotional Ride,” “Brooks-O-Rama,” “Biking with Barry,” “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,” “Kids on the Loose 3” and a “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” segment. Whew!

On the re-mastered re-issue front there’s the new Criterion Collection edition of Terrence Malick’s 1973 classic BADLANDS. Malick’s impressive debut, which concerned Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as a young outlaw couple on the run in Dakota, is now decked out with a New 4K digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack), “Charles Starkweather” (a 1993 episode of Great Crimes and Trials), Making BADLANDS (a new 42-minute documentary featuring the actors), new interview with editor Billy Weber, new interview with producer Edward Pressman, and booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda. Now, that looks like an essential package!

Also out today as part of the Criterion Collection is Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1943 classic THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP. This is one I definitely have to check out as it features a commentary with the late Powell (1905-1990) and Martin Scorsese.

More later…

Holiday Season Cinema Roundup 2012 Part 2

Continuing Film Babble Blog's end of the year roundup (check out Part 1 here), we now take a look at several more movies currently playing this holiday season:

LES MISÉRABLES (Dir. Tom Hooper) 

I was surprised at how many of the songs that I was familiar with in this adaptation of the wildly popular musical based on the 1862 Victor Hugo novel. I had forgotten that a long time ago an ex-girlfriend had the CD set of the Original Broadway Cast Recording from the late '80s, so much of it came flooding back as the film unfolded on the screen.



As my memories and the movie coalesced, I took in this French revolution era tale about Hugh Jackman as an escaped convict, who after becoming mayor of a small town, agrees to take care of deceased factory worker Anne Hathaway’s daughter (played by Isabelle Allen as a child; Amanda Seyfried as an adult). As sleazy innkeepers, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen bring on the bawdy and steal the movie whenever they appear.

Jackman, Hathaway, and Seyfried, who all sing their parts live, are in fine voice, but Russell Crowe, as a ruthless policeman who’s hunting Jackman, has a rough warble that can be painful to endure - especially when the songs go on and on, which they often do. Hooper’s epic production, which clocks in at 157 minutes, wonderfully wallows in the muck of its dark, grotesque imagery, but its messiness can be overwhelming at times. Folks who aren’t fans of the musical, or musicals in general, will find it hard to take, but for the most part, I took it just fine.

JACK REACHER (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie) 

Looks like Tom Cruise wants another franchise as this is an adaptation of one of seventeen in a series of novels by Lee Child. This action thriller formula is competently constructed, but its story - Cruise as an ex-army military police investigator tries to get to the bottom of a case involving a trained military sniper who shot five random people - isn't very compelling. 

Some excitement is there in a few set-pieces, but its climax containing a shoot-out at a construction site, only hammers home how routine a genre exercise it is. Still, Cruise fans should love it as he makes a convincing unshakable badass, and Werner Herzog makes a great villain. Read my full review here.



THIS IS 40 (Dir. Judd Apatow)

Judd Apatow’s glorified home movie is his third film to feature his wife (Leslie Mann) and kids (daughters Maude and Iris), so you know he thinks they’re funny. To his credit, for a lot of its running time (another long one at 134 min) they are funny, but this is a big sloppy comic drama with too many storylines that never really get resolved. Paul Rudd and Mann, reprising their married couple roles from KNOCKED UP, have good chemistry together, and Albert Brooks, as Rudd’s father dealing with new triplets, is highly amusing, so there’s enough here to satisfy most comedy fans. Folks who aren’t fans of heavy amounts of profanity, or Apatow’s brand of man-boy humor in general may want to skip it however. Read my full review.



ANNA KARENINA 

(Dir. Joe Wright) 



Leo Tolstoy's 1868 novel has been adapted many many times, but Wright, in the third of his “literary trilogy” with Keira Knightly, has a meta take on the material involving setting the late 19th-century Russian story in a lavish old theater that evolves within the production into whatever backdrop is needed. Knightly, as the title character, works around the ropes, pulleys, curtains, footlights, and appropriate props, to portray a virtuous woman in a loveless marriage to an imperial minister (a balding, bearded, and quite boring Jude Law) who has an affair with Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a dashing cavalry officer. It can get a bit strained at times in its second half, but Wright's inventive reworking of the well worn material makes it recommendable. Read my full review here.


Well, that's it for this not bad Holiday season. By the way, I appeared on a Special Christmas Edition of fellow Raleigh, N.C. based critic Craig D. Lindsey's podcast Muhf***as I Know last week. We recorded a commentary (of sorts) for what Craig calls “one of the shittiest sex comedies ever made: THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD (1980). The movie is available on Netflix Instant, so queue it up, go here, and listen to us babble all over it.

More later...

THIS IS 40 Is Funny But Enough With Your Family, Apatow!

Opening today at a multiplex near you:



THIS IS 40 (Dir. Judd Apatow, 2012) 

Although it’s being billed as “the sort-of sequel to KNOCKED UP,” I’m considering Judd Apatow’s newest to be the third in the Apatow family trilogy. 

We were introduced to married couple Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife of 15 years) and their two daughters Maude and Iris Apatow in KNOCKED UP in 2007, sans Rudd they appeared as different characters in Apatow’s 2009 comedy drama FUNNY PEOPLE, and now they revert back to their original incarnations to take center stage in THIS IS 40.

Set during a week that both Rudd and Mann turn the big Four-O, Apatow’s glorified 134 minute home movie juggles a bunch of fussy threads.

Let’s see, there’s the thread in which Mann is lying about her age - she’s even tells her doctor she’s only 38.

There’s Rudd’s fledging record label thread, staffed with Lena Dunham (HBO’s Girls), and Chris O’Dowd (BRIDESMAIDS), in which he’s trying to revive the career of British rocker Graham Parker (appearing as himself reunited with his great old band the Rumour).

There’s the story-line about the oldest daughter, 13 year old Maude Apatow, getting put on a Facebook “not hot” list by a boy at school, which results in a confrontation with the boy’s mother (Melissa McCarthy).

There’s the subplot about Rudd’s father, the always welcome Albert Brooks, continually borrowing money to take care of his young blonde triplets.

There’s the Mann’s clothing store thread, in which Mann frets over which one of her two employees (Megan Fox and Charlyne Yi) stole $12,000.

There’s the story-line about Mann trying to reconnect with her emotionally distant father (John Lithgow).

In the mix as well is Jason Segel as Mann’s overconfident trainer (returning from KNOCKED UP), Robert Smigel as Rudd’s best friend, and cameos by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and North Carolina native singer-songwriter Ryan Adams.

Whew! It’s a good thing that KNOCKED UP’s Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl don’t put in appearances – there wouldn’t be room for them.

THIS IS 40 is Apatow’s most indulgent movie, but it’s packed with enough laughs to make it worthwhile for comedy fans. It’s funnier than FUNNY PEOPLE, maybe about equal to KNOCKED UP and 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, and the leads’ likability goes a long way.

Language-wise, it’s a hard R. It may actually be as profane as DJANGO UNCHAINED, albeit in a very different context. A scene with Melissa McCarthy (put her in and consider the scene stolen), maybe contains the most amusing usage of profanity in a comedy this year (stay through the end credits to see an extended version of this scene in which Rudd and Mann are about to lose it).

I hope with this movie, Apatow’s family trilogy is complete. Three movies featuring his wife and kids is enough. With this movie, and the inevitable tons of bonus footage that will surely be on its later Blu ray/DVD release, I really hope he can get all the humor derived from his household out of his system, and find the funny in other things.

More later...