Role Models

|Staff Writer

“Role Models” is a film about two slacker guys, Danny (Paul Rudd) and Wheeler (Seann William Scott), whose jobs are to go from school to school selling an energy drink called Minotaur, which is funny in itself. Danny is sick of his job and his girlfriend is sick of him. One day everything piles up and Danny goes a little crazy, leading both Danny and Wheeler to have a date with the courts. Danny’s girlfriend (played by the wonderful Elizabeth Banks), also Danny’s lawyer, presents them with two options: either spend time in jail, or serve over a hundred hours of community service. They are then set up with a community service program called Sturdy Wings which is a big brother-type program for kids and is run by it’s founder; the hilarious ex-junkie Gayle Sweeny (played by the hilariously painful Jane Lynch). Wheeler is paired up with the foul-mouthed Ronnie who winds up stealing the show, and Danny is paired up with nerdyand genuine Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse of McLovin’ fame). Mintz-Plasse still plays the nerd as he did in “Superbad”, but this movie is a definite step forward from his branded McLovin character. He pulls off the role with charm and sensitivity.

“Role Models” is the product of the brilliantly twisted mind that gave us the near perfect and entirely under-rated “Wet Hot American Summer” in 2001. This is a mind that gives us penis jokes, sex jokes, nerd jokes, awkward jokes and jokes that make you cringe for laughing so hard in the first place. This is the mind of David Wain. Wain is a part of a three-man comedy team with Michael Showalter (“The Baxter”) and Michael Ian Black called Stella, which had a hilarious but cancelled one-season show on Comedy Central. Last year Wain made the very hit-or-miss comedy “The Ten” which stars Paul Rudd, Jessica Alba, and “The OC”‘s Adam Brody, but the film never got much spotlight. Wain’s comedies have never really reached a wide audience and have only seemed to sparkle for his close-knit cult following (including myself) mostly because his style of comedy is so abrasive and crude. “Role Models” is his chance to break that cult following and to reach a wider audience because it is so well crafted and incredibly watchable. This may be thanks to “Role Models”‘ star Paul Rudd. It’s not just that Paul Rudd delivers a fantastic, down-in-the-dumps performance, but because he has writing credits for the gig. Wain and Rudd are long time friends and when Wain presented Rudd with the script, Rudd felt it needed some work and, for the most part, rewrote the screenplay (according to Entertainment Weekly). It seems as though it was for the better. The dialogue is so quick and clever that it has a sharp improvisational feel to it. It also carries some weight by developing strong characters so that by the end of it, you are completely engrossed in the characters’ stories that you want to jump up and cheer for them. Wain also has a small role and delivers possibly one of the funniest lines in the film.

The entire cast shines throughout and this can be attributed to the fact that most in the cast are all good friends, meaning that Wain knows who’s good at what and how to get the best from each cast member. “Role Models” is also enjoyable because the characters are hyper-aware of the absurd situations they find themselves in that they fully embrace them. It is not quite as perfect as “Wet Hot American Summer”, but it’s damn close. Also, if you’ve seen the trailer for this film, be forewarned. The trailer does not do the movie justice by any means. If a movie can make Sean William Scott funny and likeable, it gets my thumbs up.

Grade: A-

“SYNECDOCHE [Sih-NECK_doh_kee], NEW YORK”

 

By Sky Madden | Foghorn Staff

Acclaimed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman makes his directorial debut with “Synecdoche, New York”.  It opens in San Francisco tomorrow Friday, Nov. 7th.  Kaufman’s previous works “Being John Malkovich” (1999), “Adapation” (2002) and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) have asked audiences to let the hand of existentialism come out of the big screen and massage their brains relentlessly.  This time, Kaufman reaches even further into the absurdist abyss with character Caden Cotard in his new script, “Synecdoche, New York.”  Cotard, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a tired American playwright, frustrated with pluming bills and paranoid of terminal illnesses.  His contentious wife, Adele, played by Catherine Keener bruises Caden’s mental state with her outright detached life philosophy.  Adele understands romantic love to be mere projection and that the more you know someone in this way, the more disappointing they become.  The brutal estrangement of his wife only elevates Caden’s spiraling state as he attempts to finally execute a biographic play–the play that might save him from a life of meaninglessness.

Foghorn Podcast: Interview with Charlie Kaufman

“Synecdoche, New York” was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and produced by Spike Jonze, Anthony Bregman and Sidney Kimmel.  It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, Dianne West and Tom Noonan.

Mr. Charlie Kaufman talks with Sky Madden about scriptwriting theory and his experience with making “Synecdoche” for Foghorn Scene Podcasts.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua — putting the wuuuh? in Chihuahua

Staff Writer: Brita Thompson

If you’ve seen the previews to this film, wherein thousands upon thousands of dancing and singing CGI Chihuahuas swarm over an Aztec pyramid, you’re probably looking forward to this film being an immensely expensive mess. To its credit, Beverly Hills Chihuahua had its moments that were surprisingly funny in a self-deprecating way. Part of the shtick is that Beverly Hills Chihuahua knows that it’s a ridiculous movie about talking Chihuahuas. But the film can’t make up its mind about being serious or not and so becomes a jumbled attempt at cultural awareness and Mexican pride in a horrible, cartoony, ‘Disney-fied’ way.

Treasure Island: Day by Day

Staff Writer:Kylah Frazier

The past two days have been an insane musical overload, I’m more tired than I’ve ever been and I’m pretty sure I’ll be partially def for the rest of my life but it was all well worth it. I came back from the Treasure Island Music Festival with a long list of new songs to add to my ipod and a million new pictures for my photo album. I can only try to recount everything that happened and hopefully some of you reading this were there and got to experience what I’m talking about. But to the rest of you, I’ll just let you know now, you really should have been there.
Day One

Saturday morning, a bus and a rail got me to AT&T Park where I met my friend from Berkeley and her older sister. Really quick, here’s a festival tip: make friends with Berkeley students, they’ll get some pretty awesome perks sometimes like the two days for the price of one tickets my friend scored us. We hung out in the park’s Lot A for a couple minutes before the shuttle that would take us to the island arrived and when it did arrive I was impressed. We were taken up to the venue in Bauer shuttle buses (the same, I hear that cart around Google employees) with very comfortable leather chairs, tables and TV screens. It looked a lot like the inside of the limo I rode to Senior Prom in, only bigger and with a whole bunch more people in it.

We got in past the gate and went straight for the stage to see the day’s first act, The Frail, which actually started right on time. I had never heard of this band but I bopped along in front of the crowd and got some really close up of pictures of the lead singer when he leaned over the barricade right in front of me. There wasn’t so much room between the crowd and the stage here, so it had a more intimate feel. Here if you yelled at the band and you were close to the rail you knew they could hear you which many took advantage of. I was very happy for this fact when the Foals took the stage, I had been waiting to see them and they might have been my favorite act of the day not only because of their sound but because you could tell they were into it.

Around the middle of the day we decided to take a break from the stages and check out the stands set up inside the festival. We were really excited to find that there was so much free stuff, and not just any free stuff, free stuff we actually wanted. There were silk screened scarves, movie passes, pins, stickers, bags, earplugs (way more practical than you would think at a music festival) and even a free turn in the photo booth. There was also an art tent with a whole bunch of really interesting pieces including a wall that was being spray painted as we watched and another covered with nails with questions about yourself taped to them that you wrapped pieces of yarn around if you could answer with a yes. There were a lot of stands that were selling things too: jewelry, food, posters, records etc. When it started getting dark I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel to see the San Francisco skyline all lit up (which was beautiful by the way) from the top but I only had enough money to do that or eat and eating won.

I really liked the set up of the festival. Bands played between two stages, the smaller Tunnel Stage and the Larger Bridge stage, and no two acts overlapped so in theory if you really wanted to you could see them all (though by the end you wouldn’t be getting anywhere near the performers). At first we were walking between them but it soon because very obvious that staying up front meant missing other shows and holding your spot. All the way from Hot Chip to CSS we held our spots up front at the Bridge Stage in hopes of getting close to Justice, but at they rolled on the wall of speakers and electric cross we realized that the guys standing in front of us were tall and we weren’t going to see anything. I also had the inkling that staying where we were would result in moderate to heavy bodily injury. I already knew from TV on the Radio that the girl I was pinned to on my left favored a dance in which she punched everything she could connect her fists to and I was sure the dancing would only get more violent from there.

In a less populated area we watched Justice take the stage and the madness begin. I could almost see Gaspard and Xavier in the dimmed light behind their speakers raising their arms and beckoning the crowd to sing along as the lights pulsated perfectly to the beat. Everyone started dancing like they were at a rave, I thought it looked fun so I tried to start dancing too only to find that my body had gone way too numb with cold to move in any manner coordinated enough to be called dancing. So instead I opted to watch, bouncing on my heels and bobbing my head.

After the encore I left in the flood of people back to my dorm to literally crash into my pillow and get up the next morning and do the whole thing over again. 

Day Two
Round two we came in for a latter start, arriving around two o’clock to the sounds of Tokyo Police Club coming off the big stage. We made our way for right the Tunnel stage and waited for The Morning Benders—a group from Berkeley that my friend told me where good—to come on. They came out and not much later I decided they were pretty good. As I watched on I noticed something kind of weird on one of the guy’s guitars, aside from having the name “Britney Spears” taped to it there was a spatter of red paint underneath the strings where the sound hole on an acoustic would be. I stared trying to figure out if he meant for it to look like blood when I noticed that the splatter grew every time he strummed, that’s when I realized that he was actively bleeding all over his white guitar. He didn’t seem to notice or care as he played right through the set and the blood collected and started to run down the body. I thought he was pretty cool for playing on like that despite the fact that he had gone and sliced himself pretty bad, but part of me still wished someone would give the guy a bandaid.

Right after the Benders we ran over to see Okkervil River which was the band my friend and he sister had really come to see. They were good and we were up front and got a really great view. The best part though was after they played and one of their guitarists, Brian Cassidy, came down to see the fans at the barricade. I got my event program signed and even got the chance to talk to him for a while which was really exciting. They had been having some technical problems on stage with guitar plugs and he was telling us how the cable worked and how the stage wasn’t as stocked for them because they weren’t the headliners. He said they only had four backup guitars where as The Raconteurs would probably have forty. My friend’s sister mentioned to him that she had seen them before at a Decembrists concert and he went on to tell us how he preferred playing clubs to festivals because they were too rushed and they don’t get as much time as they like. He was really cool and down to earth and talked to us for as long as he could before having to go change and meet up with his band.

So it was there against the rail I stood for the next couple hours so I could be up front for Vampire Weekend, the whole reason I can to Treasure Island. I saw them once before at the Jimmy Kimmel Show in Hollywood last April and have been waiting to see them again ever since. I put in my earplugs and waited diligently through Spiritualized (who didn’t seem very excited about their music) until the moment finally arrived when the East Coast foursome took the stage. I’m glad to say that they were well worth the wait and I quickly filled up my camera’s memory cartridge that I had been responsibly saving just for them with pictures and a video recording of their new song which I hope means a new album will be soon to follow. 

They left all too soon and I sadly relinquished my front and center spot as the roadies set up for Tegan & Sara because I knew that my ride back to school was leaving in the middle of their act and I’d never get out once they started. But I did get to watch them, or listen rather since I couldn’t see too much which was just as well because it turned out that even better than listening to them play was listening to them talk.

They were hilarious and just listening to them no one could doubt they were sisters the way they jokingly patronized and made fun of each other. They went off on tangents and had really long asides about how they felt like they were in the movie The Lost Boys and what would happen if vampires descended upon them right then in front of everyone. They played their songs as well as a cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and one sister would make faces wile the other tolled stories about her. It was during this I had to leave, I wanted to stay longer but at the same time I felt like I might fall over for so much moving after all those hours of standing almost completely still waiting. We got back on the shuttles and drove off the island back to the city.

There’s no better way to discover new bands than full festival immersion. There’s all sorts of music I need to find now and bands I need to research, enough to hopefully keep me happy until the next festival at least. I got to hear a lot, from bands I’d never heard of before like the slightly outrages Chester French to old favorites like Vampire Weekend; it was well worth the couple weeks supply of energy I burned on these past two day, definitely well worth it.