Trumpet player Chet Baker is no stranger to the big screen. He was the subject of “Let’s Get Lost,” a 1988 documentary by Bruce Webber, acted in movies with exciting names like “Howlers of the Dock” and “Hell’s Horizon” and his sublime playing haunts the soundtracks of everything from “The Sixth Sense” to “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” He’s back on the big screen as the subject of “Born to be Blue,” a stylish new drama starring Ethan Hawke.
Writer-director Robert Budreau begins the story during a valley in Baker’s life. Consumed by heroin, a beating by a drug dealer leaves him broken and barely able to play. To recuperate he and soul mate Jane (Carmen Ejogo) head to Baker’s childhood Oklahoma home where his antagonistic father (Stephen McHattie) sheds some light on why the musician behaves the way he does.
Later, on the comeback trail, Chet and Jane live in a van in Los Angeles as the trumpeter tries to convince his old producer Dick Bock (Callum Keith Rennie) to work together again. As he regains his chops and confidence the question remains, will he be able to embrace the change or will fall back into his old bad habits?
It’s a matter of historical record how Baker’s life ended, but “Born to be Blue” isn’t particularly interested in the facts. Jane is a composite figure of several of Baker’s girlfriends and wives and some of the events portrayed as fact are in debate. Instead the movie is more interested in giving the viewer a feel for Baker’s life and struggle.
Hawke shares Baker’s rough-hewn good looks and does a credible job of imitating the fragile beauty of his singing voice. More importantly he apes the addict’s temperament. Charming one minute, petulant and or incoherent the next, he’s a talented train wreck; a man whose tragic life experience fed his art. Unsure which of his proclivities are his angels and which are his devils, he’s a conflicted guy who tries to do well by those around him but often fails. It’s a compelling, if not uncommon, music bio story and Hawke embodies it.
Also compelling is Ejogo as Jane in what could have been simply a supportive wife role. She has great chemistry with Hawke and sparks fly in her character’s relationship with Baker. The heart of the film is their connection and sometimes the fireworks that fly between them are exciting, sometimes heartbreaking.
“Born to be Blue” suffers from occasional melodrama—Kedar Brown plays Miles Davis as a bebop caricature—but nails the sense of melancholy that characterised Baker’s best work.
Last week as I fought traffic en route to a London Has Fallen screening, I tweeted from the back of a cab, “Out of my way people! I’m running late for a Gerard Butler movie!” It was a silly little joke, a comment to kill time as we idled in the morning rush hour.
The first response came in right away: “said no one, ever,” followed by a torrent of unexpected Butler hate.
One person called him a “bouncer actor,” whatever that means.
Another questioned his ability to effectively disguise his native Scottish accent and many people offered me their condolences.
Why the Butler bashing?
It’s true he is a frustrating movie star. He shares the usual leading man traits that have made Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio superstars.
He’s handsome, talented and built like an action star but he’s been done in time after time by poor choices.
Pitt makes Fight Club, Butler makes Law Abiding Citizen. Leo stars in The Departed, Gerard does Machine Gun Preacher. Years ago the website Gawker placed Butler on movie star probation, calling him a “professional bad decision maker” alongside notable career fritterers Cuba Gooding Jr. and John Travolta. A look at his IMDB page suggests they were on to something.
He’s a utility player, comfortable switching genres the way most of us change our socks. One minute he’s a romantic comedy star, the next he’s choking out bad guys on screen. He’s flirted with Shakespeare and provided voices for cartoons. He’s done sci-fi flicks, musicals and even a rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.
It’s not like he hasn’t enjoyed some very big hits. In 300 he (and his meticulously crafted six-pack) played King Leonidas, a Spartan who led 300 soldiers against the might of the Persian army. It’s the film equivalent of a heavy metal concert — loud, brutal and completely uncompromising — and it made him an action hero.
People have a soft spot for Dear Frankie, his breakout film and the one that turned him into a heartthrob with serious dramatic chops. The four-hankie U.K. tear-jerker about a single mother who resorts to trickery to keep the memory of her late husband alive in her son’s mind put Butler on the world stage.
Other box office bonanzas include playing a charming mobster in the violent Guy Ritchie flick RocknRolla and voicing Viking Stoick the Vast in How to Train Your Dragon.
It’s the other stuff that seems to rub people the wrong way. As a movie reviewer I can attest there are few English language words more terrifying than “New Gerard Butler Romantic Comedy” and I think it is those films that turned my Twitter followers against him.
He’s a good actor but his track record in the rom-com department is particularly grim. Critics hate these movies, calling the handsome Scottish actor’s attempts at mixing love and comedy, “instantly grating,” and “embarrassingly limited.”
But I come to praise Butler, not to bury him. Let’s give him another chance.
I made it to the London Has Fallen screening and can tell you it’s a pretty good action movie. Perhaps even good enough to erase the memory of The Ugly Truth or Playing for Keeps from our collective memories.
“To be a good journalist you have to be a bit of a chameleon,” says Kim Barker. “You have to be accepting of different cultures, different languages and different situations. I have always been the kind of person who feels like they can go into any situation and fit in.”
In real life, Barker is a journalist who worked at the Chicago Tribune as a reporter and volunteered to become a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In reel life, she’s played by Tina Fey in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot as an expatriate television journalist addicted to the rush of living and working in a war zone.
Whiskey Foxtrot Tango plays like Animal House with warlords, or maybe Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan, but Barker describes the reality of her time there in more poetic terms.
“In Afghanistan everything looks like a picture,” says Barker. “Everything is so beautiful. The people are beautiful. The landscape is beautiful. You are surrounded by mountains when you’re in Kabul. (The people) are very friendly, very direct with very good sense of humour. Also Afghanistan has men with long beards and pick up trucks and guns who hate the government. That is familiar to me. I grew up in Montana.”
At the beginning of her time abroad Barker was a fish out of water but soon learned to culturally adapt and love the country.
“I remember on my second trip there meeting a guy who asked if I wanted to go fishing with him. I grew up fishing but fishing in Afghanistan is a little bit different because it usually involved throwing a grenade into the lake and stunning the fish or blowing them out of the water or using generator wires to electrocute them. That just doesn’t seem very sporting to me.”
Barker’s book, The Taliban Shuffle came to Tina Fey shortly after a New York Times review mentioned Barker’s similarity to the comedic actress.
“Tina Fey saw it,” Barker says. “I think her people probably showed it to her or my people. I don’t really have people but my agent sent it over to her people. She read the book and within two weeks of that review coming out she pushed Paramount and Lorne Michaels (who produced the movie) to option the book and make it into a movie.
“(People) said, ‘Who’s going to play you?’ I said, ‘A smart funny woman in Hollywood,’ and everybody was like, ‘Tina Fey?’ It was everybody’s first answer.”
Barker describes having her life turned into a film as surreal.
“It’s hard to even think about,” she says, “people seeing this in a theatre. They are going to equate me with Kim Barker even though (that) Kim Barker is a version of me. It’s fictionalized.”
She says the film screenwriter Robert Carlock told her early on that they would have to “Hollywood this up.” Changes to the basic story were made, and when they sent her a final copy of the script in 2014 she couldn’t bring herself to read it. Finally her best friend read the script “to make sure it is not going to embarrass you.”
“She read it and said, ‘It’s fine. It’s good. It’s really good. You’re probably not going to like parts of it because it makes you seem more heroic than you think of yourself.’ She was absolutely right. I’m not that brave.”
Disney animator Trent Correy may be an Ottawa native, but three years of living and working in Burbank, Calif., have changed him.
“I get home about once or twice a year now,” he says. “It’s hard to go in the winter, my body has adapted to here. I tend to send my parents photos of me on the beach in February when it is -42 C back home. I have flip flops on now while we’re talking just to turn the knife a little bit.”
Ironically the sun worshipper’s breakout was helping to animate the snowman Olaf in Frozen. You’ve also seen his handiwork in Big Hero 6 and this weekend he’s back with the furry and funny film Zootopia.
Disney animator Trent Correy may be an Ottawa native, but three years of living and working in Burbank, Calif., have changed him.
“I get home about once or twice a year now,” he says. “It’s hard to go in the winter, my body has adapted to here. I tend to send my parents photos of me on the beach in February when it is -42 C back home. I have flip flops on now while we’re talking just to turn the knife a little bit.”
Ironically the sun worshipper’s breakout was helping to animate the snowman Olaf in Frozen. You’ve also seen his handiwork in Big Hero 6 and this weekend he’s back with the furry and funny film Zootopia.
“The nice part of Zootopia was working with a number of different characters,” says the Algonquin College graduate. “I worked with everything from a mouse to a sloth to an elephant. It kept the job very interesting.”
Set in an alternate universe where animals, both predator and prey, live harmoniously in a city called Zootopia, the movie’s funniest sequence involves a slow moving sloth named Flash. It was the first scene Correy helped animate. “There are a lot of challenges animating a sloth moving at that speed,” he says, “and a lot of other challenges animating a mouse or an elephant with their different weights and animal attributes.”
The 28-year-old is a rising star at Disney — he’s currently working on the mythological epic Moana — so it might come as a surprise that he didn’t take art in high school.
“I failed art,” he admits. “It was totally my fault. I wasn’t into the art history stuff at the time and I was really interested in drawing cartoons. That was looked upon as not real art so the teacher and myself had disagreements. I ended up having to take drama, and that’s fun too.
“I did always love to draw. I have to thank my mom, who is an artist, who encouraged me to draw and keep going.”
He rediscovered his passion for art after high school and now joins the rather long and impressive list of Canadians who are helping to shape the future of animation. I ask him why Canadians are so in demand as animators.
“There is a rich history of animation in Canada with the NFB and a lot of TV work in the ’80s and ’90s,” he says. “I think a lot of it has to do with work ethic. I tend to see a lot of people who come from TV animation who are faster. They have to be because they get paid per frame in a lot of places in Canada, whereas here it’s salary. So to make your money you have to be fast, you have to be efficient and you have to be economical in your choices.
“Our whole crew here is very international, we have people from all over the world. I think there is a bit of, ‘I’m coming from a different country and I’m trying to prove myself in this big place.’ It feels so far away from Ottawa.”
The Legend of Barney Thomson is a movie Robert Carlyle was almost destined to make. The Once Upon a Time star not only plays the lead character, he directed the Scottish black comedy about an awkward barber who unwittingly becomes a serial killer.
“I was offered this four or five times purely as an actor over a period of five or six years,” he says. “I was over here in Vancouver working and a friend of mine said he had a Scottish script that I might be interested in. I said, ‘Of course I’ll read it,’ and it was that again. I can’t get away from it.”
The script is based on The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay, a novel The Scotsman described as “gleefully macabre.”
Carlyle, a Maryhill, Glasgow native, liked the screenplay but says, “there were certain aspects of Glasgow culture that were missing from it.”
“In Glasgow we have a way of speaking to one another that is kind of harsh. That was missing.”
He drew from personal experience to find Glasgow sites that “fitted in with Barney’s life.”
“A lot of the locations you see in the film like the Barrowland Ballroom are places that are kind of dying and might not be around for much longer so I thought this was an interesting way of documenting some of these places.”
Initially he signed on only as an actor but soon found himself doing double duty.
“Believe me when I say, it certainly wasn’t my idea. I don’t know if (the idea) came from the financiers or not. I can’t remember but from whichever source it came from it seemed to be an interesting hook to hang this on that not only was I going to be in it but direct it also. That enthused the financiers.”
The first time feature film director says he took his lead for the tone of the movie from the book and the script.
“Let’s not have the camera moving around and spinning around in circles. Let’s spend the time on the performances and not the camera angles, which you end up cutting anyway.”
He recruited an all-star cast, including Sir Tom Courtney, Ray Winstone and his old Trainspotting cast mate James Cosmo. In a casting coup, he hired two time Oscar winner Emma Thompson to play against type as Barney’s monstrous mom.
“Many, many years ago at the beginning of my career she did a piece on Scotland TV called Tutti Frutti,” he says. “She’s played a Scot in that, from Glasgow. I thought, ‘She’s remarkable. I thought she was English.’ Then suddenly I realized, she is English and just did this terrific accent. There’s not many English people who can do a Scottish accent that well.”
The Legend of Barney Thomson has already won Best Picture at the Scottish BAFTAs and Carlyle is keeping busy on the small screen as Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin on Once Upon a Time.
It’s his next project, however, that has the Internet buzzing. In May he’ll reprise the role of the pint glass-wielding psychopath Francis Begbie in the sequel to Trainspotting alongside the film’s original director and cast.
“We were all very emotional when we read it,” he says, “even Danny (Boyle), because these four characters have followed us around for twenty years. Where ever I go people are talking about Begbie. It is very close to us.”
Around this time of year bunnies usually visit kids with baskets of jellybeans and chocolate. This March, however, a baby rabbit named Judy “Don’t call me cute!” Hopps bounces into theatres bringing with her a message of tolerance. The new Disney film “Zootopia” is social commentary disguised as a furry and funny cartoon.
Growing up on a carrot farm Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) has dreamed of being a police officer in the city of Zootopia, despite the fact, as her father (Don Lake) constantly reminds her, “There’s never been a bunny cop.” In fact, her parents preach the virtues of complacency and want her to go into the family business and become a carrot farmer. “It’s OK to have dreams,” says dad, “just as long as you don’t believe in them too much.”
The call to service to too strong, however, and she soon graduates for the Police Academy at the top of her class. Despite her small size (Message #1: Never give up on your dreams.) she’s sent to Zootopia’s city center, a cosmopolitan place filled with hustle and bustle and animals of all shapes and sizes. “In Zootopia,” she says, “anyone can be anything.”
She’s a keener who introduces herself with, “Ready to make the world a better place?” only to be assigned to parking enforcement duty. True to form she becomes the city’s best ticketer (Message #2: Be The Best Version Of You!) but is unsatisfied by the work. When a missing otter case falls into her lap she starts her investigation by questioning a con artist named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a sly fox with a smart mouth and underworld connections. Together (Message #3: We all do better when we work together.) they learn to look past sly fox/dumb bunny stereotypes (Message #4: Er… look past stereotypes and don’t judge others.) and uncover a plot that threatens Zootopia’s basic precept of celebrating one another’s differences. (Message #5: There is beauty and strength in diversity.)
There are more messages in “Zootopia” than in Hillary Clinton’s private server’s spam folder but the film doesn’t feel like a Successories motivational poster come to life. The life lessons are nicely woven into the story and washed down with a spoonful of humour. Kids and parents alike should find Flash, the fastest sloth at the DMV funny, although for very different reasons, while a “Godfather” take-off will likely mean nothing to children but give older folks a chuckle.
Co-directors Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush pack every inch of the frame with in-jokes, like a billboard for Zuber car services, the carrot logo on a smart phone, or my favourite, the sloth’s mug that reads “You want it when?” If the messages don’t connect the animation will.
“Zootopia” is more than just another cartoon to entertain the eye. It’s a timely and relevant children’s tale with a social agenda.
Fans of 1980s action will recognize “London Has Fallen’s” set up. A veteran Secret Service agent (Gerard Butler) is about to hang up their holster but gets sucked in for one last, dangerous job. It’s a heady mix of “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard” where characters say things right out of the tough guy playbook like “Do me a favour… Stay alive,” and ethnic stereotypes never die.
After saving POTUS from a terrorist attack inside the White House in “Olympus Has Fallen,” Butler is back for a second go round as Mike Banning, secret service agent extraordinaire. He’s about to become a father and wants to leave his old life behind. In fact, he’s typing out a letter of resignation when he gets a call from the Oval Office. The British Prime Minister has died suddenly and President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) has to go to England for the state funeral.
With only twenty-four hours to plan the trip Banning is nervous about security but is assured that this will be “the most protected event on earth.” Of course the funeral is not protected enough or the movie would be called “London Has Not Fallen.” A massive terrorist attack kills several world leaders, hundreds of innocent bystanders and decimates most of the landmarks in the British capital. Turns out the man responsible for the attack, an arms dealer named Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul), has a personal grudge against Asher and doesn’t care how many people he has to kill to get his vengeance. Banning is a formidable one-man army—his Spidey senses are always tingling—but will he be able to keep the President safe and prevent the what’s left of London from collapsing into the Thames?
“London Has Fallen” is terror-porn of the highest order, but while half of London is covered in CGI ashes, there is an inherent lack of stakes because you know in your heart that nothing is going to happen to the President. He may be bloodied but by the time the end credits roll it is a guarantee he will be unbowed.
So, with no real tension, what’s left? Plenty of 80s inspired action, that’s what. Like a lost relic from John McClane’s heyday the movie presents a main character who could be a case study in ‘Hero or Psychopath’ 101. He causes carnage with a twinkle in his eye, torturing and killing people in the name of protecting the Prez. It’s all action, all the time, feeling like a throwback to a time when grim faced heroes took on impossible odds—“There’s nearly 100 terrorists in there,” Banning is told before entering a terror hive alone. “They should’ve brought more men,” he grunts.—spouted one liners and the bad guys were anyone with an exotic accent. It’s not particularly enlightened in its world outlook and dismisses the female members of the cast—all of Oscar winner Melissa Leo’s lines could be written on the head of a pin—but if you choose not to think about it much, it’s good, high-octane fun.
Just as dangerous as the bullets and bombs on display is the minefield of tough guy clichés Butler navigates. “I never thought you’d outlive me…” BOOM! “The only person you trust right now is me!” BANG! Like an endlessly looping GIF the banalities never stop. Butler delivers them with gusto, but don’t go to “London Has Fallen” looking for witty or original dialogue. Very little has been done to update the story from its 80s roots. Now the bad guys broadcast on the internet—“It’s on social media!” screams a near hysterical Deputy Chief Mason (Jackie Earle Haley)—but that’s about it for new ideas.
To sum it up: You’ve seen “London Has Fallen” before, but you’ve never seen it quite like this.
Kim Baker (Tina Fey playing the real life Kim Barker) needed to turn her life upside down. “I wanted out of my job,” she says in the new black comedy “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. “I wanted out of my mildly depressive boyfriend. I wanted to blow everything up.” And blow everything up she did… as bombs blew up around her.
When we first meet Baker she’s a New York City based cable-news journalist tiring of “writing copy for pretty people.” Eager for a change, both personally and professionally, she agrees to a three-month stint as a war correspondent in Kabul, Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. The “Ka-bubble,” the alcohol-fuelled world populated by expatriate journos and media types, soon seduces her and she becomes addicted to the rush of living and working in a war zone. Her three-month assignment stretches to four years as she begins a relationship with a charming Scottish photographer (Martin Freeman) and chases that elusive one big story.
Question is, when will she go home? Answer: When it all starts to feel normal.
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” breathes the same satiric air as “M*A*S*H” and “Catch 22,” but never rises to the level of social commentary attained in either of those films. There are as many jokes about Baker’s appearance—she is, apparently “Kabul Cute”—as there are about the war. It sidesteps any direct political stance. Instead it’s simply content to make the point that outsiders will never have a bead on how to fix the problems in this part of the world. “This war is like [making love to] a gorilla,” says US Marine Corps Col. Hollanek (Billy Bob Thornton). “You keep on going until the gorilla wants to stop.” It’s not a revolutionary idea but it is brought to vivid life as seen through Barker’s eyes.
The film is being billed as a comedy but it’s not always laugh-out-loud-funny. The jokes are styled to add to the atmosphere—Kabul international Airport, for instance, is referred to as K.I.A., which is also an acronym for “Killed In Action.”—which sits squarely in Tina Fey’s wheelhouse. She plays Baker as a mostly bemused—and frequently hung over—presence, able to keep the funny bits believable while bringing enough emotional heft to sell the serious parts.
“Whiskey Foxtrot Tango” is kind of like “Animal House” with warlords, or maybe, “Fear and Loathing in Afghanistan.” When it is firing on all cylinders, it hits its satirical mark—“Hearts and minds,” says one soldier, “the two best places to shoot somebody.”—but spends most of its running time elsewhere on Barker’s personal journey.
