Thanks again for reading.

May 2nd:
Subverting the Rom-Coms

Well, after a "day off" on Tuesday (I was working), I was able to catch Watching the Detectives bright and early Wednesday morning. It's the film I mentioned in the last column, written and directed by Paul Soter, of Broken Lizard, the comedy group that gave us Super Troopers and Beerfest.

Despite a couple of cameos from his Broken Lizard friends, this is Soter's baby, unrelated to those previous films. I knew that going in, but what I wasn't prepared for was just how different it would be. The humor is on an entirely different plane. Watching the Detectives is a dialogue-driven comedy that plays like a subversion to the romantic comedy genre. It's leisurely paced, doesn't fall prey to the annoying rom-com cliches, and it looks like everybody's having a good time.

Cillian Murphy stars as Neil, a film geek who owns a failing independent video store called Gumshoe Video - and at least in part thanks to my own video store clerk experience, I liked him immediately. One day a woman named Violet (Lucy Liu) enters his life, and they strike up a relationship. She's one of those hyperactive charmers that males in the audience are meant to fall immediately in love with. Think Natalie Portman in Garden State, although Soter and Liu actually manage to make Violet feel more real than the heroine in Zach Braff's emofest.

See, Violet hates watching movies and TV, hates sitting around, hates inactivity in general, and likes to spice up her relationship with Neil by staging elaborate pranks on him straight out of noir films. She's like an insane femme fatale but she's always kidding. One day he walks into her place to find her tied up as a hostage to an insane bald ex-boyfriend. This, of course, is far, far, far outside of film geek Neil's comfort zone.

It's a better dynamic than most romantic leads usually have, and it has the benefit of being able to showcase Soter's general love of film. He relishes staging ludicrously over-the-top noir scenes - a face-off at an underground casino; an interrogation by two cops who look like they stepped out of Double Indemnity.

One more note: Cillian Murphy, the Irish actor who first hit stardom in 28 Days Later, is a versatile guy. His skeletal good looks and offbeat charm can work in things as different as a big studio blockbuster (Batman Begins), a heavy Irish period piece (The Wind that Shakes the Barley), and now an independent comedy from one of the masterminds of Super Troopers. You should check this one out once it gets real distribution.

In other news, Dan has also been hard at work on the Tribeca scene; he saw the flick Palo Alto recently and really dug ...