Cinematical

I'm slightly mistrustful of titles that include exclamation points. They always remind me of the musical version of The Elephant Man, Elephant!, in The Tall Guy ("... there's an angel with big eeears..."). But in the case of Mamma Mia!, I'm actually surprised the title only included one exclamation point -- you can imagine the filmmakers or the creators of the stage version embracing even more emphatic punctuation, just to let you know that This! Is a Musical! And also Wacky!! As if chorus lines of men in flippers, Meryl Streep waving a feather boa, and enough ABBA music to sate the leads of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert wouldn't have clued you in.

The movie, like the stage musical it's adapted from, is essentially and unabashedly an extended gimmick -- an excuse to sing and perform songs that originated from the Swedish musical group ABBA. Characters spontaneously burst into song not because they're aspiring performers (Chicago), or because their singing is meant as a melodious soliloquy (Sweeney Todd), but because the situation or their emotional state reminds them of an ABBA song (sometimes more tangentially than others), and they decide to share it with everyone. I've had friends like this in real life, although that seems to have been a college-age thing.

Imagine one of the Star Trek crews transported to Tolkien's Middle Earth, or Buffy and her Scooby gang whisked away into the heart of Narnia. That's how Hellboy II: The Golden Army can feel, as you watch a cartoonish-looking, cigar-smoking demon fight gorgeous creatures right out of ancient folklore (and one Miyazaki-esque nature deity). Your reaction to such a contrast -- as fascinating, jarring or downright repellent -- will likely influence your feelings about the latest film from Guillermo del Toro, a sequel to his 2004 adaptation of Mike Mignola's graphic novels. The writer-director's previous film, Pan's Labyrinth, was a favorite of mine, and while Hellboy II doesn't quite measure up to that film's richness of character and story, it is still visually extraordinary.

I came into this film entirely ignorant of the Hellboy universe ... much like with Sex and the City, although it seems bizarre to compare Mignola's characters to Candace Bushnell's. I haven't read the graphic novels and I hadn't even seen the first movie (it was impossible to find a rental DVD of Hellboy in Austin last week, which may bode well for the popularity of the sequel). And yet, unlike Sex and the City, I didn't feel as though I must have missed something in order to fully appreciate the film. Hellboy II gives us virtually no backstory on its main characters, but that's not necessary, as the setup becomes obvious almost immediately. Sure, there were a few scenes where the comic-book fans were laughing and I didn't get the joke, but it didn't bother me and I never felt lost or confused.

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a Netflix Player by Roku -- a little box that lets Netflix subscribers watch the company's video-on-demand selections on a TV set. We already had a media computer hooked up to our TV, but it runs on a Linux platform so we couldn't use it to Watch Instantly on Netflix, which is Windows-only. The Roku player was priced at $99, which is a little steep for a gamble on whether the quality would be acceptable and whether we could make it work with our increasingly bulky TV/media setup, but we decided to give it a shot.

The box, which is about the size of a large paperback, arrived last weekend while I was at the farmers' market, and by the time I returned with tomatoes and peaches, my husband had hooked the box into our TV setup and activated it through our Netflix account. He tells me this was a very easy thing to do, although we're talking about someone who spent time the night before creating a fancy diagram of our devices and cabling input/output so he'd know exactly where and how to hook up the Roku box. (We also have a digital TV tuner, two DVD players, a VCR, and the media computer.) Here are the ups and downs we've discovered so far about the newest addition to our home's TV/media setup.

The movie Be Kind Rewind is being released on DVD today. Even if you didn't see the movie, you probably remember the delightful trailer, in which Jack Black and Mos Def shoot their own low-budget, low-everything versions of blockbusters like Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy. In addition, another movie about the joy of making movies is still playing in some theaters -- Son of Rambow, where two boys are inspired to shoot their own version of Rambo complete with flying dogs, nursing-home residents bribed as actors, and a fabulous French exchange student.

I can think of dozens of enjoyable movies about moviemaking (and a few clunkers, but we'll ignore them for today). But I decided to focus on seven of the most characteristic films. I didn't include films about screenwriters, because I think those would be fun to list another time, or films about moviegoing like Cinema Paradiso. Instead, I focused on the inspired and sometimes crazed filmmakers. Afterwards, you can tell me which of your favorites I left off the list.

Filmmaker Richard Linklater's feature films have often debuted in prestigious film festivals and venues, from Sundance to Cannes, but he's trying something different with his first documentary feature. After a splashy premiere in Austin last week, Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach will be released ... not in theaters, but on a cable sports channel. You can watch the film on ESPN2 or ESPN2 HD at 10:00 pm EST on Sunday, June 15.

Inning by Inning is a profile of Augie Garrido, considered one of the "winningest" coaches in NCAA baseball. The film focuses on the 69-year-old coach's most recent seasons with the Texas Longhorns team. Linklater and his crew were given access to the team from 2005-2006, and it's fascinating to see personal, almost intimate moments when Garrido talks to the college players one-on-one, or as a team. Linklater had originally set out to make a documentary about the Longhorns' back-to-back winning seasons (2004-2005), but said (in a Q&A after the film's press screening) that he became interested in Garrido's coaching techniques and shifted the film's focus accordingly. Interviews with former Texas and Cal State-Fullerton players coached by Garrido, and other sports figures like Darrell Royal and Roger Clemens (Kevin Costner appears briefly too), round out the documentary.

I love a surprise, even a small one like finding out that Kung Fu Panda was more likeable and fun than I might have expected. I have a secret mini-crush on Jack Black (okay, maybe not so secret), so I was hoping that Kung Fu Panda wouldn't suck and if nothing else, I'd be able to enjoy his vocal stylings in the Dreamworks animated film. Surprise! I liked the movie for more reasons than Jack Black.

Black voices the title character, Po, who helps in his father's noodle shop but dreams of becoming a kung fu fighter and joining the Furious Five: Monkey (Jackie Chan), Viper (Lucy Liu), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Crane (David Cross) and especially Tigress (Angelina Jolie). He wants to watch the Five compete to be the great Dragon Warrior, and is somehow dragged into the selection process himself. Kung-fu master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is irritated that a fat clumsy clown of a panda is joining his elite cadre of students, especially since it's predicted that the supremely evil snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) may escape from prison and try to steal the Dragon Warrior scroll of power for himself.

A couple of months ago, I heard some New Yorkers who are involved in the film industry talk about dealing with changing release strategies. At one point, one of them said in a horrified voice, "And remember There Will Be Blood? It opened in ... Austin!" We were all supposed to look shocked, I suppose, but instead a voice in my head shouted "Hah!" in triumph (not aloud). Austin landed the Paul Thomas Anderson movie during Fantastic Fest, before any other city, and it was a rare treat for us to be ahead of the game. Usually we are late in getting limited-release films, waiting enviously while the East and West Coasters have all the fun.

Now New Yorkers are in a dither again because Baghead, the latest film from Jay and Mark Duplass, is opening in limited release on June 13 in which city? Austin! New York and Los Angeles won't see the indie film until July. The reason Sony Pictures Classics is citing for this "reverse rollout" is that they want to build word-of-mouth more effectively, and build a following before Baghead reaches the largest media markets. The New York Times published a long article today about the ramifications of releases that start outside of their fair city, questioning whether this will become a trend or if Baghead is an "aberration." Over at Variety's blog The Circuit, Michael Jones reminds us that Austin isn't like the rest of Texas, and wonders if word-of-mouth can spread effectively from the city of slackers to places like Dallas and Houston.

Sometimes I feel like my cultural literacy is shamefully limited. I watch a lot of movies but somehow I rarely watch many television shows. I only have the most basic cable, so I could tell you all about the most fascinating shows on Austin community access but nothing about, say, Sex and the City. I saw the movie Sex and the City without ever having watched an episode, with an unfortunate tendency to refer to it as Sex in the City, and with such an ignorance of pop culture that I kept mixing up Carrie Bradshaw with Carrie Underwood. I brought a friend to the screening who was well acquainted with the TV show, in case I needed help, and whispered things like "Is that the theme song?" and "What's the joke?"

Fortunately, for those of us who are encountering Sex and the City for the first time, the movie's opening sequence provides compressed backstories about the four characters so we don't feel lost and confused. But even if we didn't know who had done what and whom and where, the storyline -- set five years after the TV show's end -- is not difficult to follow.

Indiana Jones -- he's got to be Harrison Ford, doesn't he? Okay, we had young Indiana Jones characters -- River Phoenix in the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Sean Patrick Flanery in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles -- but I never really thought of Indy as a character who could be cast in any other way. You know, you figure the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark was practically written for Ford, who'd been in a couple of George Lucas films before that anyway (Star Wars and American Graffiti).

However, that assumption couldn't be more wrong. I've been digging around on that great source of reliable information, the Internet, and reading all kinds of stories about the casting of Indiana Jones. The general gist is that Steven Spielberg was interested in Ford, but Lucas didn't want to be one of those directors who cast the same guy in all his movies. So they tested a bunch of other actors, and were seriously interested in one who had to back out ... and then ended up with Harrison Ford after all. We are all profoundly grateful. But let's take a look at some of those actors allegedly under consideration, and a few more that I threw into the mix just for fun. (I picked only actors who were alive and the right age at the time, which is why you don't see Steve McQueen on the list.)

It's been two-and-a-half years since we watched the Pevensie children come to life on the big screen in Disney's splashy adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but for the characters, only a year has passed between those adventures and the ones in the new movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Well, time is funny like that when you're dealing with the magical land of Narnia, as the storyline of this movie amply illustrates.

The structure of events in the movie is actually an improvement on the C.S. Lewis book, opening with a captivating chase scene as young Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) attempts to escape from his Uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellito). Miraz has been scheming to steal Caspian's throne and now wants him dead. But Caspian's tutor gives him a magical horn, the horn of Queen Susan, to summon help in time of need. When Caspian blows the horn, suddenly Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter are pulled out of a London Tube station (which was the first scene in the book) and into a world of wild, wooded ruins that turns out to be Narnia, thousands of years after they've left. However, Caspian thought he was summoning kings and queens, not British children, and how can these kids help him regain the throne and help Old Narnia? And where is Aslan the Lion in the middle of all this?