THE BITERION COLLECTION: Up In The The Air

(Earlier this week I did a post about New Moon called "Up In The Air." I just hope you saw what I did there.)

Yesterday it was on Twitter that Mark Brand Ambassador (whatever that is) Ashley Greene was nominated for a Best Scene Stealer at the Teen Choice Awards (whatever that is). It's kind of interesting, because the Twilight films definitely have scene stealers, only they are Billy Burke and Anna Kendrick. I obviously have a lot of love for Ashley Greene, but c'mon people. The supremacy of Burke & Kendrick (feel like I'm writing about a law firm) should be obvious to everyone; I haven't seen Eclipse, but from what I hear the pattern holds. Kendrick & Burke (I feel like I'm writing about a comedy team, which they should be) are the best. People say it all the time, but not enough.

Case in point: Mark Brand Ambassador Extraordinary and Perennial Goodwill Squanderer Ashley Greene was recently talking about her desire to do comedies:

"Comedy is something that I'm definitely looking to get into. I had a little taste of it and I do intend on going to classes for it because I think it's a different muscle, and it's hard to find female comedians. ... You've got, like, Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz and that's it."

Naturally some people jumped up and down on her for that, because, uh, there are a lot of great female comedians! Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston aren't even in the top ten! She probably meant "successful" female "comedic actresses," and Ashley Greene's definition of successful is different from ours - she means "really rich" not "artistically skilled and/or innovative." But were she not kind of an idiot (a super hot idiot), she would have mentioned her own co-star, Anna Kendrick, who is a great comedic actress, in Twilight films and elsewhere.

Elsewhere in this case (essentially only this case until Scott Pilgrim later this summer) is Up In The Air, Jason Reitman's 2009 film, which was actually the first film I saw in theaters this year. I just watched it again yesterday, and my appreciation for Kendrick's performance/subplot was renewed. This film is a character study, so when we talk about subplots in character studies we're talking about the study of a sub-character. So the subplot of this film is basically Anna Kendrick's character, Natalie, who is Finding Herself On The Road. And she does a good job with that admittedly well-tread role and holds her own, comically and serious acting-ly, against George Clooney, which is no small feat.

Every time anyone mentions this movie it feels like you're required to do five minutes on this film vis-a-vis the recession, but lets' just pretend that's what this sentence is instead of actually doing it.

Up In The Air is an Adult Indie Movie. That's the genus; the species is Road Movie: Away We Go, Into The Wild, and so on. It hits all of the bases: Elliott Smith music, a party/karaoke scene, an obscure musician cameo, a boat, JK Simmons. If The Runaways made me want to break shit, this movie made we want to get introspective about shit.

It's a little weird that Jason Reitman, a pretty young guy, seems so interested in the existential plight of older men, but we get so few of these films I can't really complain. I can't say I identify with "older men suffering from existential plight" movies, but I do enjoy them. And the more these "adult" movies fail at the box office, the less likely it will be that executives will greenlight explorations into the adult psyche - it will be more likely that they will greenlight explorations of Megan Fox's rack instead. So I am glad Reitman is making them, and making money with them, even if he seems like kind of a dick. I've already mentioned, somewhere, that Reitman keeps a pie chart of all the questions he is asked when doing press for his films. The point he is trying to make is unclear. Movie journalism is stupid? Local journalists should get fired? The state should publish a single newspaper/TV/radio station so that poor millionaire directors don't have to say the same thing more than once? Do you see the Twilight cast, who probably have to do a hundred times as much press, bitching about this kind of thing? Reitman also made a very dismissive remark to MTV when asked if he picked Kendrick based on her work in Twilight. Laughing it off is one thing, but he went on to call it "a graveyard of acting." It's really not that. Corey Feldman and Pauly Shore aren't in this shit. It's a whole bunch of young actors, many of whom who do not have fathers who directed Ghostbusters, who are trying to do their best as far as I can tell. Go fuck yourself, Jason Reitman.

But after you have finished fucking yourself, please keep making movies. They are very good. I even liked Juno! I saw Juno long before the backlash - it was a limited release kind of situation. I remember seeing it in Boston and then telling my family in New Hampshire to see it and then realizing that it wasn't playing in New Hampshire for four months or something. I felt like such a cool city kid. But by the time it got to them everyone hated Juno and I looked really unhip. hOh well. Anyway, Up In The Air is a great movie. It's the best movie I have reviewed for The Biterion Collection by far. It is almost perfect, for what it is. (What it is is kind of slight, so the bar, by definition, can only go so high.) The only real misstep is the opening title sequence, which is apparently supposed to look like postcards, but is not postcard-like at all. The font used in it is that "Greetings From/ X State!" font, but I have never seen a postcard that is a picture of a bunch of clouds. Postcards have landmarks on them! Badly played, credit sequence. But it's all uphill from there.

One of the best things about this movie is actually the teaser trailer, which by itself is a thing of beauty.

(In the film actually, that speech (well, the three or four iterations of it) is less effective, because the actual film score is mostly droning, jungle-y drum loops. Seriously, sometimes it's the same drum loop for what feels ten minutes. I didn't notice it the first time through, but the second time through it's a little distracting. So make that two missteps, but really, that's it. One thing several critics complained about was that this film very briefly employs that tiredest of all tropes, the "character running through an airport" shot. But when 75% of your movie takes place in airports, I think you're allowed to do that.)

But the best thing about this movie is not that teaser anyway, it is George Clooney. Duh, enough said. And the second best part is Anna Kendrick. They are probably equally charming! To be as charming as George Clooney, this early in your life, must be kind of scary. Soon Anna Kendrick will be at Neil Patrick Harris-levels of charming, and then she will be so charming that she will literally hypnotize people when they go to see her movies, and men, women and children will throw themselves at the screen, big dumb charmed smiles on their faces, so charmed will they be, and movie theaters around the country will suffer serious structural damage.

Kendrick & Clooney (I feel like I'm writing about a clothing line) aside, this film has a lot to offer. Speaking of scene stealers, Up In The Air is literally full of them: Zach Galifianakis, Jason Bateman, Melanie Lynskey! It's one Chris Messina short of The Full Indie Scene-Stealer McCoy, which is a thing now which I just invented. It also has a great wedding scene, which is sort of like the wedding scene in Rachel Getting Married, only realistic and not an insufferable exaggerated white-person multicultural fantasy. Come to think of it, it's not like that scene at all. But it's good.

On the Zac Little Patented 500 Days Of Summer scale, this movie scores "better than 500 Days of Summer." It is 500 times as good. See what I did there? Seriously though: Anna Kendrick is a great comedian and actress, and if you didn't know that already, this movie will prove it to you. Ashley Greene better recognize.

Previous entries can be found in the directory.