Much Ado About Nothing: A droll something

Much Ado About Nothing (2012) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for sensuality, subtle sexual candor and fleeting drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.13

Fred and Wesley finally got back together, which is pretty cool.

And while the circumstances are rather unusual, they’re no less delightful.

An eavesdropping Beatrice (Amy Acker, foreground) is astonished to overhear details
about how Benedick — elsewhere in the estate — has long adored her ... astonished
because it seems that she and Benedick do nothing but snipe at each other. Ah, but
Beatrice doesn't realize that Hero (Jillian Morgese, center) and the maid are fully aware
that they're being overheard, and are discussing "details" that have been exaggerated
for Beatrice's benefit.

Most filmmakers, after completing principal photography on a massive, gazillion-dollar project, unwind prior to the next step — assembling the director’s cut — by taking calm vacations ...  anything but film-related.

Joss Whedon isn’t most people. Prior to putting the finishing touches on The Avengers — last year’s wildly successful superhero summit meeting — he filled the in-between time by staging an intimate, micro-budget movie at his own Los Angeles home. And, as genre geeks know, when Whedon mounts such a project, he always engages the close friends who’ve become one of Hollywood’s most loyal repertoire companies.

In this case, a 12-day shoot (!) yielded one of the most unusual interpretations of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing ever to hit cinema screens. Lensed in glorious, mood-enhancing black-and-white by cinematographer Jay Hunter, this modern-dress staging nonetheless employs the Bard’s original dialogue — condensed and occasionally tweaked by Whedon — and features faces well-recognized from his various television projects.

Yes, kids; that means Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse.

Thus, my somewhat cryptic opening sentence can be explained by the casting of Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker — Wesley Wyndam-Price and Winifred “Fred” Burke, respectively, on Angel — as Benedick and Beatrice.

Lest you roll eyebrows over the reflexive accusation that Whedon has unleashed a self-indulgent vanity production, well, yes, that’s certainly true. But who can complain, when the results are this entertaining?

To be sure, the initial disconnect is jarring. The setting, clothing and technology clearly are 21st century, which is at odds with the flowery Shakespearean dialogue. The acting style throughout is a bit ostentatious and overly mannered, the performers occasionally mugging for the camera the way a stage actor would pause for a laugh from the audience.

But that “settling in” period can be true of any Shakespeare production, even those that are rigorously authentic. Fifteen or 20 minutes into this film, everything starts to look and sound natural, at which point you’ll simply enjoy the richly contrived romantic entanglements present in one of Shakespeare’s most appealing comedies.

The Cabin in the Woods: Ghoulish and giddy

The Cabin in the Woods (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for strong, gory horror violence, profanity, drug use, sexuality and brief nudity 
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.13.12


Folks will chortle — quite enthusiastically — about this one for awhile.

Although looking every inch like a standard exercise in snuffing attractive young performers in the usual macabre ways, The Cabin in the Woods is less a conventional horror flick and more an effort to return imagination, suspense and genuine surprise to a genre recently infested with distasteful (and often misogynistic) torture-porn.

When a basement trap door suddenly slams open, who could resist descending
those darkened stairs? Well, anybody with a reasonable sense of self-preservation,
which apparently doesn't include, from left, Marty (Fran Kranz), Curt (Chris
Hemsworth) and Jules (Anna Hutchison).

Filmmakers Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard have succeeded, and then some. This cheerfully lunatic fantasy is as much a genre game-changer as John Carpenter’s original Halloween, back in the day.

But make no mistake: The Cabin in the Woods may be intellectually exhilarating, but it’s no less gory. Indeed, the first 10 minutes of the third act are as gleefully deranged as the infamous lawnmower climax to Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. (Movie buffs who associate Jackson solely with The Lord of the Rings, and aren’t familiar with his early-career 1992 shocker, are advised to tread carefully.)

Its clever premise and unexpected plot twists notwithstanding, The Cabin in the Woods also gets considerable juice from the nervous gallows humor that laces the dialogue, which bears the unmistakable Whedon stamp. He and Goddard met when the latter became a writer on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel; they became best buds and — following Goddard’s big-screen scripting success with 2008’s Cloverfield — looked for something to do together.

They came up with an homage-laden concept with a difference; they co-wrote the script, and Goddard made his directorial debut during a three-month shoot in the spring of 2009. A 2010 release was planned, but then MGM — the studio to which the project was attached — fell into bankruptcy, and The Cabin in the Woods wound up in a nightmarish limbo far nastier than anything found within its storyline.

Two years later, MGM’s financial difficulties finally set right, The Cabin in the Woods has been unleashed to mess with our minds. Good thing, that.

The set-up will be recognized by those with a fondness for 1981’s The Evil Dead: Five rambunctious college friends flee civilization for a debauched weekend in an isolated backwoods cabin. Their route takes them through a mountainside tunnel; a raptor, lazily following the vehicle from outside the tunnel, suddenly slams into an invisible force-field ... a marvelous bit of well-staged disconnect on par with the spotlight that falls from “nowhere” and nearly brains Jim Carrey, at the beginning of The Truman Show.

Hmm.