Lyne’s Movies & Tunes… In Depth!

Did you ever ask yourself how they did all that great special effects in “The Matrix” and its subsequent sequels? Remember the first time you saw Carrie-Ann Moss bounce up and hang in the air for a few seconds and then kick the software tyrant, spot on his face? Wow. Which little girl wouldn’t have wanted to be Carrie-Ann? And how did The Wachowsky Brothers pull off this incredible coup? Expensively, that’s how. The amount of extra film it took for those shots (of which there were many) required 1,000 more frames than your normal cafe stop between 2 actors sitting enjoying a latté. This is creative stuff and has since been duplicated a number of times in other movies which is kind of sad. Gosh, Guys, you couldn’t have come up with something more original? I don’t know, gel that kills? Oh, right, that’s “The Blob”.

How many of you enjoy games like “6 Degrees From Kevin Bacon”? I’ve come up with something a little different. Let’s say you’ve watched a movie 87 times and never noticed, until the 88th time, that there are 2 or 3 actors in this movie who’ve worked together before. Trivia to most but delightful fun for us moviephiles! My favorite (of late) is having discovered that Loren Dean and Jason Lee in “Enemy of the

State” have worked in a movie called “Mumford”. A brilliant, albeit not heavily marketed, cheeky comedy with a little drama thrown in directed by the wonderful and talented Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, Silverado, Grand Canyon”). I’m delighted that Loren Dean (Gattaca, Enemy of the State) can carry a movie by himself. As the star of the movie, you’d think someone who’s work isn't that extensive, relatively speaking, would not be able to carry a movie by himself. In this case, Dean shows us his talents run deep. His capacity for detail is well done. It's helped along by Mary McDonnell, Alfre Woodard, Ted Danson and many character actors you’ll recognize, one in particular is Pruitt Taylor Vince, whom you may remember played the nasty in an “X-Files” episode and almost gave our favorite “X-Files” heroine, Scully (Gillian Anderson) a lobotomy. “Mumford” is the name of the movie in question and also happens to be the name of our hero, Dr. Mumford. Skip Skipperton (Jason Lee), has developed the fastest modem in the world (among other things that help fill out the story) and created his own giant enterprise in the small town of Mumford. Since the logging industry played out, his company, Panda Modems, either employs the residents of the town or they depend on his company in some way. Look for a great performance by Dana Ivey as a mean, controlling momma. Thank goodness there were no hangars handy!

Any more insight I give you will just spoil your enjoyment of the film so I’ll stop here. If you haven’t seen this unassuming movie, DO run right out and get your DVD. It’s not only worth the watch, but I’ve pretty much melted down my copy of it.     Enjoy!

TRIVIA TIDBITS

Remember the dead guy in “The Big Chill”? They made a pretty big deal out of dressing this guy for the funeral but you never saw his face. His only appearance, of course, was at the beginning of the film just before he was buried, which is why all his surviving chums got together. Well, who knew they needed an actual actor for that!? I thought they used dummies for this kind of work. Lawrence Kasdan hired Kevin Costner for that  part. And to make up for that small humiliation, Kasdan promised to sign up Kostner for his next film, “Silverado”. If you’ve seen this film, you can tell that Costner had a great time portraying his fun-loving character.

Guess anything would be more fun than playing a dead guy, wouldn’t it?