CliqueClack

You should know about Jason Clarke

In Zero Dark Thirty, you’ll easily spot Jason Clarke hunting for Bin Laden alongside Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain. He’s impossible to miss.

As veteran CIA operator Dan Bradley, the Australian actor serves as a sort of mentor and later, valued contact for Chastain’s Maya Lambert. Dan is one of the first characters we meet in the film, and although he eventually takes a back seat to Maya, he never fades away. That’s because Clarke is one of the sharpest actors working today. Not only does he have the physical presence to be the guy you absolutely do not want interrogating you, but he takes Dan on an arc of his own, creating an empathy for the man as he goes. There’s an interest in what happens to him even when the story is no longer about him. It’s a head-scratcher that Clarke didn’t pick up a supporting-actor Oscar nomination himself.

His performance, however, isn’t a surprise to anyone who has had the pleasure of watching Clarke on the small screen over the last several years. His first major US role was as ambitious Rhode Island politician Tommy Caffee in Showtime’s original series Brotherhood, which ran for three seasons starting in 2006. It certainly didn’t look like it was his first time in the lead. He was fantastic at peeling back the layers of Tommy, revealing to the audience that the so-called ‘good brother’ was as flawed as everyone else. Yet even when he did things that were absolutely infuriating — and there were a few — Clarke’s performance made it so you never stopped caring about him. Tommy never lost his humanity, for better or for worse. Brotherhood was a brilliant series all the way around, and one heck of a way for an actor to make an arrival. Continue reading 'You should know about Jason Clarke' »

Sitcom Superlatives – The best, the worst, the cutest

Best episode of the week – Go On, “Gooooaaaallll Doll!”
Okay, so Go On was maybe not the total best (as usual, it’s hard to compete with 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation), but this week’s Go On was, even in my Tuesday overload of sitcoms, a surprise delight. Once again, this show gets therapy and the healing process so, so right. Gimmicks like this week’s goal dolls may inspire short-term change that feels like progress, but real progress is a slow, grinding process. The Sonia and Yolanda subplot was not only hilarious (“Three sugar cubes. Like the number of men I’ve been with… Today.”) but effortlessly illustrative of that. Putting on a brave face and changing everything in your life by a certain deadline isn’t how healing works. It’s a labor of love.

TV on DVD is a real “drag” this week

There’s not much in the way of new scripted TV shows coming to DVD or Blu-ray this week, but reality is making a splash with the release of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, The Men Who Built America, and Finding Bigfoot. January 22 also sees the release of a collection of titles for kids (and kids of all ages), and another season of the classic series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. For information about these titles and the others coming this week, or to make a purchase, simply click on a link in our handy shopper’s guide!

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Two high-profile but little-seen movies come to home video

This week, one of the best reviewed but little-seen movies of 2012 comes to DVD and Blu-ray, End of Watch starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, along with The Paperboy, starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron (that’s the one with the infamous jellyfish sting remedy scene). Both films have big names but for some reason did not play well to general audiences. Maybe home video will give them both a chance to find an audience. Also this week, the Criterion Collection releases its very first 3D Blu-ray film, the documentary Pina, which should look spectacular. There is quite a collection of classic films hitting DVD and Blu-ray on January 22, including John Wayne’s The Quiet Man, and for anyone who remembers the home video boom of the late 80s/early 90s, some of those direct-to-video “gems” — including the cult classic Trancers — are getting a new lease on life on DVD. To see a complete list of what’s coming out this week, have a look at our shopper’s guide and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase!

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Multiplayer game modes announced for new Tomb Raider

Single-player video games have it rough. After the initial play-through of a single-player game there isn’t much left for players to do with the game — a common issue with most, if not every, single-player game.

Tomb Raider fans should be happy to learn that, earlier this month, Crystal Dynamics announced that a multiplayer component will be included within the game, in addition to the standard single-player campaign, giving gamers a bigger bang for their buck and extend the longevity of their play time.

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American Idol: Where was the drama on week 1?

Hokay … first impressions: This guy’s not impressed.

And a whole lotta people out there in TV Land are riding my same boat. Well, hold on to your big boy pants, folks, because it’s only going to get worse from here.

Or … is it?

In between the 87 folks who made it to the Hollywood Rounds from New York and Chicago, there was some fun and frolickry on the first two nights of American Idol.

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CliqueClack has free passes for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters in DC and Baltimore

Do you remember the story of Hansel & Gretel, the children lost in the woods and nearly eaten by a witch who lived in a house made of candy? Hansel & Gretel are all grown up now, self-appointed vigilantes ridding the world of evil, but what they don’t realize is that they have become the hunted. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton star as the witch hunting siblings with Famke Janssen, Zoe Bell, Peter Stormare and Derek Mears as allies and enemies.

CliqueClack has teamed up with Paramount Pictures and Allied Integrated Marketing for special advance screenings of the new film Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters in Baltimore and Washington D.C. The screenings will be held on Thursday, January 24 at 8:00 PM at the AMC Columbia (Maryland) and the AMC Georgetown cinemas. If you would like to be the first people in the area to see the film, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. We will email you a special code that will allow you to download two Admit One passes from GoFoBo.com.

Be sure to mention which screening you wish to attend — DC or Baltimore — so we can send you the proper code. If you do not include your city in the comment, we will not be able to respond with a code.

**This offer has expired.**

Passes are limited and are first come, first served. We have no control over the number of passes available, and they could run out at anytime, so get your comments posted now! Also note that passes do not guarantee you a seat, as the theaters are overbooked to ensure a full house. Please plan to arrive early. Further instructions will be included with the code.

Do not mess with an overprotective Mama

Jessica Chastain is sitting on top of the world right now, with the success of Zero Dark Thirty and an Oscar nomination in the past few weeks (I still say she got robbed of a nomination for playing the younger Helen Mirren in The Debt), and she will most likely bring home that Best Actress Oscar … unless she falls prey to the Bad Choice Follow-Up Movie that is blamed for Eddie Murphy’s Supporting Actor loss (for Dreamgirls) after his follow-up film, Norbit. Not that Jessica chose to follow Zero Dark Thirty with what some may consider a trashy horror film. It could have just been an accident of scheduling.

But Mama is no Norbit. With the support of Guillermo del Toro — who was so impressed with director Andrés Muschietti’s Mama short (see below) — the film doesn’t seem to be the bad choice that it could have been. The story is your typical ghost story set-up with some new twists: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays Jeffrey, a Wall Street/big bank type in the midst of a financial crisis who decides to murder his partners and his ex-wife and take his two small daughters for a drive to eventually get rid of them and himself as well. But high speed and snow-covered roads don’t mix, and the car flies off the road and down an embankment, with the three miraculously surviving (only Victoria’s glasses get broken in the crash). Stumbling through the woods, they come upon a spooky old cabin (yes, another “cabin in the woods” movie!) to take refuge. Jeffrey tries to take his own life, but chickens out and decides to kill the girls first. Looking out a window, Victoria says she sees a woman but her feet don’t touch the ground, and just as Jeffrey is about to put a bullet in her brain, something comes out of the darkness and snatches him away. Over the course of five years, the two girls are protected by the entity they call Mama until Jeffrey’s twin (!) brother Lucas finally finds them. But bringing them home to get them acclimated back into society comes with a huge price … the jealousy of Mama.

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Visit Broken City if you don’t have anything better to do

Sometimes all you really want to do is lose yourself in a world of muted colors and confusing morality, a world where everyone is corrupt and dames got gams to nowheresville (or something like that). Broken City tries to immerse you in a dark, mysterious city of complexity and murder, but it ultimately feels pretty typical. The movie primarily focuses on William “Billy” Taggert (Mark Wahlberg at his most Mark Wahlberg-iest), a disgraced former New York City cop now working as a private investigator (which means taking pictures of cheating spouses). Poor Billy killed a criminal that got off the hook, but that did end up getting him a beautiful girlfriend — the sister of the criminal’s victim. After seven years, Billy gets hired by slick mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe, hamming it up admirably) to follow the mayor’s wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones, perfect for the role) and take photos. That’s all he’s good for anymore, right? Wait, wait, I’m inserting more complexity than the movie ends up having. Sorry.

It’s all because there’s a mayoral election coming up, the mayor facing off against ludicrously “decent” Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper), having the silliest apt name since Jean-Claude Van Damme’s evil Vilain from last year’s The Expendables 2 (The Expendablest). Kyle Chandler plays Valliant’s campaign manager, who may be up to something, and Jeffrey Wright plays the police commissioner, who also might be up to something. As you might expect, Billy bites off more than he expects and gets involved in some classic real estate scams, murder, car chases, and romantic troubles, all set in the classically dark aesthetic you’d expect from something trying to be a classic noir, hard-boiled detective tale. Unfortunately, the mystery ends up being both overly simplistic and overly complicated. Real estate is boring already, and the movie tries and fails to make it interesting.

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The Last Stand brings Arnold Schwarzenegger back with punches and guns

Sometimes our best days seem behind us, the past glories of time gone by and a younger, more energetic self. Sometimes excitement is overrated, when it crosses the line into trauma. And sometimes you just want to see a drug lord get punched in the face.

The Last Stand (from South Korean director Jee-woon Kim) is the first movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in something more like a leading role since he got into politics. So don’t expect some sort of great acting from him here. The story is dirt simple. Ludicrously evil druglord Gabriel Cortez has escaped FBI custody in the fastest car ever made and is headed for the Mexican border, where his team of minions (led by chief minion played by typically evil Peter Stormare) is preparing sneak him across the border. The only things that can stop him? Forrest Whitaker and his team of reasonably competent FBI agents! Ha, ha, no, no, they barely do anything other than make phone calls. Almost had you there.

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