Movie Review: New York, I Love You (2009)
April 29, 2010 in Movie Reviews
I just went to see a screening of New York, I Love You, a collection of 10 short films masquerading as a full-length feature. Despite having one of the most amazing ensemble casts ever, it was no good. No good at all.
New York, I Love You comes to us from the producers of the French film Paris, je t’aime (ie “Paris, I Love You”) and has basically the same concept. All stories take place in the city of New York, and each one is about love, or the search for love (which is often confused for sex). Apart from that, they are entirely different and standalone pieces, even though it is put together as though it is a single film. Characters from one story might make a cameo in another every now and then — and there’s one character, a girl who walks around New York carrying a video camera, that I suppose links the pieces together — but there’s absolutely no connection between the stories.
You can’t discuss this movie without talking about the actors that make up the ensemble cast. Just off the top of my head, there was: Natalie Portman, Shia LaBeouf, Ethan Hawke, Bradley Cooper, Hayden Christensen, Anton Yelchin, Blake Lively, Orlando Bloom, Chris Cooper, Christina Ricci, Julie Christie, James Caan, Rachel Bilson, Andy Garcia, Robin Wright Penn, Jacinda Barrett, Maggie Q and Shu Qi. Brett Ratner directed one of the stories and Natalie Portman wrote and directed another.
I guess the whole point of New York, I Love You was to show off New York as a city, and to make some sort of general comment about the “moments” and “connections” people make, whether it is with a completely random stranger or with someone you’ve been with for 60 years.
Needless to say, I struggled with this movie. Putting aside that I did not know it was really a collection of short films as opposed to a segmented narrative (eg Love Actually, Crash, He’s Just Not That Into You, Valentines Day), many of the stories didn’t work for me.
That’s what happens when you combine what is essentially 10 films written and directed by different people. There is no consistency in the style or the tone or the feel of each one (for instance, some stories used internal dialogue; another had a narrator). More importantly, many of the situations and much of the dialogue felt contrived. It was very uncomfortable watching something you know is trying to manipulate your emotions in a hurry because it only has 10 minutes in which to do it. I often found myself shaking my head wondering who on the planet reacts and talks like that to random strangers!
The short films all certainly had a lot of style — with the pretty shots, arty imagery and poetic chit chat — but there was rarely enough substance to establish an emotional connection. And besides, even if you did connect with a particular character, you may never see them again anyway.
Individually, some of the stories were pretty good, witty and insightful. My favourite one was a short conversation between Ethan Hawke and Maggie Q. A couple of others, the one with Anton Yelchin and the one with the old couple, were decent. However, not all of them hit the mark. One or two were actually quite boring or irritating. And the worst part about this being a collection of short films is that about half of them (or more) had a twist ending. Usually one or two in a film is fine, but when it keeps happening over and over, it can start to get a bit tedious.
I would have very much preferred it had they simply presented the movie as 10 short films written and directed by different people, and broken them up accordingly without trying to force an unnecessary link between them. Knowing when one short story ended and another began would have helped me reset and watch the next one with a clean slate. Instead, the “combined” collection we ended up with felt uneven, disjointed and lacking in direction.
New York, I Love You is technically sound, shows New York in a nice light, and features an amazing cast — but so what? It wasn’t enjoyable and that’s all that mattered in the end.
1.5 out of 5 stars!
The Power of Bieber Fever (in Sydney)!
April 27, 2010 in Entertainment, Social/Political Commentary
All I’ve been hearing and seeing lately is “Bieber Fever”.
I don’t really know much about the pop teen sensation with the bangs and the prepubescent voice, but when I first heard his name mentioned on the radio (not very clearly), I was stunned. I was like, “Is this possible? A teenage heartthrob with the name ‘Beaver’?” Everyone’s talking about this kid who’s giving young girls “Beaver Fever?”
I was kind of relieved (and disappointed) when I found out that I had misheard. Damn.
Anyway, for weeks all people could talk about was how Justin Bieber, a 16-year-old Canadian who was discovered on YouTube, was coming to Australia. And that he was only going to be giving a single, once-off performance on the local morning television show Sunrise.
Originally, I think the performance was supposed to take place outside the Sunrise studio outdoors in Martin Place, the heart of the Sydney CBD, but “safety concerns” forced them to shift to the more spacious Overseas Passenger Terminal down the road at Circular Quay (not too far from the Opera House).
Young girls started camping out from 6pm the night before, and the crowd numbers surged into the early hours of the morning. Reports say there were already around 4000 people waiting to catch a glimpse of Bieber by 2am.
However, the girls got too excited and broke through the barriers and people started getting crushed and trampled. Apparently, at least 10 girls fainted, and someone may have fractured a knee cap. Efforts by police to calm the crowd down were futile, and eventually the live concert was cancelled!
Risking a riot on their hands, Sunrise invited Bieber into the studios back at Martin Place to perform one song (Baby) instead of the scheduled three. Needless to say, it got very crowded there, as many of the kids from Circular Quay migrated back up in a hurry. Even after Bieber left, they stuck around for ages, hoping to catch another glimpse of him.
Disappointed fans lashed out at organisers and Sunrise for the botched concert. Many had camped out all night in the cold, while some travelled all the way from other states just to see him. Meanwhile the police pointed the finger at uncooperative parents (the few that bothered to show up with their young kids).
One 10-year-old who came out with her mother by train at 3am said:
I swear, I did not make that up. Direct quote from the papers.
One father was particularly angry at the whole mess, and said: “Clearly this total waste of our kids’ time, sleep and pocket money getting there was a deliberate publicity stunt designed to exploit fans. Certainly [Sunrise] knew that thousands of kids would turn out, and it would be unmanageable, and set him up to play to a few kids at Martin Place. Channel Seven and Sunrise owe the fans and their parents an apology for shameless publicity stunts that ended in injury, hurt , disappointment, money spent and sleep deprived.”
Personally, I am quite perplexed about this whole thing. I have nothing against the Beaver himself (I think good for him, the kid must have some talent for getting discovered via YouTube). But there’s just so much wrong with what happened here.
First of all, what the heck are parents doing by allowing their children (some of which are very young) to camp out in the city all night by themselves? Some of these kids are like 10, 11, 12 years old. I just can’t imagine my parents giving the okay to something like that to me and my sister when we were at that age. Secondly, as unlikely as that is, it’s even more unbelievable to me that some parents would actually accompany their kids in the middle of the night, or camp out, just to see the Beaver perform a couple of songs. If they’re a fan of the Beaver themselves, that’s another thing (though it is quite disturbing in itself), but are these adults being good parents by making the effort to come out with their kids to make sure they are safe, or are they spoiling their children? I think that’s an interesting debate.
Nonetheless, I place the blame with the organisers. It was simply poor organisation. Seriously, they are making 4000 young girls seem like some sort of unstoppable force of nature. We’ve seen other outdoor concerts and performances, marathons, political marches, industrial action, not to mention sporting events, in and around the city CBD that have way more people, some way more unruly (though when it comes to teenage girls, this is debatable). And we never seen any of them cancelled for “safety concerns”.
Most of all, this is not the first time something like this has happened for the Beaver, so it’s not like they can say what happened was totally unexpected. Bieber’s concert in a mall in Long Island last November was also cancelled due to overflowing crowd concerns.
Fact is, they underestimated the power of “Beaver Fever”.
Tags: Australia, Baby, Beaver, Beaver Fever, Bieber, Bieber Fever, concert, Justin Bieber, Sunrise, Sydney
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