Movie Nation

I think the funniest interview I ever had was the day the producers of “Suicide Kings” paired up Jay Mohr and Christopher Walken, two of the film’s stars, for chats about it. Mohr, a very funny comic and wickedly on-key impressionist, broke down Walken’s vocal mannerisms, “He ke–eeps, finding syl-AB-bles, in words with ONly one syl-ABLE.”

Walken, and I, were both in stiches the whole time.

Mohr, once and always Bob Sugar from “Jerry Maguire,” Mr. Mean on a lot of films and TV shows (especially the testy-tasty “Action”), has been reduced to bit parts on TV and in films, to hosting a lot of mediocre stand-up comedy and “debate” shows and the like, in recent years.

You’d think he’d lost his edge altogether, if you never heard him substituting for Jim Rome on Rome’s sports talk radio show. Quick with a riff, a biting insult or brutal sports take-down, this isn’t the doughy/”actorly” Mohr of oh, “Scrubs” or “Ghost Whisperer,” what have you. This was the edgy comic people couldn’t wait to find a new project for.

So now he’s got his own show, replacing Rome. And it’s funny and over the line, just the way Mohr once was.

Watching “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” last night, I wondered if that movie wasn’t the writing on the wall for the Jay-bird. He has a thankless, laughless, wimpy supporting part, a magician who never made it, who drinks tall gin and tonics (vodka tonics?) at the bar where Vegas magicians hang out, where guys like Steve Carell and Jim Carrey are given all the funny things to say and do.

Mohr? He just gives us a dopey, starstruck look and makes us wish his character could afford a chin tuck.

He’s always got some sort of work, but “Burt Wonderstone” is some sort of big screen nadir, a big budget film with him as seventh banana, and NOT FUNNY. Surely, this was a “Get me the radio gig” moment.

Heard the show? He’s terrific on it. The movie? Not so much.

A judge has struck down New York’s Nanny State effort to ban supersized sugary soft drinks. And the city’s theater operators are elated. Selling $.25 worth of soda in a $9 cup is a big part of their business model.

For a movie that cost over $215 million (marketing, etc., all in) to have any prayer of breaking even, it’s got to open as close to half of that amount as possible.

Projections for “Oz, the Great and Powerful” have always been on the soft side of “strong,” with the high end of projections predicting $92 million opening weekend, Thursday midnight included. Then Sat. AM, it looked gto be falled WELL short of that — $74 or so.

Now it appears to have cleared $80 million domestic, $150 worldwide. It’s going to have to hit, what, $450-500 to break even worldwide? It is at least within striking distance of that.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” plummeted its second weekend — as expected. “Oz” stole its thunder. Both passable MARCH fantasies. They’d have been devoured in a summer release.”

“Dead Man Down” did a miserable $5 million or so.

“Emperor” had a decent enough per-screen average, and earned over $1 million US.

The latest anime from Japan’s famed Studio Ghibli breaks one of the cardinal rules, at least in Hollywood, of animation.

Can the story be told without animation? If so, why animate it?

There is no mythical “My Neighbor Totoro,” no magical “Howl’s Moving Castle,” no supernatural sea sprite (“Ponyo”) to visualize. “From Up on Poppy Hill” is a simple melodrama, a period piece set in Yokohama in the months leading up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

But it’s a lovely film, a sentimental parable that carefully recreates a post-war Japan obsessed with obliterating its past. And at the school where Umi and her sister Sora study, that simply won’t do.

The battered old frat-house/clubhouse at the school’s center, the “Latin Quarter,” is scheduled for demolition. The uniformed boys enlist the uniformed girls in their cause – saving The Latin Quarter. And that’s where 17 year-old Umi (voiced by Sarah Bolger) first sets her dreamy eyes on the reckless firebrand, Shun (Anton Yelchin).

Their unfolding relationship takes a back seat to the world the Studio Ghibli animators and director Goro Miyazaki are intent on creating. The school, especially the Latin Quarter, is peppered with all manner of “types,” argumentative students who debate Big Ideas in the chemistry club, the philosophy club (Ron Howard voices the president of that one), the newspaper, where Shun is editor, and the archeology club.

“The crux of the matter – How can we make archeology cool again?” Indiana Jones was still sixteen years in the future, remember.

The students tussle over demolishing “the relics of a bygone era.” They break into folk songs whenever the teachers show up to see what the ruckus is over.

“You can’t move into the future without first knowing the past!”

Miyazaki, the late-life convert to his father, Hayao Miyazaki’s art form, focuses on nostalgia, a “simpler” Japan. Much of the movie simply follows Umi through her vast array of daily chores – shopping and cooking the rice, vegetables, fish and pork for the boarding house she runs for her grandmother while Mom is in America, studying. Her ship’s captain father is dead. But every day, Umi raises signal flags for the passing ships, in tribute.

Hayao co-scripted this comic book adaptation for his son. Goro’s first venture in anime was the fantastical “Tales from the Earthsea,” a much more suitable subject for Studio Ghibli’s efforts. “Poppy Hill” shows him to have a sense of humor and a gift for creating images and characters that tug at the heart.

But it’s quaint settings to its charming, retro music, “From Up on Poppy Hill” is more to be appreciated than treasured; an animated time capsule for a Japan went under the bulldozer long before Studio Ghibli came along to sentimentalize it.

MPAA Rating: PG for mild thematic elements and some incidental smoking images

Cast: The voices of Sarah Bolger, Anton Yelchin, Gillian Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Howard, Beau Bridges

Credits: Directed by Goro Miyazaki, written by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, based on the Tetsuro Sayama comic book.  A Studio Ghibli/Gkids release.

Running time: 1:31

More character development, more humor, a better sense of the movie to come. Not bad.

Charlie Day is on board (Whew. He’s in such demand and all.). So naturally Jason Bateman and Jason Sudeikis are on board a sequel.