Spout is a celebration of cinema. It’s a place to talk about the movies you love. While maintaining a critical yet positive voice, the writing on Spout blog will always be smart and conversational as we focus on the films and filmmakers we enjoy and appreciate. This is the space between academia and movie geekdom that you’ve been looking for, and it’s the place where discussions of great and important films exist.
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Like a lot of movies this year and a growing amount in general over the past decade, “Going the Distance” is highly informed by the Internet age. You could argue that this is only a matter of what life is like today. Certainly the movies would want and need to reflect the everyday commonalities of computer and smart phone usage in the real world. Nowadays it’s strange to see a character write a letter or have an answering machine. But not every current movie can be looked at as a commentary on the technological and social consequences of the Internet age and how they have changed situations and lifestyles from how they used to be. Nanette Burstein’s rom-com, a departure from her usual documentary medium (she directed “American Teen” and co-directed Oscar-nominee “On the Ropes” and “The Kid Stays in the Picture”), is as surprisingly topical as it is surprisingly crude (and its comedy is very blue).
The main characters, Garrett (Justin Long) and Erin (Drew Barrymore), each has or gets a dream job that is a literal fantasy in this day and age. He works for a record label, apparently a small subsidiary of a major, while she’s hired by the San Francisco Chronicle following an internship at the fictional New York Sentinel. I don’t think there are two industries more threatened, if not yet made entirely obsolete, by the Internet than the music and newspaper industries. The careers of the characters is surely no coincidence in this regard. But there is more to this than merely being an only-in-the-movies sort of mirage cinema. Though that would be fine and fitting for a movie that has some of the most romanticized tourist-friendly montages and establishing shots of NYC locales since “Enchanted.” The career fantasy is also necessary for the exploration of how the Internet has altered long-distance relationships for better and worse.
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Is there still no DVD release date set for “Shrek Forever After”? Not that I’m interested in seeing it, but now would be a great time to capitalize on all the talk of the franchise since the discovery of an ugly fish that people have labeled ‘the Shrek fish.’ I don’t quite see the resemblance myself (this other fish at least got the ears right), but I do recommend DreamWorks Animation gets its hands on this creature and makes it the new studio mascot. It could use a new logo anyway after six years of separation from DreamWorks Pictures. Or, maybe we can finally see that kid fishing from the moon actually catch something. And that something can be the ‘Shrek fish.’
Interestingly enough, the thing looks more like other DWA characters than Shrek. With its blue flesh, lack of a nose or ears and giant head protrusion, it reminds me just as much of Gallaxhar from “Monsters vs. Aliens” and the title villain of the upcoming “Megamind” (see the images after the jump). Obviously we can make a “Shark Tale” comparison, too. If the studio ever moves ahead on a sequel to that film they’ll have to design a character who is an Asian sheepshead wrasse like this guy as a tribute to his unintentional viral promotion of the Shrek franchise. See him in motion in the MSNBC video after the jump.
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