King Corn, Breach, Hot Fuzz, & Juno

King Corn is a documentary about corn. And if you do a search for King Corn on the IMDB, the first hit is Ron Jeremy. That was strange, although supposedly he is "The Porn King", which is somewhat close. But the movie itself is disturbing, telling of two Yale grads who head back to Iowa to grow an acre of corn, find out just how much the corn business has messed up our country, and how the large subsidies have not helped. Again, it didn't really have anything new for those of us who've been against farm subsidies and high-fructose corn syrup for years, but the making of the corn syrup was probably the most interesting. That just doesn't seem right. The two leads... (what are their names?) made no impression on me at all. In fact, I had to read the IMDB just to remember who they were.

Breach was filmed in DC, always fun to play the "I've been there" game with a movie. And hey, I remember why I like Ryan Phillippe, because when he's not making crap like I Know What You Did Last Summer and 54, he's making interesting films. And Caroline Dhavernas needs more work. And not work like the weird-ass Tulse Luper Suitcases. Man, Peter Greenaway is weird. Billy Ray may be responsible for some crap (Color of Night is mostly famous for little Bruce on screen, and somehow making Jane March (that terrible, terrible actress) famous in the US for a little while), but he's done some good stuff in the last five-ish years, as Shattered Glass and Breach were very good, and Flightplan was far better than it had any right to be. And Chris Cooper was outstanding, and I didn't hate Laura Linney, only one of which was unexpected. Certainly a movie to see.

Hot Fuzz interestingly enough is filmed in places I've been in England, including a pub in the town where my great aunt and uncle lived for many years. So that was interesting. And it was very funny. Although my love for zombie films is much stronger than my love for 70s and 80s (and Point Break) cop films, so that probably had something to do with me not caring it as much. But Timothy Dalton was great, and the joke of the policemen (Martin "Tim Canterbury" Freeman, Steve "Alan Partridge" Coogan, and Bill "I'm in too many awesome things to count" Nighy) was fun for me, being a fan of all three.

Juno has a little bit of annoyance for me, a mythology nerd. When she's talking about how she was named, she says that Juno was Zeus's wife. Which, ignoring the fact that it was common law if anything, is wrong due to Zeus being in Greek mythology and Juno being in Roman mythology. In transferring the gods from Greek to Roman, most have a direct linkage: Zeus to Jupiter, Hera to Juno, Ares to Mars, Aphrodite to Venus, and so on, but they are also slightly different. But the main thing is that she mixed Greek with Roman mythology.

Ok, after that little bit of nerdosity, I feel I can get down to the movie itself. If "Twee" was in the dictionary, the first definition would be If You're Feeling Sinister (I mean, Tigermilk is also twee, but thinking about it again, Electronic Renaissance, while a great song, isn't very twee), and the second definition would be Juno. And I officially find The Moldy Peaches to be too annoying for me. I do wonder which Sonic Youth album she bought that was "just noise". Because some of their albums are quite terrible. But their cover of Superstar (first brought to my attention when, interestingly enough, Jeffrey Combs in The Frighteners also loved the song) is just an amazing cover of the song.

As a fan of Alias (and Dude, Where's My Car? a vastly underrated (by most other people) movie), I wasn't surprised by how good Jennifer Garner was, or how much of a dick that talented Jason Bateman was. And Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Olivia Thirlby, J.K. Simmons, and Allison Janney were all good, and Rainn Wilson's convenience store clerk was funny.

And for those keeping track, yes, "a thirty-something graphic designer with a cool Asian girlfriend who kicks ass on the bass guitar" is something of my dream.