The Amazing Kreskin & The Great Buck Howard, Wanted, Messengers of Deception, The Love Guru Bombs, and more…

 

The Amazing Kreskin.

 

The closing night film at the 2008 Cinevegas Film Festival was The Great Buck Howard. Writer-director Sean McGinly spent 4 months working for mentalist The Amazing Kreskin in the early '90s and based The Great Buck Howard on that experience. I know The Amazing Kreskin. Without fail, we get an impressive Christmas card from Kreskin every year. Buck Howard is a hilarious, spot-on and rather touching portrayal.

 

In May 2002, we had lunch with Kreskin in Las Vegas and were invited to a pre-opening, private performance. Kreskin was appearing nightly for a month at The Silverton Hotel Showroom. It was the first time I had seen Kreskin’s show and he was indeed amazing. Along with giving out free copies of his newest book, “The Amazing Kreskin’s Future With The Stars”, to everyone in the casino’s lobby, we all got signed copies of Kreskin’s head shot. 

 

On June 6, after his show, Kreskin promised a spectacular event. He would bring down UFOs. We drove out to a field behind The Silverton. It was like a Fourth of July gathering. Everyone was drinking beer and blasting rock and roll. Lounge chairs were up. If he failed and UFOs did not appear, Kreskin promised to donate $50,000 of his own money to a charity.

 

A friend of mine, Chuck Walker (pictured), had flown in from New York to make his own film of the event.

 

A stage was set up for Kreskin. He produced a white handkerchief, dramatically waved it around, and let it fall to the ground. He did this several times. This was the

induction cue for the pre-chosen. As the white handkerchief dropped, the UFOs would appear.

 

I didn’t see any UFOs but Kreskin was a fiery force of energy. It was as if we were at a charismatic healing tent revival. Later that night, the local news showed film of something appearing in the sky. The crowd had left by then.

 

The Great Buck Howard.

 

After leaving law school without informing his tuition-paying parents, Troy Gable (Colin Hanks) accepts a job as The Great Buck Howard’s (John Malkovich) assistant. Troy doesn’t have a clue who Buck Howard is – he’s a relic of 61 appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. He’s a world famous mentalist who is a self-anointed diva. He’s a diva because his no-where, not-here Middle America audiences adore him. And he is actually great at what he does. Generously modeled after The Amazing Kreskin, Malkovich is mesmerizing. You see all the exposed, raw layers of Buck Howard. 

 

Instead of bringing down UFOs, Buck’s show-stopper is finding his night’s performance fee that has been hidden in the audience.

 

Troy is the perfect, passive assistant without a trace of disgust for the delusional Buck. (If you are over 80 or haven’t had a hit in 40 years, you still get to play Las Vegas.) These are the most hilarious scenes, with Buck genuinely shocked when he is not treated with reverence.

 

As Troy goes on the road with Buck and serves as his baggage handler and salad tosser, he meets an L.A. publicist, Valerie (Emily Blunt), who joins them in Cincinnati for Buck’s big comeback. Valerie is Troy’s reality-checker. Buck gloriously succeeds, but the press leaves early. Strangely redeemed, Buck becomes a media sensation again. He goes on all the talk shows. He hates Jay Leno for never booking him. But then another clever plot twist happens.

 

The dialogue and direction are perfect but the film belongs to Malkovich. When he’s not in a scene you’re wondering what Buck is doing. He inhabits the character of Buck with the skill of a talented actor. He’s fearless, revealing Buck’s psychological failings in every scene. The bruising handshake, the Norma Desmond face of horror at a perceived slight, the cruel treatment of his one-person staff, his outsized arrogance – Malkovich never short-changes the character. Buck expects to be idolized, even if it’s only by the doorman.

 

And, in a respectful nod to The Amazing Kreskin, McGinly (pictured) does answer one of the two questions that keep coming up: Is Buck gay, and, How does he find his money? Is it a trick?

 

The Great Buck Howard Trailer

 

 

Wanted.

 

All hail director Timur Bekmambetov (pictured) and his stunt team. You will love the last line of the film.

 

As the bar keeps getting raised in the action genre, the idea of suspending reality has leapt into the realm of fantasy slamming right into mundane everyday life.

 

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is a gold star loser. His boss is a castrating behemoth, his job as an accountant manager is soul crushing, and he’s being cuckolded by his best friend. His girlfriend is a shrew and he has $14 in his checking account. He lives in a dump on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx. But, his DNA has been targeted by a cabal of psycho super charged assassins belonging to a guild of weavers. Who runs this centuries old gang of weaving thugs out to keep the world order?

 

Are they members of Novus Ordo Mundi? The Illuminati? Is it the Bilderberg Group? World Trade Organization? Dreamworks?

 

Gibson was raised as a poor son of a single mother. His father skipped out right after his birth without even leaving a note. Fox (Angelina Jolie, once again playing a butch franchise character she created called Angelina Jolie) turns up and tells Gibson his father was a super human assassin belonging to a group more powerful and richer than Saudi Arabia, known simply as “the Fraternity”. His dad was rich, but never even dropped a twenty in a birthday card.

 

Gibson is brutally recruited into The Fraternity. His mission? Kill the man who killed his father. Now, if it was his abandoned mother who was killed, I would understand.

The Fraternity’s U.S. headquarters is a functioning weave shop in a castle compound and at its head is Sloane (Morgan Freeman). 

 

Sloane informs Gibson that he is the only one who can avenge his father’s death. First, he has to be toughened up by a crew of vicious killers. Then he has to do a few dress rehearsal killings. Taken under Fox’s tattooed wing, his potential is revealed. He can curve bullets. Run faster than lightning and is a swift knife-welding killer.

Every night he sleeps in a chamber that miraculously restores his body to perfection, sans wounds and aches and pains.

 

Is Angelina Jolie the female Arnold Schwarzenegger? Can she leave the Angelina Jolie character behind and play a real woman? We will see later this year.

 

Can Clint Eastwood, who directs Jolie in The Changeling as a 1928 working class mother, keep Jolie from raising her eyebrow or doing that Monty Python “silly walk”?

 

Jolie, who has crafted Fox as a tribute to herself, is perfect. No acting required here. McAvoy, actually appearing shorter and slighter than he has in the past, does have chemistry with Jolie.  But Wanted will make a star of Bekmambetov. Understanding that action directors are more like Roman generals than New Wave auteurs, Bekmambetov brilliantly orchestrates an enormous cast of highly skilled technicians. And, he can direct the few non-action scenes.  

 

Wanted screenwriters, Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan, (story by Michael Brand and Derek Haas), working from comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, give us the nice twist and then, the double twist. Wanted has an intelligent script with a very clever voice over. I loved the last line of the film. It’s going to seal

the movie’s status as a memorable and terrific action movie. Bekmambetov steps over The Matrix, making The Wachowski Brothers look quaintly old school.

 

 Wanted Trailer

 

Blind Item.

 

The New York Daily News gossip columnists, Rush and Molloy, asked last week: Which divorced comic superstar is exploring a groovy new real-life persona: that of an openly gay man?

 

The Love Guru.

 

All Men Are Created Equal – Except Movie Stars. Mike Myers’s new film got crushing reviews and lousy box office, but what is even more shocking is Myers’s “alleged” behavior on the set.

 

A New York Times reader purporting to have been a Guru extra chimed in with his own commentary on A.O. Scott’s NY Times scathing review. “The article said "The

rule seems to be that no one may upstage him and all must adore him." That is 100% true. We were not allowed to stand too close to him during a break in case we

heard what he said. He could never remember his lines and some scenes were shot 50 times. When he was on the elephant on the ice we felt so sorry for the poor animal (both were female) that many people hoped he would be dumped and stepped on. Being in an ice rink from 7AM until 2AM is COLD.”

 

 

 

Messengers of Deception:

 

UFO Contacts and Cults. Luckily, I have a signed copy of hard-to-find of Messengers of Deception, first published in 1979 and now considered a classic. It has just been re-issued and here is a sum-up of Jacques Vallee’s Foreword to the 2008 edition:

 

"I believe that UFOs are physically real. They represent a fantastic technology controlled by an unknown form of consciousness. But I also believe that it would be dangerous to jump to premature conclusions about their origin and nature, because the phenomenon serves as the vehicle for images that can be manipulated to promote belief systems tending to the long- term transformation of human society." Amazon.com: Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults: Jacques Vallee: Books

 

Future Movie Star.

 

You too can become a movie star. Don’t let those school photos hold you back. It takes money, connections, and a very skilled surgeon. The boy with the Buster Brown hairdo is George Clooney!