In Eastbound and Down, Danny McBride is former Major League pitcher Kenny Powers, a washed-up superstar who bought in to the hype and is now despised by who are, simply put, sick of his crap. Blissfully free of self-awareness, Powers doesn’t let the crash and burn of his career put a dent in his raging ego. “That is why I am better than everyone else in the world,” is his mantra, even as he moves in to his brother’s middle-class home and takes a job as a junior high school gym teacher in his home town. Not the best career choice for an arrogant jerk with anger management issues. Created for HBO by McBride with Ben Best and Jody Hill and co-produced by Will Ferrell (who co-stars in two episodes) and Adam McKay (who also directs a couple of episodes), this is a cable series created with the same collaborative spirit and improvisational approach of Will Ferrell’s movies, and it’s funnier and sharper than Ferrell’s last couple of pictures. Note that David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) directs three episodes as well. The limited series numbers only six half-hour episodes, but they make for a pretty tight story that even allows Powers to grow up a little. But not much. Also features deleted scenes (the extended “Stevie’s Dark Secret,” which apparently was too much even for HBO, is so perverse that it’s given its own supplement), commentary and a 12-minute featurette that offers the best description I’ve heard of the show: “It’s like if Dennis Hopper shot The Natural.”

Hal Ashby’s 1982 gambling comedy Lookin’ to Get Out, directed from a script co-written by star Jon Voight, was a critical and commercial flop on its original release. Seen today, in a longer cut than was originally released (Voight was pressured to edit it down by 15 minutes by the studio), it looks better, if not quite great. Voight is Alex, a hopeless gambling addict with unflagging optimism in his own abilities who sets off to Vegas with his schlub of a best friend Jerry (Burt Young) for a “big score” to settle a gambling debt. Alex is flamboyant, effusive, a perpetual motion hustler racing with out-of-control momentum. Jerry is constantly worried and unceasingly loyal, but at root he’s a good-hearted romantic who takes everyone at their word until they prove their word isn’t worth anything. The plot is a completely unconvincing series of coincidences but the dynamism of the characters and their friendships is marvelous. Voight and Young are like kids when they get excited, immature but utterly devoted to one another, and Young delivers the defining line with such unforced conviction that it won me over completely: “I don’t want your money. Alex, he does. I can’t help that, but he’s my friend and you take the good with the bad. Ann-Margret is touching as a woman from Voight’s past whose romantic idealism is tempered by her growing realization that her old lover is completely unsuitable as a father to her daughter. Ashby’s indulgence allows the film get lost in comic chases and brawls (not to mention the crazy plot involving mistaken identity and a washed up gambler played by Bert Remsen) but he always returns to the characters, who are the real story of the film. You can tell what footage has been restored by the speckling on the film (it appears to be from a workprint, but the wear is minor and the footage is otherwise sharp and has strong color) and it’s all character stuff, the very thing that makes the film work. But, lordy, is that eighties synthesizer score painful.
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[Originally published as part of the “MSN Cadillac” series.]

Spike Lee’s vibrant, vital, thoroughly accomplished third feature opens on a call to action — “Fight the power!” shouts Public Enemy in the credits — and ends with a call to “wake up!”

Rosie Perez pumps out an aggressive shout of a dance in the opening credits, staged in front of a tenement set bathed in fiery red light. Not merely an evocation of the heat wave (literal and figurative) on this scorcher of a summer day in New York’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, it anticipates the incendiary drama to come: Confrontation will end in conflagration.

As a private citizen, Spike Lee is aggressively outspoken and provocative. As a filmmaker, he is remarkably inclusive and egalitarian. Do the Right Thing gives every character in the bustling ensemble a voice, a sensibility and a dignity, from ranting would-be activist Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) to philosophical neighborhood drunk Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) to pizzeria proprietor Sal (Danny Aiello), who displays his American-Italian pride on his ethnic-exclusive “Wall of Fame.”

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Harrison Ford is the most recent film folk to be a part of my interview series on MSN, but he’s the first who couldn’t come up with an answer to the question that gives the series its title.

What’s in your DVD player?

(long silence) I’m trying to remember. I usually have a very specific ambition when I watch a film, either looking at a filmmaker’s work or the work of an actor or actress. It’s been a while since we’ve watched one.

Do you see many films on DVD?

We have a seven-year-old at home and have a busy life, we don’t usually sit down and watch a DVD all that often and when we do, it’s likely to be a nature film that we watch with Liam or some kid show. Otherwise, it’s work more often than not.

Do you have a favorite among your own films?

I had the opportunity to work with some very good filmmakers and so I think a number of the older films I’ve made are worthy of being seen again, not just for me but for the work involved and the quality of the film. Films like “Presumed Innocent,” “The Mosquito Coast,” those are films that I think that are especially high quality. I also think that the Jack Ryan films are especially well made.

I’ve always liked Jack Ryan because he was a reluctant action hero, more of a thinker than an adventurer. Who do you identity more with – Indiana Jones or Jack Ryan?

I’d have to say that my personal experience would lead me to a situation where I would identify more with Jack Ryan, because Jack Ryan is caused to engage in action when there’s a direct threat to his family. As you say, he only reluctantly engages because he is, by nature, an intellectual.

Read the complete piece here.

In case you missed it, the last “DVD Player” piece was with Spike Lee.

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I had the opportunity to interview Spike Lee while I was at Toronto, where he and his cast presented the world premiere of Miracle at St. Anna. Mr. Lee has a reputation of being a tough and confrontational interview subject, but in his interview with me – the first after his press conference – he put me right at ease. Which was great, as I was coming off a sick day and was still not up to snuff. I didn’t feel well prepared and if he noticed, he never made an issue of it.

My interview with Spike Lee is in the P-I:

Seattle P-I: It’s clear in the first scenes of the soldiers marching through the marsh in Tuscany that many of them were poorly trained and completely unprepared for battle.

Lee: A lot of people didn’t get the training they needed, they were stuck in places where they were just fodder for the Nazis, to soften them up. In no way should they have gotten that high number of casualties. To be honest, the white commanders, General Almond (played in the movie by Robert John Burke), which those guys hated, had low regard for them as soldiers and as human beings and they were treated as such.

The four black American soldiers were like aliens to the Italian villagers, yet some of them had a lot in common, especially in terms of the centrality of religion in their lives.

Well, there’s commonality between human beings, even where you think there would not be, and that’s what makes interesting cinema. These Italian villages have never seen blacks before, these Buffalo Soldiers have never been in a foreign country and can’t speak Italian. There’s no way in the world they’re going to be able to communicate with each other, but that wasn’t the case.

Is there a reason you cast actors who are not well known to general audiences in your lead roles?

We wanted an ensemble piece. But, to be honest, it wasn’t like that at first. At first, Wesley Snipes was supposed to play Derek Luke’s role and Terrence Howard was supposed to play Michael Ealy’s role. It did not work out with Wesley because of the IRS and Terrence Howard was a scheduling problem. But it worked out for the best.

Read the complete interview here.

I also interview Tim Robbins about his new film, The Lucky Ones, where he plays an Iraq veteran trying to get home after his tour of duty is over.

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