10 New Career Moves For James Franco

You may have heard that James Franco, new-fangled Renaissance Man, painted a mural awhile back in the hipster New York hive of Williamsburg. This, of course, is merely the tip of the vegan meatloaf when it comes to the all-around artisan that is James Franco. Actor. Acting Coach. Director. Author. Drag Queen. Artist.

This, as it must, got me to thinking: what other avenues could Hollywood's requisite cavalier pursue.

Note: This list does not include Becoming A Trappist Monk or Joining Greenpeace because, come on, those are just too obvious.

10 New Career Moves For James Franco

1. Films a documentary in which he waits in line at the post office. Titles it……”James Franco Waits In Line At The Post Office.”

2. Becomes the official "personal incense burner" for Dogstar.

3. Fashions an alter-ego named Ricky Lefevre, leader of a Lower East Side singing street gang called The Coral Catsharks.

4. Writes, directs and stars in a film along with Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill chronicling a cattle drive from Montana to Texas. In an inspired bit of Herzoginess he decides to lead an ACTUAL cattle drive with Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill from Montana to Texas and film it.

5. Opens an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in which he drinks gas station coffee. Titles it……”James Franco Drinking Gas Station Coffee.”

6. Apprentices to Daft Punk.

7. Creates a line of "Franco Print" shirts, button-ups adorned with patterns of festive James Franco images. (He uses the proceeds of this venture along with a Kickstarter campaign to fund his remake of "Captain Ron.")

8. Becomes spokesman for Bartles & Jaymes and films ads with him in the role of Ed Jaymes & Seth Rogen in the role of Frank Bartles.

9. Legally changes his name to Bob Marley’s “Jamming.” The WHOLE song. “Yes, I had a reservation for Jamming, I want to jam it with you. We’re jamming, jamming, and I hope you like jamming too. Ain’t no rules, ain’t no vow, we can do it anyhow…” etc.

10. Calls a press conference and officially establishes himself as "America's Concierge."

The Good & The Bad Of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Good and The Bad of David Fincher's hyper-glossy The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo that has for a heartbeat the leading performance of Rooney Mara can be broken down into a split sequence that occurs close to the end of the film. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) and his research assistant/hacker/ass kicker/piercing enthusiast/raging introvert Lisbeth Salander (Mara) have just been given access to all the files of Sweden's Vanger Corp, the company they are investigating in the hopes of solving a 40 year old disappearance and/or murder.

And at this point it is as if Fincher and his editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall momentarily decide to craft two entirely separate movies. In the first movie, Mikael, working out of his cottage, stumbles upon a crucial piece of evidence, possibly implicating a member of the Vanger family living nearby. Thus, he makes his way to a sleek, avant garde home on a windswept hill housing this family member. He sneaks inside. He tip-toes down hallways, peers around corners, inspects rooms, tries to open locked doors. He even......wait for it......unsheathes a knife. Eventually the family member returns home. Mikael makes an escape by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin. (Or does he?)

In the second movie, Lisbeth feverishly scrounges around the book-lined walls of the archives of Vanger Corp. She is exhausted. She boards an elevator. She disembarks. She buys a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar from a vending machine. She walks back to the archives. She bites into her chocolate. She sips at her coffee. She goes back to work.

Fincher and his editors cut, cleverly, from the first movie to the second movie, back and forth, over and over. As the first movie unfolds we continually expect "something" to happen, and eventually it does. As the second movie unfolds we continually expect "something" to happen, and it does not.

Therein lies the conundrum. The murder mystery is theoretically the engine that drives "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" but that element is handled for the duration of the two-and-half hours just like the first movie. It hits all the overdone beats, goes precisely where you expect it to go and goes there without illuminating our understanding of anything. It's the crap of a million and one airport rack novels.

The engine that TRULY drives "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is Lisbeth, which is to say it is also Rooney Mara. The film's mighty allure is in the social ineptness of Lisbeth as she continually dismisses the archives employee without so much as looking at her. It's in the way she is fueled by sugar and caffeine and in the way she pulls her hood over her head as she buys that sugar and caffeine as if she does not want the guard on duty to see her face, as if she is internally lamenting the fact she can't seem to be alone no matter where the hell she goes.

There is nothing there in the second movie but, of course, simultaneously, EVERYTHING is there. The character and the performance uniting in a sequence that seems to exist for no purpose other than to try and throw us off the scent. The first movie is so obvious. The second movie isn't obvious at all. Rather it is deeper and more subtle and more mysterious. Oh, what I'd give to have at the no doubt reels and reels and reels of footage that Fincher and Baxter and Wall had at their disposal. We'd make "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" a latter "Annie Hall" - which is to say we'd ditch the murder mystery and make Daniel Craig a high-rent supporting character.

Why couldn't "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" be all about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo?

Small Beautifully Moving Parts

Sarah Sparks (Anna Margaret Hollyman) is at the Grand Canyon on a western road trip and she gets out of her rental minivan to use her electric toothbrush. She flips it on. We hear the familiar whirring. Then the familiar whirring begins to die. It dies completely. Sarah Sparks is forced to brush her teeth……manually. Egads.

Technology, however tiny and day-to-day, is at the root of the aptly named “Small Beautifully Moving Parts”, a 72 minute severe indie. And even if the title did not clue us into the topic, we would understand straight away when Sarah, who apparently earns a living as a “researcher”, interviews random people on the street about the presence of technology of our lives. Three times the film returns to this device which assists us each time in understanding Sarah’s mental state and the movie’s aim. It is frustratingly inorganic and while I would like to chalk it up to co-directors/writers Annie Howell and Lisa Robinson underscoring how inorganic our technology-charged lives are, well, I know better.

Annie and her husband Leon (Andre Holland) have just learned she is pregnant. Her reaction is not exactly, shall we say, joyous, but nor is it depression. Perhaps the word for which we are looking is confusion. After all, technology is her field, not anthropology. And yet, all around her technological problems yield human freak-outs. Her sister’s (Sarah Rafferty) attempt to potty train her daughter goes awry when their potty-training doll suffers a mechanical breakdown. (How did people in the colonial era potty-train their children without the luxury of potty-training dolls?). Her father’s skype conversation with his lady friend whom he’s never met in person goes awry when his microphone cuts out. And Sarah’s journey to find her estranged mother takes a few detours when the GPS in her rental van cuts out.

Did I mention Sarah was estranged from her mother? Well, of course she is. And before the birth of her own daughter Sarah wants the chance not to re-connect with her mother, per se, but just to see her mother and ask “Why?” for any number of reasons. Her mother, however, has gone off the grid, somewhere in the desert of Nevada where they have no phones or email.

You see what’s going on here. I’m not referring to Sarah and her mother’s inevitable tete-a-tete. You expect the inevitable tete-a-tete to be enlightening and instead it is just brutally, if politely, honest. Answers? You want answers? There are no stinkin’ answers. You ask the question and then make a guess based on your own hypothesis, that’s your answer. No, I’m referring to the film’s examination of our over-reliance on technology.

This is a worthy topic of cinematic exploration and even if “Small Beautifully Moving Parts” is often too on the nose about it (witness the sequence that leads to Sarah and her mother’s inevitable tete-a-tete), well, hey, it gets the ball rolling.