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THE STARS:
Josh Jackson • Rachael Taylor 
DIRECTOR: Masayuki Ochiai

U.S. RELEASE: March 21 2008, Nationwide

THE CONCEPT:

Photographer Benjamin Shaw (Jackson), and his new wife Jane (Taylor) are in Tokyo for a lucrative fashion shoot. While driving on a mountain road their car crashes into a woman standing in the middle of the road, who has materialized from nowhere, but after they regain consciousness they cannot find any trace of the girl. When Ben begins his fashion shoot, mysterious white blurs, eerily evocative of a Human form, begin to materialize in all of his photos, and Jane believes the blurs are the dead girl from the accident.

THE COMMENT:

RACHAEL TAYLER on doing a Horror film:

“You’re dealing with fairly complex human issues and the spectrum of emotions you play are potentially wider, you’re dealing with ideas of revenge and death, deceit and betrayal and all that stuff. I find that kind of pleasurable as an actor. It gives you more to play with and you’re exploring things that you probably wouldn’t get to explore on a daily basis, like the Supernatural.”

JOSH JACKSON:

“What attracted me to Shutter was playing the character. In a straight ahead drama, generally the arc and the transition that the character goes through, while it may be internally severe, it is sort of [limiting]. When you’re doing a Horror film you have the potential of doing something much broader and a much more shocking shift, so for me to be able to start here and then end up as somebody totally different was fun for me.”

TAYLOR:

“I was a big fan of the original film. I didn’t use it in terms of performance, but it was one of the main reasons I wanted to make this movie. It’s an excellent movie and it was a great jumping off point. Our version is different; it’s more of a reinterpretation than a remake, because we shift the perspective a lot. What I wanted to bring to it was a strong female story. I’m not interested in making a film about a blonde girl in a ghost house having horrible things happen to her. What I wanted the story to be about, and what I really fought to occur, is that she would be very proactive and be a strong female character trying to figure out this mystery, and interpret these supernatural events rather than things happening to her.”

JACKSON on whether he believes in spiritual photography:

“I’ve never had the experience of it. I don’t really work on absolutes, I think it’s impossible to say absolutely yes or no to just about anything. It’s like my issues with faith, I’m not a man of faith, I have a real hard time when people of faith tell me something is absolutely correct, but then it would be hypocritical for me to say it’s absolutely incorrect. So I’ve never had a ghost moment, I’ve never had a ghost in my [camera] but I don’t deny that it’s possible.”

TAYLOR:

“I think [ghosts are] really interesting, it’s a real phenomenon which is really cool. There actually are photographs that have inexplicable images in them, whether or not you want to consider them as supernatural images is up to you. There are photographs that you can’t explain the element in the picture, it’s not a watermark or a technical problem, so it’s fascination. And I like what it represents, which is that it’s how a supernatural being can articulate something that they really need to say if the emotion is potent and strong enough, and it’s about their finding a way to get their message across to us, and in this case it is using the medium of photography.”

JACKSON on working with Japanese director Masayuki Ochiai:

“There were certainly moments of difficulty, because I think when we would get into the meat of a language heavy scene, it was difficult for him to follow along because he understands only a little bit of English. But in terms of communicating with the actors, or the rest of the Westerners on set, he had a phenomenal translator who was able to not only translate correctly the words, but had lived in the States so could contextualize this is not what I’m saying but how I’m saying it that’s important.”

Labels: Film Review

Few of the nine minigames that make up Wii Play have much staying power.
The Good: Makes good, pervasive use of Miis; comes as pack-in with wii remote.
The Bad: Lack of structure; most minigames are novel for only a short time; good minigames are hurt by a lack of gameplay options.

Review: Nintendo's move of packing in Wii Sports with every new Wii sold in the US proved to be a genius move. Though it was little more than a simple collection of tech demos, Wii Sports can perhaps claim some of the credit for the system's immediate mainstream appeal because it provided built-in proof of the kind of fun, accessible gameplay the Wii was capable of. Less than three months after launch, Nintendo follows up with Wii Play, a similar collection of minigames that lacks that athletic theme as an anchor. Those looking for more of what they got out of Wii Sports will undoubtedly be disappointed because the quality and lasting value of the games aren't as high. There are a few keepers in there, but for the most part the novelty wears off quickly.

Possibly the best feature in Wii Play is the game's prominent and pervasive use of Miis, the simple, caricatured avatars native to the Wii. When you first boot up the game, you're asked to choose a Mii to play as, and from that point on you'll see a variety of Miis--those that reside in your console's Mii Plaza and Mii Parade, along with more-generic Miis produced by the game--everywhere. Considering the paucity of games that employ the Miis, it's a welcome bonus in Wii Play.

There's not much structure to Wii Play beyond the individual games. At first you'll have access to only one of the nine games, and you'll have to play it and then each of the following games you unlock before you'll gain access to all of them. You start off with Shooting Range, which is basically Duck Hunt with fewer ducks, and in it you use the Wii Remote as though it were a light gun. The game consists of several rounds, during which you'll pop balloons, shoot clay targets, juggle tin cans in the air, and, in the final round, prevent marauding waves of UFOs from abducting Miis. The controls are good enough, but the game is not particularly dynamic. The passing references to light-gun classics like Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley are a nice touch, though they kind of make you wish one of those games had been ported directly.

After that you'll gain access to Find Mii, which is similar in concept to Where's Waldo, though on a smaller scale and with faster pacing. With the clock ticking, you'll be challenged to pick out matching sets of Miis from a small crowd, identify Miis that are out of sync with the others, and find a Mii that you had identified as a "favorite" several rounds earlier. It's not particularly challenging, and it takes its sweet time in turning up the difficulty by having the Miis run or swim around the screen and limiting how much of the screen you can see at once. The biggest problem, though, is the limited number of Miis that are ever onscreen at once.

Considering how much physical fun the tennis portion of Wii Sports was, you might be expecting more than you'll be getting out of Table Tennis in Wii Play, which doesn't require you to serve or even try to score points. Your only objective here is to rally with the other player for as long as you possibly can, which requires you to just keep up with the ball by moving the paddle side to side.

Pose Mii is likely the most abstract minigame in Wii Play, and it also happens to be one of the least fun. As bubbles containing silhouettes of your Mii in one of three different poses fall down the screen, you'll use the Wii Remote to move your Mii around the screen. Your goal is to pop the bubbles before they reach the bottom of the screen. You press the A and B buttons to cycle through the different poses and twist the Wii Remote to line up your Mii with the positions of the silhouettes. There's a little strategy here because you'll see specially marked bubbles that, when popped, will cause all the other bubbles onscreen to freeze in place. Things get tough as the bubbles start falling faster and at crazier angles, and the game mixes up the types of silhouettes it throws at you more quickly, but it's also repetitive and not particularly fun.

Laser hockey requires almost no explanation, because it's just air hockey with a glowing neon motif where you use the Wii Remote to control the paddle, twisting it to hit the puck at different angles. Still, this is one of the better games in the package, due largely to its strength as a two-player game and its conceptual simplicity. The visual style of Laser Hockey is also simple, but the clean, sharp look makes it easier to focus on the action. Billiards is also pretty self-explanatory and fun. It has you aiming your shot with the D pad, then aiming at a specific spot on the cue ball before pulling the Wii Remote back and then pushing it toward the screen, like you would a pool cue. Though it takes some time to get control over the power of your shots, the controls feel pretty good, and it's slick how you can control the spin of the cue ball. The problem with Billiards is its lack of gameplay options--you can play a game with eight balls where you have to sink them in numbered order, and that's it.

Fishing has you going after what appear to be construction paper cutouts of fish in a pond the size of a kiddy pool. It's a neat idea, but it's hard to get a good sense of depth, and it can appear that your lure is in the water when it's really far above it. The game's arts-and-crafts visual style is really the best thing it's got going for it. Charge is another game with a cute visual style but not much in the way of gameplay. In a world where everything appears to have been hand-knit, your Mii will ride a cow down a winding path, knocking down scarecrows and hopping over vaulting gates. You control the cow by holding the Wii Remote sideways--you steer the cow by turning the remote from side to side, move faster by tilting the remote forward, move slower by tilting it back, and jump by quickly lifting the remote up into the air. This kind of control scheme was novel when the Wii first came out, but by now enough real, full-featured games have used it for Charge to not really matter. Lastly there's Tanks!, the one game in Wii Play that you can play with the Nunchuk. It's quite reminiscent of Combat for the Atari 2600 and has you piloting a tank around a field apparently constructed out of wooden building blocks, dropping mines and firing shells at CPU-controlled tanks. The Nunchuk definitely makes it easier to move and shoot at the same time, but even without it, Tanks! is decent, simple fun.

It's not all bad, but Wii Play doesn't hold up as a stand-alone retail game. Nintendo seems to be aware of that, because the only way you can get Wii Play in North America as of this writing is as a pack-in with a Wii Remote. The continued scarcity of the Wii Remote, and the fact that the Wii Play package is retailing for only $10 more than a remote by itself, makes the game's shortcomings easier to overlook. Regardless of price, Wii Play probably isn't going to hold your attention for long.

Barenaked Ladies recorded and mixed 29 songs over the last year. Thirteen were chosen to be on the main album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me, which was released on September 12. Fourteen others will be available through various special editions of that album when downloaded, as well as its own CD, Barenaked Ladies Are Men, which will be available early next year. There were two bonus songs available if you pre-ordered, which I sadly did incorrectly and didn’t get. They are “What a Letdown” and “Why Say Anything Nice.” I already reviewed the first disc of this deluxe edition. What follows is a look at the second disc.

Keyboardist Kevin Hearn opens up the second half of the deluxe edition with "Serendipity." The bassline of this mid-tempo indie song is almost a fifties-style walk. It also really shows off his vocal range. Though it probably wouldn't make my top ten list of BNL songs, it's not bad. “Something You’ll Never Find,” sung by Steven Page, can be summed up in two words — fricken’ marathon. This song goes nearly non-stop lyrically and is high energy musically, especially for poor Tyler on the drums. My favorite lyrics from this track are, "Over in Indiana/ Wearing their red bandanas/ Indians eat bananas/ Thinking they're full of Vitamin C." It makes me giggle. The song also flows very well from verse to chorus and back again.

Next up it's Ed’s turn to sing on “One and Only.” The fact they have three different confident singers in three songs goes to show Barenaked Ladies has a vocal diversity similar to the Beach Boys. Unlike most bands with one singer, and one, maybe two songwriters, Barenaked Ladies have four members who participate in songwriting and take their turns at the microphone. “Angry People” is the happiest song ever written, not lyrically, but instrumentally. You also get a choir-like background vocal over the chorus just making it seem all the more upbeat. The lyrics describe angry people and how they can make those around them miserable. The song fits right into the BNL trademark of a hypocrisy-fueled musical combination fans love.

“Running Out of Ink” is one of Steven Page’s greatest vocal triumphs since “Break Your Heart.” It is also extremely entertaining, lyrically and instrumentally, making it quite possibly the best from the deluxe CD. It also has a bridge, which moves from the uptempo pop melody to something almost like orchestration and then back again. It is something rarely pulled off by other bands, but BNL does it very well. Another great bridge is in “Half a Heart” — actually, it is quite possibly the best part of this song. And it may even be one of BNL’s better bridges ever. This song also has some cool stuff going on in the background musically, especially in how the synthesizer and guitar complement each other.

“Maybe Not” is one of those songs that feels sad but has funny lyrics. It makes the listener feel confused. Which mood is the most appropriate to be in while listening to it? It's about breaking up, which isn't funny at all, but it's so goofy you can't help smiling. Also, I like the hand claps. It's about time for '80s hand claps to return to music. They have been gone far too long and I have been adding them to every song I listen to for ages now. ‘I Can, I Will, I Do” is Steven Page on helium. He is able to sing the entire song at a higher pitch than he typically sings, which makes me jealous. I cannot sustain a higher pitch, let alone stay in tune at that pitch for more than about four bars. I guess that’s why he's the professional.

“Fun and Games” is the heavily political song fans who read the BNL Blog have seen coming. What is truly amazing about it is they deliver their very strong political beliefs in such a way you want to sing along – even if you disagree with them. It also has another example of their great bridges I talked about earlier. “The New Sad” is a song that reminds me of something off of Steven Page’s solo album, Vanity Project. The focal point is the vocals, and it's rather simple in construction. Though it is in the background, this song features some of my favorite guitar work on the whole album and it also blends well with the keyboard.

“Quality” reminds me of “Celebrity” from their album Everything to Everyone. Many of the lyrics just leave me baffled though, such as “Look at them now, they're rubbing my cow there, And feeding it beer.” Huh? What is that all about? Kevin opened this set of songs, and he also gets to close it with "Another Spin." This is truly the best of him. It is slightly rock, slightly pop, and extremely entertaining. It even has cowbell! It is one of my favorite songs he has written, and there could be no better way to close out the album. I didn't warm up to Barenaked Ladies Are Men as quickly as the first half of the deluxe album, but I find myself listening to it more frequently now. It is made up of the extremes left off the first half — the higher energy songs, and the lower energy ones. Barenaked Ladies Are Me is the middle ground of the 29 songs.

Track Listings

1. Serendipity
2. Something You'll Never Find
3. One and Only
4. Angry People
5. Down to Earth
6. Beautiful
7. Running Out of Ink
8. Half a Heart
9. Maybe Not
10. I Can I Will I Do
11. Fun & Games
12. The New Sad
13. Quality
14. Another Spin
15. What a Letdown
16. Why Say Anything Nice?

Tiny actress Ashley Olsen happily jiggled outside her beachfront hotel room while sporting not-so-attractive white cotton undies and a see-through shirt that revealed her, um, sunburn. Click here to see the pics

A rep for the 20-year-old noted that her break was “with friends" -- which would explain why the back of someone's head pops up in some of the pictures. Perhaps the dance was a get-happy ritual to become a wholesome Olsen again. Ashley and her sister Mary-Kate were spotted backstage at New York Fashion Week looking like the world beyond the W suite was falling apart. Insiders said they did nothing but look glum and bored.

"They weren't drinking, they weren't talking — not even to each other. They sat in silence for at least 20 minutes, staring at the floor," said a New York Post spy.
It's so hard being a poor little rich girl. Thank goodness for beaches.

Designer Tells Britney: Bag It

Pop princess-gone-wrong Britney Spears was reportedly turned down last Tuesday when she asked for a purse at the Heatherette show at New York Fashion Week. Britney apparently wanted to be presented with one of only 100 available PUMA bags designed by heiress-model Lydia Hearst in conjunction with the Heatherette design duo. She promised to carry it to her front-row seat, where she would be photographed with the limited luxury. While a spokeswoman for Spears denied the incident, insiders told the New York Daily News that Hearst declined the offer.

"I'm only giving the bag to accomplished young women who are doing something positive to affect the world around them,” Hearst told the paper. “They are women I look up to and respect, like Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Jessica Parker and Anne Hathaway. They share the same high standards of giving back to the communities in which they live." But the put-down didn't curb Brit's appetite for nightlife. The Girl Gone Giddy vomited all over the bathroom at New York nightclub Tenjune on Saturday night, the New York Post's Page Six gossip column reported. And a little hangover didn't stop her from hitting the clubs one more time. She was back in action Sunday night, donning a bikini and white busboy coat at another New York club, Page Six reported.

"She didn't like what she was wearing," said the Post spy, "so she asked one of the dancers to trade clothes with her."

Spears changed out of her tight red dress and returned wearing the bikini under the coat — and proceeded to dance. According to the entertainment TV show “Extra,” which showed footage of Brit's odd attire, Spears ditched her clothes altogether, and dirty-danced in her underwear with another female dancer (hey, at least she was wearing panties this time!). The show also reported that the single mom ended the night at yet another Big Apple club, where she passed out and was carried from the premises.

“She likes to drink champagne, everytime I see her she has champagne in her hand,” said an unidentified “friend” who appeared on “Extra." "She was out almost every single night this week. I know she went to (nightclub) Tenjune alone four nights in the past week."

Grammy Gossip: Justin and K-Fed Hug, Scarlett Denies Romance and Christina Has a Dig at Britney

Justin Timberlake had a red-carpet run-in with Brit’s "other" ex, Kevin Federline, at a Grammy pre-party on Friday at Hollywood’s Avalon (how does Fed-Ex manage to get invited to these things?). The two exchanged an awkward embrace … how, um, sweet? What’s even more bizarre is that Spears' freshest ex, model Isaac Cohen, was partyin’ it up there as well.

Click here to see the 'Speared' men hugging it out

John Mayer showed up at the Grammy ceremony without his main squeeze Jessica Simpson(wearing sneakers with his tux) and decided to vocalize his cultural talents. When pressed by E! News anchor Ryan Seacrest for information regarding his relationship with Simpson, Mayer replied in Japanese, then sarcastically told him to “find a Japanese person, decode it and you’ll have an answer.”

Turns out that Mayer really does think his new girl is a "Wonderland," as his message was “She is very beautiful, and you’re the last to know.” Ouch. Sultry screen siren Scarlett Johansson also dodged questions about her and "SexyBack" singer Timberlake. The young actress squealed and pretended to look shocked that people would even consider them a couple. (Slight over-acting here? Especially considering that Page Six spies spotted Johansson at the Avalon party dressed in a hoodie and sunglasses, sneaking backstage to visit JT.) The Red Hot Chili Peppers also added some salt to the evening when they "forgot" that their interview with Seacrest was live. Frontman Anthony Kiedis sprayed silly string all over the broadcaster, and accidentally touched his genitals when he tried to clean up the mess.

Burning red-hot, Seacrest reminded them that there was no time delay. In after-party news, best female pop vocal winner Christina Aguilera took a swipe at fellow Mousekeeter Britney Spears as she crossed her legs while exiting her limo to enter Hyde.

"This is just my personal take on how to exit a limo," Aguilera told E! reporters. "You've got to do what's right for you."