In critics’ shorthand, “The Sitter” can be quickly described as “After Hours” meets “Adventures in Babysitting.” This mash-up of elements from Martin Scorsese’s edgy 1985 gambol through Manhattan’s midnight underbelly and Chris Columbus’ larky 1987 kids and teens escapade adds up to an R-rated comedy that’s an uncomfortable blending of rough and cuddly.

Landry Bender, Kevin Hernandez, Max Records, Jonah Hill

As a star vehicle for Jonah Hill (“Superbad”), a schlubby Everyman whose comic lineage runs from Fatty Arbuckle through John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley, this shambling comedy offers up an escalating series of absurd, ill-considered situations that get more bizarre, convoluted and implausible as the night rolls on.

The farcical, far-fetched story by first-time scripters Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka casts Hill as a likable, wiseacre slacker named Noah Griffin, who has been kicked out of college and lives at home with his desperate-to-date single mom (Jessica Hecht). To facilitate his mother’s big night out, Noah reluctantly agrees to babysit the kids next door and finds himself in charge of an adolescent trio of dysfunctional little terrors.

There’s the jittery Slater (Max Records of “Where the Wild Things Are”), a pill-popping neurotic with serious issues about his budding sexuality; tart little sister Blithe (precocious newcomer Landry Bender), a foul-mouthed, mascara-ed, pint-sized party girl, and adopted brother Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), a surly little sociopath with a penchant for dropping cherry bombs down toilets.

As the sitter and his unruly charges settle in for an uneasy evening of TV watching, Noah gets a call from his supposed “girlfriend,” the manipulative diva Marisa (Ari Graynor) urging him to join her at a hip downtown party – oh, and to pick up some nose candy along the way.

So Noah decides it’s a good idea to load his three charges into their dad’s pristine minivan and head out into the night to score some drugs.

It’s a dubious decision that not surprisingly deteriorates into a visit to the surreal den of a gun-slinging drug dealer (Sam Rockwell); the accidental purloining of a large cocaine stash; the crashing of a bat mitzvah to steal some cash; the quick burglary of a jewelry store; a dicey visit to an after-hours gang-bangers’ club and several other nightmarish, night-on-the-town misadventures.

Director David Gordon Green, who has graduated from the subtle, indie promise of “George Washington” and “Undertow” to the raunchy comedy of “Pineapple Express,” TV’s “Eastbound & Down” and this, pushes the weird, episodic story forward with high spirits but rough craft (and no concern for logic).

When things threaten to get too raunchy or ridiculous, he slows down to let Noah, with all his hard-won worldly wisdom, gently counsel each of the children with a mild, mushy, be-true-to-yourself speech – which the likable Hill pulls off with surprising aplomb.

There are some queasy laughs here and there and some strong performances from the good supporting cast. But mainly “The Sitter” is a showcase for Hill and his goofy, regular-Joe persona, and you might just find yourself pulling for the guy, despite the chaotic, lowdown script he’s saddled with. Let’s hope after this derivative, minimum-wage gig he moves on to better, and funnier, things.

- Dennis King

“The Sitter”

R
1:21
2 stars
Starring: Jonah Hill, Max Records, Ari Graynor, Sam Rockwell
(Crude and sexual humor, pervasive language, drug material and some violence)

BY GENE TRIPLETT

No telling what John Wayne might’ve thought of his grandson acting in some loco Western called “Cowboys & Aliens.”

“Young ‘un,” the Duke might have bellowed, “you been out in the sun too long without yer Stetson?”

But Brendan Wayne, 39, isn’t so sure his granddaddy would disapprove.

“The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think — relative to today — he’d love it,” the third-generation actor said in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles. “It’s a great way to tell a classic story that otherwise can’t be told because you’d offend cultures that don’t deserve to be offended. It was simpler back then. We didn’t understand the breadth of cowboys and Indians.”

Brendan Wayne plays a deputy in a small, 1875 New Mexico town that’s ambushed by varmints from another planet in director Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys & Aliens.”

Daniel Craig trades in his Walther PPK and his Aston Martin for a frontier six-shooter and a fast horse as a stranger who wakes up in the middle of the desert with an odd-looking shackle on his left wrist and no memory of who he is.

“And then he drifts into my town where I’m a deputy with Keith Carradine playing the sheriff,” Wayne said. “And we don’t know what’s going on, but we know that our town’s kind of under attack and that we’re losing people, and we think it’s the Indians coming to take ‘em. And the juxtaposition is that the Indians feel the same way. They think we’re taking their people.”

Meanwhile, Craig’s character discovers that the townspeople don’t cotton to strangers, and everyone takes their orders from the iron-fisted Col. Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). It’s a town that’s already used to living in fear, but when incredible flying machines start streaking down from the sky to snatch people away, things get downright scary.

And as the stranger begins to remember who he is and what he’s just been through, Dolarhyde and his men, a gang of outlaws and an encampment of Chiricahua Apache warriors realize the mysterious drifter’s leadership may be their only chance of fighting off the airborne invaders.

“It’s a journey of spirit,” Wayne said. “You don’t want to put too much on it because it is an action movie. But it’s a good old-fashioned Western in that these people are going to get their people back.”

It’s a plot not unlike a John Wayne Western such as “The Searchers.” Of course, that John Ford film was made about 16 years before Brendan Wayne was born, and he was only 7 when his famous grandfather died in 1979.

“I didn’t get the John Wayne concept,” Brendan Wayne said. “I thought that was granddaddy, and didn’t everybody’s granddad ride horses and stuff?”

He remembers thinking of the man as “a big, goofy, you know, granddad … just a really gentle, sweet, funny guy.”

Born in Encino, Calif., the son of John Wayne’s eldest daughter Mary Antonia “Toni” Wayne La Cava, Brendan grew up around horses, attending rodeos and occasionally visiting his grandfather on movie sets.

“I was on the set of ‘The Shootist,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, I betcha other people’s parents and grandparents, this is where they worked.’ Like, you know, this is normal. It wasn’t until he passed that I was, like, Oh wait, he was a little more extraordinary than I had thought. It started when he was sick and everybody at school was writing him get-well cards. And I went to Catholic school. I said to the nun, I said, ‘Sister Roberta Ann, my best friend Tony, his grandpa was sick, and the whole school didn’t write him cards.’

“And she looked at me and really didn’t have much of an answer. … But that was when I started to piece it together.”

It was after watching his grandfather’s iconic portrayals in films such as “Red River,” “The Searchers” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” that Brendan Wayne decided to study film at the University of Southern California. The father of three is best known for his roles in “Couples Retreat” and “Fast & Furious,” and guest shots on such TV series as “CSI” and “The Closer.”

And if his grandfather were around today, Brendan Wayne honestly believes the Duke would have taken a role in “Cowboys & Aliens” if it were offered to him.

“I don’t think he was afraid of anything,” Wayne said. “Anybody who’d play Genghis Khan (“The Conqueror,” 1956) sure liked a challenge, just to say the least.

“He could have played Daniel Craig’s role, or Harrison Ford’s role, and done them as well as anybody. You know, I think Harrison’s in this movie, to be honest with you, because he’s the closest thing we have to that character type. He’s as tough as they get. He was ridin’ his horse and jumpin’ off it. He wasn’t flinchin’ from the physical. He was willing to challenge anything that came along.”

Wayne said co-stars Craig, Sam Rockwell, Julio Cedillo and Olivia Wilde were game for doing most of their stunts as well — and so was Wayne — in the best daring Duke tradition.

“You’re not going to see a lot of back-of-the-head shots because of stunt guys,” he said, “because those guys were amazing, and they did some great work.”

Listed on wimgo Movies under Action

Daniel Craig

Director Jon Favreau mixes sagebrush shoot-’em-up with science fiction freakiness in “Cowboys & Aliens”

and fires off a mash-up of movie genres that’s lightweight fun at a warp-speed gallop.

There’s a whole posse of writers credited for this thriller (six in all) which is usually a sign of trouble ahead, but all potential narrative bullets are dodged, the top-hand stars are all on target, and the special effects, non-stop action and gritty period look of this piece should satisfy horse opera enthusiasts and sci-fi fans alike.

Daniel Craig switches from James Bondian martinis and tailored tuxes to the rotgut whiskey and brush-scarred chaps of the iconic, laconic Western hero, filling those boots with a minimum of strain as a stranger who wakes up in the middle of the desert with an odd-looking shackle on his left wrist and no memory of who is, but possessed of an instinctual and deadly ability to take down three local yokels who happen by and attempt to take him prisoner for a possible reward.

After appropriating boots, cartridge belt, six-gun and hat (bad choice there) from the three corpses, he’s fully outfitted for the hero role and, in true loner hero tradition, rides one of the dead men’s horses into the dusty town of Absolution, New Mexico Territory, where he immediately gets crossways with its inhabitants.

First he puts down the bullying antics of a loudmouth named Percy Dolarhyde (a superbly obnoxious Paul Dano), who happens to be the spoiled son of powerful cattle baron Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, convincingly rawhide-tough), who owns the town and tells everyone in it when to jump and how high.

Then the sheriff (Keith Carradine) recognizes the stranger from wanted posters as one Jake Lonergan, leader of a notorious outlaw gang. Now our hero has a name, plus the daunting task of resisting arrest against the sheriff and his handful of armed deputies, which he almost manages in heroic saloon-brawl fashion before he’s coldcocked from behind by a mysterious, sad-eyed beauty named Ella (a winning Olivia Wilde), who wears a pretty gingham dress and a great big revolver around her tiny waist.

Ella doesn’t want Jake leaving town because she knows who he is and the fantastic tragedy that he’s been through, and that he is the only one who can help her in a desperate search. And when incredible metal flying machines come screaming out of the sky hurling fiery thunder and snatching people from the street, Jake suddenly recalls what that cumbersome bracelet is for and the townspeople realize he may be their only hope of defeating the “demon” marauders and recovering their abducted people.

What follows is plenty of good old fashioned gunplay and bare-fisted action as Dolarhyde and his men, Jake’s former outlaw gang and a band of Chiricahua Apache warriors form an uneasy alliance against some of scariest looking bug-eyed creatures ever created by CGI.

Who’d have thought Favreau, back when he was a young hipster making smart and funny little indie comedies (“Swingers,” 1996; “Made,” 2001) with his buddy Vince Vaughn, would ever become such a such a sure-handed crafter of such big-budget blockbusters as “Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2,” and now “Cowboys & Aliens.”

Crossbreeding the Old West with the outer limits is nothing new, dating back to the 1935 serial “The Phantom Empire,” when singing cowboy Gene Autry discovered a race of advanced humans living deep beneath the earth. But Favreau has given the idea a stellar 21st century reboot that’s a good bet to outdraw all comers at the box office on its opening weekend.

— Gene Triplett

“Cowboys & Aliens”

PG-13

1:58

3 stars

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Ana de la Reguera, Adam Beach, Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, Keith Carradine.

(Intense sequences of Western and sci-fi action and violence, some partial nudity and a brief crude reference)

Listed on wimgo Movies under Action

By Gene Triplett

Duncan Jones came by his affinity for science fiction almost naturally, having had it instilled in him by the man who portrayed “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and recorded “Space Oddity” and “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.”

Duncan Jones

Jones’ father, David Bowie, is a huge sci-fi aficionado, which doesn’t seem too surprising.

“He was always a warm, supportive guy who was always introducing me to things that he felt passionate and interested in,” Jones said of the man who named him Duncan Zowie Hayward Jones — aka “Zowie Bowie.”

“He was the one who sort of introduced me to a lot of the sci-fi literature that kind of got me started in my love of sci-fi.”

So it’s also not surprising that when Jones became a film director, he launched his career with 2009′s “Moon,” the critically praised story of an astronaut (Sam Rockwell) suffering the dire hallucinatory effects of three years of isolation on the lunar surface.

Sticking with sci-fi

His sophomore effort, “Source Code,” is just as out-of-this-world, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as decorated soldier Capt. Colter Stevens, who finds himself part of a government time-travel experiment that allows him to cross over to an alternate reality and into the identity of another man living the last eight minutes of his life.

The other man, Sean Fentriss, is about to die in a Chicago commuter train explosion that’s already occurred a few hours in the past, and Stevens, in Fentriss’, body has eight minutes to gather clues to the bomber’s identity and help prevent a second terrorist attack in the heart of the city.

In “Groundhog Day” fashion, Colter is forced to relive the incident repeatedly, gathering more clues each time he is zapped into the past, in a race to prevent a second bombing from taking place in the present. In the process, Colter makes a connection with the doomed man’s girlfriend (Michelle Monaghan), who also is fated to die in the explosion.

“I had the opportunity to meet up with Jake Gyllenhaal because he had seen ‘Moon’ and really liked it, and I wanted to find a way to work with him,” Jones told The Oklahoman in a phone interview from Los Angeles last week.

“I had a project I was hoping he’d be interested in and he said, ‘You know what, I have this script I’ve already seen. I think you’d be great for it.’ And he basically gave me ‘Source Code’ to read, and I read it, and I was, like, ‘This is actually really good. And if I can sort of sink my teeth in this, I think between myself and getting the chance to work with Jake, this could be a really fun thing to do.’”

Bringing the humor

Jones found the script by Ben Ripley to be structurally sound, framing a brilliant piece of speculative fiction that followed an intriguing and unpredictable nonlinear course. But he and Gyllenhaal thought it needed something more.

“What Jake and I both wanted to bring to it was a slightly different tone,” he said. “I think the script was quite serious when we read it, and we wanted to find a way to lighten the tone and inject some humor into it. And I think that was really important. … And obviously the ending of the film is something where I kind of added an element, a sort of ‘Twilight Zone’ vibe to the ending of it that wasn’t there in the draft that I read.”

Meanwhile, Jones has been at work on two other sci-fi scripts of his own, both related to the story he told in “Moon.”

“I’ve had this film that even before ‘Moon’ I was hoping to make called ‘Mute,’” he said. “It takes place in Berlin and Germany, and it’s definitely a nod to ‘Blade Runner,’ and what we’re going to do is, because we’ve been struggling to make it for such a long time and not been able to quite make it happen, we’re going to release that as a graphic novel and hopefully that will come out before the end of the year.”

“Mute” follows the same futuristic timeline as “Moon,” revolving around the disappearance of a woman, which pits her partner, a mute bartender, against the city’s gangsters. The film was to have included Sam Rockwell in a cameo as his “Moon” character, Sam Bell.

“Hopefully, we’ll still get the cameo in the graphic novel, and then if we ever get the chance to make the movie we’ll have a chance to have him in that as well,” he said.

No musical inclination

Jones’ filmmaking ambitions could have sprung from his father’s movie work, as Bowie has displayed impressive acting chops in such features as Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), Tony Scott’s erotic vampire thriller “The Hunger” (1983), and Nicolas Roeg’s sci-fi cult classic, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976).

But the musical side of the man who created the ambiguously sexy Ziggy Stardust persona and the sophisticated “Thin White Duke,” the man who reshaped glam, Philly soul, ’70s dance floor music and all manner of avant-pop to suit himself and a legion of fans, has had little influence on the son.

“I never had any natural musical inclination,” Jones said. “My poor dad tried to get me to learn musical instruments, and they just wouldn’t take. It was not interesting to me and, yeah, I regret it now of course, to be able to strum on the guitar, play the piano. It just wasn’t in my DNA, I guess.”

But still there’s that sci-fi gene.

“I used to spend an hour or two a night reading,” Jones said. “That was kind of the family rule. And if I found it difficult or I was bored with whatever I was reading, kind of like candy my dad would give me a sci-fi thing to read instead.”

Jones’ next film will continue in that family tradition of fantastic tales.

“But it will be my last science-fiction film for a little while I think,” he said. “I’ll do this last one, and hopefully it’ll be all the things I wanted to do in a sci-fi movie, and then I’m going to take a break from the genre.”

Listed on wimgo Movies under Action

BY GENE TRIPLETT

TORONTO — For Hilary Swank, the best t

Hilary Swank, right, and Betty Anne Waters

hing about winning two Oscars is the chance to portray people like Betty Anne Waters.

“There’s no doubt that as an actor, my passion lies in playing characters like Betty Anne,” Swank said, as the real Waters sat two chairs away wiping tears from her eyes. “So, the Academy Award has given me the opportunity certainly to continue to explore areas of the human spirit and life that inspire me.”

She was speaking at a Toronto International Film Festival news conference promoting “Conviction,” a film that tells the true story of Waters’ 18-year fight to prove her brother Kenny innocent of murder and free him from prison.

The small-town Massachusetts woman was an unemployed high school dropout with none of the resources to fight a long legal battle when her brother was arrested, tried and sentenced to life behind bars in 1983. But through dogged determination and complete devotion to Kenny, Waters earned her GED, then a college degree and went on to law school, passing the bar exam in two states.

Then she set out to exonerate the brother she had promised in their rugged childhood she would never abandon, sacrificing her marriage in the process and struggling to raise two kids alone as her life was consumed with following a seemingly endless trail of questionable evidence.

“I started crying one minute into it, so I don’t remember most of it,” Waters said of her feelings when she first saw the film. “It was, for lack of a better word, surreal. It was amazing seeing yourself (in Swank’s performance), your brother (played by Sam Rockwell) and your story come to life, and it actually is the story. It was amazing to watch it. I was just amazed at how the real story did come up and it was there … I thought it was perfect.”

Director Tony Goldwyn (“A Walk on the Moon”) saw the cinematic potential in Waters’ story when it made national news in 2001.

“What made me want to tell this story beyond the extraordinariness of Betty Anne’s achievements … was the bond between these two people and the love that they shared, her faith in him and his in her,” Goldwyn said. “She knew he was innocent, even when everyone else thought he was guilty. Kenny never doubted for one second that Betty Anne was going to become a lawyer, find evidence to somehow get him out. … What is that connection about? And I think it’s the thing that we all crave in our lives, is that kind of human connection.”

Swank said Waters has become her “real-life hero” over the course of getting to know her and learning to understand her drive and her unconditional love for her brother.

“If you sat in here right now and asked Betty Anne any question you could think of, she would answer it in such great detail and with such a memory,” Swank said. “You know, not afraid to show all different sides of herself, and colors of herself. I say she’s my hero yet she’s so human, too.

“I hear these stories that she shares with us, and some of the stories that you see in the movie, and you have this idea (that) she’s this tough woman. She’s gonna get in there and she’s driven, and you have this idea in your head, if you didn’t meet her, of someone who is tough and talks tough,” Swank said.

“And look at her. She’s over here crying, and all heart and … she wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s a dichotomy of what you see on paper and what you really get. It was a great lesson for me as an actor, when you read something and go, ‘Oh, yeah.’ It was extraordinary to play all those different colors of Betty and for her to share all those different colors, that (screenwriter) Pamela (Gray) captured all those different colors. It’s remarkable.”

Spoiler alert: Readers unaware of the outcome of the Kenny and Betty Anne Waters’ story should read no further, as the film’s conclusion is revealed.

While the film ends with Kenny’s jubilant release from prison, it leaves out the ultimate conclusion of his real-life story, which was not a happy one: He died not long after regaining his freedom. But Swank’s hero doesn’t wear it like tragedy.

“After his release, he was free for six months,” Waters said, smiling. “And those six months he had the ride of his life, I’ll say. He had so much fun. He was on all the day shows — and even ‘Oprah’ — and he had so much fun and lived life. It was the happiest days of his life. And he died accidentally. He fell and hurt his head. But the most I could say about that was that he died a free person.”

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Juliette Lewis

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Juliette Lewis has come by her Hollywood rock ‘n’ roll wild child image honestly, picking film roles and playing music that are dangerous and different.

Since stunning movie audiences when she was barely 18 as Danielle Bowden in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of “Cape Fear” (earning  a supporting Oscar nomination), the Los Angeles native has tackled some of the edgiest characters out there, including a serial slayer in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” a psycho-killer’s girlfriend in Dominic Sena’s “Kalifornia,” a corrupt cop’s mistress in Peter Medak’s cult favorite “Romeo is Bleeding,” a worldly-wise young drifter in Lasse Hallstrom’s “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” a mentally challenged woman in Garry Marshall’s “The Other Sister,” and a nine-months-pregnant kidnap victim in Christopher McQuarrie’s “The Way of the Gun.”

In 2003, Lewis took a break from acting to satisfy her musical urges, which were just as exotic as her dramatic appetites, forming a band called Juliette and the Licks, shaking up a punk-pop concoction that was equal parts Iggy Pop, P.J. Harvey and ’90s alt-rock, and filling two full-length albums with it (“You’re Speaking My Language,” “Four On the Floor”) in 2005-06.

In 2009, she went solo, expanding the colors of her musical palette — with a touch here and there of the blues — on “Terra Incognita,” before turning back to acting in earnest.

And earnest she is in Tony Goldwyn’s “Conviction,” the true story of working-class Massachusetts woman Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank) who put herself through law school and spent 18 years proving her imprisoned brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) innocent of murder.

Lewis is already drawing critical raves for her brief but indelible performance as an unprincipled, low-living woman whose testimony puts Kenny in jail.

She kicked off our recent phone interview by complimenting my “nice accent,” of all things, making me self-conscious about my Okie drawl. So, I asked about our mutual Oklahoma City acquaintance, Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

A: Well, you know, I met him a couple of times at his shows so I don’t know him past that, other than I’m a big fan of his, and he seems like a real good guy.

Q: The reason I asked is because you actually appear in the Flaming Lips documentary “The Fearless Freaks.”

A: I know, I remember that show. Me and my sister went there, and we had our own animal suits that we rented. We didn’t know that they gave you suits, so we came with our own. And I got to be an animal onstage.

Q: What kind of animal were you?

A: I think I was a mouse.

Q: When was that?

A: Oh, that was like six years ago. It was before I was touring with my own band.

Q: Bet that was fun. Well, let’s talk about “Conviction.” You were fantastic in this film. With the little time that you were in it, you made more of an impression on me than anyone else in the cast.

A: Oh wow, I appreciate that. Yeah it’s been really wild because I didn’t make movies for about five years because I was just making records and touring, and that became my main bread and butter. So I turned stuff down because I just wanted to give everything to my music. So it was only last year I started doing films again. So it’s been really exciting for me to just play all kinds of different roles.

No matter how big or small the part is … this is a perfect movie that gave me the opportunity to do something I’d never done in film before, which was to completely transform. I didn’t want you to see me anywhere, any of my mannerisms. And also I never played a part where in one scene I had to go through so many transitions or emotions, you know, like between feeling guilty and grief-stricken to vengeful and then being totally disconnected. And then at the end being manipulative.

So yeah, it was a really wild thing to be a part of.

Q: Did you pursue this role, or did they come to you with it?

A: Oh no, Tony (Goldwyn) just offered it to me, Tony the director. And I just make a decision based on “does this give me something new to do in film?” And I felt it did, but I’m also slowly finding my way back into movies again, and I feel like this is a new chapter in my career, or it’s the beginning of one, you know, in my 30s now. This is the most dramatic thing I’ve done in the last 10 years. I was out on “The Switch” earlier this year, which is a comedy, and I’ll be in “Due Date” which is another comedy in November.

Q: What kind of preparation or research process did you go through for this role in “Conviction”?

A: This movie was really interesting because there was a world of research. Because it’s a true story and this person is a real person. I never met her, but I had all the ingredients there, that she lied and she kept lying, and I knew she was an alcoholic. I studied with a dialect coach, a woman named Liz Himelstein, to get her accent together.

But with that said, every personality is different. And a lot of the essence of the part is something that I have to sort of channel and come up with.

So I added the ingredients like the facts of the case. Like the scenes I’m in, that’s all verbatim things she said in interviews.

So even the way she messes up phrases, that’s her actual language. But the way in which she conveys her feelings, that was left for my interpretation.

Q: There was one word in there that was really off-kilter, that caught everybody’s attention.

A: “Railroad?” That was in the script. And I thought it was a typo. And I told the writer, “Don’t you wanna fix this?” And she went, “Oh no, that’s what she said.” And she said “stature of limitations” (instead of) statute of limitations.

That was really fun, and then of course makeup and hair, that was a huge part. ‘Cause I wanted you to see the amount of damage that she’d been through over 18 years. When you see, you know, when you can see a person and you can go, “Wow, where have they been?” And I wanted you to feel that.

Q: I know you said the script was verbatim, but how much did you bring to this character beyond that?

A: Well, all of the behavior and where she gets emotional, where she gets angry, all of that is the way I interpret the dialogue. And then, of course, when I’m getting up to fill my drink, or if I’m being distracted, all those things are my physical language.

But as far as lines, I added a couple of lines but that’s pretty much as written. It’s just sort of the life I gave it is something else. You can’t really write a person’s interpretation of it.

Q: You mentioned “Due Date,” which stars Robert Downey Jr. Could you tell me a little bit about that film?

A: That’s a real cameo, and it’s one scene. (Director/co-writer) Todd Phillips, he just calls me up and says, “Hey, I got a part for you,” and then I come down. He’s proven himself as one of the best comedic directors out there right now, and this movie with Downey, and first of all, Zach Galifianakis is one of my favorite comedians. Downey, I played with, of course, in “Natural Born Killers.” It was a fun day at the office for me with those two.

Q: So are you doing anything at all musically, or putting it on hold for a while?

A: Yes. I just toured the states and Canada in a van, no less. And we were on a monthlong tour and we didn’t play Oklahoma, but I was out with The Pretenders last year and Cat Power was pretty incredible.

And so now I’m on my downtime. It’s the gestation period. I’m going to be writing more, and I’ll probably make another record next year. But now I’m finding the balance, because I was pretty much just making music and touring for five years, and I really feel like I found a strong, good solid audience that is gonna take the ride with me when I do it again.

Q: The music you’re making with The New Romantiques, how does that differ from the music you were making with The Licks?

A: Well, they’re not called The New Romantiques. I flirted with that name for a minute, and then it was out on the Internet, and blah, blah, blah. But “Terra Incognita” is a proper solo album in that it was written with a good friend of mine. I wrote half of it on piano and then (Omar Rodriquez-) Lopez of Mars Volta produced it and he also played instruments on it, and then I put a band together after the fact.

So, the way I approached songwriting was completely different, and I focused a lot more on melody and space and dimension in the music and the songs. Big old guitar riffs and rock drums. Because with The Licks it was proper, straight-up-and-down guitar rock, and on this new record I have a blues song called “Hard Lovin Woman,” I have this really what I hope to be or aspired to be a kind of Bowie-esque, softer song called “Suicide Dive Bombers,” and then your banging rock ‘n’ roll track, “Terra Incognita.” And so it goes all over the place, and I feel like it’s a real personal record. It’s just me and my different musical tastes.

I’m about to release a new video that’ll come out next month. But I always tell people to go on MySpace and all that jazz to hear the music.

Q: Is the next record going to be more of what we’re hearing on “Terra Incognita”?

A: No, it’s funny because I feel like every new thing musically is a reaction to the last. So my next record, I’ve already been writing the songs. It’s all really rhythmic. I’m an explorer, adding more electronic sounds to the drumbeats, and then it’s really hooky choruses. It’s just totally different. It’ll be a really fun record where “Terra Incognita” was more sort of my weird record, for lack of a better description.

It’s not gonna be too long. That’s the thing. I got into this game way too late and I have so much to say and do, so I’m not gonna wait a year.

Q: I look forward to hearing it. Well, I’ve already taken up my time allotted so I’ll turn you loose.

A: “Turn Me Loose,” that’s a Loverboy song. “Turn Me Loose.” OK, I’ll see you later. Bye.

Listed on wimgo Movies under Biography

Common wisdom in Hollywood says that it’s the rare sequel that outshines the original. And in the case of the overstuffed, overly frenetic, slightly incoherent “Iron Man 2,” that wisdom holds fast and true.

If this hotly anticipated sequel to the 2008 Marvel Comics superhero saga proves anything, it’s that more is not always better. But that’s a cliché, as well as a very real pitfall that trips up many if not most big-bang, big-budget action movies that score big box-office bucks and come back a couple of years later for a second helping of riches.

The things that surprised and charmed us most about the first “Iron Man” – clever gizmos, clever characters, prize-worthy special effects and the willfully eccentric, darkly dangerous presence of Robert Downey Jr. in the title role – are back in spades for the sequel.

But so is an overly convoluted plot by actor-screenwriter Justin Theroux (“Tropic Thunder”) that confronts our gazillioinaire playboy industrialist-inventor Tony Stark (Downey, upping his game in terms of bleak, sardonic humor) with a rash of personal problems and a couple of potent arch-enemies on his case.

It’s hardly necessary to provide detailed synopsis, since this thing was practically blogged to death before it hit multiplex screens.

But, briefly, Stark, seemingly unhinged by creeping megalomania and a bad ticker, is still stubbornly guarding the secret of his nifty bionic iron suit and insisting that he’s using it for the good of mankind.

Amid a numbing barrage of explosive special effects, orchestrated without much apparent logic by returning director Jon Favreau, Stark struggles with his own inner nuttiness while fending off a genius Russian thug named Ivan Vanko (is that Mickey Rourke under all those tattoos?), who blames Stark for … oh, something or other. There’s also an underhanded weapons dealer with the appropriate weapons dealer name Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), who’s conniving with Vanko against Stark.

On top of that, the blustery U.S. Sen. Stern (Garry Shandling) is pressuring Stark to turn over his technology to the Defense Department; Stark’s loyal Girl Friday, Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), now has a rival in a dishy new assistant, Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson, scantily clad), and old comrade Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, stepping in for Terrence Howard) feels that he needs to knock some sense into Stark’s muddled head.

That doesn’t even take into account the puzzling presence of Samuel L. Jackson’s eye-patched crimefighter Nick Fury, who shows up late and hangs around without much to do.

All the confusion and chaos of the story, or the over-reliance on noisy CGI action scenes, won’t likely spoil the fun for hardcore fans. Downey’s cheeky flamboyance and his knack for glib, dark humor provide enough saving grace to make “Iron Man 2” an ironclad blockbuster. It manages to be enjoyable, even while being a rattling contraption that’s far too mechanical for its own good.

- Dennis King

“Iron Man 2”

PG-13
2:04
2.5 stars
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke
(Sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some language.)