Hey folks, Harry here... Well it seems that Eminem's Film debut has finally been shown to audiences in Toronto and the first review is interesting, if not a rave, definitely a review that notes that the film is at the least interesting. Eminem is 'Elvis'? While I like some of Eminem's music now, since I was educated by an enlightened one... I think the time for drawing comparison's between Eminem and ELVIS - well, I think that time will never come. ELVIS was the KING - Eminem exists in a period that no longer has royalty of any kind, merely images crafted and formed, marketed and processed. The KING is dead, and we'll never see his like again - Unless BRUCE CAMPBELL counts! Also here, you'll see a look at Miramax's edit of SHAOLIN SOCCER - and it is another RAVE! So here ya go...

Hi, Prankster here. Just thought I'd send you a couple reviews from the TIFF.

First up: 8 MILE, the Eminem-starring pseudo-autobiographical (or - is it?) flick directed by Curtis Hanson. This was apparently a rough cut, though it played out pretty well to me. Itís set in the titular district of Detroit, located between the downtown core and the suburbs - if you're thinking "caught between heaven and hell", you're on the right track.

I seem to have bad luck with gritty movies about life in the hood at the Toronto FilmFest - last year I missed the first ten minutes of Training Day. This year I missed the same amount of 8 Mile. Oh well. From what I understand, it started with Eminem's character, Jimmy 'B. Rabbit' Smith, taking the stage at a Hip-Hop 'Battle', in which two competitors improvise talking trash at each other in rhyme. Rabbit freezes up and gets booed off the stage, which puts him off busting beats for a while. Too bad, as that's his only real talent in life, not to mention his only escape from his run-down neighbourhood, lousy job on an assembly line, and horribly self-absorbed white-trash mother (Kim Basinger, doing a southern accent for some reason, even though the movie is set in Detroit). The rest of his time is spent hanging with his pals, including best bud Future (Mekhi Pfeiffer) and hanging on another guy who keeps dangling the chance to record a demo in front of his nose.

Now there's been great 'early buzz' on this movie. Maybe we should be suspicious, since we were the first real audience to see the flick, and that 'buzz' could only be from studio insiders. Some might also hold that it's a giant PR spin on Mr. Mathers' part, a 'poor-little-me' flick that tries to lionize him as a working-class hero. Then again, maybe it's an honest and unflinching look at what it's really like in this kind of neighbourhood.

I'd heard all this battered around beforehand, but what I wasn't prepared for:

This is an Elvis movie.

I'm not kidding. The characters even refer to Rabbit as 'Elvis', disdainfully. But this thing has that plot where the guy from the wrong side of the tracks sings (OK, raps) to express himself as he tries to get out from his intolerable situation. And this movie comes pretty close to being a hip-hop musical, too. Rabbit raps just to get himself through the day sometime - there's an especially neat scene early on where he starts riffing off of the strains of "Sweet Home Alabama" drifting out the window of his house, where his mom is "gettin' it on" with her equally trashy boyfriend. Nicely played character scene, though there aren't too many more like it as the film progresses. Still, some of the raps seem like they were improvised off the cuff by Eminem, which is pretty damn impressive.

Ultimately, the film won me over by avoiding the usual "Boyz N the Hood" clichÈs. Rabbit gets spotted by a police car while engaging in vandalism; Rabbit runs afoul of a local gang; Rabbit has a screwup buddy who pulls a gun at the wrong moment. But none of these setups play out the way you'd expect them to. There's also a bit where Rabbit comes to the defense of a gay guy, which is either an ironic gag or a blatant bit of spin control on Eminem's part (or I guess it might be his way of 'explaining' his seemingly homophobic tendencies - the scene does draw a distinction between 'gays' and 'faggots', for whatever that's worth - )

As you might be gathering from this review, I enjoyed the film (the climax is a wowser, even if you have no interest whatsoever in rap or hip-hop - in fact, it almost seemed like an attempt to introduce rap to an audience of novices at times). However, I still have the sneaking suspicion that this is at least in part a vanity project for Eminem. He gives a very natural performance, but he's obviously playing himself, or a variation thereof - I can't help thinking that he'd have a lot of trouble adapting to a different role. He only really shines during the rap sequences, the rest of the time he's underplaying like crazy - his eyes downcast, his voice a mumble. While the character's obviously been beaten down by life, there are a few points where he should have turned on the charisma and didn't. I don't think he even cracks a smile at any point. Again, this modest guy seems like a projection of how Eminem wants us to see him, deep down, but it doesn't jibe with his self-promoting onstage persona.

That said, I'm quite happy to see him do another movie, and there's no denying this is a pretty emotional flick in and of itself. I don't think the critics are going to take to it much, but itís an authentic and surprisingly warmhearted movie. Like Rabbit baring his soul (in song, natch) at the end of the flick, daring us to find something wrong with who he is, the movie deals with the many challenges it's going to face from audiences by addressing them head-on. When all is said and done, that makes it a hard movie to dislike.

SHAOLIN SOCCER