The music business is all about being in the right place at the right time. That's why the Flobots are positioning themselves strategically for today's release of their highly anticipated major-label debut.

Rather than celebrating "Fight With Tools" — the No. 1 downloaded hip-hop album on iTunes this week — in their hometown, the Denver troupe is in Southern California.

Their sing-songy single "Handlebars" is a particular favorite in Los Angeles, where modern-rock FM powerhouse KROQ was one of the band's earliest supporters. And so the six-piece ensemble, which rocks a trumpet and a viola on top of the traditional guitar-bass-and-drums lineup, will mark today's release with a free show at Virgin Records on Hollywood Boulevard.

Then they'll hunker down in a nearby hotel room to watch their TV debut on "Last Call With Carson Daly," a performance recorded Monday.

Not bad for a band that was supporting its self-released CD with two sold-out shows at the tiny Falcon Bowl in Englewood just six months ago.

"I've never seen anything happen for a local band so fast," said Nerf, program director at KTCL, the local station that gave the Flobots an early break. "In the past, with every band that has taken off out of Denver, it's been a slow, tedious process to get signed, and a slow, tedious process to get the album ready to go, and a slow, tedious process to get the song to radio.

"But this all seemed to happen in a month, and if that kind of inertia and momentum keeps going, these guys are going to be an enormous success."

Very different deals
It's true. Local pop band Meese signed to Atlantic Records in November, four months before the Flobots signed with Universal Republic Records, a division of Universal Music Group. But the deals were very different.

Like most bands who get a big-label break, Meese is spending considerable time in the studio working on its first record. But the Flobots landed an "as-is" deal with Universal, meaning the label wanted to take their self-produced local debut national, nearly untouched.
It's a rare and enviable deal, especially for a 5-year-old band with no track record. But it's working: "Handlebars" is sitting pretty on the hip-hop charts, above songs by the Roots, Kanye West and Atmosphere.

However, it was the noise the band made locally that enabled its jump to the national level.

"From my perspective, the movement in Denver was so strong with all the support from the community and the radio station and the people coming to the shows, it put us in a place where we could leverage a lot more than most bands can," said J.J. Italiano, who manages the band out of the Denver-based offices of Steel Giant.

Skeptical about signing
Some fans were skeptical when the socially progressive Flobots signed with a corporate label. The group is as passionate about politics as it is about music, often pairing its shows with events sympatico with its activist philosophy — such as on-site voter registration. Also, the group launched its nonprofit website Flobots.org in February to connect fans to community organizations that need help.

The band sees its unique deal as a way to broadcast its message to a larger audience.

"(The record deal) has allowed us to be full-time activists and musicians, which is pretty amazing," guitarist Andy Guerrero told The Denver Post after signing with Universal.

Added MC Jonny 5, a.k.a. Jamie Laurie, a teacher at East High School: "I really do think that this band's success is one manifestation of a larger movement that's going on out there. We're hungry for hope and change, and we're seeing that manifesting in different ways right now."

Those ideas resonate with fans.

"They're socially conscious and politically active," said Jenny Kukoy of Denver. "And they're not just reaching out to the older crowd. They're pinpointing the younger generation."

Added Andrea Cram, who saw the Flobots in March: "They hope that they're enlightening people and causing change with their music, and I think they are."

That enthusiasm gets music industry notice, near and far.

"The Flobots are exploding all over the country right now," said AEG Live Rocky Mountains honcho Chuck Morris, who will host the group's next Colorado appearance July 20 at his Mile High Music Festival in Commerce City. "With the festival, we made a point to really promote the up-and-comers in this town. It's so important to us, because we have no future without them."

Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com

One of the coolest things about "The Forbidden Kingdom" happens just as the martial arts fable gets underway.

Stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li's names form a right angle as the credits come up. Chan's name runs horizontally, Li's perpendicular; they share the "j."

It's a fine nod to the double-billing of two major players in a genre, an acknowledgement of competition but also of the playful parity they bring to the screen as mentors to young Jason Tripitikas when he's thrown into an ancient world.

taga kung-fu kid and his mentors

Like recent matchups of equally big names, such as Washington and Crowe, and Nicholson and Freeman, Chan and Li's tantalizing pairing takes place in a film that is less than the sum of their parts.

Each has dual roles. Chan plays a shopkeeper in Boston's Chinatown and Lu Yan, the "drunken immortal" in the mystical realm in which this retelling of the Monkey King legend unfolds.

Li plays that monarch as well as the Silent Monk who sets out to release the Monkey King from the stone statue he's been entombed in by the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou).

Affable Michael Angarano feels miscast as Jason. (For a more convincing showing, see him in "Snow Angels.")

Jason's journey takes him from the too-mean streets of Boston to a strange world where he must return a magical staff to its "rightful owner." There he'll meet his mentors. He'll also make an ally of Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei), a lovely young women bent on avenging her family. She's an enemy of Ni Chang (Li Bing Bing), the white-haired witch set on immortality.

Jason finds the staff in a dusty store.

Chan has winking fun playing owner Old Hop. "You another white boy who wants to know kung fu," the grizzled shop owner says, teasing his young customer. Indeed, Jason is an action-flick geek of the "chop socky" variety.

His room is wallpapered with posters of kung-fu films. Bruce Lee's veins pop in taut readiness. He visits Old Hop's shop for the latest import DVD. And the movie, written by John Fusco ("Hidalgo") is a loving mash-up of the various ways martial arts have traveled across the waters.

This "Kingdom" has the behind-the- scenes talent to support a journey to a realm of magic and martial-arts ballet.

Peter Pau, cinematographer on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," is no stranger to the rigorous dance between stunts and camera. Action maestro Woo-Ping Yuen, who choreographed the fight/flight sequences in "The Matrix," "Crouching Tiger," and Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films, makes sure director Rob Minkoff's cast vie and fly with aplomb.

A number of "Forbidden Kingdom" sequences deliver muscular slaptick. A fight in which Lu Yan uses Jason as one more weapon in his arsenal of defensive moves is vintage Chan. This comes as no news for fans of the actor, who brought that comedic flourish with him into his American-made movies.

But Li is a pleasing surprise. The actor charms as both the trickster king and the more dour monk. When the Jade Emperor tells the humorless Jade Warlord to give the "naughty monkey a title and let him go," you know what he means. As played by Li, the orange-blond being is an amusing sprite.

The movie's flaw comes in the surprisingly brutal way (given its presumptive audience of teens) that Jason's journey begins and ends.

A bully named Lupo comes hurtling toward Jason from out of another film. With his black leather jacket and heavy accent, you might be forgiven for thinking he materialized from something silly and retro.

But he's lethal in ways that say more than the filmmakers likely intended about the violent images of themselves American kids get served by movies — even well-intentioned fabulist yarns.

Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also on blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer

It seems a no- brainer, but we'll say it anyway: As with sex, you should really know with whom you're doing drugs.

In the case of Ewan McGregor's character in the dark, diverting trifle "Deception," both rules apply.

Buttoned-down tax accountant Jonathan McQuarry sits after hours in an office, poring over the books of one of his many corporate clients. Looking around, he observes a pair of office cleaners slip into a bathroom. Even they, it seems, have a friskier life than he.

Into his routine strolls Wyatt Bose, a dapper and charming senior partner at the firm. The two banter. Then Wyatt offers Jonathan a joint. Mary Jane introduces the new best friends, and the bean counter bares his soul.

Half-baked, "Deception" (directed by Marcel Langenegger from a screenplay by Mark Bomback) winds toward a busy conclusion that'll have you pondering the state of airport security more than you should.

But long before we fret over passport control and plot points, we'll travel the world of anonymous sex groups that cater to impossibly foxy corporate high-fliers.

Hugh Jackman plays Wyatt. A master of his universe, the suspiciously smooth operator takes the numbers-crunching Cinderfella (a guy who can't get his super to fix a leak, let alone get him to remember his name) under his finely tailored wing.

The movie's title insists we stay ahead of the ledger-smart, EQ-stunted Jonathan. Quick scenes provide clues we easily note that he misses at his own peril.

Given the life he's plunged into, he can be forgiven this cluelessness.

Wyatt goes away on business. Cellphones get swapped, and Jonathan is initiated into a powerfully different world in which callers ring Wyatt's mobile and ask, "Are you free tonight?"

The callers are drop-dead gorgeous, boldly successful women who, says one, want "intimacy without the intricacy."

"Deception" recalls the fantasies of Showtime's soft-core series "Red Shoe Diaries." It's often tastefully laughable.

But then, Jonathan is a study in gender reversals when it comes to sex. His first encounter has sex with him, then falls asleep while he lies awake and confused. His next caller smokes a post-coital cig and eyes him.

As the older woman who schools Jonathan in what he's gotten himself into, fabulous Charlotte Rampling looks feline and pleased, like a cat of a certain age who's devoured a canary or two in her time.

In a meeting that defies the odds (and what are the odds of that?), a woman Jonathan spied on a subway platform turns up as one of his encounters.

Michelle Williams is "S." She and Jonathan break just enough rules that the lovesick pup believes they've got a future. Her disappearance and possible demise turns "Deception" from a high-minded Penthouse letter into an SVU investigation (complete with whip smart detective Lisa Gay Hamilton) into something altogether different when Wyatt finally returns from his travels.

Jackman proves the best reason to stick with a film whose title becomes an excuse to veer beyond believable psychological profile.

What's Wyatt's game? We can't help asking, because — unlike Jonathan — we've known from the start that he's had one.

Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com