Time for
your weekly notable news update! Below you'll find a
slew of sentences meant to provide a brief glimpse of what's
been going on over the past week in movieland. If
something leaves you desperate for more info then my advice
is to do a little extra research on one or all of the
following fantastic sites:
Latino Review,
Dark Horizons,
Ain't It Cool News,
CHUD and/or
JoBlo. Now, read on!
Movie News
Rundown
Jeremy Renner (The
Hurt Locker) has signed on for Mission Impossible 4.
Apparently, he is being looked at as the eventual successor
of the franchise.
Sony is said to be looking at putting together a sequel to
their Karate Kid remake.
John Cusack will play Edgar Allan Poe in James McTeigue's
fiction-based The Raven. The story is said to
follow Poe as he attempts to stop a serial killer who is
using his stories as methodology.
Producer Laura Shuler Donner has said that the Magneto
origin film is essentially dead since a lot of its story was
incorporated into Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class.
The documentary Inside Job has a
trailer. It will probably make you
angry.
Dimension has already started working on a sequel to
Piranha 3D.
Katie Holmes has signed on to star with Adam Sandler in
Jack And Jill. The movie follows a man who must
deal with his twin sister (Sandler will play both roles) at
a Thanksgiving dinner.
Marvel is looking at adapting Iron Fist. The
comic follows a martial arts expert whose fists are turned
into indestructible weapons after defeating a dragon.
Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are being looked at for
Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close. The plot
centers around a boy who finds a key and begins a search to
find the lock it goes to.
Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell have signed on for minor roles
in the upcoming Scream 4.
There's now a
trailer for Another Year.
Could be solid.
Angelina Jolie is looking to write and direct a currently
untitled project that tells the story of a man and a woman
who meet and fall in love on the eve of the Bosnian War.
Victory! Dustin Hoffman is back for Little Fockers.
Jaden Smith may star in Monster Witness Relocation
Program. No word yet on the exact plot, but I
think we can all throw out a guess as to what it might be
about.
Sam Worthington will star in Drift. The
Australia-based movie will tell how surfing became a global
industry.
Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World is said to be
close to adding Jessica Alba to the cast.
Warner Bros. has optioned Heaven's Shadow. The
books, which were co-written by David Goyer, follow Earth
trying to stop an alien force that's bent on destroying
humans.
Steve Carell will star in A Boyfriend For My Wife.
As you probably guessed, the story deals with a husband
trying to get out of his terrible marriage by finding a new
lover for his wife.
Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan and Albert Brooks will star in
Drive, which is about a stuntman who is also a
getaway driver. Naturally, he gets into trouble and
must go on the run.
Pedro Almodovar (Broken Embraces) is all set to shoot The
Skin I Live In. Antonio Banderas will star in the
movie about a plastic surgeon trying to get revenge on the
man who raped his daughter.
For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Hope that's OK.
Read on!
The
Breakdown - Catfish
The Impression:
Meeting people over the internet may not be the best
idea ever.
The Reality:
It's hard to talk about this film without spewing out a
variety of spoilers, so I'll just keep this really
brief.
Whether the events of this documentary are true or not,
there is still a very interesting subject at work in the
story that's being told, and the last third of the film
explores that as well as anything could. Yes, the
trailer is misleading and this doesn't turn into some
massive freak show that will leave you scared to ever use
Facebook again, but that doesn't mean Catfish isn't
worth your time. Check it out at least once.
For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - Flipped
The Impression:
Looks like an overlong episode of a little series called
The Wonder Years. But where The Wonder Years
were entertaining and oft times subversive in their
portrayal of a family living in the late 1960s, Flipped
looks like a typical generic turd from late-career Rob
Reiner.
The Reality:
Truthfully, this film plays out like seven episodes of
The Wonder Years stitched together with a sort of
Rashomon-type gimmick thrown in to trick the viewer in to
thinking that their actually watching something new.
The film follows, from both sides of the relationship, the
budding romance between headstrong Juli Baker (Madeline
Carroll) and daft-but-dreamy Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe).
There’ a lot of narration, a lot of lessons learned, and of
course a drearily happy ending involving first kisses and
families come to peace.
Yet the film doesn’t attempt to play out in a typical
fashion, it’s broken down in to a series of short episodes
each seen through the eyes and narration of the two blooming
lovers, each with its own dramatic highs and lows, a
denouement, and of course a happy climax. Tied all
together, yes, a narrative does emerge, but it feels
fractured because of the sort of segmented storytelling
presented. Each little part has the exact same feel and
structure, a sort of overtly 50s, bland telling of what it
was like to grow up.
I found myself in an audience that absolutely adored this
film and I thought to myself, perhaps this sort of
provincial storytelling, away from things that might inspire
uncomfortable reactions is the future of an America
constantly under attack by the conservative right. Or
maybe I’m just a cynical liberal who can’t abide by a film
that so egregiously supports such normative thinking.
The Lesson:
If you want to make money, skew far from anything
challenging.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
Time for
your weekly notable news update! Below you'll find a
slew of sentences meant to provide a brief glimpse of what's
been going on over the past week in movieland. If
something leaves you desperate for more info then my advice
is to do a little extra research on one or all of the
following fantastic sites:
Latino Review,
Dark Horizons,
Ain't It Cool News,
CHUD and/or
JoBlo. Now, read on!
Movie News
Rundown
Hayden
Christensen says there is currently some talk about doing a
sequel to Jumper.
Rumor has it that Noomi Rapace (Girl With The Dragon
Tattoo) is being courted for roles in Sherlock Holmes
2 and Mission Impossible 4.
Are you ready for the story of Valerie Plame? I am now
that I've seen the first
trailer for Fair Game.
January Jones (Mad Men) has been cast as Emma Frost
in X-Men: First Class. The part originally went
to Alice Eve (She's Out Of My League), but apparently
she had issues with some script changes and asked to be
released from her contract.
Monsters has a new
trailer. I think the movie could be
a lot of fun.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy will star in Hysteria.
The film is said to be centered around the invention of the
vibrator.
There's a
trailer for Vanishing On 7th Street.
Looks very direct to DVD.
Idris Elba (The Losers) has signed on to star in
Cross, which is about a detective searching for a man
who may have killed his pregnant wife. Morgan Freeman
played the role of Alex Cross in Kiss The Girl and
Along Came A Spider.
Seth Rogen will lend his voice to Boo U. The
animated feature will follow a ghost who can't properly
scare any of the living, so he gets sent back to school.
Yikes. Little Fockers looks worse that I
imagined it would. International trailer is
here.
Guillermo Del Toro has said he's currently not interested in
doing a Hellboy 3 because of the ending he has
planned for it. Apparently, he's just not ready to see
it played out on screen.
Hugh Jackman has dropped out of Avon Man in favor of
X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2.
The first
trailer for Black Swan can only be
described as incredible.
Jim Carrey will star in Mr. Popper's Penguins and
Under Cover. The former is about a man who
inherits six penguins and the latter involves a man who
joins a cover band in order to raise enough money to gain
custody of his children.
Bruce Willis, Danny Trejo and Carey Mulligan will star in
Violet And Daisy. The exact plot is not currently
known.
Work has supposedly started on a movie that will tell the
story of how Google was created.
John Woo is hoping to add Liam Neeson to the cast of his
Flying Tigers movie. The story is said to follow
the American squadron who trained Chinese fighter pilots to
take on Japan in WWII.
Imogen Poots, Ophelia Lovibond, Lily Collins, Teresa Palmer
and Emma Roberts are said to be in contention to play Peter
Parker's love interest in the upcoming Spider-Man
reboot.
I'm Still Here, which is the documentary that
features Joaquin Phoenix as a hip hop artist, now has a
trailer. Doesn't really show a lot,
but it's well done.
Josh Hartnett and director Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number
Slevin, Wicker Park) are set to team up again
with a movie called Tomorrow. It's said to
follow a guy who travels back and forth in time trying to
prevent the murder of his family.
Just in case you don't feel indie enough today, check out
the new
trailer for Nice Guy Johnny.
I’m more than
happy that The Switch sold itself as a such a
stereotypical clichéd bit of Hollywood romantic comedy.
With its slapstick ads and seeming emphasis on Jennifer
Aniston’s coy expressions, The Switch just seemed
like another dud in a long line of by-the-numbers Hollywood
crap. Yet, the film surprises, managing to craft
characters that follow the similar story threads of a modern
rom-com, but engage in these plot points in refreshing
enjoyable ways.
Review - The Switch
The film
revolves around Jason Bateman’s Wally Mars, an uptight,
hypochondriac finance man who, drunk and in love with his
best friend Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), swaps his semen with
the semen of her chosen donor. Seven years later, when
Kassie moves back to New York with her new child Sebastian
(the amazing Thomas Robinson), Wally has, well, a lot to
contend with. On paper it looks like crap, you can see
what’s going to happen a mile away. I’m not giving away
anything to say that things end up well, the main characters
lovingly together, all the loose ends neatly tied together,
but because of the strength of the characters, it still
manages to thrive. Bateman’s Wally isn’t just your
typical Baxter-schlub, he’s a narcissistic, neurotic prick
that regardless of situation allows no one (sans Kassie and
his boss Leonard - Jeff Goldblum in stellar form) within his
emotional bubble. He’s abrasive in a way romantic
comedies don’t allow their male romantic leads to be.
It’s not cutesy-wutesy anger, Wally is an asshole, straight
on through and though we laugh at his jokes, there’s sadness
to the way he keeps folks at bay. When Sebastian comes
in to his life, Wally starts to change, but its a slow
laborious, uncomfortable process, as it should be.
Jennifer Aniston continues to work the magic of her bubbly
sitcom persona, but in this film it comes across as flighty,
even insincere, and it works, anchoring the character and
pushing her past stereotype.
In the end, it isn’t a drastically original film in plot or
production, but it just doesn’t matter. The
characters, and the actors who portray them are so good,
that The Switch becomes more than its parts. It
becomes an enjoyable romantic comedy, which is a rarity
these days.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
I never thought
I’d see a film that climaxed in a digitized kung-fu battle
between Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman. For that
matter I never thought I’d see a film that starred Michael
Cera as a kung-fu master who pulls swords from his chest and
battles a bevy of strapping lads and lasses for the love of
one Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Nor, did
I ever think that a filmic adaptation of Bryan O’Malley’s
hit-hipster-Americanized-homage to the world of video games
and anime would ever grace the screen, or that I’d leave the
theater of such an adaptation with a huge shit-eating grin
plastered across my face. Yet, that all said, I never
thought that such a film would fall in the lap of one of the
true geniuses working in film right now, Edgar Wright.
Wright, director of the Shaun Of The Dead and the
criminally underrated Hot Fuzz, is like a Gen-X
version of the Coen Brothers. A director who’s
knowledge of film and genre is near unparalleled and has no
issue warping the various genres to his own masterful
devices. Yet he isn’t draw on the conventions of say
Westerns and Film Noir, he’s drawing on cheap-o zombie
flicks, comic books, video games, and the 1980s. Thus
the idea of a video game reference-heavy kung fu flick set
in, well, Toronto amongst the hipster set seems like a film
that Wright would succeed quite handily at. And with
Scott Pilgrim VS The World he does, mightily.
Review - Scott Pilgrim Vs The
World
Scott Pilgrim
(Michael Cera) is a self-obsessed, jobless mooch who plays
in a band (Sex Bob-omb) and breaks the hearts of ladies.
When said Scott Pilgrim falls heavily in love with American
ex-pat Ramona Flowers, he’s forced to face off with her
seven, mystically powered, evil exes in to-the-death street
fights rife with extra lives, 100-hit combos and all the
fixings of your favorite light 90s video game. At the
heart though, Wright, as he always seems to do, finds a
strong center that relies on his strong writing (Scott
Pilgrim is one of the funniest films of the year) but
also the aspiring love between Scott Pilgrim and Ramona
Flowers. Their early-20s romance is the foundation
amongst the wildness of the rest of the film, and the two
young actors hold it together well. Any one who
thought Cera was a poor choice for Pilgrim will be proven
wrong, as he brings a sort of curt, conceit that adds depth
and, thankfully, difference to his normal form of
awkwardness.
Wright, using a slew of visual effects and video game
references, crafts one of the most original films of the
year and the decade. A film that pulls no stops in visual
madness or creativity, but somehow anchors itself with some
truly hilarious set-ups and a cast of young actors (Kieran
Culkin as Wallace Wells, inspired casting) who bring weight
to what could’ve been a sort of flighty mess of visual
wanking ala Speed Racer.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Hope that's OK.
Read on!
The
Breakdown - Eat Pray Love
The Impression:
Just seeing this book in every grocery store in America
raises my hackles. Thus, an adaptation of Elizabeth
Gilbert’s memoir feels like repeated kicks to the soft spots
between by my legs.
The Reality:
There is a line in this film, from Elizabeth (Julia
Roberts) to her quote dropping spiritual guru Richard
(Richard Jenkins) that goes something like, "Do you always
speak in bumper stickers?" Which after sitting through
this two and half hour film, seemed downright hypocritical
since Eat Pray Love is nothing more than a series of
bumper sticker-type takes on inspiration spat from the mouth
of a variety of cardboard characters glued to a snapshot
collection of beautiful places.
And that’s pretty much what the film has going for it - a
series of well shot (if you’re in to the glossier pages of
National Geographic) locations and a smattering of deft
editing (the opening scenes in India mainly) and a very
solid performance by Javier Bardem as Felipe, Elizabeth’s
love interest in Bali.
Aside from that it's a boring, slow, balloon of a film
lobbed in to its target audience: the middle-aged grocery
store goers who purchased Gilbert’s original book in the
first place. I know this because I complained about
the film while working and was told very bluntly that
regardless of my opinion, the gaggle of middle aged women
would "still check it out," as they "loved the book."
I work for tips, so my retching was stifled.
The Lesson:
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, pay 12.50 for a film just
because you’re in the mood for a film and it’s the only
thing playing at the theater closest to your location.
There’s a fine chance you might stumble across a winner, but
the sheer thought of crash-landing in to another Eat Pray
Love puts that desperate hope to shame.
Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The
Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and
the KEXP blog. He also has his own
Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.
If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his
writings here at Side One: Track One then please do
so
here.
- Noah Sanders
- -
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
