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!
Simon Pegg will
star in Hector And The Search For Happiness. I
will let you guess what the movie is about.
Mark Wahlberg may star in The Disciple Program.
The film is said to follow a man trying to solve the mystery
of his wife's death.
Lionsgate/Summit are looking at possibly bringing in Ryan
Reynolds to star in a Highlander reboot.
Duncan Jones (Moon) is reportedly set to direct a biopic on James
Bond creator Ian Fleming.
Daniel Radcliffe is said to be interested in joining the
cast of Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio.
Hampton Fancher, who wrote the original Blade Runner,
has been hired to pen the sequel for Ridley Scott.
Alex Proyas will direct Gods Of Egypt for Summit.
No word yet on an exact plot.
Liam Neeson will star in A Walk Amongst The Tombstones.
The film will follow Neeson around as he beats up a slew of
bad guys.
James Badge Dale (24) has landed a role in Iron
Man 3. The part is rumored to be that of the
character Eric Savin, who is also known as Coldblood.
John Woo is set to direct Day Of The Beast, which is
a remake of Youth Of The Beast. The original
dealt with the dealings of the Yakuza.
Scott Z. Burns (Contagion) has been hired to write
the sequel to Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.
Aaron Sorkin will adapt Steve Jobs for Sony.
Jay Roach is set to direct El Presidente. The
movie is said to be about a secret service agent that has to
protect a sleazy former president. Tom Cruise and
Robert Downey Jr. are said to be the frontrunners to star.
Channing Tatum will star in Roland Emmerich's White House
Down.
Robin Williams, Mila Kunis, and Peter Dinklage will star in
The Angriest Man In Brooklyn. It will reportedly
center around a doctor trying to find a patient that he
mistakenly told only had 90 minutes to live.
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 - Battleship
The Impression:
Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) takes
Hasbro's Battleship (yes, the game) and adapts it for
the big screen.
The Reality:
Nice try, Government! I'm on to your games. You
tried to cover up the fact that this movie was made with the
sole purpose of showing directionless young men that they
could become Earth-saving heroes by joining the service, but
all the fancy explosions and Rihanna's stiff acting just
couldn't conceal your mission. Also, there's the fact
that you may have made one of the funniest films of
all-time, and that totally works against you. I mean,
it's as though even you weren't able to take your
big-budgeted recruitment campaign seriously.
The Lesson:
Military propaganda films can be fun! Now go enlist!
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!
Gavin O'Connor
will direct Yakuza. The movie will supposedly
follow an American intelligence officer who gets involved
with ... the Yakuza.
Guillermo Del Toro will co-direct a stop motion version of
Pinocchio with Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox).
Kurt Russell and Sacha Baron Cohen have dropped out of
Tarantino's Django Unchained.
Kyle Chandler (Super 8) has signed on to appear in
Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street.
David Wain will direct Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler in the
romantic comedy They Came Together.
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost will reportedly
start shooting The World's End later this year.
Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down) may direct a Matthew
Vaughn-produced Kick Ass 2. The main people
from the first film's cast are expected to return.
Cameron Diaz has landed a role in Ridley Scott's The
Counselor.
Jessica Chastain will not be taking a role in Iron Man 3.
The part may instead go to Rebecca Hall (The Town).
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Byung-hun Lee (I Saw The Devil)
have landed roles in RED 2.
Arnold Swarzenegger will star in Ten, which is about
a DEA group that steals a bunch of money from a safe house.
Alec Baldwin has taken parts in the next Woody Allen film
and a comedy titled Man That Rocks The Cradle, which
will star Russell Brand.
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 - Dark Shadows
The Impression:
Tim Burton indulges in a truly bizarre dream project by
adapting a cult-favorite television show from the 1980s ...
a friend of mine told me, "It’s so terribly made, it’s
pretty awesome." This is going to be a giant flop.
The Reality:
For two-thirds of Dark Shadows, there’s hope that Tim
Burton escaped from the dark cell his captors have been
holding him in, fought off the eerily realistic clone that’s
been sullying his name for the last ten or so years, and
actually managed to create a film that seemed more in line
with his classics (Beetlejuice, Edward
Scissorhands, Ed Wood) than his recent
abominations. Johnny Depp plays Barnabus Collins, a 17th
century businessman who’s cursed by a spurned lover (Eva
Green) to be a vampire, buried alive and woken again in the
1970s to try to fix all that has wronged his once noble
family. For a daunting length Burton and Depp manage to keep
attention solely based on the, admittedly, enjoyable
character interactions. Barnabus Collins is the newest in a
long line of very similar Johnny Depp characters, but
somehow this stuffy aristocrat seems only mostly played out
(almost entirely in the moments when Burton and company flog
the age-old fish-out-of-water "the 70s were trippy" humor -
which they do, a lot) and Depp is able to wring a few truly
solid scenes, especially, in the early bits of the film,
with Helena Bonham Carter's Dr. Hoffman. And though
enjoyable, somewhere at the two-thirds mark it suddenly
dawned on me that nothing had happened in the film, that
what I was watching was a loosely stitched together
collection of scenes that yes, showcased the kooky world of
the Collins family, but didn’t actually aim to progress any
sort of storyline. At first it seems, perhaps Burton is
aping the meandering ways of bad television in some sort of
meta play on the original series, but when the film comes
shuddering to a halt with a prolonged and confusing action
scene, the truth comes to the surface - Burton has as little
idea what to do with the film as anyone watching it. Though
it starts promising, even playing up an oddball crudeness I
thought Burton had let die, it ends with bafflement,
prompting this viewer to look back and see nothing worth
recommending.
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!
Jonah Hill has
reportedly joined the cast of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf
Of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio is already set
to star.
Sharlto Copley (District 9) has landed roles in
Oldboy, Maleficent, and Open Grave.
Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson may star in David Michod's
Rover. It's said to follow a guy who chases a
group of thieves across the Outback after they steal his
car.
Brad Bird has been hired by Disney to direct 1952.
No word yet on the plot, but it was written by Damon
Lindelof and Jeff Jensen.
Glee producer Robert Aguirre-Sacasa and Joseph
Gordon-Levitt are said to be interested in putting together
a Little Shop Of Horrors remake.
Luke Evans, David Tennant, and Rihanna are all said to be in
talks to join Fast Six. Michelle Rodriguez
recently made her return to the series official.
Jody Hill (Eastbound And Down) has been hired to pen
a Dukes Of Hazzard movie.
Gary Ross (The Hunger Games) is reportedly in talks
to direct Houdini for Summit. The film will
follow the magician's "secret life" as a spy.
Marvel may be looking at a solo Hulk movie for 2015.
Gareth Evans (The Raid) is set to direct Breaking
The Bank. The movie will be based on UFC fighter
Lee Murray, who put together one of the largest cash heists
in history.
John Hawkes will star in Too Late, which is about a
private investigator that's in love with the woman he's been
hired to find.
Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) has been hired to do a
rewrite of the Catching Fire script.
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 - The Avengers
The Impression:
Marvel’s been shakily building the path towards this
unbelievably enormous film since Tony Stark swaggered on to
the screen in Iron Man four years ago. They’ve
baubled a few of the films along the way (Iron Man 2
and Thor, ahem) but with Joss Whedon behind the
camera a film starring each and all of the main ass-kickers
from their respective films suddenly sounds downright
amazing.
The Reality:
For years and years and years (possibly to this day) every
comic book character’s book would get an Annual - a
super-sized behemoth rife with guest stars, and if well
executed, big plot advances and character developments. Joss
Whedon has created a near perfect end-of-the-year Annual. He
clearly understands comic books, the big book especially,
and his Avengers is a masterstroke in bringing
together a group of disparate, super-powered personalities
and letting them wreak havoc on each other and the world.
Whedon understands that the big Annual, the collaboration
book, isn’t about dense plot mechanisms, no no, it is about
bringing together Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America
(Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), The Hulk (Mark
Ruffalo), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett
Johansson) and giving enough small moments amongst the
inevitable chaos. It’s about a simple three-act structure
where Act I features the gathering of the group, Act II the
lashing out of the collected super-heroes (on each other),
and Act III in which the group comes together to fight off a
horde of super beasts. Strangely enough in the smaller
moments in the film, a fight scene between Black Widow and
some Russians in particular, Whedon’s small screen
experience rears its ugly head and we’re suddenly watching
Buffy the Super Spy, but the final hour of the movie, one of
the great "New York gets destroyed" moments in recent film
history, proves Whedon more than an able big budget
director. His final hour is densely peppered with memorable
one-liners and scenarios that push forward character
development (as slight as it might be) while forcing "oohs"
and "aahs" from the collected audience. The favorite
characters continued to be my favorite characters (Iron Man
and Captain America in particular) but who truly stands out
is The Hulk, a character so far mishandled. Here, The Hulk
is a living weapon, so dangerous that even a group of
superheroes fear his Dr. Jekyll like turning. Whedon smartly
holds off The Hulk’s transformation until almost 2/3rds of
the film, building the suspense and the expectation. When
Bruce Banner suddenly turns from mild-mannered to hulking,
the film truly takes off, leaving behind the weighty baggage
of Marvel’s proposed multi-film narrative, and turning in to
the most enjoyable romp in years.
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 - Headhunters
The Impression:
Morton Tyldum, from my scant research, is a well respected,
even game-changing director in Norway. Here he adapts a book
by Jo Nesbo, a beloved crime writer, and the focus of a
possible adaptation by Martin Scorsese. Could be
interesting.
The Reality:
Headhunters has two weak points: the beginning and
the end. If one was to see only the first five minutes and
the last five minutes of this decidedly dark, intelligent,
thriller, they would think that Jo Nesbo was Elmore Leonard
and that the film could take place on the sandy beaches of
Miami. Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is a renowned corporate
headhunter financially over his head, who provides for the
lavish lifestyle he’s learned to love by stealing art prints
from potential clients. Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)
is a reformed mercenary turned millionaire who saunters in
to Brown’s life with an original Reuben painting and yen for
his wife and turns everything, violently upside down. The
story of Roger Brown isn’t the story of flashy crime and
beautiful women (though both pop up in the film) but instead
a smaller story about a self-conscious man who lands himself
in a situation that quickly spirals out of control. Tyldum
has managed to take the crime thriller and imbue it with
some emotional charge, but in the opening and closing
moments the film suffers tonally. For the majority of its
running time the film is a violent spiral of darkness,
enjoyably so, but to get to this one must look past the
jaunty "caper" music of the first two minutes and turn the
film off when it starts again. What lies between is a strong
bit of genre-filmmaking.
The Lesson:
Somehow I blame the studios for the four minutes of this
film I didn’t love.
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 - The Avengers
The Impression:
After five pretty good setup movies, Marvel finally
assembles The Avengers. Expectations can only
be described as astronomically high.
The Reality:
If I had to give you a permanent answer right now, I'd be
willing to call The Avengers a great flick. I
can't say how well it's actually going to hold up
over repeat viewings (the first act is slow, and there are a
sizeable variety of plot holes that have the potential to
agitate), but I do know that it plays out like something
that was made by a bunch of people trying really hard to
make the right decisions. This results in a movie that
constantly feels inspired, like a labor of love, and when I
wasn't rooting for the characters on the screen, I was
pulling for Joss Whedon and his crew to roll out another
scene worth cheering out loud for. If you can't find
something/anything to champion in The Avengers, then
you should stop going to the theater.
PS - There's no reason to see this in 3D. It doesn't
look bad or anything, but you get nothing in exchange for
the extra cash you have to pay to get in.
The Lesson:
Where there's a will, there's a way.
-
-
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.
