Criterion announced their April titles this afternoon, with DVD and Blu-ray for Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie and Ang Lee's director's cut of Ride with the Devil. Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind, with Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton, will also be available on DVD only. In addition to the mainline releases, the fifth volume of their Essential Art House Collection will be released, with the Region 1 debut of Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò. The other five titles are Fellini's 8½, David Lean's Brief Encounter, Ozu's Floating Weeds, Truffaut's Jules et Jim and Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde.
Showing posts with label Ang Lee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ang Lee. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2010
Assayas, Godard, Lumet and Lee on Criterion's April Schedule
Criterion announced their April titles this afternoon, with DVD and Blu-ray for Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie and Ang Lee's director's cut of Ride with the Devil. Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind, with Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton, will also be available on DVD only. In addition to the mainline releases, the fifth volume of their Essential Art House Collection will be released, with the Region 1 debut of Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò. The other five titles are Fellini's 8½, David Lean's Brief Encounter, Ozu's Floating Weeds, Truffaut's Jules et Jim and Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Brief DVD Update
Palisades Tartan announced a DVD and Blu-ray release on 8 December of Olivier Marchal's 36 [36 Quai des Orfèvres], a crime thriller starring Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu, André Dussollier, Valeria Golino, Roschdy Zem, Francis Renaud, Daniel Duval and Anne Consigny. 36 is currently slated for an American remake directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, the 2 Antonio Banderas Zorro films) from Paramount. Palisades Tartan also announced Blu-ray releases for Kim Jin-Won's The Butcher and Paul Spurrier's P for 15 December. I didn't find any other notable Blu-ray releases for this update. It does seem to be a shame that Focus will release Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock on Blu-ray and not Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control or Park Chan-wook's Thirst.
- 36 [36 Quai des Orfèvres], 2004, d. Olivier Marchal, Palisades Tartan, also on Blu-ray, 8 December- Run! Bitch Run!, 2009, d. Joseph Guzman, Vicious Circle/Breaking Glass Pictures, 8 December
- Taking Woodstock, d. Ang Lee, Focus Features, also on Blu-ray, 15 December
- It Might Get Loud, 2008, d. Davis Guggenheim, Sony, also on Blu-ray, 22 December
- Half-Life, 2008, d. Jennifer Phang, Wolfe Video, 29 December
- Laila's Birthday, 2008, d. Rashid Masharawi, Kino, 5 January
- No Impact Man: The Documentary, 2009, d. Laura Gabbert, Justin Schein, Oscilloscope, 5 January
- The Burning Plain, 2008, d. Guillermo Arriaga, Magnolia, also on Blu-ray, 12 January
- Nurse Jackie, Season 1, 2009, Lionsgate, also on Blu-ray, 23 February
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Samuel Maoz's Lebanon Takes the Golden Lion
Samuel Maoz's Lebanon, which is set during the First Lebanon War in 1982, took home the Golden Lion in Venice today, wrapping up the annual festivities. Ang Lee, who's won two Golden Lions himself in the past five years (for Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution) was the head of this year's jury, which also included Sandrine Bonnaire, Sergei Bodrov, Liliana Cavani, Joe Dante, Anurag Kashyap and Luciano Ligabue. The awards are all listed below.
Golden Lion: Lebanon - d. Samuel MaozSilver Lion, for Best Director: Shirin Neshat - Women Without Men
Special Jury Prize: Soul Kitchen - d. Fatih Akin
Coppa Volpi for Best Actor: Colin Firth - A Single Man
Coppa Volpi for Best Actress: Xenia Rappoport - La doppia ora
Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor: Jasmine Trinca - Il grande sogno
Osella for Best Technical Contribution: Sylvie Olivé, production designer - Mr. Nobody
Osella for Best Screenplay: Todd Solondz - Life During Wartime
Friday, June 19, 2009
In The Summer, In The Cinema
My most recent poll was put up probably too late to draw much attention, but for once that screw-up was only partially my fault. As I mentioned before, this is a particularly weak summer line-up, and we can perhaps attribute that to the after-effects of the writers' strike, as well as the stellar quality of 2008's summer season, which set the bar so high. How could this year compare to a line-up that featured such entertaining films as The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Kung Fu Panda? Still, I should have at least made more of an effort, even if only for old time's sake. Here are the results:
What's weirdest about Star Trek's overwhelming success is that people were still voting for it weeks after it had come out. From what I can tell people were seeing it more than once, so perhaps this was a retroactive vote of happiness after people had already seen it. Whatever the reason, it's great to see so much support for something that was treated as a hubris-tainted disaster before even a frame of it had been shown. I had expected something approximating greatness for a while, hoping that J.J. Abrams would go for broke after playing safe with the frustrating Mission Impossible 3, but sadly my anticipation worked against me.
When I finally saw it I was a little disappointed, even though I liked it a lot. The hectic pace was necessary to get all of the characters into place while setting up the Trek universe for N00Bs and telling a story, but it might have been a touch too crazed even for me. It didn't help that seeing it in IMAX made all of those whip-pans and lens flares far more exhausting than they would be on a regular screen, as well as making Zachary Quinto's eyebrows and the... how can I put this tactfully... heavily-detailed face of Chris Pine hella-distracting. I have been trying and failing to see it again on a normal sized screen to give it another shot at blowing my mind. Even without that reassessment, so far it's the movie to beat this summer. Why? Because Abrams destroyed Vulcan. That takes balls of brass. Or dilithium.
After that, the only movie generating more than baseline excitement is Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. All the more surprising after the critical drubbing it received at Cannes. Not that that matters. Tarantino is one of those rare artists that have created a work of pop culture art of such great impact that they get a free pass for life. Just as I'll follow Eno or Dylan or Scorsese through thick or thin, Tarantino movies will always feel like an event, even when the result is a disappointment (I'm thinking Kill Bill Part Two). It worries me that a die-hard Tarantino fan like Bradshaw gave it a memorable slating, but he seems uncomfortable around schlocky b-movie stuff.
Yes, he gave Star Trek a big five-star review, but then claimed throughout the review that Nero and his grumpy cohorts were Klingon. It suggests he never really pays attention to the "baser" end of the cultural spectrum. Which is fine, of course. Thank God for him giving props to Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Andrei Zvyagintsev despite the whining of readers offended that he would dare like something "arty". Nevertheless, if the movie is going to feature more than one explosion or decapitation, or is actually colossally dreadful, stupid, and predictable on almost every level, best to take his review with a pinch of salt/gunpowder.
Speaking of things that explode, Disguisatrons Two: There Will Be Oil got my vote. Yes the first one had as many flaws as it had great moments. Yes it could be confusing. Yes it blah blah ah fuck it. I loved the first one just because it set out to be a robot mayhem movie with broad jokes and explosions and unearned drama, and it did that with zero apology. I wasn't a huge Transformers fan so I didn't weep because Mammothtron was the wrong shade of teal. I think Michael Bay's decision to make every action scene hectic and every conversation a series of unconnected smart-ass jokes is a terrible kind of genius because you can tune out every few seconds and never lose track of what's going on, because there's nothing coherent to lose track of, and nothing has any dramatic weight. It's spectacle for the sake of spectacle. Criticising Bay for not being Ingmar Bergman is as futile as criticising cheese for not being gaseous. (ETA: I wrote that sentence yesterday, and what do you know, Bradshaw hated it, using a customarily brilliant metaphor about sex to illustrate the point. However, when criticising the awful Megan Fox, he invoked the memory of Liv Ullmann! Spooky.)
Bear in mind, he's probably the only action filmmaker I'm willing to give this latitude to (see Stephen Sommers comments below), simply because he does this stuff bigger and better than anyone else. Without the outrageous spectacle, that dramatic emptiness is really apparent. As I feel obliged to say every time I get excited about a Bay movie, I'm not crazy. I'm fully aware it could suck, but I won't have to wait long to find out. I'll be seeing it on Saturday on IMAX, Crom willing, and if that format made Star Trek hard to watch, it will almost certainly render hardcore Bay nigh-unwatchable. But, you know, who cares? BOOM!
I'd be very very surprised if it gave us anywhere near the pleasure Drag Me To Hell did. Sam Raimi's gloriously silly granny-spitfest entertained parts of my brain I'd forgotten I had, i.e. all of the neurons that were born during my first viewing of Evil Dead II. Much as I have grown to dislike seeing movies with large audiences, I would have liked to have seen this with more people, even if only to drown out the noise of this one old guy who chattered away when we went to see it (my intense glare of disgust did not phase him, oddly). The few dozen people who were in there hooted and shrieked and laughed throughout, and it was great.
I can't remember the last time I saw a film work so well simply because it is so proudly base and silly, but then that's probably because Sam Raimi has not been making those films for a while. Seeing his return to his roots has been one of the highlights of the year, and not enough people have experienced it. For shame, humanity! If you've not yet seen it, you have to go see it right now, even if only for the fight scene in the car about twenty minutes in. I can't remember a more brazen attempt to get a response from a crowd, nor can I remember a scene that has been as successful in generating one.
Canyon's vote went to Pixar's Up, the long-awaited follow-up to Monsters Inc. from Pete Docter. This is a particularly hard movie to write about as the majority of Americans we know have already seen it, and we remain Ed-Asner-less. It's not out in England until October, meaning we're going to have the same silliness we had with Ratatouille, where we saw the movie on the big screen three weeks before the release of the region 1 DVD. Wall*E came out quickly, but we were not crazy about that. Up's trailers have been so wonderful, and unexpected, and glowing, that we're more excited about this than any other Pixar movie to date. Now I know how the Japanese feel (movies get released months late over there, for reasons I do not understand).
Then there's some weirdness. A vote for The Time-Traveller's Wife? Was this a Journeyman fan? An Eric Bana fan? Just for having Ron Livingston in the cast, I'll be giving that sucker a miss. Same goes for Harry Potter and the Wig of Translucence or whatever it's called. I'm afraid I'm not a fan, though that's partially because I stopped reading the books before they, apparently, got a lot more complex. While Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy captured my imagination, J.K. Rowling's books almost completely passed me by. I enjoyed Prisoner of Azkaban (the book), but never got any further.
As for the films, Chris Columbus' dreadful work on the first one put me off for good, even though Alfonso Cuaron eventually turned up to save the day. Of course, that fifteen-hour narcolepsy-inducing disaster is the one Potter movie that's in constant rotation on Sky Movies, so there's no getting away from it. I will watch them all eventually, even though the second one is full of icky spiders BAD BAD MOVIE!!! I like that they're becoming darker as they progress (just like the books), but from the impressive trailers for the latest film, if the next two are darker, they'll have to be directed by Michael Haneke. (Idea!)
One final vote, for Neill Blomkamp's District 9. Alien Nation without a rubber-headed Mandy Patinkin drinking sour milk? I can't wait either.
After that, the majority of the films on the list got no votes. Fair enough. I struggled to come up with a list, and most of these films wouldn't interest me either. I had high hopes for Terminator Salvation, though most fans had written it off just because McG was involved. For a good stretch of the film he did a good job, with two stand-out setpieces in the first hour, and the good sense to hire Bryce Dallas Howard, Christian Bale, relative newcomer and scene-stealer Sam Worthington (Marcus Wright rocked), and last but certainly not least, internet search engine sensation Moon Bloodgood, as Tough But Beautiful Post-Apocalypse Lady In Sexy Tight Trews.
Sadly, it all fell apart in the final twenty minutes, with action scenes dragging on for too long, before a horribly compromised final reel fell flat. Then there was the distracting and relentless tide of references to the first two movies. I had had enough by the time Christian Bale pulled out the CD player and cranked out You Could Be Mine, an act that suggested he had occupied himself during the nuclear winter by scavenging in burned-out record stores when not shouting into his walkie-talkie. Sadly, there was more to come, with numerous shots lifted wholesale from James Cameron's originals. By the time "Arnie" showed up, I half expected Rick Rossovich to rush in from stage left to hit him in the head with a lamp.
Still, at least I had enjoyed it for a while, and it exceeded my expectations by some distance. The opposite could be said for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which could well be the worst Marvel adaptation to date. It's definitely in the bottom three. There are no words to express how awful the goddamn thing is, and even my fanboyish pleasure in watching Hugh Jackman do his thing was dented, probably because I know he got more involved in the making of it, which means the stink of failure is upon him. Sadly, that stink oozes off the screen like some kind of miasmic deathcloud, and settles on us as well. And when I say stink, I'm talking a mouthful of skunk-ass-juice stink right in the mouth. That stinky. That FAIL-y.
Even weeks later, after numerous failed attempts to remove the stink with lemon juice, Viakal, and Febreeze, I was still flashing back to some of the dreadfulness. The hilarious sped-up shot of Wolvie hacking away at a fire escape; Ryan Reynolds wasted as Deadpool; that horrible final fight in front of a green screen; the pointless last act retcon of one major death just to have that death happen all over again; Cyclops' eyes setting fire to things when any fule kno that his eyebeams are pure force, not heat; Wolverine meeting Ma and Pa Kent and getting them killed within a few minutes of showing up; "Why is the moon so lonely?", which has to be the funniest line of dialogue of 2009; the galactic-level stupidity of the whole sorry enterprise. Right now, not even an Uwe Boll movie written by Paul Haggis and starring Cameron Diaz and Paul Walker could topple it from the Worst Movie of 2009 position.
I mean, Angels and Demons was not as bad as Wolverine. How is this possible? Middle-aged man runs around Rome shouting factoids about Catholicism vs. adamantium berserker rage. It should have been a slamdunk. And yet the former was more entertaining, even though the identity of the bad guy was obvious as soon as they opened their mouth. I spent the whole film being very obnoxious to Canyon, acting like a cross between Rex Reed and Sherlock Holmes, and I was even more annoying when my suspicion was vindicated. Still, my mom liked it, so it all worked out well.
What else is there? I have high hopes for Moon, as my mancrush Hott Sam Rockwell is pretty much the only person in it, which is how I feel about a lot of movies he's been in. God knows when it comes out here. Public Enemies will thrill me no matter what: my love of Michael Mann is so strong that I liked Miami Vice despite its many many flaws, so the only thing this could do to disappoint me is to be less entertaining than John Milius' muscular feature debut, Dillinger. Bruno could be fun. Who doesn't love jokes involving dildos and rednecks?
Other than Woody Allen, who seems to have hired Larry David to replicate his own shtick but without the bite. No votes for Whatever Works, which tells me that this blog is not read by Larry King. He recently tweeted 'Just saw Woody Allen's new movie Whatver [sic] Works" It's his greatest movie, even better than "Annie Hall" I can't say good enough about it!' Considering the endearingly random quality of his tweets, which are not that far removed from the comments in this prescient Onion article, I'm not sure this is an opinion to be trusted. After the hysterical car-crash that was Cassandra's Dream, I just don't see how Allen can even recapture the dizzy heights of Alice and Another Woman, let alone Husbands and Wives or Manhattan.
I'm also uninterested in (500) Days of Summer and Taking Woodstock, partially because they seem super-quirky, but mostly because I can't help but think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Demetri Martin accidentally switched movies. Surely JGL should be working with Ang Lee by now? If we do see (500) Days, it'll be in the hope that a) Zooey sings, and b) we find out if that fucking irksome (500) is justified by the plot.
For a change, I'm even less interested in seeing the last two action movies on the list, which is odd considering my love of pyrotechnics. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is by Stephen Sommers and will therefore have the same tedious talkFIGHTtalkFIGHT structure, but without the exuberance of Bay, or his gift for composition. (I will ignore all flaming on this point, so don't bother.) Plus, it will not be anywhere near as good as the Warren Ellis-scripted cartoon on Adult Swim.
Speaking of futile attempts to improve on greatness, The Taking of Pelham 123 shouldn't even exist. Last week we rewatched the original Joseph Sargent thriller, and it's enormous fun. Plus, it's already been remade as a TV movie, and indirectly by Spike Lee with Inside Man (obviously it's not the same plot, but it has the same feel, and has great fun dramatising New York's infamous air of exasperated cynicism and multicultural tension).
Though I'm not surprised no one wants to see The Final Destination (now in eye-shattering 3D!), why does no one want to see Funny People? Okay, so it sounds like incredibly mawkish navel-gazing sub-James-L.-Brooksian tripe, but The RZA is in it! Bobby Digital, people! Have you seen Derailed? He plays a postroom guy who hangs out with executive Clive Owen, and it's the most out-of-place performance I've ever seen. Each time they interacted, my brain tried to leap out of my head. There's that bloke from Chancer, walking through the office, and OMG HE'S CHATTING WITH THE RZA! Everything's better with a bit of RZA in it.
So, anyway. Go see lots of movies, and in a couple of months, if I remember, I'll put up my usual end-of-summer polls to determine which movies sank, which swam, and which soared like celluloid eagles.
- JJ Abrams Risks Death by Unwashed Nerd Rage-On - 8 (47%)
- Quentin Tarantino and the Broken Spellcheck - 3 (17%)
- Transmogrifiers 2: Return of the Awesome - 1 (5%)
- I’d Rather Be Dragged To Hell Than Watch Spider-Man 3 Again - 1 (5%)
- Pixar’s Whassup, Bitches? - 1 (5%)
- The Time-Travelling Bana - 1 (5%)
- Harry Potter and the Thing in the Place with the Whatsit - 1 (5%)
- District 9 (AKA Neill Blomkamp Rocks Your Face Off) - 1 (5%)
- Terminator Franchise: Salvage Operation - 0 (0%)
- The Curious Case of Wolverine Wutton - 0 (0%)
- Angels, Demons, and Probably Ewan McGregor’s Schlong - 0 (0%)
- Another Worthless Woody Allen Movie - 0 (0%)
- Hott Sam Rockwell’s Lunar Oscar Bid - 0 (0%)
- Depp and Bale in: Untouchablesque - 0 (0%)
- Sacha Baron Cohen and the Inevitable Lawsuits - 0 (0%)
- (500) Days of Self-Conscious Indie Movie Quirk - 0 (0%)
- Demetri Martin + Ang Lee + Hippies = WTF? - 0 (0%)
- G.I. Joe: The Struggle to Give a Shit - 0 (0%)
- The Unnecessary Remaking of Pelham 123 - 0 (0%)
- Final Destination: Rube Goldberg’s Revenge - 0 (0%)
- Judd Apatow’s Self-Loathing People (feat. The RZA!) - 0 (0%)
What's weirdest about Star Trek's overwhelming success is that people were still voting for it weeks after it had come out. From what I can tell people were seeing it more than once, so perhaps this was a retroactive vote of happiness after people had already seen it. Whatever the reason, it's great to see so much support for something that was treated as a hubris-tainted disaster before even a frame of it had been shown. I had expected something approximating greatness for a while, hoping that J.J. Abrams would go for broke after playing safe with the frustrating Mission Impossible 3, but sadly my anticipation worked against me.
When I finally saw it I was a little disappointed, even though I liked it a lot. The hectic pace was necessary to get all of the characters into place while setting up the Trek universe for N00Bs and telling a story, but it might have been a touch too crazed even for me. It didn't help that seeing it in IMAX made all of those whip-pans and lens flares far more exhausting than they would be on a regular screen, as well as making Zachary Quinto's eyebrows and the... how can I put this tactfully... heavily-detailed face of Chris Pine hella-distracting. I have been trying and failing to see it again on a normal sized screen to give it another shot at blowing my mind. Even without that reassessment, so far it's the movie to beat this summer. Why? Because Abrams destroyed Vulcan. That takes balls of brass. Or dilithium.
After that, the only movie generating more than baseline excitement is Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. All the more surprising after the critical drubbing it received at Cannes. Not that that matters. Tarantino is one of those rare artists that have created a work of pop culture art of such great impact that they get a free pass for life. Just as I'll follow Eno or Dylan or Scorsese through thick or thin, Tarantino movies will always feel like an event, even when the result is a disappointment (I'm thinking Kill Bill Part Two). It worries me that a die-hard Tarantino fan like Bradshaw gave it a memorable slating, but he seems uncomfortable around schlocky b-movie stuff.
Yes, he gave Star Trek a big five-star review, but then claimed throughout the review that Nero and his grumpy cohorts were Klingon. It suggests he never really pays attention to the "baser" end of the cultural spectrum. Which is fine, of course. Thank God for him giving props to Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Andrei Zvyagintsev despite the whining of readers offended that he would dare like something "arty". Nevertheless, if the movie is going to feature more than one explosion or decapitation, or is actually colossally dreadful, stupid, and predictable on almost every level, best to take his review with a pinch of salt/gunpowder.
Speaking of things that explode, Disguisatrons Two: There Will Be Oil got my vote. Yes the first one had as many flaws as it had great moments. Yes it could be confusing. Yes it blah blah ah fuck it. I loved the first one just because it set out to be a robot mayhem movie with broad jokes and explosions and unearned drama, and it did that with zero apology. I wasn't a huge Transformers fan so I didn't weep because Mammothtron was the wrong shade of teal. I think Michael Bay's decision to make every action scene hectic and every conversation a series of unconnected smart-ass jokes is a terrible kind of genius because you can tune out every few seconds and never lose track of what's going on, because there's nothing coherent to lose track of, and nothing has any dramatic weight. It's spectacle for the sake of spectacle. Criticising Bay for not being Ingmar Bergman is as futile as criticising cheese for not being gaseous. (ETA: I wrote that sentence yesterday, and what do you know, Bradshaw hated it, using a customarily brilliant metaphor about sex to illustrate the point. However, when criticising the awful Megan Fox, he invoked the memory of Liv Ullmann! Spooky.)
Bear in mind, he's probably the only action filmmaker I'm willing to give this latitude to (see Stephen Sommers comments below), simply because he does this stuff bigger and better than anyone else. Without the outrageous spectacle, that dramatic emptiness is really apparent. As I feel obliged to say every time I get excited about a Bay movie, I'm not crazy. I'm fully aware it could suck, but I won't have to wait long to find out. I'll be seeing it on Saturday on IMAX, Crom willing, and if that format made Star Trek hard to watch, it will almost certainly render hardcore Bay nigh-unwatchable. But, you know, who cares? BOOM!
I'd be very very surprised if it gave us anywhere near the pleasure Drag Me To Hell did. Sam Raimi's gloriously silly granny-spitfest entertained parts of my brain I'd forgotten I had, i.e. all of the neurons that were born during my first viewing of Evil Dead II. Much as I have grown to dislike seeing movies with large audiences, I would have liked to have seen this with more people, even if only to drown out the noise of this one old guy who chattered away when we went to see it (my intense glare of disgust did not phase him, oddly). The few dozen people who were in there hooted and shrieked and laughed throughout, and it was great.
I can't remember the last time I saw a film work so well simply because it is so proudly base and silly, but then that's probably because Sam Raimi has not been making those films for a while. Seeing his return to his roots has been one of the highlights of the year, and not enough people have experienced it. For shame, humanity! If you've not yet seen it, you have to go see it right now, even if only for the fight scene in the car about twenty minutes in. I can't remember a more brazen attempt to get a response from a crowd, nor can I remember a scene that has been as successful in generating one.
Canyon's vote went to Pixar's Up, the long-awaited follow-up to Monsters Inc. from Pete Docter. This is a particularly hard movie to write about as the majority of Americans we know have already seen it, and we remain Ed-Asner-less. It's not out in England until October, meaning we're going to have the same silliness we had with Ratatouille, where we saw the movie on the big screen three weeks before the release of the region 1 DVD. Wall*E came out quickly, but we were not crazy about that. Up's trailers have been so wonderful, and unexpected, and glowing, that we're more excited about this than any other Pixar movie to date. Now I know how the Japanese feel (movies get released months late over there, for reasons I do not understand).
Then there's some weirdness. A vote for The Time-Traveller's Wife? Was this a Journeyman fan? An Eric Bana fan? Just for having Ron Livingston in the cast, I'll be giving that sucker a miss. Same goes for Harry Potter and the Wig of Translucence or whatever it's called. I'm afraid I'm not a fan, though that's partially because I stopped reading the books before they, apparently, got a lot more complex. While Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy captured my imagination, J.K. Rowling's books almost completely passed me by. I enjoyed Prisoner of Azkaban (the book), but never got any further.
As for the films, Chris Columbus' dreadful work on the first one put me off for good, even though Alfonso Cuaron eventually turned up to save the day. Of course, that fifteen-hour narcolepsy-inducing disaster is the one Potter movie that's in constant rotation on Sky Movies, so there's no getting away from it. I will watch them all eventually, even though the second one is full of icky spiders BAD BAD MOVIE!!! I like that they're becoming darker as they progress (just like the books), but from the impressive trailers for the latest film, if the next two are darker, they'll have to be directed by Michael Haneke. (Idea!)
One final vote, for Neill Blomkamp's District 9. Alien Nation without a rubber-headed Mandy Patinkin drinking sour milk? I can't wait either.
After that, the majority of the films on the list got no votes. Fair enough. I struggled to come up with a list, and most of these films wouldn't interest me either. I had high hopes for Terminator Salvation, though most fans had written it off just because McG was involved. For a good stretch of the film he did a good job, with two stand-out setpieces in the first hour, and the good sense to hire Bryce Dallas Howard, Christian Bale, relative newcomer and scene-stealer Sam Worthington (Marcus Wright rocked), and last but certainly not least, internet search engine sensation Moon Bloodgood, as Tough But Beautiful Post-Apocalypse Lady In Sexy Tight Trews.
Sadly, it all fell apart in the final twenty minutes, with action scenes dragging on for too long, before a horribly compromised final reel fell flat. Then there was the distracting and relentless tide of references to the first two movies. I had had enough by the time Christian Bale pulled out the CD player and cranked out You Could Be Mine, an act that suggested he had occupied himself during the nuclear winter by scavenging in burned-out record stores when not shouting into his walkie-talkie. Sadly, there was more to come, with numerous shots lifted wholesale from James Cameron's originals. By the time "Arnie" showed up, I half expected Rick Rossovich to rush in from stage left to hit him in the head with a lamp.
Still, at least I had enjoyed it for a while, and it exceeded my expectations by some distance. The opposite could be said for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which could well be the worst Marvel adaptation to date. It's definitely in the bottom three. There are no words to express how awful the goddamn thing is, and even my fanboyish pleasure in watching Hugh Jackman do his thing was dented, probably because I know he got more involved in the making of it, which means the stink of failure is upon him. Sadly, that stink oozes off the screen like some kind of miasmic deathcloud, and settles on us as well. And when I say stink, I'm talking a mouthful of skunk-ass-juice stink right in the mouth. That stinky. That FAIL-y.
Even weeks later, after numerous failed attempts to remove the stink with lemon juice, Viakal, and Febreeze, I was still flashing back to some of the dreadfulness. The hilarious sped-up shot of Wolvie hacking away at a fire escape; Ryan Reynolds wasted as Deadpool; that horrible final fight in front of a green screen; the pointless last act retcon of one major death just to have that death happen all over again; Cyclops' eyes setting fire to things when any fule kno that his eyebeams are pure force, not heat; Wolverine meeting Ma and Pa Kent and getting them killed within a few minutes of showing up; "Why is the moon so lonely?", which has to be the funniest line of dialogue of 2009; the galactic-level stupidity of the whole sorry enterprise. Right now, not even an Uwe Boll movie written by Paul Haggis and starring Cameron Diaz and Paul Walker could topple it from the Worst Movie of 2009 position.
I mean, Angels and Demons was not as bad as Wolverine. How is this possible? Middle-aged man runs around Rome shouting factoids about Catholicism vs. adamantium berserker rage. It should have been a slamdunk. And yet the former was more entertaining, even though the identity of the bad guy was obvious as soon as they opened their mouth. I spent the whole film being very obnoxious to Canyon, acting like a cross between Rex Reed and Sherlock Holmes, and I was even more annoying when my suspicion was vindicated. Still, my mom liked it, so it all worked out well.
What else is there? I have high hopes for Moon, as my mancrush Hott Sam Rockwell is pretty much the only person in it, which is how I feel about a lot of movies he's been in. God knows when it comes out here. Public Enemies will thrill me no matter what: my love of Michael Mann is so strong that I liked Miami Vice despite its many many flaws, so the only thing this could do to disappoint me is to be less entertaining than John Milius' muscular feature debut, Dillinger. Bruno could be fun. Who doesn't love jokes involving dildos and rednecks?
Other than Woody Allen, who seems to have hired Larry David to replicate his own shtick but without the bite. No votes for Whatever Works, which tells me that this blog is not read by Larry King. He recently tweeted 'Just saw Woody Allen's new movie Whatver [sic] Works" It's his greatest movie, even better than "Annie Hall" I can't say good enough about it!' Considering the endearingly random quality of his tweets, which are not that far removed from the comments in this prescient Onion article, I'm not sure this is an opinion to be trusted. After the hysterical car-crash that was Cassandra's Dream, I just don't see how Allen can even recapture the dizzy heights of Alice and Another Woman, let alone Husbands and Wives or Manhattan.
I'm also uninterested in (500) Days of Summer and Taking Woodstock, partially because they seem super-quirky, but mostly because I can't help but think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Demetri Martin accidentally switched movies. Surely JGL should be working with Ang Lee by now? If we do see (500) Days, it'll be in the hope that a) Zooey sings, and b) we find out if that fucking irksome (500) is justified by the plot.
For a change, I'm even less interested in seeing the last two action movies on the list, which is odd considering my love of pyrotechnics. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is by Stephen Sommers and will therefore have the same tedious talkFIGHTtalkFIGHT structure, but without the exuberance of Bay, or his gift for composition. (I will ignore all flaming on this point, so don't bother.) Plus, it will not be anywhere near as good as the Warren Ellis-scripted cartoon on Adult Swim.
Speaking of futile attempts to improve on greatness, The Taking of Pelham 123 shouldn't even exist. Last week we rewatched the original Joseph Sargent thriller, and it's enormous fun. Plus, it's already been remade as a TV movie, and indirectly by Spike Lee with Inside Man (obviously it's not the same plot, but it has the same feel, and has great fun dramatising New York's infamous air of exasperated cynicism and multicultural tension).
Though I'm not surprised no one wants to see The Final Destination (now in eye-shattering 3D!), why does no one want to see Funny People? Okay, so it sounds like incredibly mawkish navel-gazing sub-James-L.-Brooksian tripe, but The RZA is in it! Bobby Digital, people! Have you seen Derailed? He plays a postroom guy who hangs out with executive Clive Owen, and it's the most out-of-place performance I've ever seen. Each time they interacted, my brain tried to leap out of my head. There's that bloke from Chancer, walking through the office, and OMG HE'S CHATTING WITH THE RZA! Everything's better with a bit of RZA in it.
So, anyway. Go see lots of movies, and in a couple of months, if I remember, I'll put up my usual end-of-summer polls to determine which movies sank, which swam, and which soared like celluloid eagles.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
'Twas Here My Summer Exploded
Summertime! Or, as Prince of Freshland Willard Smith once put it, summersummersummertime! All of its joys (such as the sunshine, the wasps, the ever-present sheen of sticky sweat) pale into insignificance next to my favourite thing in the world ever; the summer movie season. As usual, the anticipation is bound to be much more nourishing than the actual movies themselves, though last year saw an unprecedented bumper crop of excellent popcorn entertainment which should, technically, raise my excitement to even greater levels, what with the summer movie season finally offering brainfood as well as robot wars. Sadly, that 2009 highwater mark and the recent writer's strike means I'm less excited about this year's line-up. Sure, I'll see a fair few, but there's only one or two I'm goggle-eyed with obnoxious enthusiasm over. My face is sad.
Those who know me have a pretty good idea which movies have me froth-mouthed, but I'll save that for now, because I'm more interested in what you, the readers of this blog, are most excited about. Just like last year, I want to see what is getting this small cross-section of people most pumped. Sadly, due to RL complications, I forgot to do this earlier, and have therefore included a film that has already been released (The Further Adventures of Logan T. Loganstein And His Whirring Claws Of Kill), but perhaps, if you've already seen it, you enjoyed it so much you can't wait to see it again! I gather it'sdepressingly bad hella-exciting. Anyway, here's the list.
Seriously! The RZA is in the next Judd Apatow movie! I can't wait, though I'd much rather see a full-length Bobby Digital film than some navel-gazing James L. Brooks homage, no matter how good it is. Anyway, the poll will be up in a sec, and will be around for approximately numerous weeks.
Those who know me have a pretty good idea which movies have me froth-mouthed, but I'll save that for now, because I'm more interested in what you, the readers of this blog, are most excited about. Just like last year, I want to see what is getting this small cross-section of people most pumped. Sadly, due to RL complications, I forgot to do this earlier, and have therefore included a film that has already been released (The Further Adventures of Logan T. Loganstein And His Whirring Claws Of Kill), but perhaps, if you've already seen it, you enjoyed it so much you can't wait to see it again! I gather it's
- Terminator Franchise: Salvage Operation
- I’d Rather Be Dragged To Hell Than Watch Spider-Man 3 Again
- JJ Abrams Risks Death by Unwashed Nerd Rage-On
- Transmogrifiers 2: Return of the Awesome
- The Curious Case of Wolverine Wutton
- Angels, Demons, and Probably Ewan McGregor’s Schlong
- Another Worthless Woody Allen Movie
- The Unnecessary Remaking of Pelham 123
- (500) Days of Self-Conscious Indie Movie Quirk
- The Time-Travelling Bana
- Harry Potter and the Thing in the Place with the Whatsit
- Demetri Martin + Ang Lee + Hippies = WTF?
- District 9 (AKA Neill Blomkamp Rocks Your Face Off)
- Hott Sam Rockwell’s Lunar Oscar Bid
- Pixar’s Whassup, Bitches?
- Depp and Bale in: Untouchablesque
- Sacha Baron Cohen and the Inevitable Lawsuits
- G.I. Joe: The Struggle to Give a Shit
- Quentin Tarantino and the Broken Spellcheck
- Final Destination: Rube Goldberg’s Revenge
- Judd Apatow’s Self-Loathing People (feat. The RZA!)
Seriously! The RZA is in the next Judd Apatow movie! I can't wait, though I'd much rather see a full-length Bobby Digital film than some navel-gazing James L. Brooks homage, no matter how good it is. Anyway, the poll will be up in a sec, and will be around for approximately numerous weeks.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Countdown to the Oscars (bleh), Part 2
I was inspired by someone else's blog (I don't remember who it was) to make a rundown of the decade at the Academy Awards. In this post, I'll list the ten best and worst Best Picture nominees, and after tabulating my list, I realize how pathetic it really is. I only really like the top four, and the remaining six I can only give faint praise (and, yes, Erin Brockovich really is better than Traffic). In the middle of posting this, I realized how stupid this whole list is, since I was cluelessly going by the year of the ceremonies instead of the year of the film's release. Double bleh. I suppose I'll keep going anyway. The Best Picture nominees I didn't see (and probably won't except for Master and Commander) are: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Seabiscuit (well, more than ten minutes); Good Night, and Good Luck.; Munich; Letters from Iwo Jima.The Ten Best "Best Picture" Nominees
1. No Country for Old Men (2008, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)2. There Will Be Blood (2008, Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001, Ang Lee)
4. Milk (2009, Gus Van Sant)
5. The Insider (Michael Mann, 2000)
6. In the Bedroom (2002, Todd Field)
7. The Departed (2007, Martin Scorsese)
8. Brokeback Mountain (2006, Ang Lee)
9. Capote (2006, Bennett Miller)
10. Erin Brockovich (2001, Steven Soderbergh)
The Ten Worst "Best Picture" Nominees
1. Crash (2006, Paul Haggis)2. The Reader (2009, Stephen Daldry)
3. Ray (2005, Taylor Hackford)
4. The Cider House Rules (2000, Lasse Hallström)
5. Moulin Rouge (2002, Baz Luhrmann)
6. Chocolat (2001, Lasse Hallström)
7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009, David Fincher)
8. A Beautiful Mind (2002, Ron Howard)
9. Babel (2007, Alejandro González Iñarritu)
10. Gangs of New York (2003, Martin Scorsese)
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Coming (or Not Coming) in 2009: Part 3
Part three of my posts looking at a number of films that may show up at film festivals during 2009 will focus on the continent of Asia, as well as a pair from Australia/New Zealand. Previous posts have covered France and the rest of Europe, and earlier posts about the Berlinale mentioned the new film from Chen Kaige.
Blake Williams first gave me word of the new film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century). You can find more information here on the director, and his latest project Primitive: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives which is going into production shortly via this link. Thanks Blake.
The latest film from Johnnie To (Mad Detective, Election) will be a French/Hong Kong co-production and filmed in English, entitled Vengeance. Filming now, Vengeance stars Johnny Hallyday, Simon Yam and Sylvie Testud. Variety reports that this is not the planned remake of Le cercle rouge, however. It is slated to be released in France on 20 May.
Following Lust, Caution, Ang Lee returns to the US for Taking Woodstock, which is set to be released in the States in August. It will be the third teaming in a row for Lee with Focus Features. Taking Woodstock stars, among many others, Emile Hirsch, comedian Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Paul Dano, Kelli Garner, Imelda Staunton, Katherine Waterston, Eugene Levy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Dan Fogler.
Like Hou Hsiao-hsien before him, Tsai Ming-liang will make his next feature in France, entitled Visage [Face]. The film explores the myth of Salomé, the biblical figure who performed the Dance of the Seven Veils which resulted in the beheading of John the Bapist. The dream cast includes Laetitia Casta as Salomé, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Mathieu Amalric, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye and frequent actor Lee Kang-sheng. No dates set, but check this link (thanks to Nimzo!) for more information.
Hong Sang-soo's latest You Don't Even Know is currently filming. I couldn't find much information about the film, but it does star Kim Tae-woo and Go Hyun-jung from Woman on the Beach as well as Ye Ji-won from Turning Gate.
Park Chan-wook's Thirst looks to be ready in time for Cannes. The film already has distribution in France (Wild Side), the UK (Palisades Tartan), South Korea (CJ Entertainment) and the US (Focus Features) and will hopefully be out by the end of the year, before the Old Boy remake hits theatres. Thirst stars Song Kang-ho (The Host), Shin Ha-kyun (No Mercy for the Rude), Mercedes Cabral (Serbis) and Eriq Ebouaney (35 rhums).
I Come with the Rain will be Tran Anh Hung's first film since The Vertical Ray of the Sun in 2000. Produced by France, I couldn't find any substantial release dates for the film, but it stars Josh Hartnett, Elias Koteas, Lee Byung-hun (The Good, the Bad, the Weird), Simón Andreu and Takuya Kimura (2046).
No one seems to know what's going on with Wong Kar-wai's intended remake of The Lady from Shanghai after star Nicole Kidman dropped out. If I hear anything, I'll let you know.
The new film from director Mira Nair will be an American biopic of Amelia Earheart, with Hilary Swank as the doomed pilot. The film, called Amelia, will be released by Fox Searchlight in October. Amelia also stars Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Virginia Madsen and Joe Anderson.
John Woo's Red Cliff Part 2 was released in China on 8 January; the first installment was released last summer, though it doesn't look like any US distributor has picked up either. Red Cliff 2 stars Chang Chen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung.
Abbas Kiarostami's Copie conforme [Certified Copy] is currently in production and is set to star Juliette Binoche (she really does get to work with the world's best directors, doesn't she?). mk2 will release the film in France when it's completed.
The Duel will be the first American film from director Dover Koshashvili (Late Marriage). It looks to be finished filming, but I couldn't find anything further about the film.
Jane Campion will follow the terrible In the Cut with Bright Star, which examines the relationship between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Pathé should release the film by the end of the year in the UK. It stars Ben Wishaw, Abbie Cornish, Paul Schneider and Kerry Fox.
The new film from John Hillcoat (The Proposition), called The Road, was bumped from last fall to sometime this year. The cast includes Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall, Garret Dillahunt, Michael K. Williams and Molly Parker. The Road is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy.
As there always seems to be one, I forgot to mention the two new films from Fatih Akin (The Edge of Heaven) when doing my European post. Soul Kitchen is to be released in France on 11 November by Pyramide Distribution; the film stars Moritz Bleibtreu and Birol Ünel. The other film is a documentary entitled Garbage in the Garden of Eden.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Super Or Not-Super? That Was The Question, Ages Ago
I hate it when a plan doesn't come together. This poll, which was originally meant to end several months ago, got dragged beyond its natural endpoint by me because it seemed to keep attracting votes from netsurfers randomly sent here by such Google search terms as "sexxy women boobs", "January Jones bad actor", "Seth Lakeman", and, of course, "Moon Bloodgood". Of all the things that we have done on this blog, be it incurring the wrath of Torchwood fans, incurring the wrath of Bible fans, or incurring the wrath of friends of super-actor Jesse Plemons, the response to that poll, although small compared to bigger, more professional sites, was significant for us. The temptation was there to keep it up until the next wave of superhero movies comes out, which could be a while, thanks to the writers' strike.
However, Blogger decided to fuck me. Right now the poll states 65 votes have been counted, when last week that number stood at 74. Nine votes lost to the ether! WTF is that about? Perhaps that's a glitch that can be explained on Blogger forums, but I'm too distraught to check. As far as I can tell Blogger hates democracy. Someone should call Greg Palast.
Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) - 24 (36%) Christian Bale (Batman) - 16 (24%) Ron Perlman (Hellboy) - 7 (10%) Huge Ackman (Wolverine) - 7 (10%) Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man) - 3 (4%) Jennifer Garner (Elektra) - 3 (4%) Brandon Routh (Superman) - 2 (3%) Halle Berry (Not-Catwoman) - 1 (1%) Ben Affleck (Daredevil) - 1 (1%) Patrick Warburton (The Tick) - 1 (1%) Chris Evans (Human Torch) - 0 (0%) Thomas "Homeless Dad" Jane (The Punisher) - 0 (0%) The Shaq (Steel) - 0 (0%) Nicolas Cage (Ghost Rider) - 0 (0%) Wesley Snipes (Blade) - 0 (0%) Ang Lee In A Motion Capture Suit (Hulk) - 0 (0%)
Anyway, before any more votes can go missing, I might as well shut it down now, and reveal the final tallies. Unsurprisingly (at least to me) the clear winner is Robert Downey Jr., who did what only a couple of other superhero actors have been able to do, i.e. take a character we thought we knew and add another dimension to them. Christopher Reeve showed Superman's fear and vulnerability, Nicholas Cage revealed that Johnny Blaze loves monkey documentaries, and Robert Downey Jr revealed that Tony Stark is funny. For too long the character has seemed like little more than an intense cypher in a suit, but Downey Jr. found the spark that brought him to life.
Of course Stark is a show-off and narcissist, traits that don't really go away even when he comes to realise what a negative effect Stark Industries has on the world. That balancing act, between playing Stark as a charming but aloof playboy and as a committed but humorless crusader, is what makes Downey Jr's performance so perfect. It's such a complete and satisfying incarnation of everyone's favourite Registration Act-supporting dickbag that, upon seeing it, I immediately hoped that he would get Oscar attention next year. Just like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, he was so great and entertaining and instantly transformed into A-list superstar material that people came to see the movie to see him as much as they did the superheroics. Add to that his amazing work on the otherwise disappointing Tropic Thunder, and it's so much his year that I'd bet his chances are higher than you'd expect. Of course, Tropic Thunder is too offensive to get a nomination for anything other than technical Oscars, so the buzz will transfer to Iron Man. The campaign is apparently in full swing, and though I still harbour natural doubts, there's hope.
Second place goes to Christian Bale, who did something subtly different than Robert Downey Jr. by showing how the character was meant to work. It's repeatedly stated in Batman comics that the character is meant to be terrifying, but the image of a guy dressed as a bat and unable to turn his head has never seemed scary to anyone. Bale (and Christopher Nolan) finally cracked how to make Batman as fearsome as his reputation demands, and while some find Bale's Batvoice ridiculous, I totally bought it, so much so that when reading the comics, I now hear Batman's dialogue in that insane raspy growl. That said, while I give multiple props to Bale's intense and customarily intelligent performances, I still hear Kevin Conroy's voice for Bruce Wayne. Fans of the legendary animated series will know what I'm talking about, especially one regular reader who loves him some Mask of the Phantasm.
Coming joint third, (unless, of course, those nine missing votes went to Shaq for his sensitive portrayal of Steel) Ron Perlman also brought his character to life, but maybe only for me. As I've said before, the character of Hellboy never worked on the page (subjectively), but once Perlman appeared onscreen, I finally understood what his appeal was. With the talented Perlman usually relegated to gruff bad guy roles, I'm immensely grateful to Guillermo Del Toro for giving him a chance to show how charming he can be, though I think it would go a lot smoother if he wrote Hellboy some funnier dialogue.
Even though joint third place is a good showing, I expected more votes for Hugh Jackman, whose fanboy-appeasing performance as Wolverine was the instant star-making role that gave the superhero genre its big break in film. More than anything else, the massive popular acceptance of this almost unknown song-and-dance guy as a feral killing machine with leaky tear ducts and a heart of gold made everyone who saw it realise there was a way to make superheroes work in serious movies. Without him and his fantastic hott torso (and the guiding hand of Bryan Singer), I doubt any of the subsequent superhero movies would have been possible.
Speaking of Bryan Singer, his random casting of Brandon Routh as Superman ended up paying off brilliantly, which makes the mediocrity of that movie all the more galling. With The Man of Steel seemingly stalled as of this moment, it's a source of almost infinite annoyance that Routh, who managed to convince many fans that he could embody the nobility and vulnerability of Kal-El, will probably not get another shot at playing the role. When DC and Warner Brothers announced the Justice League movie, they caused me much sorrow by announcing he wouldn't reprise the role, made up for it a lot by hinting that he would be replaced by Scott Porter (who is often the moral centre on Friday Night Lights), then pissed me off again by casting some other guy instead. Then they cancelled the film altogether. Whatevs. Seemingly forgotten, Routh only gets two votes, one of them from Canyon.
Though it appears to be an unpopular opinion on the net, I think Jennifer Garner is the tops. I'm pleased she got a few votes, expecting the dreadful nature of Rob Bowman's Elektra to dissuade voters. I'm not as enthused about Tobey Maguire's votes, as my initial glee at the casting of yet another serious actor as a popular superhero has waned over the course of three Spidey movies as Maguire seems to be doing almost no other work (nothing on this planet will make me watch Seabiscuit, so don't even go there), so I can't even tell whether I think he's a talented actor any more. He's just the guy who's too old to play a young loser with powers, dances badly for no reason other than to make the audience put their hands over their faces in embarrassment, and looks like a stack of wet flappy pancakes when he cries. And he's coming back for three more movies? Oy.
I can only assume that the single vote for Halle Berry as Not Catwoman was an ironic statement, because even someone utterly transfixed by her infamous beauty couldn't ignore the ineptitude and total misunderstanding of the character on display here. A lot of fanboys complain about several recent Marvel adaptations, but even the real disasters cannot compare with DC's run of terrible movies. Daredevil has its detractors, though I still maintain Affleck, with his single vote, was better than the haters say, and it at least made an effort to honour the characters. Ghost Rider was appalling but Nic Cage's total commitment to the weird saves the film from total fail. The Fantastic Four movies might be kiddie versions of the bonkers science fiction adventures we FF fans love, but even when it's hard to watch Reed Richards dancing, or Doctor Doom played like a bad guy from some 80s cheap-ass 8 frames-per-second animated shite, you've still got Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans (who received one votes in this poll, though I'm sure he had more at one point) honouring Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm with their valiant efforts.
What do DC offer us at their worst? The nigh-unwatchable Supergirl, with Peter "Go! High-Ah! Gehhhhlll!" O'Toole's career worst performance? Steel, which remains the only superhero adaptation I've been unable to finish due to overwhelming psychic pain and disappointment? Batman and Fucking Robin? I'd rather rewatch Jonathan Hensleigh's The Punisher any day, especially as Thomas "Homeless Dad" Jane is my hero, and to be honest the worst crime of the movie is to be a homage to Don Siegel-style economy in the age of Michael Bay-style excess (not that I think emulating Don Siegel is a crime, just a question of misjudging a mood). I predict a wave of reappraisal when the forthcoming sequel is finally released.
Batman and Robin would be the worst DC adaptation so far, except that it at least gave the world the line "You're not sending me to da coolah!", which is still in constant rotation in our house. It's not much, but that vaults it above the complete failure that is Catwoman. Her weakness is insensibility upon exposure to catnip? Her nemesis is an insane cosmetics entrepreneur (played with an offensive lack of skill by Sharon Stone, no less)? That this anti-feminist fiasco was made while Daniel Waters' brilliantly subversive script sits on a metaphorical shelf would make me doubt the existence of God if I didn't already doubt the existence of God. A lesser blogger than I would probably write something pun-tastic like, "It was a purr-fectly hair-i-ball cat-astrophe that you should make a fe-line to avoid." An even lesser blogger might refer to it as Scatwoman. However that kind of dismissal isn't enough for a failure this total. It's diarrhoea in the middle of the night. It's vomit in a pile of freshly washed clothes. It's nappy rash, poison ivy, tennis elbow, insomnia, and anaphylactic shock all at the same time. Never let it be spoken of again.
Zero votes for Nicolas Cage (which will sadden Johnny Blaze-fan Canyon, I'm sure), Ang Lee in a Motion Capture Suit (even after the blank Hulk Smash performance on the most recent movie failed to generate even a fraction of the character that Ang Lee did), and, most shocking of all, zero votes for Dr. Wesley T. Snipes, who kicked so much vampire bottom in the Blade trilogy? How soon we forget. Or perhaps people thought they would get hassled by the IRS for supporting him. Wimps! Haven't superheroes shown we should stand up to tyranny? I'm tempted to hand those nine votes to him, giving the Dr. of Asskicking a third place spot. Oh, and kudos for noticing poor Patrick Warburton at the bottom of the poll. I'm glad someone threw him some one vote worth of love for his heroic blue-suited silliness.
Right. I'm done. Happy now, Blogger? ::pouts::
However, Blogger decided to fuck me. Right now the poll states 65 votes have been counted, when last week that number stood at 74. Nine votes lost to the ether! WTF is that about? Perhaps that's a glitch that can be explained on Blogger forums, but I'm too distraught to check. As far as I can tell Blogger hates democracy. Someone should call Greg Palast.
Anyway, before any more votes can go missing, I might as well shut it down now, and reveal the final tallies. Unsurprisingly (at least to me) the clear winner is Robert Downey Jr., who did what only a couple of other superhero actors have been able to do, i.e. take a character we thought we knew and add another dimension to them. Christopher Reeve showed Superman's fear and vulnerability, Nicholas Cage revealed that Johnny Blaze loves monkey documentaries, and Robert Downey Jr revealed that Tony Stark is funny. For too long the character has seemed like little more than an intense cypher in a suit, but Downey Jr. found the spark that brought him to life.
Of course Stark is a show-off and narcissist, traits that don't really go away even when he comes to realise what a negative effect Stark Industries has on the world. That balancing act, between playing Stark as a charming but aloof playboy and as a committed but humorless crusader, is what makes Downey Jr's performance so perfect. It's such a complete and satisfying incarnation of everyone's favourite Registration Act-supporting dickbag that, upon seeing it, I immediately hoped that he would get Oscar attention next year. Just like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, he was so great and entertaining and instantly transformed into A-list superstar material that people came to see the movie to see him as much as they did the superheroics. Add to that his amazing work on the otherwise disappointing Tropic Thunder, and it's so much his year that I'd bet his chances are higher than you'd expect. Of course, Tropic Thunder is too offensive to get a nomination for anything other than technical Oscars, so the buzz will transfer to Iron Man. The campaign is apparently in full swing, and though I still harbour natural doubts, there's hope.
Second place goes to Christian Bale, who did something subtly different than Robert Downey Jr. by showing how the character was meant to work. It's repeatedly stated in Batman comics that the character is meant to be terrifying, but the image of a guy dressed as a bat and unable to turn his head has never seemed scary to anyone. Bale (and Christopher Nolan) finally cracked how to make Batman as fearsome as his reputation demands, and while some find Bale's Batvoice ridiculous, I totally bought it, so much so that when reading the comics, I now hear Batman's dialogue in that insane raspy growl. That said, while I give multiple props to Bale's intense and customarily intelligent performances, I still hear Kevin Conroy's voice for Bruce Wayne. Fans of the legendary animated series will know what I'm talking about, especially one regular reader who loves him some Mask of the Phantasm.
Coming joint third, (unless, of course, those nine missing votes went to Shaq for his sensitive portrayal of Steel) Ron Perlman also brought his character to life, but maybe only for me. As I've said before, the character of Hellboy never worked on the page (subjectively), but once Perlman appeared onscreen, I finally understood what his appeal was. With the talented Perlman usually relegated to gruff bad guy roles, I'm immensely grateful to Guillermo Del Toro for giving him a chance to show how charming he can be, though I think it would go a lot smoother if he wrote Hellboy some funnier dialogue.
Even though joint third place is a good showing, I expected more votes for Hugh Jackman, whose fanboy-appeasing performance as Wolverine was the instant star-making role that gave the superhero genre its big break in film. More than anything else, the massive popular acceptance of this almost unknown song-and-dance guy as a feral killing machine with leaky tear ducts and a heart of gold made everyone who saw it realise there was a way to make superheroes work in serious movies. Without him and his fantastic hott torso (and the guiding hand of Bryan Singer), I doubt any of the subsequent superhero movies would have been possible.
Speaking of Bryan Singer, his random casting of Brandon Routh as Superman ended up paying off brilliantly, which makes the mediocrity of that movie all the more galling. With The Man of Steel seemingly stalled as of this moment, it's a source of almost infinite annoyance that Routh, who managed to convince many fans that he could embody the nobility and vulnerability of Kal-El, will probably not get another shot at playing the role. When DC and Warner Brothers announced the Justice League movie, they caused me much sorrow by announcing he wouldn't reprise the role, made up for it a lot by hinting that he would be replaced by Scott Porter (who is often the moral centre on Friday Night Lights), then pissed me off again by casting some other guy instead. Then they cancelled the film altogether. Whatevs. Seemingly forgotten, Routh only gets two votes, one of them from Canyon.
Though it appears to be an unpopular opinion on the net, I think Jennifer Garner is the tops. I'm pleased she got a few votes, expecting the dreadful nature of Rob Bowman's Elektra to dissuade voters. I'm not as enthused about Tobey Maguire's votes, as my initial glee at the casting of yet another serious actor as a popular superhero has waned over the course of three Spidey movies as Maguire seems to be doing almost no other work (nothing on this planet will make me watch Seabiscuit, so don't even go there), so I can't even tell whether I think he's a talented actor any more. He's just the guy who's too old to play a young loser with powers, dances badly for no reason other than to make the audience put their hands over their faces in embarrassment, and looks like a stack of wet flappy pancakes when he cries. And he's coming back for three more movies? Oy.
I can only assume that the single vote for Halle Berry as Not Catwoman was an ironic statement, because even someone utterly transfixed by her infamous beauty couldn't ignore the ineptitude and total misunderstanding of the character on display here. A lot of fanboys complain about several recent Marvel adaptations, but even the real disasters cannot compare with DC's run of terrible movies. Daredevil has its detractors, though I still maintain Affleck, with his single vote, was better than the haters say, and it at least made an effort to honour the characters. Ghost Rider was appalling but Nic Cage's total commitment to the weird saves the film from total fail. The Fantastic Four movies might be kiddie versions of the bonkers science fiction adventures we FF fans love, but even when it's hard to watch Reed Richards dancing, or Doctor Doom played like a bad guy from some 80s cheap-ass 8 frames-per-second animated shite, you've still got Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans (who received one votes in this poll, though I'm sure he had more at one point) honouring Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm with their valiant efforts.
What do DC offer us at their worst? The nigh-unwatchable Supergirl, with Peter "Go! High-Ah! Gehhhhlll!" O'Toole's career worst performance? Steel, which remains the only superhero adaptation I've been unable to finish due to overwhelming psychic pain and disappointment? Batman and Fucking Robin? I'd rather rewatch Jonathan Hensleigh's The Punisher any day, especially as Thomas "Homeless Dad" Jane is my hero, and to be honest the worst crime of the movie is to be a homage to Don Siegel-style economy in the age of Michael Bay-style excess (not that I think emulating Don Siegel is a crime, just a question of misjudging a mood). I predict a wave of reappraisal when the forthcoming sequel is finally released.
Batman and Robin would be the worst DC adaptation so far, except that it at least gave the world the line "You're not sending me to da coolah!", which is still in constant rotation in our house. It's not much, but that vaults it above the complete failure that is Catwoman. Her weakness is insensibility upon exposure to catnip? Her nemesis is an insane cosmetics entrepreneur (played with an offensive lack of skill by Sharon Stone, no less)? That this anti-feminist fiasco was made while Daniel Waters' brilliantly subversive script sits on a metaphorical shelf would make me doubt the existence of God if I didn't already doubt the existence of God. A lesser blogger than I would probably write something pun-tastic like, "It was a purr-fectly hair-i-ball cat-astrophe that you should make a fe-line to avoid." An even lesser blogger might refer to it as Scatwoman. However that kind of dismissal isn't enough for a failure this total. It's diarrhoea in the middle of the night. It's vomit in a pile of freshly washed clothes. It's nappy rash, poison ivy, tennis elbow, insomnia, and anaphylactic shock all at the same time. Never let it be spoken of again.
Zero votes for Nicolas Cage (which will sadden Johnny Blaze-fan Canyon, I'm sure), Ang Lee in a Motion Capture Suit (even after the blank Hulk Smash performance on the most recent movie failed to generate even a fraction of the character that Ang Lee did), and, most shocking of all, zero votes for Dr. Wesley T. Snipes, who kicked so much vampire bottom in the Blade trilogy? How soon we forget. Or perhaps people thought they would get hassled by the IRS for supporting him. Wimps! Haven't superheroes shown we should stand up to tyranny? I'm tempted to hand those nine votes to him, giving the Dr. of Asskicking a third place spot. Oh, and kudos for noticing poor Patrick Warburton at the bottom of the poll. I'm glad someone threw him some one vote worth of love for his heroic blue-suited silliness.
Right. I'm done. Happy now, Blogger? ::pouts::
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