News: Director Remembers Heath Ledger
January 28, 2008
In a touching article, Christopher Nolan (The Dark Night, Batman Begins, The Prestige) remembers Heath Ledger.
His death came as a strong blow to Hollywood, and Nolan had some amazing things to say about a great actor.
DVD Review: Eastern Promises
January 28, 2008
Bob Dylan once said that ‘to live outside the law, you must be honest.’ And so it is with David Cronenberg’s most recent movie, ‘Eastern Promises.’
The film stars Naomi Watts as Anna a nurse in the maternity ward in London’s hospitals. When a 14 year-old Russian heroin addict turns up and give birth to a baby just before dying, Anna turns to a diary the girl was carrying with her to find the baby’s family.
Her attempt to have the diary translated leads her to a Russian restaurant/club run by Semon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) with assistance from his son, Kirill, played by Vincent Cassel. Their driver is Nikolai played by Viggo Mortensen. They are also mobsters.
Semon quickly realizes that the diary is incredibly damaging, and tries to stop Anna from learning its contents, while Nikolai shows a softer side, almost befriending Anna while still earning his stars from the mob.
‘Eastern Promises’ is Cronenberg’s second film with Mortensen and like with ‘A History of Violence,’ the paring results in an excellent film. In ‘Violence,’ Mortensen was the center spoke to a wheel of interesting characters and here Cronenberg lets him loose, on an interesting and almost silent character. Much like the Dylan quote above, Mortensen’s Nikolai knows that being in a gang is no reason to not do the right thing.
The story is Nikolai and Mortensen dives in, full-force. With strong performances across the board, (Mueller-Stahl and Cassel especially,) ‘Eastern Promises’ is easily one of the best movies of 2007.
Cronenberg’s direction is never flashy and serves the material incredibly well. Much like in ‘Violence,’ he lays back and lets the actors shine, at the same time, keeping things moving at a solid pace. He’s always had a propensity for horrific images, and yet this time, his focus is on the weathered, aged faces that populate the story.
Much has been made of Mortensen’s fully-nude, steam bath attempted murder/wrestling scene and, yes it’s very well directed and acted and kudos for Mortensen for giving himself wholly to the scene. (While I enjoyed what they were doing, I could do with seeing less of ‘little Aragon.’)
‘Eastern Promises’ is a slow-burn of a story, never overwhelming you with intensity or flash, but it is precisely these elements that make it such a rewarding movie. –Sam
News: Del Toro to Helm ‘Hobbit’ Films
January 28, 2008
Hollywood Reporter says Guillermo Del Toro will direct back-to-back film versions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit.’
Del Toro will oversee the script writing process with producer and ‘Lord of the Rings’ director Peter Jackson.
The budget for each film is reportedly $150 million.
The deal was reportedly has not been officially decided yet, because of the WGA strike, but an agreement is in place.
News: ‘Spartans’ Edges out ‘Rambo’
January 28, 2008
The spoof film ‘Remember the Spartans,’ has edged out Sylvester Stalone’s return to the big screen with ‘Rambo’ on its opening weekend. ‘Spartans’ took in $18.2 million at the box office. ‘Rambo’ took $18.1 million.
‘Juno’ recieved a bump from it’s Oscar nomination, with its total take now around $100 million, while ‘Cloverfield’ fell over 60% from last weekend, taking in a reported $12.7 million.
News: Coens Win DGA Award
January 28, 2008
The Coen brothers are the odds on favorites to win the Best Director Oscar after winning the same honor at the Director’s Guild Award ceremony this past weekend.
Joel Coen told reporters, that when brother Ethan is feeling depressed, he likes to use silver polish ’spit shines his medals for an hour or two. It makes him feel better. This is a really big one, in every respect. It’s going to keep him busy.’
‘No Country For Old Men’ also picked up awards from SAG on Sunday, with Javier Bardem winning Best Supporting Actor and the cast winning Best Ensemble.
Review: Rambo
January 25, 2008
Few things seem gray anymore. Perception has grown black and white. There is good and evil, Republican and Democrat, tasteful and tasteless, comedy and drama, etc. Middle ground, ambiguity seem unsettling, out of place. As time passes and our brains need to neatly file information into definitive compartments, we sum up our feelings of a particular subject, give it that label and put it away, forever stored as a summation. The action genre has fallen victim to this tendency. Today the action movie illicits thoughts of guns, stunts and explosions all surrounding impossibly cool heroes in “movies for guys who like movies.” And, in thinking back without thinking, few films seemingly represent this better than Rambo.
20 years since Rambo III, Sylvester Stallone reintroduces audiences to a someone we thought we knew but really forgot through a character that the world once knew but ultimately forgot. Living just outside of Burma, Rambo has become separated from the world. Living in the jungle, John Rambo has long since separated himself from humanity. And for good reason: just up the river lies the genocide of the Burmese people, ravaged by militant militias, hunted, toyed with for the sheer thrill of exploiting power over other people. Some of the movie’s most violent scenes depict the horrendous acts thrust upon these people. Stallone, smartly, opens the movie with actual footage of the horrors in Burma. Dead children, soldiers kicking beaten people in the head. The first five minutes of the movie completely obliterate the notion that this is the fantasy, cliche action pic we’ve come to think as Rambo. He shows us this character means something in this real world. And through this footage, Stallone gives us the film’s first polarizing view: evil.
Rambo is living his life as a snake herder, finding venomous snakes in the jungle and selling them to charmers. Here he meets a group of religious missionaries (representing good) who want to enlist Rambo and his boat to take them up river into Burma so they can help the victims of the country. Rambo sees their mission as hopeless and their idealism as naivete. He asks if they are going to bring weapons. The answer of no reveals Rambo’s take on humanity as a whole: “Then you’re not changing anything.”
Eventually they get him to take them up river and as they are bringing aid and religion to the Burmese, the village is attacked and those that aren’t killed (there are few) are taken hostage. My summarizing the events would make this sound like a cliche action movie: mercenaries are hired to get the missionaries back, Rambo joins them and ultimately becomes the catalyst to free the missionaries while dispensing violence upon the bad guys. However, Stallone skillfully puts together a story that shows a man who has given up on humanity forced to face his moral ambiguity, to save those who he had given up hope on through means by which he himself is frightened of and quite possibly hates himself for being capable of. Through applaudable scripting and directing, Sylvester Stallone has Rambo, the character and the film, transcend the weight of the action movie albatross and creates a character study of an individual who is forced to face himself and find out whether he has a place in the world again.
Now all of this sounds incredibly philosophical, but rest assured that when it’s time to kick ass, John Rambo kicks ass. No punches are pulled as the last 20 minutes of the film unfurls across the projector. If this is the last blood Rambo is going to spill, Stallone made it count. Visceral and climactic, the violence feels like the release of the pent up emotions that have been building inside this character for the past 20 years. And we, the audience, feel a release and reward as we relate to being in the ambiguous middle of the good and evil and the other stark contrasts that we face each day. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, John Rambo is us.
Rambo seemingly brings a close to another iconic character that helped define a genre. And with this bookend, Sylvester Stallone provides us with a chance to see that action movies aren’t low brow and action stars shouldn’t be compartmentalized. I loved Rambo and cannot wait to find myself in the theater to see it again.
- justin
Editorial: OVER-RATED! Clap-clap! Clap-clap-clap!
January 25, 2008
I like lists. They get me the groceries I need, make sure I am not using my finger to brush my teeth on vacation, help my girlfriend remember why she is still with me… they are great. So why wouldn’t I come up with a list to determine the most overrated movies? When I put it in terms like that, I determined it would be foolish not to. Maybe even more than just foolish, I would take it further and say it would be utterly foolish, bordering silly, not to create this list.
So how did I determine what belongs on the list and where? Well, I will tell you. It was a highly scientific process of getting drunk, calling old girlfriends and throwing up in my roommate’s slippers. You may think that this has nothing to do with deciding what movies are overrated, but what you don’t realize is that I’m still hung-over and wearing feetie pajamas on upside-down. So, you see? It’s all very official.
(Side-note: The movies that make up this list are not necessarily movies I don’t like. The fact is I do enjoy some of them, I just feel that the praise they get is excessive in comparison to the quality of the film. )
The Top Six (Why six you may ask? It is one for each of my ab muscles.) Overrated Films According To This Guy:
6) Casablanca - With the emotional range of a shoebox Humphrey Bogart reminds us why we don’t typically let cardboard act.
5) Crash - No matter how much this story twisted and turned, you pretty much saw the whole thing coming. And you saw the whole thing coming because Paul Haggis doesn’t trust you to pick up on subtleties so he made it loud and explained everything. His cliche play of the cliche stereotypes undermined the whole movie and left me feeling a bit under appreciated as an audience member. Plus I have a standing oath with my toaster to never like a movie that casts Brendan Fraser.
4) Knocked Up - This was tough because I couldn’t decide which Seth Rogen film to put up here until I determined that once you have seen one Rogen film, you’ve seen them all. It wasn’t that this wasn’t a funny film, which it wasn’t, and it wasn’t that it was a misogynistic film, which it was, it’s that this film was somehow so bad and overrated that it actually set curing cancer back 35 years.
3) American Beauty - The lesson in this movie is that woman need a man to be complete. What’s wrong with that? Wait, we are not still living in the 50’s? Then why am I wearing this poodle skirt? Dammit! That’s the last time I ask to my couch for fashion advice.
2) The Matrix - Besides plagiarizing the story from a comic book the other flaw in this movie is that it relies heavily on the believability of Keanu Reeves. I will repeat that because it warrants mentioning again, this movie relies heavily on the believability of Keanue Reeves. The producers of The Matrix really should have taken my suggestion and cast my dog as the lead. Sure she has no concept of on coming traffic, gets confused when she can’t find a snowball you threw into the snow, drags her butt across a rug floor, can’t read or deliver lines, but she is so cute when you put people clothes on her!
1) Scarface - I am not sure what was worse for me, the unbelievable story, shoddy movie making, cliche lines, or the fact that he had an super-duper (I was going to go with amazingly large, but then I thought, “why hold back? It’s a super-duper moment.”) crush on his sister. Wait, no that last one did it for me. Also, when is the last time anyone was inspired to conquer the world based on what a blimp said? I trusted what a blimp told me once. It said it loved me and would always be there for me. But was it? No. It left me at the alter, a shattered man. And now I am married to a Buick.
Those are my most overrated films. If you disagree, that’s fine, because I disagree with your face.
-Brandin
News: Not all HD DVD is HD?
January 25, 2008
Interesting article from DVDFile.com this morning. Titled, ‘Of Resolution, Bit Rates and Scaling,’ it suggests that perhaps Apple’s new downloadable HD may not be true HD. Or maybe it is. Apparently, it depends on your definition of the term.
They explain it in way more depth than I could. Check out the article.
Review: 1408
January 25, 2008
Here’s the plot of ‘1408,’ real simple and real short. Ghost hunter doesn’t believe in ghosts. He checks into a haunted hotel room in New York and the ghosts try to change his mind. His mind is changed. Fade to black. End of movie. ‘1408’ keeps to that schedule so closely, you could set your watch to it.
John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, professional author. Enslin writes books about different haunted places to visit and stay. He’s on his third or fourth book and he’s seen it all. The wear is beginning to show. A book signing is sparsely attended. He checks into a bed and breakfast and is downright rude to the husband and wife running the place. He just wants to get to the things that go bump in the night.
And then he hears about the Dolphin hotel. Room 1408, it’s cursed. No one’s ever spent an hour in there alone and come out alive. Enslin decides that it will be the final chapter to his next book.
He checks into the hotel. Hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson says that he shouldn’t do it, that it’s too dangerous and that the hotel doesn’t want another death on their hands. Enslin insists. Reluctantly, they hand over the key.
And that’s where the fun begins. Or, at least, should begin. It starts simply; the bed is turned down without anyone entering the room. The radio turns on, blaring the Carpenter’s ‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’ And then his dead daughter shows up. And the sprinkler system goes off. And then the room catches fire. And he tries to crawl out the window to another room to find there is no other room.
I understand that logic sometimes takes a holiday in horror movies. However, the whole thing just rang false for me, it didn’t resonate like I hoped it would.
It’s an amazing performance by Cusack, reportedly one of his top ten favorite performances, but it doesn’t add up to a good movie. The direction is great, the cast is good, the sets are excellent, but, in the end, it just kind of hangs there.
The story is based on a Stephen King short story. And, I’ve heard the argument that all good Stephen King movies are based on his short stories and not his books, but this is one that goes against that maxim. (Plus, ‘Misery,’ and ‘Secret Window,’ proved this theory wrong already.) The whole concept of the movie just didn’t resonate with me. And by the end, I was kind of bored and eagerly awaiting the credits.
Telling us it’s spooky and scary and actually being that are two different things. ‘1408’ talks a good game, but when it comes to actual scares, one is left wanting. -Sam
News: Bond Title Revealed
January 24, 2008
Producers have confirmed to the BBC that the title for the new James Bond movie will be ‘Quantum of Solace.’ The title comes from a short story written by Bond creator Ian Fleming in 1960.
The movie, scheduled for release in November, is the 22nd Bond film made by EON Productions and the second starring Daniel Craig.
News: Cloverfield Making Audiences Sick
January 24, 2008
JJ Abrams’ latest production ‘Cloverfield,’ is making some audiences sick. Some moviegoers say that the movie, shot entirely hand-held, is making them dizzy or, in some cases, nauseous. One doctor is quoted as saying that it’s a classic case of vertigo, where you feel like you’re moving even if you’re not.
If you tend to suffer from vertigo, it’s recommended that you either sit far away from the screen, or wait for the movie to come out on DVD. (Watching the movie from your couch with familiar surroundings usually helps quell the queasy feeling, experts say.)
News: Mendes to Try Comedy?
January 24, 2008
Variety.com is reporting that director Sam Mendes will make his next movie a comedy for Focus Features. The project, originally titled ‘This Must Be the Place,’ was written by ‘Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’ and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers and wife Vendela Vida.
Mendes won an Oscar for directing for his first film, ‘American Beauty.’ He has also directed ‘The Road to Perdition,’ and ‘Jarhead.’
