Entries Tagged 'Film' ↓

James Cameron has not directed a feature film in a dozen years. However, his last was 1997’s Titanic, still the all-time box-office champ, at $1.8 billlion grossed worldwide. That means there are enormous hopes riding on his upcoming December release, Avatar. That, a quarter-billion-dollar budget, and one swivvy advance poster, above. And this teaser trailer.

I’m about in the middle of Cormac McCarthy’s utterly blighted, comfortless novel, The Road. Perhaps that’s why the trailer, above top, for Denzel Washington’s post-apocalyptic, January 2010 The Book of Eli, directed by the Hughes Brothers, comes off to me as stagey; pure movie, in whole. (To be fair, however, I might have the same response to The Road‘s trailer, at which I’ve refused to look until I finish the book.)

Meanwhile, I’m completely taken with the breathy declarations and lush sartorial chroma of Jane Campion’s bodice-ripper, Bright Star, below top; out September 18. It’s the story of poet John Keats, who died at 25 from tubercolosis, but not before both rewriting the DNA of English verse, and hardily bedding his next-door neighbor, the aptly-named Fanny Brawne.

So, what gives? I mean, I’m a sucker for the apocalypse. Have I gone soft in my middle age? You tell me.

Whoa: Check out this dramatic, new teaser poster, above, from Jamie Foxx’s upcoming thriller with 300‘s Gerard Butler, right, Law-Abiding Citizen.

In the story, notes IMDB.com,

An everyday guy [Butler] decides to take justice into his own hands after a plea bargain sets his family’s killers free. His target: The district attorney [Foxx] who orchestrated the deal.

Directed by F. Gary Gray (Set It Off; The Negotiator; The Italian Job), Law-Abiding Citizen breaks the rules on October 16th.

[via impawards.com]

I get invited to a number of movie press screenings, mostly for medium-budget, high-quality, serious “art” films. When I received the notice for political satire In the Loop, right, I looked at the image embedded in the press release, said, “James Gandolfini as a general? Feh!” Ignored it. (That’s not him, above, but actor Peter Capaldi, who, in this transatlantic piece, plays Malcolm Tucker, the British prime minister’s director of communications.)

What a mistake. I still haven’t seen the movie, but I wish the publicist had sent me the trailer, cause I’d have been there in a minute. In the Loop‘s promo is one of the best, funniest, and most expertly edited I’ve ever seen. It perfectly conveys the film’s Wag the Dog, geopolitical-comedy-of errors, Babel-speak theme with deftness and hilarity that makes the short a must-watch-again. Check it out below, or, as I always prefer, in Apple Quicktime.

Flame on: TRON: Legacy light cycle gets the blazes outta here

For the recent Comic-Con, Disney released light cycle footage, above, from the upcoming TRON: Legacy, the 2010 sequel to 1982’s geek classic, TRON.

So why am I not feeling the new stuff?

Take a look for yourself, below. First, the original trailer, then their visual effects test.

Thoughts?

Somehow I overlooked this: Last year, 2008, was the 45th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s nightmarish, 1963 classic, The Birds. To commemorate the release, and create new relevance for Barbie—a toy which has seen serious drops in its popularity over the last several years—Mattel created this Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” Barbie® Doll.

Decked out in the classic mint green ensemble Melanie Griffith’s mom, Tippi Hendren, wore in her debut film role, the figurine also sports a stylish handbag and three viciously attacking ravens. Absent, of course, because it’s Barbie: The terrified expression Hendren wore through out the entire film as the fowls tried to take her head off. It’s $40 from Barbie Collector, but, right now, Entertaiment Earth has ’em for less than $25. Want one? Like Tippi, better move yo’ behind.

Here’s my prediction: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will do huge first-week numbers, based on awe-inspiring trailer footage, then rapidly descend in flames from orbit, as people share with friends that the film is a stinking, heaving pile of constipated rhinoceros feces.

Transformers: ROTF, which opens today, is a narrative and conceptual mess. But this is neither surprising nor the greatest of its blames. It is, at critical moments, visually incomprehensible—and this from someone who considered the faceted clatter of the first film’s shifting multiplanes, at moments, symphonic. But this is the least of its faults.

What offends is how gleefully the film endorses crude racism, serving up, not one, but two near-buckdancing, shiftless Black stereotypes—the sambots, as one reviewer adeptly punned, Skids, top and above right, and his twin (get this), Mudflap. Their insertion reveals how clearly insulated the white people who work at Paramount and for director Michael Bay appear to be in their racial supremacy. This also shows how out of touch they must be with developing, changing American and world tastes in entertainment. (That, without even getting into what will surely be Afrocentric outrage at key scenes of desecration.)

Let me put it this way: Continue reading →

Harrison Ford is a great actor. But I think whoever re-edited the audio on this brief scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was playing on a certain, say, modularity in some of Mr. Ford’s performances.

You know those lists of bad predictions from the 1800s and early 1900s, where people who should have known better say stuff like, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” (Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943), or “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” (H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927)?

Well, add Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, Chris Marangi at Gabelli & Company, and Doug Creutz of Cowen and Company to that esteemed company. Don’t know their names? You better learn ’em while these guys still have jobs: They’re the analysts from that now notorious NY Times article, back in April, “Pixar’s Art Leaves Profit Watchers Edgy,” who predicted doom for Pixar Animation Studio’s 10th feature, Up:

Richard Greenfield of Pali Research downgraded Disney shares to sell last month, citing a poor outlook for “Up” as a reason. “We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character,” he wrote, adding a complaint about the lack of a female lead.

Mr. Greenfield is alone in his vociferousness, but not in his opinion.

“People seem to be concerned about this one,” said Chris Marangi, who follows Disney at Gabelli & Company. Doug Creutz of Cowen and Company said qualms ran deeper than whether “Up” will be a hit — he thinks it will — but rather whether Pixar can deliver the kind of megahit it once did.

“The worries keep coming despite Pixar’s track record, because each film it delivers seems to be less commercial than the last,” Mr. Creutz said.

Big freaking yawn. Of course, now, Disney-Pixar can pun, “Up yours!” since, to the surprise of none who’ve seen it, Variety reported yesterday that

After less than a month at the multiplexes, Disney-Pixar’s 3-D toon “Up” has enough lift to likely become the second-highest-grossing Pixar title at the domestic B.O. after “Finding Nemo.”

Through Sunday, “Up’s” domestic total was $187.4 million — the second best of any summer film to date. Par’s “Star Trek” has cumed $231.9 million. …

At the rate it’s going, “Up” will soon surpass the $206.4 million grossed by Pixar’s “Ratatouille” in summer 2007, and the $223.8 million grossed domestically by Pixar’s “Wall-E” last summer.

“Finding Nemo,” released in 2003, cumed $339.7 million domestically. Next-best Pixar grosser is “The Incredibles” at $261.4 million.

Based on its performance, box office observers now believe “Up” has every chance of surpassing “Incredibles.”

That quote in our hed, “Quality is the best business plan,” is attributed in the Times piece to John Lasseter, right, one of Pixar’s co-founders, and chief creative officer at Disney, post the Mouse’s $7.4B purchase of the famed computer animation company in 2006. It speaks to the focus on making compelling films via captivating stories that has always marked the Pixar way.

Even Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, seems to be learning how Luxo rolls: “A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure.”

Or, as Up‘s cranky protagonist, Carl Fredericksen, would say to those analysts,

Continue reading →

Saw Star Trek, above, last night. Twice. Needless to say, it completely and totally rocks. Don’t wait for the DVD: This is a theater must-see.

One detail, though: The IMAX format is growing in popularity, but not all the IMAX theaters are those massive five-story ones, like at the Air & Space Museum, in Washington D.C., or at Lincoln Center, here, in NYC.

For example, the one where I saw the movie, at AMC 25 on 42nd St, charges $17.50 for a single, precious IMAX ticket, but the screen is basically the same size as pretty much any of the 25’s big screens. The film was digitally-projected, and the sound was enormous, but if you’re looking for that monster IMAX screen, go elsewhere.

But Star Trek, man: I think the coolest aspect of it, and the reason that the movie, in 10 days, has grossed nearly $150 million domestic—besides those $17.50 tickets—is that producer/director J.J. Abrams truly found the correct way to reboot the series. He brings it up to date, but in a way that draws in people who don’t care about Trek, as well as those who care about nothing else.

This being the movie biz, Abrams’ job was to, especially, cater to the former, which he does courtesy of a good-looking, enthusiastic cast, especially Chris Pine, as Capt. James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto (Heroes) as Mr. Spock, Zöe Saldana as Lt. Uhura, and Eric Bana as the villainous Nero..

Meanwhile, for those of us who care passionately about such issues as, for example, what a starship sounds like when it goes to warp, the movie is nothing if not a revelation. In-jokes abound, and even in serious moments, of which there are many, the director nods to people who, say, know why, on a critical mission, Kirk and Sulu (John Cho) don’t get the red flightsuit.

Without question, Star Trek is going to be the movie to beat this summer. In fact, when the flick is over, the first thing one asks themself is, “When’s the next one?”

Here’s another question: I can think of at least one other much-beloved  sci-fi series whose name starts with the word Star, and which desperately needs a remix.

J.J. Abrams: You available?