So Erik-with-a-k covered the coming comedies of 2009, Scott was all over the horror picks (though his inclusion of Race to Witch Mountain still boggles my mind), Eric-with-a-c nabbed the family-friendly fare, and Elisabeth went over the geek fodder that awaits. But while I respect their calendar years and made-up math alike, I've opted to divide my list of 2009's action and adventure flicks into four categories: Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About, Action Flicks I Couldn't Care Less About, Action Flicks That I Hope Surprise Me, and Those Which Fell In Between. Enjoy!
Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About: First and foremost -- Watchmen (March 6th). It's one hell of a graphic novel and looks to be one hell of an adaptation (with or without the Giant Blank), and come Fox or high water, it'll see the light of day soon enough. Then there's Public Enemies (July 1st), which has me sold on not the subject matter, but sheer pedigree: Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp and Christian Bale as '30s gangsters. (It doesn't hurt that the earliest word ranges from damn good to great.) On the skimpier side, I can only hope that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17th) streamlines its source material as the previous one had, and I can only hope that Crank 2: High Voltage (April 17th) lives up/down to the depravity of its predecessor. There's one last action movie that I couldn't care more about because, well, I've already seen a version of it. The international cut of Taken (January 30th, though reportedly opening with some R-dodging trims) is about as brisk and butt-kicking as one might hope out of a man-on-a-mission kidnapping thriller, and if you disagree, I'll send Liam Neeson to change your mind.
When we were kicking around ideas for year-end superlative Cinematical Sevens, I was proudly tasked with chronicling the year's finest in big-screen mayhem, violence, destruction and other such shenanigans. When I was kicking around ideas for said feature between me, myself, and I, there were too many titles to leave off the list, so instead of highlighting only a mere couple of movies, I've opted to sort these puppies out by specific manner of cinematic excess.
So there.
1.Most pervasive destruction - The Joker may have terrorized Gotham to the tune of a destroyed hospital, a wrecked helicopter, a sunken SWAT truck, a toasty fire engine, and a golden district attorney, but even he can't top the Cloverfield monster's swath of destruction across the real-life Gotham. Statue of Liberty? Gone. Brooklyn Bridge? History. Central Park? Adios. And that's not including all the Hollister stores that our protagonists might've fled to. (On a smaller scale, though, Inside's lady in black terrorizes a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve to the point of all but painting every last wall in her house with the blood of her victims. Gotta love the French!)
I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button weeks ago, and yet every time I tried to think about it -- whether it was to contemplate a decision in David Fincher's direction, a deviation from F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, a moment in Eric Roth's script or a note in the performances of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett -- I would soon find myself, invariably, distracted from the large-scale visions and moments of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and instead contemplating the smaller-scale moments of my own life. This was at best annoying; what did it say about the film that I couldn't hold it in my attention? What did it say about my attention that I couldn't even focus it on a film? But Zen gives us the parable of the master who points to the moon, and the student who looks at the master's finger. Fincher, Roth, Pitt and Blanchett have all, in their way, made a film of true sincerity and (ironically enough in light of its technical achievements) real simplicity; resting your gaze on the film, without directing it onto the things it encourages you to look at, seems like staring at the pointing finger.
Fitzgerald's tale is a brief fantasia, the story of Benjamin Button, a man who, born old, ages backward; at the same time, the slenderest books often become the best films, the lush drapery of moviemaking lending their slight grace weight, the stark simplicity of the plot a place for a director's vision to find purchase and grow. Within moments -- as an old woman lies dying in a modern New Orleans hospital, slate-gray rain battering the windows, her daughter (Julia Ormond) paging through her diaries and scrapbooks as the old woman fades in and out of consciousness, flickering between past memory and present reality -- we know we're not in the world established in Fitzgerald's 1922 short story. The woman's diaries are not just hers, and as the daughter reads, we learn about the birth and exile of Benjamin Button, born old in New Orleans in 1918 just after the Great War. ...
I'm going to try to not blame David Fincher for choosing to work on Chef (a comedy with Keanu Reeves) over the crime flick Ness -- but I'll be real honest with you: it ain't going to be easy. MTV recently spoke with the director, and Fincher finally opened up about the cooking comedy, and provided some tidbits on what he has in store for the flick. Fincher tells MTV that "It's like a celibate sex comedy if that means anything. It's really about the creative process," the filmmaker explained. "It's truly an aromatic art-form, making food. I love that idea. And I love Keanu's passion for that world."
There had been some speculation that Fincher was going to be working on an adaptation of Anthony Bourdain's best-selling memoir Kitchen Confidential, but it looks like Chef will be an original script. Fincher tells MTV, "They decided to go ahead and make 'Kitchen Confidential' as a [television] series. This is an original script that's very funny." There's been speculation that Reeves has been developing this project for some time, and that he might have also written it -- although Michael Kalesniko's name has also been tossed around as the possible writer -- and, as to be expected, the typically secretive Fincher isn't talking.
So even though I consider Fincher a bona fide genius (and hey, I've got nothing against Keanu Reeves), there's just something about Chef that smells a bit funky. It might be the combination of Keanu and comedy, or maybe I just can't see Fincher keeping it light -- and perhaps the idea of a "celibate sex comedy" isn't very ... well, sexy. Hopefully, they're both going to prove me wrong.
Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)
At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.
A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.
So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?
Jack Ryan will live again, if Paramount gets their way. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they've hired Hossein Amini to pen a brand new Jack Ryan picture for the studio.
Amini is best known for his classic literature adaptations like Jude, The Four Feathers, and The Wings of the Dove (for which he was nominated for an Oscar). But he seems to be moving into action films these days, like the upcoming Elmore Leonard adaptation Killshot, and he's currently working on James Sallis' Drive for Hugh Jackman. So, Tom Clancy should be a relative breeze in comparison to Leonard, Sallis, and Thomas Hardy.
However, he won't actually be adapting a Clancy book -- Amini will be penning an origin story that reboots the character into a young man, and puts him at the center of an original story. Paramount is hoping that Ryan can become a new franchise, just like they're aiming for with Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, among others.
But really ... is Jack Ryan really worth franchising? I enjoyed The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games like most of the civilized world, but am hard pressed to name anything very memorable about Ryan. He's not James Bond, with cars, women, and martinis, or Bourne with his amnesia, lethal skills, and boxes of passports. What is he, other than a smart guy who thwarts international plots? I've never read the books, so I could be missing something important. But from what I can see, he just has a cool name, and that translates to a brand these days?
It's only the middle of December, and already I feel like Summer 2009 is just around the corner. It feels like I was bombarded with Terminator: Salvation and X-Men Origin: Wolverine all weekend, and now G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra is coming back into the mix of things with a few new character posters. They're not entirely new, as they first appeared over the summer at a licensing fair, but have been scanned online for the first time thanks to Film.ru. There's four in all -- Duke, Snake Eyes, Baroness, and Ripcord, and all four have been added to the GI Joe gallery below. Unfortunately, they haven't appeared in a big, hi-res version yet.
Paramount might want to reconsider the design since they look just like the Star Trek character posters. You can't have people wandering into Trek, and wondering where the heck Snake Eyes is. G.I. Joe is the All American Hero! Make these screamingly obvious -- red, white, and blue all the way! At least throw in the camoflauge I remember (and probably wrongly) from the packaging. None of this classiness and silver font -- that has to be left for Mission: Impossible installments.
You know, sometimes I just don't understand Hollywood. You have to wonder who's making the decisions at Paramount these days, because David Fincher's Eliot Ness flick has all the makings of a profitable little film for the studio, but the project has been wasting away at Paramount since 2006. So despite having an all-star cast, including Matt Damon as Eliot Ness, Casey Affleck and Rachel McAdams, the production just can't seem to get off the ground. Unfortunately, the bad news just keeps on coming, and Entertainment Weekly reports that time is running out for the film.
News of the flick first hit back in 2006, when it was reported that Fincher was working on an adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis' graphic novel, Torso. Bendis' novel centered on, "a series of brutal murders that took place in the Cleveland area between 1935 and 1938, and were investigated by Ness, who was by then the Public Safety Director of Cleveland." There is still no confirmation on whether Fincher will be using Bendis' novel, but EW reports that Paramount has "...recently received a finalized script from Ehren Kruger (The Ring) and would make a decision before the rights ran out." (By the way, the rights run out on December 15th.)
Having already made my love for her comedic talents quite pronounced, it only heartens me to hear that Anna Faris is up for more antics in the genre. Her next two projects, according to the Hollywood Reporter, are an untitled pitch involving the House Bunny team in which "two estranged sisters team up to land a husband" and something called 20 Times a Lady, based on Karyn Bosnak's novel, in which her protagonist goes through all her past sexual conquests out of hopes of finding Mr. Right among their number.
Okay, so they both sound like somewhat gimmicky rom-com fodder that Kate Hudson probably passed on at some point, but if anyone has proven themselves capable of working wonders with next to nothing, I remain convinced it's this here comedienne. By IMDb's count, Faris has at least four other comedies due out next year (none of which, thankfully, are Scary Movie 5), and hey, if it ain't broke...
The first teaser trailer looked promising enough, and the mildly (un)pleasant surprises continue with the brand-new full trailer for Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th remake. Opening on February (Friday) 13th, this re-do jimmies with the original trilogy and aims to tread at least a little new ground in the story department. Instead of a bunch of clueless counselors who are preparing a camp for the upcoming summer, this new-fangled version will focus on a guy who's missing for his missing sister, only to come across a bunch of (soon-to-be-dead) partiers while searching around ol' Camp Crystal Lake.
Hey, it's not like the original flick was densely plotted, ok?
So the purist in me wants to sneer derisively and the 14-year-old horror nerd in me wants to say "Woohoo, bring it on!" -- so let's just call it a draw and keep our fingers crossed for the next few months. Plus, detest me if you will, but I happen to quite like Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. So there. As far as the trailer goes, I think they give away a few too many of the jolts, but then again, most people won't watch this trailer four times in fifteen minutes. Like I did.
I think last week was one of the most passionate ones I've seen in my months of Geek Beatdom. We had competing frenzies, for one, as Twilightand Star Trekbattled for news supremacy all across the Internet. It was fandom at its most defining. If aliens came down tomorrow and said "What is this fandom of which you speak?" and I only had ten minutes to explain it before they blew up the Earth, I'd just pull up our archives for the week of November 17th, 2008.
First, I have to say ... way to go, Trek fans. Society has labeled Trekkers/Trekkies the worst and weirdest of the lot. From my own experience, that's never been true. I hope the critics were watching the reaction to Trek because honestly, I saw a lot of intelligent and rational discussion on both sides of the fence. I've written a lot of stories on a lot of geeky topics, I expect to be flamed about 99% of the time, and my Trek guide was one that saw me bracing myself as I handed it over to our editors. I hadn't slept the three days prior to writing it, so I'm surprised it was coherent at all – but I was even more surprised by the pleasant reaction it garnered. (It was a stark contrast to a Twilight piece I did for our Moviefone friends. Yikes.)
For all the passion flying around Trek, I find myself in the rare position of having no opinion whatsoever. It doesn't thrill me, but it doesn't bore me, and I had so little expectation that it didn't disappoint me. In theory, I liked the idea of rebooting Trek, but it's a different thing altogether to see it in action. It doesn't feel right – and that has nothing to do with J.J. Abrams and the Enterprise crew he's assembled. I'm just not sure it should have been done at all.
With Thanksgiving coming up, I thought I'd revisit Planes, Trains & Automobiles, one of the few movies directly connected to that holiday and a delightful comedy classic in its own right. It had been several years since I'd watched it, and I assumed that in the meantime it had been released on some kind of special edition DVD. Last year was its 20th anniversary, in fact -- a fine time to put out a handsome disc with lots of extras.
Or so you'd think! As it turns out, Planes, Trains & Automobiles has only legitimately been released on DVD once, way back in 2000, with a poor video transfer and no extras whatsoever. Not even a trailer. Not even the extra scenes that are commonly included when the film airs on television. Deepening this wound is the fact that, as severalreviewersnoted at the time, Paramount's announcement of the DVD had promised it would have deleted scenes. Why the studio changed its mind at the last minute no one knows, but it sure disappointed people in 2000 who had been looking forward to the DVD.
The film was released again this summer as part of VH1's "I Love the '80s" series, but it still didn't have any extras and was essentially a rip-off in new packaging. The only bonus was the incorporation of one additional scene, of Neal and Del eating food on the airplane, that's often shown in the TV version. That's hardly a good enough reason to re-buy the disc, though.
Why is there no special edition of this movie? It's a perennial favorite. It is beloved. It is oft-quoted ("Those aren't pillows!"). It frequently appears on polls of movie fans' favorite comedies. Its very title has become shorthand for any trip punctuated by mishaps and setbacks, as in, "Our vacation to Mexico was a disaster -- it was a total Planes, Trains & Automobiles situation." You would buy it, right?
So before anyone accuses me of pandering to celebrity by putting a picture of Brad Pitt on this news item, I want you to know that I tried to find a picture that was a little more 'newsworthy', but caved when I came up with nothing. So, it's Pitt you get. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Pitt's production company, Plan B, have purchased the rights to the true life tale of local journalist Linda Trest, and her take-down of a conman posing as a federal agent in Gerald, Missouri.
Anthony Walton and Andrew Dresher have already been tapped to write the story of a small town journalist by the name of Linda Trest who had been receiving complaints about drug searches that had been conducted by Bill A. Jakob (a new-to-town federal agent who had supposedly been sent to handle the town's Methamphetamine problem). After conducting her own investigation, Trest uncovered that Jakob was an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding minister and a former small-town cop -- one thing he wasn't was a federal agent. Jakob eventually pleaded guilty to impersonating an officer, and is facing six years in prison.
Plan B has been snatching up new properties left and right lately, including Eat, Pray, Love, with Ryan Murphy directing, The Killer and Black Hole with David Fincher, and the just-announcedBattling Boy. Like with most Plan B projects, rumors are already brewing over whether or not Pitt will star (presumably as Jakob). But as we all know, Pitt has the bad habit of dropping out of movies even after signing on the dotted line, so we'll have to wait and see.
(Note: This evening, Cinematical screened a whole bunch of footage from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek in New York City. We'll have a breakdown of scenes screened, our thoughts and some words from Abrams himself real soon. In the meantime, here's a little Trek guide for you newbies out there.)
By now, you've probably seen the leaked trailer for J.J. Abrams' reinvention of Star Trek. Hopefully, as you're reading this, you will probably have seen a shiny official version. This is supposed to be Trek for a new generation, a movie that reintroduces the original characters of Kirk and Spock to people who have only seen Trek through watered down sequels and spin-offs. As impossible as it seems, there are people who find all things Trek a mystery -- and when our beloved editor, Erik Davis, asked me to put together a guide, I found myself in a bit of a panic. I began asking my Trekkie friends what they would tell a newbie -- and since we all arrived at roughly these same ten facts, I feel less silly sharing them. If you're new to the final frontier, read on. If you've been wearing your Spock ears since preschool, just go watch the trailer again.
Fact #1:Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry modeled the show on Gulliver's Travels, wanting each episode to be both an exciting adventure and a social parable. The show tackled all kinds of 60s social issues -- feminism, racism, ecology, religion, the Cold War, and Vietnam. Perhaps the biggest hurdle facing Abrams' film is whether or not it can attain that same level of social awareness. Will the new Trek film make a commentary on anything, or will it be nothing but empty action in the name of rebooting?
In the wake of White Chicks and Little Man, the Wayans Brothers return to grace the world with the presence of next February's Dance Flick, which lampoons last February's Step Up 2: The Streets, not to mention Save the Last Dance, You Got Served, How She Move, maybe Center Stage, possibly Robert Altman's The Company, and probably plenty of stuff that isn't related to actual dance flicks.
Having watched the initial Scary Movie last week for the first time since my formative teen years, their spoof efforts there still aren't on par with SM3 (which they didn't do), but remain above SM2 (which they did do). In short: humor that's dated and crude is right up their alley (I'm frankly impressed they remembered to work Flashdance in), and besides, you saw that break-dancing newborn, right? Call up Calista Flockhart, and count me out already.
Starring the usually amusing Amy Sedaris and the often less so Wayans clan, Dance Flick serves the last laugh to the streets on February 6, 2009.
So Erik-with-a-k covered the coming comedies of 2009, Scott was all over the horror picks (though his inclusion of Race to Witch Mountain still boggles my mind), Eric-with-a-c nabbed the family-friendly fare, and Elisabeth went over the geek fodder that awaits. But while I respect their calendar years and made-up math alike, I've opted to divide my list of 2009's action and adventure flicks into four categories: Action Flicks I Couldn't Care More About, Action Flicks I Couldn't Care Less About, Action Flicks That I Hope Surprise Me, and Those Which Fell In Between. Enjoy!
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