July | 2009 | the m0vie blog

“It must be hard to love political correctness…”

Posted on July 7, 2009 by Darren

There’s nothing like a little bit of political correctness gone crazy to get the blood flowing. I’m amazed it’s taken me this long to find a story that piqued my interest enough that I would cover it. Ask and you shall receive and all that. Last week’s hubbub over the trailer for Warner Brothers’ film Orphan is exactly what irritates me about our current PC-focused state of mind. For those who don’t know, Orphan sees an adopted little girl proceeding to wreak havoc on a small suburban family. The trailer was released last week and prompted a huge outcry from various interest groups for including the line, “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own.” Because apparently every line spoken in movies must be the unadulterated truth, right? No characters would ever make a subjective statement about their own incorrect world view, would they?

Creepy children never go out of fashion...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adoption, age restrictions, censorship, complaints, controversy, film classification, film ratings, films, interest groups, Movies, orphan, orphan movie, pc, political correctness, R, restricted, Warner Brothers, world gone mad | 1 Comment »

An Experiment in Terror…

Posted on July 7, 2009 by Darren

This could go really well, or really badly. On one hand, I’m all about horror films that aren’t about psycho killers stalking and slashing scantily clad teenage girls. On the other hand, it takes a lot of restraint to do psychological horror well. Either way, the Stanford Prison Experiment looks set to terrify more than just first year psychology students, with the similarly-themed The Experiment in the works.

Would you let this guy lock you up for a psychological experiment?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Abu Ghraib, adrian brody, das experiment, elijah wood, films, forest whitaker, horror, Movies, philip zimbardo, psychological experiment, psychological thriller, psychology, stanford, stanford prison expiremnt, the experiment, true stories, zimbardo | Leave a comment »

A Man’s Mann…

Posted on July 6, 2009 by Darren

I have to confess I was not overly impressed with Public Enemies. In fairness, it was mostly down to the choices Mann made in filming the work – the high definition cameras and the insistence on shakey hand held movement. You might argue that it was a choice designed to place us in the real world of the Great Depression – to put us on the streets with Dillinger and immerse us in his world rather than the sanitised grandiose version of the 1930’s that typically finds its way on to our screens. This ignores one fundamental fact about Mann’s film making: it is no less grandiose or fantastic than those myths of times past. Mann is a film maker who works best exploring the dynamics of a masculine ideal that never existed. His male characters are drawn in the mold of a classic image that never actually existed.

I'll bet Pacino ordered the Large Ham. Overdone. VERY LOUDLY!

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Filed under: Movies, Television | Tagged: action movies, ali, collateral, director, film, guns, heat, john dillinger, male, masculine, masculinity, men, michael mann, modern man, Movies, public enemies, themes, violence | Leave a comment »

No More Animated Patrick Troughton? It’s a War Crime!

Posted on July 6, 2009 by Darren

The War Games, the final Doctor Who serial featuring Patrick Troughton, materialises on DVD today. I haven’t seen it (I’ll probably pick it up from HMV today if the price is right), but reviews seem to state it’s one of the show’s few ten-parters that doesn’t feel padded… well as padded. Anyway, I’m a big fan of Troughton’s Doctor (whose one-adjective-summation would be “loveable” – in the same way that Tom Baker’s would be “dramatic” or Eccleston’s would be “human” or Hartnell’s would be “bratty” and so on), but we’re nearing the end of Troughton serials available for release. Which is a damned shame. Is animation the next step forward?

The "Reanimated" Cybermen...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: animated dotor who, animation, bbc, black and white, british television, classic, cosgrove hall, david tennant, doctor who, dvds, patrick troughton, second doctor, serials, Television, the invasion, the war games, troughton | Leave a comment »

Next Stop: Movies

Posted on July 5, 2009 by Darren

Kudos to the good people over at Vodkaster. They’ve put together the Top 250 Movies of All Time (as of 19th June 2009) in the style of a metro/subway map. It really is a fantastic acheivement, though I’d disagree with some of their classifications. Click here, or the photo, for more.

Should I make a pun about "underground classics"?

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: best movies, city plan, favourite movies, film, great movies, imdb, map, metro, subway | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Public Enemies

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Darren

I want to love this film. I really do. I enjoyed Miami Vice, so devoted am I to the cult of Mann and his study of the modern man lost in the world of violence and suffering. And Public Enemies has a lot going for it, it does. A fantastic cast, a better-than-fantastic lead, a solid script. On the other hand, the film is, technically speaking, a mess. And not the good kind of mess.

Don't get Christian Bale angry... He won't like you when he's angry...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: billy crudup, christian bale, crime, fbi, film, high definition, history, j edgar hoover, john dillinger, johnny depp, michael mann, Movies, non-review review, public enemies, public enemy number one, review | 11 Comments »

A Unique Acting Job

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Darren

Found this on-line over at The Cinematical. It’s a… unique acting job.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: acting, actors, advertisement, bad dad, dogs, job, kidnapping, kids, lying, worst dad ever | 1 Comment »

‘Roid Rage: Univeral Presents Asteroids – The Movie

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Darren

An Asteroids movie is coming. Yes, it’s like all your 1980’s Christmases are coming at once. The Atari classic about a two-dimensional triangle which blasts two-dimensional representations of asteroids is getting the deluxe movie treatment. And we’re as excited as anyone else! Which is not very excited at all. I would love to have been at that pitch meeting.

“So, what’s the plot about?”
“A two-dimensional triangle which blasts two-dimensional representations of asteroids.”
“Oh…”
“And in some modern versions, the triangle is different colours.”
“Sold!”

I wish I were making this up...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: asteroids, asteroids game, asteroids movie, films, matthew lopez, minesweeper, Movies, super mario brothers, universal studios, videogame adaptations, videogame movies | 1 Comment »

Natural Born Predators…

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Darren

I have to admit, I’m a little excited about Predators. It seems that I’m really more excited about next year’s cinematic treats – Green Lantern, Predators, Inception, even Iron Man 2 – than I am about what lies ahead for this year, well outside this month’s releases. Avatar is going to be groundbreakingly jaw dropping, but it’s not really interesting to think about it. It’s boringly amazing, if that is possible. Predators, on the other hand, is great fun to speculate about. Sure, it’s a rake of horror monsters from the past few decades being revitalised – like Freddie Kruger who has a three-picture deal and the Weinstein Company returning to its roots with a remake of An American Werewolf in London – but Predators is the only one of the remakes of more modern schlock that seems to have a chance of not sucking. I love Jackie Earle Haley, but even I can tell that a Nightmare on Elm Street reboot is a bad idea. I’m sure he could prove me wrong on that count, but I’m not expecting to him to. And I think that quirky genre-bending flicks are hard to emulate the second-time around, so I’m nervouse about remaking Landis’ low budget classic. So, Predators is the most hopeful of the bunch.

The thing's got dreadlocks... geddit? Dread... locks... no?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 2010 releases, action movies, aliens, blockbusters, films, Fox, Movies, Neil Marshall, Nimrod Antal, predator, predators, robert rodriguez | 2 Comments »

The Future of Home Entertainment?

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Darren

Blu Ray isn’t working quite the magic for home entertainment media that it should. The DVD market share is still falling and Blu Ray can’t seem to rise fast enough to catch it. There’s a lot of talk about whether hard copy media – actually owning a piece of hardware containing the movie – is outdated and the future of media consumption lies in direct downloads, but I don’t ever think that people will stop buying disks or videos or whatever the hard-copy medium of the day is.