Posted on October 31, 2009 by Darren
It’s been a busy October – perhaps too busy. I’ll be taking a step abck from blogging a bit in november (a few posts a week, certainly not anywhere near two-a-day), just with reather hectic stuff going on in the world around me.
Anyway, it was a quite a fun month – who doesn’t like Halloween? We had our own runup to Halloween with Screen Scare Week, which was a selection of random scary movie related articles, which were fun and are well worth a look.
Outside of that we looked at a variety of movie related phenomena, from the protest by the director of The Godfather III that cinema was being ruined by continuing failed attempts to replicate past successes and I wondered what it takes to force someone to turn off a movie.
I wondered if Anton Chigurh (yes, the guy from No Country for Old Men) was in fact an angel (it’s not as crazy as it sounds). And Up got me thinking about how Hollywood treats its elderly.
I wondered about the “twitter effect”, whether I should read the novels upon which films are based before reviewing them and I vented a bit on my dislike of reality television. I also wrote a bit about the new blogger guidelines stateside.
It was a fairly solid month around here.
Filed under: Months in Review | Tagged: Months in Review, october | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 30, 2009 by Darren
There’s been a lot of buzz generated about the new “shared universe” that Marvel is generating on-screen in the run up to The Avengers, being released in 2012. It has generated fantastic buzz and discussion given there are only really two scenes that have been screened suggesting how the the format might work: the presence of Samuel L. Jackson at the end of Iron Man, welcoming Tony Stark into a wider “universe” and the one-scene appearance of Robert Downey Jnr. at the end of The Incredible Hulk. Undoubtedly next year’s Iron Man 2 will feature even more treats (as will Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger), but it’s interesting to see the fuss that two tiny scenes have generated. I really do think that Marvel are on to box office gold here, and I also think it’s an interesting (and honest) attempt to transfer the medium of comics to film. However, these are all playing into one giant box office buster. Might it be worth taking the same concept and applying it to some of Marvel’s smaller screen franchises?
Fighting over top billing...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: captain america, crossover, crossovers, daredevil, film, films, iron man, marvel, marvel comics, Movies, punisher, the avengers, the punisher, thor | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 30, 2009 by Darren
If there was one horror movie that was the centre of much focus and discussion this autumn, it was probably Paranormal Activity. If there was another one, it was Jennifer’s Body. Written by the Oscar-nominated writer of Juno and starring ‘it’ girl of the moment Megan Fox, the movie sparked a whole host of interesting debates from its initial conception through to its underwhelming box office debut. The centre concept was an intriguing gender reversal on the traditional slasher movie dynamic: a college girl randomly murders promiscuous boys. That, and the fact that she is a demon. So, is the movie a feminist slasher flick, and does that go someway towards explaining its somewhat poor box office figures?
Do you want to see more of Jennifer's Body?
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: diablo cody, feminist, femism, horror, jennifers body, megan fox, Movies, screen scare week, slasher | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 29, 2009 by Darren
There is an interesting article in The Guardian written by Samantha Morton, which lauds Nicole Kidman’s decision to announce that Hollywood treats women as sex objects and Matt Damon’s announcement that he won’t do excessively violent films. They are both valid points for discussion, but I’m never quite sure what to make of it when an artist makes a public anouncement like that, clearly politicising their work. Anyone who neede Nicole Kidman to tell them that Hollywood treats women as objects obviously hasn’t been paying attention to any film released ever, and I doubt anyone will be particularly surprised to here Matt Damon won’t turn up as a lead in Saw. That’s not to diminish their observation, but part of me is always uncomfortable abou the increasing politicalisation of actors and celebrities in our culture.
Not kidding around...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: actors, discussion, film, Movies, nicole kidman, role models, samantha morton, sex objects, sexism, the guardian, violence, Why Nicole Kidman was brave to speak out | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 29, 2009 by Darren
This is probably on a shortlist for the best Batman story of all time, alongside Frank Miller’s other definitive work on the character, The Dark Knight Returns. Whereas Millar focused on the eventual end of the character’s crusade against crime, here he focuses on the origin of the character. Expanding from the one-page origin which accompanied Batman #1, Miller brings his keen eye to Batman’s psychology, but also the world in which Batman functions. This isn’t the gothic construction of Tim Burton, but a grimy urban cesspool like Christopher Nolan’s. In the world that Miller carves out for the hero, he greatest opponents aren’t the disfigured freaks who would become his adversaries, but the architecture of greed and corruption that defines Gotham.
Imagine if it had been a seagull that crashed through his window that fateful night...
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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman begins, batman: year one, comic books, dc comics, frank miller, review, year one | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 29, 2009 by Darren
Horror films are scary. And scary isn’t an emotion we’re intended to experience regularly. It’s evolutionary purpose is to tell us that something really bad is going down right now and we really need to cop ourselves on in order to deal with it. It’s meant to make our adrenaline flow, and our hair stand up – it’s meant to keep us on the edge and stop us feeling comfortable. So, why do we take such great joy in experiencing that abstract terror, the suspense and the horror of scary movies? Surely it’s contrary to our evolutionary logic, right?
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: emotions, fear, horror, horror films, movie genres, psychology, scared, screen scare week | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 28, 2009 by Darren
Well, at least it’s an action movie that acknowledges its pointlessness. It isn’t a spoiler to point out that – since Wolverine doesn’t remember his origin in X-Men and has to reminded in X-Men II – none of the events here have any real importance to the character development of the Canadian superhero. The audience knows buying a ticket that anything he learns will be erased and lost and that the film itself is just an explosion-filled flashback which, even if had something worth saying, would be pointless anyway. That said, it does deliver somewhat convincing action sequences and two very good leading performances.
The other man of steel...
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: danny hueston, Deadpool, gavin hood, liev schreiber, Movies, non-review review, review, ryan reynolds, wolverine, x-men, X-Men Origins, X-Men Origins: Wolverine | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 28, 2009 by Darren
Seriously. John Carpenter pretty much invented the genre back in the 1970s, and it has been with us ever since. But why do we get so many really terrible variations on people doing bad and gruesome things to other people year-in and year-out. You’d magine that every possible object that exists for a killer to hide behind has been hidden behind and every possible note that could be reached by a high-pitched scream has been reached by a high-pitched scream. And yet here they are, again and again and again. What’s the dealio?
I'm not even sure he's the scariest Myers around...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: films, halloween, horror, horror genre, jason, michael myers, Movies, slasher, slasher films | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 27, 2009 by Darren
The three biggest children’s films under discussion at the moment are Pixar’s Up, Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are. These three films have generated a debate about who exactly family entertainment should be aimed at, and whether are not there are themes (rather than content) which should be taboo for films that would appear to be aimed at children. More importantly, these three films have sparked a flurry of complaints or criticisms from adults who claim they are far too mature for younger audiences. So, are we really only making these films for big kids?
Watch out, here comes the Politically-Correct-allo!
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: children, children's films, cinema, films, maturity, Movies, parents, pixar, scary, the fantastic mister fox, the fantastic mr. fox, themes, up, where the wild things are | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 27, 2009 by Darren
Just when you think there isn’t an original concept left in comic book storytelling, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka come up this ingenious concept: what is it like to police a comic book city – and the one populated with the same sorts of loons which give Batman a headache? Brubaker and Rucka construct a truly surprisingly awesome noir police procedure that takes a gutter’s-eye view of one of the darkest cities ever to appear in comic books. It manages to combine the two aspects brilliantly, simultaneously bringing a fresh perspective to both the Batman mythos and the police procedural.
The joke's on Gotham...
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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, comic books, dc comics, ed brubaker, gotham, gotham central, gotham city, greg rucka, half a life, in the line of duty, motive, review, soft targets, unresolved | Leave a comment »
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