Darren

Watch! Marvin the Martian in “Yule Be Sorry”

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Darren

This was apparently posted two months ago, but I’m only seeing it now. Plus, you know, it’s Christmas themed.

Director Alex Zamm uploaded test footage for a Marvin the Martian film, and you can see the clip below. Blending CGI versions of classic cartoon characters and live action is always a risky venture (given that it produces things like Alvin & The Chipmunks and The Smurfs), and I’ll concede that I am a little wary of the child actor (and character) in the below short. I’m not sure I’d rush out to see a movie featuring “Marvin the Martian and a kid.” However, I also have a fondness for Marvin the Martian as a character and it’s great to see the little guy up and about in some form or another. He doesn’t need a sidekick kid. Or to be reduced to the sidekick of a kid.

Still, the test footage isn’t about the script, although his characterisation is quite decent. It’s about the ability to render the character in the real world, and I think Marvin looks fantastic. Then again, I’ve always loved his design. All the movie would need would be the right script, as unlikely as that would seem to be. The fact that Zamm felt comfortable sharing this means the project is probably dead. While I’m not sure I’d love to see this short extended to a feature-length film, it would be great to see Marvin on the big screen and the short demonstrates that we have the technology.

Warner Brothers seem to have stopped producing those new Looney Tunes shorts that we saw last year, and it’s a bit of a shame – while the CGI might take some getting used to, it was great to have those characters back in some shape or form. Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think. I can’t seem to embed it, so click the picture below of the link here.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Alex Zamm, alvin & the chipmunks, christmas, Computer-generated imagery, looney tunes, Marvin, Marvin the Martian, smurfs, Warner Bros | Leave a comment »

My 12 for ’12: The Cabin in the Woods & The Virtues of Constructive Criticism

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Darren

I’m counting down my top twelve films of the year between now and January, starting at #12 and heading to #1. I expect the list to be a little bit predictable, a little bit surprising, a little bit of everything. All films released in the UK and Ireland in 2012 qualify. Sound off below, and let me know if I’m on the money, or if I’m completely off the radar. And let me know your own picks or recommendations.

This is #4…

The horror movie has always been a bit of an ugly stepchild when it comes to film genres. It seems, for instance, that horror movies (and directors) have to wait longer to receive recognition for the work that they’ve done. The Shining, for example, earned several Razzy nominations in the year of release, but is now regarded as one of many classics within Kubrick’s oeuvre. There are lots of reasons that the horror genre is easy enough to dismiss or ignore.

You could argue that there’s something so basic about fear that it isn’t considered as much of an artistic accomplishment to scare the audience. There are legitimate arguments to be made about the sexist connotations of various horror films. Perhaps more than any other genre, successes within the horror genre have a tendency to lead to self-cannibalisation – sequels, remakes, knock-offs – that dilute and erode any credibility that the original film had earned. The innovation of Paranormal Activity is harder to recognise after half-a-decade of found-footage imitations. The cleverness of the original Saw becomes harder to distinguish amongst a crowd of “torture porn” wannabes.

All of these are very legitimate criticisms to make about the nature of the genre as a whole, and perhaps they speak to why films within that niche are so easily dismissed. I will aggressively argue that several horror films are among the most important films ever made, but I will also concede that there is (as with everything) a lot of trash out there, and a lot of things we need to talk about. Cabin in the Woods feels like a genuine attempt to have that sort of conversation, and to raise those questions. More than that, though, it comes from a place of obvious affection for the genre and all that it represents. This isn’t a stern lecture about the inherent inferiority of a particular type of film, but constructive criticism from a bunch of people who care deeply about the genre as a whole.

Continue reading →

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: art, arts, British Isles, Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard, film, games, horror, Horror fiction, Horror film, Ireland, January, joss whedon, kubrick, Lykke Li, martin mcdonagh, Michael Haneke, Movie, paranormal activity, shining, stanley kubrick, United States, Woods | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Where Silence Has Lease (Review)

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also next year’s release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, I’m taking a look at the recent blu ray release of the first season (and a tiny bit of the second), episode-by-episode. Check back daily for the latest review.

If we ignore The Child as an aberration, a recycled script necessitated by the Writers’ Guild of America Strike of 1988, Where Silence Has Lease actually makes for a much stronger starting point for the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We’re not quite at the point where we’re getting consistently good episodes on a weekly basis, but episodes like Where Silence Has Lease and the following Elementary, Dear Data demonstrating that the show was at least learning what worked and what didn’t in the bets of the first season episodes.

In particular, Where Silence Has Lease allows the show to tell a straight-up science-fiction exploration story that provides commentary on the human condition, but in a manner that isn’t as clumsy as first-season efforts like Lonely Among Us. It’s not a classic episode, but it’s a solid one. However, a solid episode of the second season can stand alongside the best episodes of the first season, demonstrating that the show is making significant progress towards the consistent quality it would eventually maintain.

Into the void…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: jean-luc picard, Klingon, Michael Westmore, Next Generation, picard, Riker, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Starfleet Academy, StarTrek, Where Silence Has Lease, William Riker, Worf | 6 Comments »

Immatürity for Charity, Tonight, 9.30pm, RTÉ 2

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Darren

Christmas is often the time to indulge your inner child, so Immatürity for Charity seems perfectly suited for a post-holiday comedic treat. I had the pleasure of checking out a preview of it last week, and it is deliciously juvenile. It is, as the title suggests, a decidedly low-brow comedy sketch show, the kind of thing that could easily grate if it weren’t handled with the right amount of skill and enthusiasm. Luckily, writer (and star) Domhnall Glesson and director John Butler have done an outstanding job. Not all the sketches included are absolutely pitch-perfect, but the beauty of sketch comedy is that if you don’t like what you’re watching, well… another will be along shortly.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Amy Huberman, Anna Karenina, arts, brendan gleeson, christmas, Clubs and Venues, comedy, David Wilmot, Dredd, Holidays, Hugh O'Conor, John Butler, Performing Arts, Sketch comedy | 2 Comments »

12 Movie Moments of 2012: Dancing (Monsieur Lahzar)

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Darren

As well as counting down the top twelve films, I’m also going to count down my top twelve movie related “moments” of 2012. The term “moment” is elastic, so expect some crazy nonsense here. And, as usual, I accept that my taste is completely absurd, so I fully expect you to disagree. With that in mind, this is #5…

Sometimes it’s the simplest moments that stick in the memory. Monsieur Lahzar was a superb little French-Canadian film that went under the radar last year. It’s a film that I really recommend. Comedian Mohamed Fellag gives a wonderfully moving central performance as a replacement teacher helping his class deal with the suicide of his predecessor. The eponymous Lahzar is so buttoned down that it’s oddly affecting to watch him interact with the children, but it’s the smaller private moments that allow Fellag to really craft and define his character.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: art, avengers, Cinema of Canada, Dark Knight Rises, Fellag, film, Filmmaking, france, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Looper, Movie, New York City, ParaNorman, We Built This City | Leave a comment »

My 12 for ’12: Prometheus, Faith, Treachery & The Great Beyond…

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Darren

This is #5…

In the year 7510,
If God’s a-comin’, he ought to make it by then.
Maybe he’ll look around himself and say,
“Guess it’s time for the Judgement Day.”

In the year 8510,
God’s gonna shake his mighty head.
He’ll either say “I’m pleased where man has been”,
Or tear it down and start again.

-Zager and Evans, In The Year 2525

Faith is a funny thing. If you don’t have it, it’s impossible to explain. If you do have it, it needs no explanation. Ridley Scott’s Prometheus feels a little bit ham-strung by the “Alien DNA” that it carries. As a prequel to the iconic film series, it’s hardly the most successful endeavour. Indeed, the film’s references to everybody’s favourite chest-bursting extra-terrestrial feel almost forced. Like the discussion about the Scientology influence on The Master, focusing on the instantly recognisable xenomorph tends to obscure the unique strengths of Prometheus as its own film.

Interestingly, the strongest connection to Alien is thematic rather than literal. Like Ridley Scott’s first science-fiction masterpiece, Prometheus postulates a cold and uncaring universe, one that is inherently alien, incomprehensible and hostile. The human condition causes us to question, but Prometheus suggests that there can be no answers – no satisfactory answers at least.

Continue reading →

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: alien, Alien (film), Alien DNA, arts, British Isles, christianity, damon lindelof, DNA, god, Ireland, Jon Spaihts, Lykke Li, Movie, Prometheus, ridley scott, Scientology, Shaw | 8 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Child (Review)

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Darren

Let’s play make believe for a second here. Let’s imagine you are producing a television show that had a very rocky first season, but seemed to be making steps in the right direction. This was a show already respected for its depiction of social issues like racism or drug use…

However, despite that, the first year of the show had some major gender issues. Your writers and actors had been pointing out that some of the episodes in that first year could be considered sexist. Of the three actresses in you regular cast, two left. One became the first regular on a Star Trek show to die in the middle of the season, and you had to write the first episode of the second season to write out the other actress who had been having some trouble with a male producer.

Now, keeping all that in mind, let’s carefully consider what to do with the remaining female lead character. If you are producing the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you choose to have an alien impregnate that character without consent, use her body as incubation chamber, exploit her maternal instincts and then make her watch what she believes to be her own child die. More than that, you make sure that the female character is completely superfluous to the script itself, and that nobody seems to care particularly about her.

Don’t worry, Troi. Face of the Enemy is less than half a decade away…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly Crusher, Data, Deanna Troi, gene roddenberry, jean-luc picard, Leonard Nimoy, Neutral Zone, Next Generation, picard, spock, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, StarTrek, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E), Vulcans, William Riker, Worf | 5 Comments »

12 Movie Moments of 2012: The Dark Knight Returns (The Dark Knight Rises)

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Darren

Ireland got an IMAX screen this year. Well, it had an IMAX screen before, but it shut down before The Dark Knight kick-started the whole “watching cool movies in IMAX” thing. Evidently, watching Liam Neeson talk about Everest wasn’t nearly as exciting as watching Batman flip over an articulated lorry. Christopher Nolan shot a large percentage of The Dark Knight on IMAX, but he shot even more of The Dark Knight Rises using the special cameras.

As such, I was delighted that Cineworld and The Irish Times organised a special screening of The Dark Knight Rises in early December, even though the cinema had only reopened after Nolan’s epic was available on blu ray. It’s an oft-cited criticism that the third part of Nolan’s Batman trilogy featured surprisingly little Batman. I’d disagree, and instead suggest that the film made excellent use of its large cast – and when Batman appeared on screen he carried the weight that he deserved.

The sequence in which Bruce leads the Gotham Police Department on a merry chase while pursuing Bane and his terrorists is the perfect example, a fantastically constructed action sequence that tells us pretty much everything we need to know about the cast at that moment in time.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, avengers, bane, batman, batman begins, British Isles, Bruce, Christopher Nolan, ChristopherNolan, dark knight, Dark Knight Rises, Everest, film, gotham city, imax, liam neeson, Movie, New York City, nolan, reviews | 5 Comments »

The Spirit Archives, Vol. 26 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Darren

It’s strange reading The Spirit Archives, Vol. 26. Not just because it’s a collection of absolutely everything (from stories to pin-ups to posters to sketches) rather than a set of comic strips. Also because of the scope of this final hardcover collection in DC’s Spirit Archives programme. While, with the exception of the last volume, each book collected six months of the weekly strip, this final book collects pretty-much everything Will Eisner did with the character from the time that the weekly strip ended through to his death in 2005. I’m a bit surprised that there’s only one book of this material, although it does allow the reader to flick through the decades following the end of the strip as if examining a family photo albums – watching the subtle changes as time marches on.

Despite the fact that he was cancelled, The Spirit never seemed to quite go away. There was a lot of work featuring the character by other writers and artists, but most of that isn’t collected here. Instead, this admittedly disjointed collection reads best as a sort of a documentary charting the on-going relationship between Will Eisner and arguably his most popular creation.

Still making waves…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: art, Business and Economy, CONTRACT WITH GOD, Dolan, Ebony, Eisner, Ellen, Ellen Dolan, Harvey Comics, james bond, Kitchen Sink Press, Metro Areas, new york, New York City, New York City Metro, Octopus, Religion and Spirituality, Spirit, Spirits, superhero, United States, Will Eisner | 3 Comments »

My 12 for ’12: The Master & The American Century

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Darren

This is #6…

It’s very weird being a popular culture nerd who lives outside the United States. A significant portion of pop culture is exported directly from the United States. I grew up on Star Trek and Batman, two iconic American franchises. I probably know more about American history – filtered through feature films, television shows and other popular forms of entertainment – than school taught me about the origins of my own nation. Even then, it still feels a little strange to watch American film makers commentating on American situations, and to not only recognise but almost understand how those references work within the American subconscious.

The Master is a fascinating exploration of post war America, the period where America well and truly emerged as the defining global power, where the country embraced economic prosperity and manifest destiny no longer referred to expansion out west, but a bold adventure into a promising future. In an article published shortly before America entered the Second World War, Henry R. Luce argued that the twentieth century was “the American century.” If it seemed that way before the conflict, it was all but certain afterwards. Of course, economic prosperity does not always bring with it a sense of peace and tranquillity, and The Master explores the sense of existential ennui that took root in a way that is, if you’ll pardon the pun, masterful.