Remember when Al Pacino was great? Yeah, it was a while ago.
Wow, they're really trying to keep Pacino out of that taxi, aren't they? Not that I'd blame him for trying to get away from this film...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 88 minutes, al pacino, films, Movies, non-review review, review, righteous kill | 2 Comments »
Hey there, the always cool guys over at Universal are looking for suggestions for questions for a Q & A session with Get Him to the Greek stars Russell Brand and Jonah Hill that will follow the Irish premiere next Tuesday night. They’ve also got a competition for a few tickets to the event itself. If you want to check it out, just pop on over to their facebook, right here.
The competition isn't THAT serious...
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: comedy, facebook, film, get him to the greek, irish premiere, jonah hill, Movies, premiere, russell brand, tickets | 4 Comments »
I have an offer to make. If you push the button, two things will happen. First, someone, somewhere in the world, whom you don’t know, will die. Second, you will receive a payment of one million dollars. You have 24 hours.
– “Arlington Stewart”
Such is the premise of The Box, a movie based on a short story by science fiction icon Richard Matheson, but one of the movie’s many problems is that director Richard Kelly apparently doesn’t find that premise interesting enough to sustain his film. That seems inherently pithy, considering that Matheson’s story Button, Button has been adapted for The Twilight Zone and as a radio play for CBS Mystery Theatre – there must have been something there. Instead, Kelly uses the eponymous box as a jumping off point into what can only really be described as “abstractsville”, taking a left at “crazy town”. There are moments in this film which work, but they are few and far between – there are large stretches of time when it is just infuriating.
James Marsden counts up the box office receipts... they aren't good...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: box, button button, cameron diaz, films, frank langella, james marsden, Movies, non-review review, review, richard kelly, the box, the button, twilight zone | 12 Comments »
Wow. What a debut. Okay, I know this wasn’t quite a debut for James Cameron, but Pirhana II hardly counts, right? Terminator is perhaps the best example of a talented young director producing a large-scale action movie on a miniscule budget. I’ll provoke the disdain of many a film buff out there when I declare I have a very slight preference for the sequel Terminator II: Judgement Day, but the first two movies are some of the best examples of action movies from the eighties/nineties. Hell, they are both some of the best examples of any action movies.
Don't ask him to show you his guns...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Arnold Schwarzenegger, james cameron, kyle reese, Movies, non-review review, review, terminator, the terminator | 7 Comments »
Surely you can’t be serious?
I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
The lads over at Anomalous Material are running a ‘greatest comedy of all time’ tournament at the moment, which is well worth a gander if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t yet seen all 128 movies. What I have seen, however, is Airplane!, and I can assure you that it deserves serious consideration for the crown.
A take off of all your favourite films...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: airplane!, comedy, film, Movies, non-review review, parody, pop culture, puns, review, zucker | 6 Comments »
It seems that year-on-year, the cinemas are flooded with sequels to banal action movies. This year we have Iron Man 2, Shrek 4, Predators and Sex and the City 2, among others. It’s been that way for years. If you summer blockbuster isn’t an adaptation (of television show, novel, comic book, earlier film or even video game), chances are that it is a sequel (or a prequel). It makes shrewd business sense. Given the huge amount of money spent on these tentpoles ($150m for just the production budget, let alone other costs), so it feels somewhat safer to spend it on a known quantity. Franchises have built in fanbases, more merchandise, already had several DVD releases (which means more people are aware of it than casual cinema goers), which means a bigger audience, more awareness and more money. It can be quite exhausting, however, from a cinema goer prospective. However, Hollywood likes to innovate in its own insanely boring way. Much as they redefined cinema by bringing back a gimmick from the fifties, and turned the glut of sequels into prequels, it appears Hollywood has found a new way of generating money from established properties: the spin-off.
Think of the Gross, baby!
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: aldous snow, business, films, franchises, get him to the greek, hollywood, les grossman, Movies, sequels, spin-offs, tropic thunder | 20 Comments »
Can you remember a year when the summer wasn’t dominated by sequels or spin-offs or reboots or prequels? If you can, most of them were probably adaptations. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth recently about the abundance of such films in the summer lineups, so I thought it might be worth a little exploration into the history of the sequel and of Hollywood blockbusters, and also worth considering the suggestion that has been mooted a lot recently: are movie-goers tiring of sequels?
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: audiences, films, hollywood, Inception, lowest common denominator, Movies, original films, originality, prequels, remakes, sequels, sex and the city 2, spin-offs, studios | 2 Comments »
Christopher Nolan confirmed over the weekend that the Joker would not be recast for the sequel to The Dark Knight. Which I suppose means we can rule him off the “list of potential villains” we’ve all been putting together in our heads as Batman 3 approaches. As much as I get the sense (and as much as rumours about the ‘trilogy’ that emerged before The Dark Knight was released would suggest) that the Joker was clearly imagined as playing a fairly lerge role in the conclusion of Nolan’s Batman saga, I can see the reasons for and respect his decision to not to recast the role.
This card is off the table...
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: batman, Batman 3, casting, Christopher Nolan, film, heath ledger, Movies, The Dark Knight, the joker | 20 Comments »
Early in the movie, our anonymous bounty hunter, Blondie or The Man With No Name or whatever you want to call him, wanders into a tavern looking for his target. Identifying the bandit gambling at a table, inches from an impotent sheriff, the hunter wanders over to his mark. He silently grabs the cards and starts counting them out. The hardened criminal stares up silently, and he plays along. The game is poker. The two men settle their hands and trade their cards. The villain lays out his cards on the table. It looks good, and then the stranger reveals his cards. Of course, his hand is better. The gambler at the table looks up to this drifter who has so silently intruded on his game. Apparently behind the audience, he asks what the stakes were. As it always is in stories like this, “Your life.”
You know how it ends.
Sometimes you have to take the Good with the Bad...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Clint Eastwood, deconstruction, dollars, eastwood, films, for a few dollars more, Movies, non-review review, review, sergio leone, western | 2 Comments »
I actually think these are both pretty cool and as reasonably faithful as a big screen live-action adaptation could be, but the costumes for Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger have been leaked on-line. Click below for bigger images.
Source for Thor Concept Art: Cinema Blend
Source for Captain America Concept Art: Fused Film
I am actually quite happy with both, I think they are pragmatic adaptations of costumes which – while iconic – simply wouldn’t work in real life or on the big screen. It does seem though, in banishing the wings from the helmets of each hero (and Thor’s helmet altogether) that Marvel has a vendetta against feathers.
I am a little surprised that Thor hasn’t been “Ultimised” at all. The Marvel movies have shown a trend so far of trying to move iconic heroes more towards reality (or at least in the general direction) and I had kinda expected that Thor’s whole “Viking armour” schtick might be a bit much for mainstream movie-goers. I was kinda expecting something a bit more stripped-down, similar to the look Bryan Hitch gave him in the modernised retelling of the origin of the Avengers, The Ultimates, much in the same way that the movies have presented the Samuel L. Jackson version of Nick Fury, rather than the mainstream spandex-wearing version of the super spy – most memorably brought to life as David Hasselhoff, for those with a fondness for terrible movies.
Its hammer time...
Still, I’m just surprised. I’m certainly not disappointed. If Kenneth Branagh thinks he can pull this off, then, well… I trust Kenneth Branagh. Certainly more than I trust Joe Johnson.
Though the look above has kept the black “power” waistcoat (complete with bubbles), it’s more clearly influenced by the classic conception of the character, complete with chainmail armour and red cape. For those interested in nerdy nuggets of trivia, it’s the waistcoat which was the source of his power in The Ultimates, leading various skeptical characters to suggest that he wasn’t a god of thunder, just a nut job who had stolen some secret technology. This allowed the writer Mark Millar to explore the character’s divinity rather than simply throwing him into the mix with the other more technologically-driven heroes and skirting over the whole “a god walks amongst you” bit.
I’m now kinda curious about how Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull will look in Captain America. A red Skull is probably as least as difficult as that iconic red, white & blue uniform to adapt to screen.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: captain america, concept art, costumes, Movies, superheroes, thor | 17 Comments »
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