Film. Music. Television.
Brodie Fanns!
As if all those clips weren’t enough this morning, I come bearing a very special gift.
The brand spankin’ new teaser-trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
February 14th is now officially the best day of the year, 2008. Sorry, second best behind February 13th. Best day ever honours has to go to Strike Resolution Day.
Anywho… trailer… CHECK IT!
Brodie Fanns!
I love you all. Not like that. Well… maybe you like that. You know who you are. Call me. Yeah…..
Anyway. I realize I kinda fucked myself by posting my top 5 romance flicks a few weeks ago. I should have held onto it for today.
Now I’ve got nothing to post, really.
Well… not a list per se… how about a collection of films about romance, love, relationships, that weren’t on that original list, but I enjoyed anyway.
First up…
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
I think it’s a funny take on the fractured marriage story.
Romeo + Juliet
It’s Dicaprio before his talent really matured, but I like it.
Out of Sight
Off-beat sure, but just about the only film featuring Jennifer Lopez I can watch.
Lost in Translation
Brodie Fanns!
I’ve got a review and other stuff for you. Let’s get started, shall we?
Fool’s Gold
1 star
What do you get when you take the mediocre Indiana Jones rip-off, Sahara, remove the sexy latina and Steve Zahn, and put the adorably perky Kate Hudson in their place? Well, you get solid gold shit. But no shortage of a shirtless Matthew McConaughey
Ben and Tess Finnegan (McConaughey and Hudson) are a bickering, brink of divorce couple that also has a passion for treasure salvaging. Then, amidst their divorce, Ben, who never quite grew up, found some clues indicating the location of a nearly 300 year old buried treasure. With the financial assistance of Tess’ new employer, Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland in a take off of the Hilton family, I suppose), they are able to start searching for the wreckage off a small Caribbean island. They only have to contend with Ben’s former investor, a deranged rapper who owns the island in question.
And then McConaughey takes his shirt off for a while.
I give it points for being a romantic comedy tangled with an adventure yarn, but that’s just a thin connection at best, as it contains not even the tiniest of fractions of thrills and excitement in other modern adventure flicks of it’s kind. Including National Treasure and the aforementioned Sahara.
I blame it on the lack of any real personae or charisma between the two leads. Separately, they have those things. But together… I don’t know, they were just vapid and hollow characters leading vapid and hollow lives. I didn’t care one way or another if they got the gold and got back together in the end. Spoiler alert. Everything you think happens in this movie, does happen. It’s almost like this could have been reworked as an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond and no one would have noticed. Except for the distinct lack of shirt removal thank god.
The jokes fell flat. Everybody’s talents were wasted on this film. Hudson and McConaughy both showed so much promise in Almost Famous and Dazed and Confused, respectively. But neither seem to have really caught on as far as actual talent goes. Maybe they should stick to artsy 70’s nostalgia flicks with kick ass soundtracks. That’s what they should do next. Maybe play Cher and Duane Allman.
Am I being fair to this film? Probably not. I don’t know. I rated Rambo a little higher because it delivered what it promised. But Fool’s Gold… it’s one thing to go into a movie with low expectations and have them exceeded. But it’s another to go in with low expectations and not even have them met.
Expect to see this in a few years with “Three Chances to Watch” on TBS or something.
IN OTHER NEWS…
Roy Scheider: 1932-2008. RIP
The star of Jaws and All That Jazz passed away on Saturday of multiple myeoma, a form of bone cancer. He was just 75 years old.
IN OTHER NEWS…
Actually, that’s about it for now.
Brodie Fanns!
Let me be the first to give you the best news I could ever give in my years, past, present and future, as an entertainment reporter.
THE WRITER’S STRIKE IS OVER!!!!!
At least according to an article posted over on cnbc.com. Read the full article here.
Jackass deluxe Michael Eisner has spoken to the press about the conclusion of the strike (started on Nov. 5), saying that the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have reached a tentative agreement, set for final approval on Saturday. This will end the now 14 week, 4 day strike which has had a strangle hold on American film and television productions, and all but canceled several major awards shows.
I must quote Jon Stewart (update, if you will) on how the strike has impacted TV and Film, particularly late night comedy shows. This was said upon his return to the air on Jan. 7th: “We have been off the air for 8 weeks. And the last time the late night shows went off the air for an extended period of time, was after 9/11. And that was for only a week. So by my math, the writer’s strike is 8 times worse than 9/11.”
Obviously there’s a hint of sarcasm in there.
For those of you who don’t know what the strike was all about, let me try to explain it as best as I can.
The last time the writer’s contracts were negotiated, was in 2005. And this left out residuals of internet presentations, be it downloads or streaming on the site, as this was a brand new technology no one had really taken advantage of yet. So now, cut to 2007, you can download a plethora of shows on iTunes, and all the major networks put full episodes of their shows online. The writers are not seeing any of the money. None of it.
Now, as an aspiring writer, I sympathize. If people were making money off of something I wrote, I’d want some of that two. But here’s the thing of it all. The money, the profits, that the producers and network heads are seeing, is a monetarily insignificant amount. To slice that up into even smaller chunks, would make the whole process cost-ineffective.
To quote jackass deluxe Michael Eisner from a Nov. 7th Fox News interview, “For a writer to give up today’s money for a nonexistent piece of the future — they should [strike] in three years, shouldn’t be doing it now — they are misguided.” He goes on to say, “They don’t know what to give. … Digital will eventually be the dominant medium for distribution but not yet.”
So why did they strike if there’s no money to be had? Producers and studio heads are stupid and kept going on and on about how digital presentation is doing so well. But really it wasn’t.
The studios are like that jerk at the bar who goes on and on about how great he is at such and such sport or whatever, and the writers are the quiet guy in the corner (not nerdy quiet, I’m talking Wolverine quiet), who calls him out on it and wins.
Alls I know is, thank god TV will be back. Though who knows how the networks are going to structure their seasons, since most shows are only halfway through with no new episodes to air, and it’ll take some time for production to get rolling again.
But the most important thing… strike is over. Maybe my writer’s block I’ve been having will finally clear up.
Brodie Fanns!
New review for your reading pleasure. I don’t know what’s in store for the blog-o-dome this week. But, you’ll know it when I post it.
Strange Wilderness
2.5 stars
Could we really expect the latest offering from the guys who brought us Grandma’s Boy to be a masterpiece? No. But was it funny as hell? Yes. And no.
Faced with struggling ratings and competition from a hipper, more knowledgeable show, the cast and crew of the long running Strange Wilderness, a wee hours of the morning nature documentary show, make one last ditch effort to save their beloved TV program, started by star Peter Gaulke’s father. They embark on an international road trip to hunt Bigfoot, who has been found in Ecuador of all places.
The cast is anchored by Steve Zahn, and he slips perfectly into a role he probably would have done about 10 years ago, but at this point he seems out of place in this stoner/slacker flick. Happy Madison Production regulars Peter Dante and Alan Covert are right at home playing character-types that have brought them a huge cult fan base throughout the years in just about every Adam Sandler flick ever made. While comedic child prodigies Justin Long and Jonah Hill seem to be wasting their talents on a film that is far beneath their talents they have previously demonstrated in Accepted and Super Bad respectively.
I don’t think it’s really fair to fault the cast for the film being unfunny. Because in all actuality, the scenes in the film are not unfunny. But this is where the age old maxim about a film’s director comes into play. The saying goes that a film really has three directors: the writer, the director and the editor. And if you want to get really technical, you could add the cinematographer into the mix, but we’ll just stick with these three. Writer Peter Gaulke (yes, he named the main character after himself) has had moderate success with some of the most mediocre to awful comedies of the past 10 years (Me, Myself and Irene, Say It Isn’t So), while director Fred Wolf (former head writer/cast member of SNL) is marking his feature film debut. But I think the problems of this film lie with the third director. The editor, Tom Costain.
Like I said, it wasn’t an unfunny film. The scenes individually were hilarious. It’s a very quotable film. And the actors did some damn funny work, including the intentionally unintentionally funny Robert Patrick (T2: Judgement Day) and the always good for a laugh Joe Don Baker (Mitchell). Yet while the cast is a weird amalgamation of the Happy Madison, Judd Apatow and Broken Lizard (Kevin Heffernan) camps, which should lead to great comedy, it falls apart in the editing.
It feels like term paper written over a Red Bull and Hot Pocket fueled all-nighter. It’s convoluted, hastily put together, rushed and sometimes makes little sense. It’s like Wolf filmed a very funny movie, then Costain put it on his shelf, sat down with his bong for about a month, then realized it had to be shipped to theatres in week, and spent all night cutting the thing from memory. There were times when I was left wondering if it was a joke they were playing on us. Like they had cut the real movie, then decided to make a second version of the same movie, only using all the deleted scenes and blooper reels.
And it’s sad, because Grandma’s Boy was such a great cult classic. Luckily, most of the negative backlash will be going to Happy Madison, while Apatow’s crew and Broken Lizard should escape relatively unscathed.
Meh… it’s the catchiest title I could think of at 5 am.
Anywho, as some of you may have heard two months ago, not only did Peter Jackson, writer/director/producer of the massively successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, settle his dispute with New Line Cinema concerning unpaid royalties, but New Line and MGM reached an agreement over the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Rings companion novel, The Hobbit. Unfortunately for us, visionary Jackson will not be helming the duo of films (yes, they’re splitting it into two films) set for release in 2010 and 2011, pending resolution of the writer’s strike.
Jackson has already been committed to direct an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s bestseller The Lovely Bones, and to co-direct Tintin, with none-other than Mr. Steven Spielberg, both set for a 2009 release. Jackson will remain on board as producer and possibly a write.
So who is directing? Well, luckily for everyone who cares (and I’m guessing it’s a lot of you), Mexican visual master Guillermo del Toro has been signed to cast, according to early reports. The director, who has masterfully brought us Hellboy (get the headline now?) and the wonderously beautiful El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), will helm both installments of the Rings prequel films, set to be shot simultaneously.
No word on who will be cast in key roles, though I’m guessing Ian McKellen, Hugo Weaving and Andy Serkis will return as Gandalf, Elrond and Gollum, respectively. And knowing del Toro… Ron Perlman as Bilbo.
Oh, and now for something completely different.
And what the hell… a while back I decided why not figure who is best represented in my DVD collection. Which actor/actress/director had the most films in my collection. It was hard to determine these stats, for various reasons, but I stuck to the following rules.
For Boxed sets (trilogies and the like), each individual title will count, rather than Star Wars trilogy only counting as one mark for Harrison Ford.
For TV Shows, each individual season counts, as it is part of one title. So I have 5 seasons of 24 on DVD, that’s 5 marks for Keifer Sutherland. It would not go by episode, then it would be like… 120 for Sutherland.
Cameos count. Cate Blanchett’s cameo in Hott Fuzz counts as a mark toward her. These sort of things got harder when it was ensemble casts, but I tried to do my best with counting them all.
Those are the basic rules.
Top 5 Actors in my DVD collection (which currently stands at a count of 478)
1) Matt Damon – 15
2) Bruce Willis – 14
3) Brad Pitt – 13
* George Clooney -13
5) Al Pacino – 12
* Tom Cruise – 12
Top 5 Actresses
1) Cate Blanchett – 8
2) Kirsten Dunst – 7
3) Elizabeth Banks – 6
* Joan Allen – 6
* Keira Knightly – 6
Top 5 Directors
1) Steven Spielberg – 9
2) Oliver Stone – 7
3) Kevin Smith – 6
* Quentin Tarantino – 6
5) Robert Rodriguez – 5
* Sidney Lumet – 5
* Robert Zemeckis – 5
* Brian De Palma – 5
* Stephen Soderbergh – 5
It should be noted that some of those two come with the multiple films, same role, particularly Matt Damon, who has 6 films populated solely by the Bourne and Ocean’s franchises.
Let it also be noted that while Spielberg may have 9 in my collection… Sofia Coppola could technically be considered the most prolific, as I own 100% of her films (which does stand at 3). Though of Tarantino’s films that are strictly Tarantino (not counting Four Rooms which he co-directed with 3 others), I do own all of his films.
Brodie Fanns!
I’m excited to see you. I had a long weekend, but it is time to get back into the movie dealy.
Let’s jump right in.
I only have a mini-review for you. Why? Well… quite frankly… Rambo just doesn’t warrant a full review.
Rambo
3 Stars
I went into this movie with very low expectations. While most recharges of long forgotten 80’s franchises have actually done quite well (Freddy vs. Jason, Rocky, Live Free or Die Hard) and impressed the heck out of me, Rambo was one franchise I felt didn’t really need a revamp, and wasn’t particularly excited to see.
So when my expectations are that low, I wasn’t at all surprised when they were met. I was, however, surprised when the flick exceeded them. As a child of the golden age of action, where gratuitous violence and gore reigned supreme, I was pleased that this is a return to form for the now distinctly divided genre. On one end is the dopey, outlandish plot, star driven flick (anything with Vin Diesel), on the other, high brow, character driven, concept action (The Bourne series).
But Rambo is not so much an homage, as it is a memorial to the quality action flicks of the 80’s. The villain is that of unimaginable evil (East-Asian warlord). The hero is as mythic as he is brutally compassionate (it’s an oxymoron, I know, but it makes sense). The female lead/quasi-love interest is the traditional damsel in distress. And the supporting cast is made up of a rogue’s gallery of caricatures and archetypes.
The action, once it starts, is non-stop, with some goofy blood effects, but lots of them. It really could have gone the political route, as it is set during a civil war, but it leaves the politics out, and just goes for the jugular. Literally. John Rambo rips a guy’s jugular out of his throat.
At this point, I’m just waiting for the next logical film from Sylvester Stallone: either Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot: Part II or Rocky vs. Rambo.
This ends the review portion of our broadcast.
Now, as an entertainment reporter, and admitted cinephile (it doesn’t mean what you think it means you perv), who also happens to have high-speed internet access, I stay pretty up to date with films in production. Sure the occasional one slips through the cracks, but usually I’m pretty up to date on this shit. I’ve been following the casting of Star Trek since it was announced, and there were rumours of Matt Damon or Nathan Fillion in the role of James T. Kirk (Fillion would have been awesome, but too reminiscent of Cpt. Reynolds).
I’ve followed movies from production all the way to much delayed release.
But I keep update through various websites. I pretty much live on Apple Trailers, Yahoo! Movies and of course, my homepage, the IMDb. I peruse the myspace from time to time to see what they’ve got going on over there, hit up studio sites for their in production calenders, and I use other sites.
But this is all to keep me updated on films coming out. I generally have a running list of what’s coming this year (I even have a short list of the major 2009 releases I want to see), just so I know what I want to see, and to keep track of production and release dates.
To help pass the savings on to you, every few months I’ll post the ones I’ve got dog-earred. Obviously January has past, but here’s a short list for February, March and April.
February:
March
April
That’s a brief look into what’s coming up this spring.
Check ya later!
-Brodie Mann
Brodie Fanns!
Never fear, last week was not the last you had heard from the list. This week is. I’m doing the post-game this week. A few stats and figures.
The list was originally about 400 long, in it’s first inception during the summer of ’04 I believe. In those four years it’s been altered many a time, obviously. The original list was not a ranked list, it was just a list. After about six months, I decided it should be ranked. The first top 10 resembled the current one, though it included the 1931 Dracula. After a while, I deemed it unnecessary to have two films in the top 10 that were essentially different, yet near identical, versions of the same story, with Nosferatu also being based on the story of Dracula. Yes, they are technically two wildly separate and different films, but I couldn’t justify both of them being in the top 10. So I went with my favourite of the two, Nosferatu, and the rest is history.
To make it easier on me, I cut 200 films out of the list. And that original list is now lost in memory, as I don’t have a back up anywhere. So there it sat. 200 films, the top 20 had since been ranked, and I was making process. Then about… mid last year, I decided “Hey, I’m writing in a blog now, I should do my top 100.” So I sliced another hundred out of the list. The original is on this computer still. Then I ranked the back 50. And that brings us to today. The list has been published. Go us!
Just today, I sat down and took a long hard look at the list. I am happy with the list. That doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future. I still haven’t decided if I want any 2007 flicks in the list, (Zodiac, No Country for Old Men and Sunshine are strong contenders). And there are plenty of classics I have yet to see.
It was criminal that I didn’t have any foreign, non-english films on the list, so I may add in a few of those. Don’t know why I would forget them in the first place.
And who knows… someone may come out with a flick in the future that just blows me away. Cloverfield was amazing. Not Top 100 amazing… but damn close.
Just so you know…
an * denotes inclusion of trilogies
The actors with the most films on the list:
Al Pacino and Harrison Ford* with 4 each. Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Ian McKellen, Kevin Spacey, Michael J. Fox*, Christopher Lloyd* and Elliot Gould with 3 each.
The actresses with the most films on the list:
Uma Thurman, Cate Blanchett* and Lea Thompson* with 3 each. Diane Keaton, Julia Roberts and Carrie Anne Moss with 2 each.
The directors with the most films on the list:
Quentin Tarantino, Frank Capra, Sidney Lumet and Stanley Kubrick with 4 each. Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson* and Robert Zemeckis* with 3 each.
Alright peeps… that’s alls I gots for you now.
Next week… keep an eye out for reviews for Rambo, a somewhat similar data list, and a top 10 list from someone who isn’t me.
Weird.
Peace!
-Brodie Mann
Aloha Brodie Fanns!
New review.
But before I start, you led a good life, Heath. It took me while to warm up to you, and I’m going to miss what you could have given us in the future. You had an immense and dynamic talent that was just starting to show. But your swan song looks phenomenal. To you, Joker/Skip/Ennis/Casanova/Patrick/Heath Ledger, I raise my glass.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
3.5 Stars
Sweeney Todd is a conundrum of a movie. And sad as it is to say, I have to use a Simon Cowell quote on this one: “Yeah it was good, but so what?” Tim Burton, you’re a one trick pony whose trick is getting very old.
Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) was a happily married man with a beautiful baby daughter and a nice little barber shop. Until the jealous Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) decides he should have Barker’s wife for himself, and forces Barker into exile. Sixteen years later, Barker, now calling himself Sweeney Todd, returns from Australia, only to learn that his wife is dead and his daughter now the charge of Turpin. Todd and his meat pie shop running land-lady Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) hatch a plan to lure Turpin to the new barber shop on the second floor of the pie shop, where they will kill and cook him for her pies. Subplot being that the sailor Todd sailed with from Australia, a young man named Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower) has fallen instantly and madly in love with Johanna (Jayne Weisner), who just so happens to be Turpin’s charge, a.k.a. Barker’s daughter. What a small world we live in. Even smaller by 18th century standards. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, it’s a bloody musical. Literally, bloody. One of the goriest musicals I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the thing. Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands) has always been a master of the visually beautiful, yet mostly macabre comedies. Sweeny Todd is definitely the perfect fit for Tim. But there in lies the problem. That’s pretty much all he can do. The man has no range. While one could argue, that he’s found his voice, there are plenty of directors out there who have found their voice. And their voice isn’t as mono-tonal as the love child of Steven Wright and Ben Stein. Spielberg is one. While there are certain thematic elements that remain constant in his films, his “trademarks” if you will, I ask you, would you guess that E.T. and Saving Private Ryan were made by the same person?
That’s because he has range. He can explore his own boundaries as a film maker. Burton pretty much refuses to move outside his comfort zone. So while he is a decent and competent director, he isn’t that dynamic. It brings me back to my first point… It was good, but so what? It’s the same thing we’ve been seeing from him for the past twenty years.
Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean), on the other hand, continues to explore his bounds as an actor. It was his first singing role and he nailed it with perfection. I had my doubts, not that I didn’t think Depp could do it, it’s just, he’s never struck me as a singer. There were times when his vocal characterization of Todd was very reminiscent of Cpt. Jack Sparrow. Though I suppose when you play characters of the same era and similar geographic backgrounds, that’s bound to happen.
Where would this film be without the outstanding supporting cast? I don’t know, but probably with less stars in this review and even less awards. Bonham Carter (Fight Club) was fantastic as the daft Mrs. Lovett, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the absolutely fantastic performance of young newcomer Ed Sanders (literally nothing, this was his first film) as the orphan Toby, who was a hawker for Sacha Baron Cohen’s (Borat) Adolfo Pirelli wonderful hair growth elixir, and became a worker in the meat pie shop. He was fantastic, holding his on against both Cohen and Depp, two of the finest actors in today’s market.
While this film was entertaining, and gloriously gory, I fail to find the true ingenuity in seeing the same thing over and over. My plea to Tim Burton: there’s this thing called the box, and there’s a big wide world of filmmaking outside of it… check it out sometime.
The Empty Theatre 
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