solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

I’ll almost certainly take some flack for this, but if you haven’t seen ‘Harold & Kumar get the muchies’ you’re really missing out. It sits in the deep vaults of ‘actually pretty funny comedies’ with ‘Super Troopers’, ‘Slackers’ and ‘Office Space’. To misquote Spinal Tap, “It’s a thin line between clever and stupid”.

Sure it’s juvenile, the whole plot of the first film is based around trying to find a hamburger outlet, but with a fantastic cameo from Doogie Howser M.D, and a scene where they ride a cheetah there’s more reasons to show it love than there is to hate it.

Here’s the Doogie Howser scene i’m talking about:

The reasoning behind the title is becuase i’m pretty sure i’ve raged before about studios ignoring good poster design and instead optioning for the massive photos of the lead actors. They did it with The Prestige, and they’ve done it with numerous others, but the thing is.. for 3:10 to Yuma I think it actually works.

I’ve seen the film and the thing is except for the actors there’s very little in the film, it’s a western; there’s some horses, some dusty trails and the odd saloon so it seems to make sense to me to focus on the two leads.

I just picked up the dvd release of the original and they’ve done a really nice job with the cover art, giving it an old-timey feeling, yet getting across some of the main themes of the film… which I think they tried to do with this.. but in my opinion failed.

The poster was an exclusive to cinematical

We don’t run give-aways very often… mainly becuase I don’t have anything decent to give away. Except of course.. the gift.. of sweet lovin. Which is actually harder to give away than you might imagine. Anyway.. get to the point.

The awesome London horror film festival ‘Frightfest’ kicks off next thursday (the 23rd of August) and we have 10 passes to the opening night to give away. The Passes cover the following stuff:

- 28 Weeks Later ‘Special Event’, where producer of the film Andrew MacDonald will be presenting deleted scenes and extras from the dvd release of the film. 20th Century Fox will be supplying ‘Goodies’, which can never be a bad thing

- The UK premiere of ‘Black Water’, an aussie giant-croc movie. I know nothing about this film other than It’s Australian and has giant crocs. If it’s good.. great, If it’s bad the crowd reactions at frightfest nearly always make it worth sitting through.

Check out the trailer here

- The film will be followed by exclusive footage from Neil Marshall’s ‘Doomsday’ (very excited about this)

If you’d like a pass all you need to do is drop your name in an email, put ‘Frightfest’ in the subject line and send it to me. Next tuesday (the 21st) I will pull 10 peoples email at random to receive the passes. good luck!

The festival is held at the Odeon ‘West End’ in Leicester Square, so obviously if you live in Alaska don’t bother entering. sorry

This year there’s more than a couple of other things playing that I really want to check out too: ‘The Signal’ is playing on Friday, a low budget zombie/crazies movie that was a big hit at festivals in the U.S. ‘Shrooms’ is that killer mushroom movie I was laughing about a couple of months ago.. also playing late friday night. The Shia le Beouf does ‘Rear Window’ movie ‘Disturbia’ plays on Saturday accompanied by a late showing of ‘The Devil Dared me too’ the NZ stuntman movie.

The sick part of me wants to sit through a double whammy of Uwe Boll films on sunday; ‘Postal’, and ‘Seed’ but i’m not sure my constitution can take it. I might throw up a lung If I watch two in a row. terrible filmmaking can do that to you.

So according to Firstshowing, they arrived via ropeofsilicon through a flickr account

The images were briefly up at AICN and labeled as stills from the footage that was shown at ‘Wizard World’ in chicago a week or two ago, but I would place a firm ‘Bullshit’ stamp on that statement, as they’re way to clean to be video captures. So i’m guessing now that we’re getting more and more images released that we might just be close to getting a proper trailer? fingers crossed…

oh and if you haven’t read the description of the footage from ‘Wizard World‘:

The footage started with a silhouette of a dark figure in front of one of Batman’s armored vehicles before quickly cutting to Bruce Wayne and Alfred delivering the brief lines heard in the Dark Knight teaser trailer.

“Some people just want to watch the world burn,” advises Alfred before the camera jumps to Batman in action on the Batpod, the new iteration of his motorcycle.

The action built up as the Joker was seen in full for the first time with a mess of white face, smeared red lipstick and sweaty, straggly green hair. Apparently, the clown prince of crime gets arrested at one point in the film, as the montage presented Jim Gordon (complete in SWAT gear) at the Joker’s booking, saying, “no prints, no ID, custom clothes, no tags.” The clown smiles with what appears to be blood over his face from the inside of an interrogation room.

Checking back in with Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy has a brief scene with Eckhart’s Harvey Dent where he says “Rachel’s told me everything about you.”

“I truly hope not,” responds Wayne.

The footage sped up at that point into an intense montage of action, featuring the following clips:

- The new batsuit rising up from a trap door in the ground and held in a chain metal case.

- Rachel Dawes (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) close to an unidentified man either kissing him or being threatened by him as the camera rotates around them.

- The Joker and Batman battling in close quarters (possibly a hospital room). Batman throws Joker over a table and crashing into the ground while the clown smiles at him. It should be noted that the Joker was done up in his signature purple suit.

I’ve no idea where these came from, I think no.3 is a spy photo from a while back… the other 3 seem to be brand new and normally i’d post a source.. but in this case I just have to give high fives all round to my boy Gunrunner for passing them on.

I’ll be having nightmares about Ledger’s face tonight.

Trying to slowly reassemble all the bits and pieces of news I missed while I was away into some kind or order…a point at which to move forward from. So there was a new poster released for ‘Eastern Promises’ which I like.. half-of. I dig the top half, russian prison/gang tattoos are always interesting but the bottom half of the poster just looks like marketing men slowly made them put more and more logos and junk on it. shame.

There’s a new trailer too; It’s nice to see some new scenes from the film but this is obviously a more mainstream cut, over explaining things and now with added voiceover. check it out here

I had a brief go at translating Viggo’s tattoo’s (from what I can see on the poster, and in the trailer.. which isn’t much)

The scene where he stands up half-naked, he’s got a cross on his chest:

A cross worn on the chest signifies a “Prince of Thieves”, the highest possible rank. Or a scene of the crucified Christ, has no religious meaning but it’s the inmate saying he’s been oppressed and sentenced by the authorities just like Jesus. If the crucifix is topped by a crown then it means the wearer is a pakhan - a leader of a thieves family.

A scene of Viggo’s back, with what appears to be a Russian catholic church on his back:

The number of dome towers (cupolas) indicates either number of prison terms or number of years of the sentence.

3?

The setting sun on his hand:

this tattoo is usually accompanied by birds flying over the horizon. It represents freedom.

dang… I obviously need to pick up this book

The film is opening the London Film Festival on the 17th of October, but hopefully i’ll check out a press screening before then.

Before you hit play and load the youtube video up, i’ll warn you this video is literally unwatchable. out of focus, awful angle, worse sound. I don’t actually think i’v ever seen a worse pirated footage. So if you’re on a slow connection or you bandwidth is metered, I wouldn’t even bother.

If you do load it up you can see lots of random shots of Milo Ventimiglia running around a hospital and some other dude that looks like Dane Cook following him around. All though I do get a slightly ‘Dexter‘-ish feeling from it all which I don’t think is a bad thing.

When a watchable trailer arrives we’ll be able to better judge whether the film is going a steaming pile a’la ‘Capivity‘ or something a little more watchable. Fingers crossed for the latter.

I watched Crank again over the weekend; The best character name ever ‘Chev Chelios’, Jason Stratham snorting coke like Scarface, Amy Smart being fucked by coked up Stratham over a bin in china town while tourists look on. The film is a work of genius. Also I was listening to an episode of ‘Uncut‘ a little while back when they had the 2 creators (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) of the film on the show. They seem like genuinely cool guys who have a good attitude towards making the kinds of films they want to make. Fun popcorn flicks.

Their new film ‘Pathology’ stars Milo Ventimiglia (from Heroes and Rocky Balboa) an interesting young actor if ever I saw one, and has an interesting if slightly hyperbolic sounding plot:

When med school student Ted Gray (Milo Ventimiglia) graduates top of his class he joins one of the nation’s most prestigious Pathology programs. With talent and determination Ted is quickly noticed by the program’s privileged and elite band of pathology interns who invite him into their crowd. Intrigued by his new friends he begins to uncover secrets he never expected and finds that he has unknowingly become a pawn in their dangerous and secret after-hours game at the morgue of who can commit the perfect undetectable murder. As Ted becomes seduced into their wild extracurricular activities the danger becomes real and he must stay one step ahead of the game before he is the next victim.

Sounds like it might have a touch of ‘Flatliners’ in there, mixed in with too much CSI. I’m wondering if it’ll retain the same kind of dumb edge that Crank did, not that ‘d mind if it didn’t but I like a healthy dose of stupidity when it comes to my action films.

… and speaking of stupid films, in a double bill with Crank I watched ‘The Condemned’ the new Stone Cold Steve Austin action film, a total rip off of Battle Royale and a product of WWE films. I won’t in any way say the film is good, It’s Stone Cold and Vinnie Jones as leads.. how good can it be? but I didn’t get bored, there were a number of really quite good action setups/fights and a little section of dialogue that would have made John McTiernan proud:

So again with the previews, on monday I caught an early screening of ‘3:10 to Yuma’, a solid western from the greatest surname in cinema James Mangold. Here’s the little plot synopsis:

3:10 to Yuma stars Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster, Gretchen Mol and Peter Fonda in a modern take on the classic western by Elmore Leonard from producing/writing/ directing team Cathy Konrad and James Mangold.

In Arizona in the late 1800’s, infamous outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe) and his vicious gang of thieves and murderers have plagued the Southern Railroad. When Wade is captured, Civil War veteran Dan Evans (Christian Bale), struggling to survive on his drought-plagued ranch, volunteers to deliver him alive to the “3:10 to Yuma”, a train that will take the killer to trial. On the trail, Evans and Wade, each from very different worlds, begin to earn each other’s respect. But with Wade’s outfit on their trail – and dangers at every turn – the mission soon becomes a violent, impossible journey toward each man’s destiny.

So it took a while for me to collect my thoughts after the screening, but here they are (a proper review will follow in september).
Christian Bale is excellent as the gaunt looking Arizona farmer, ex-military (he fought for the North) but is struggling to survive off the land. Russell Crowe was decent, mean at times, crazy when he had to be but it felt a little like he was cruising through to me without putting all the effort in. The real revelation was, as I predicted Ben Foster as Crowes right-hand man… the guy is an ultimate bad ass, plus he has the dead-eyed shark acting down so pat, If I ever met him in real life I’d honestly be scared of him.

The film is essentially a cowboy movie with daddy issues. Bale’s character is out to prove his worth to his son, whatever the cost. It gives him a raw eyed determination that sends him from timid farmer to badass cowboy on a mission. Crowes characters motivation never really sat right with me, for 70% of the film he’s a godless yet charming savage but seems to flip-flop halfway through into talking about his parental issues after he was abandoned in dodge city when he was very young. It’s not bad motivation for these characters but I’m not sure if I ever wanted my cowboys to share their feelings with me, I just want them to ride around looking mean shooting people’s trigger fingers off and spitting a lot. That being said the film is well put together and has several very cool shoot-outs and fast paced action scenes that meant I never lost interest. Plus with acting calibre such as this up on screen its difficult to not be engaged by the characters.

I’ve been so crazy with work recently that I’ve been neglecting the blog a little bit, i’ll be back in full force soon enough but right now things are gonna be a bit quiet. I’ve still taken in a couple of previews for upcoming films and in lieu of proper reviews you’ll have to settle for some intial reaction stuff.

So once again a film that’s already been and gone in the U.S finally washes up on the lowly shores of the UK. The new Brad Bird/Pixar film ‘Ratatouille’ will finally arrive on UK screens on the 5th of September, was it worth the wait? here’s the plot synopsis:

A rat named Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef despite his family’s wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When fate places Remy in the sewers of Paris, he finds himself ideally situated beneath a restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. Despite the apparent dangers of being an unlikely - and certainly unwanted - visitor in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant, Remy’s passion for cooking soon sets into motion a hilarious and exciting rat race that turns the culinary world of Paris upside down.

Remy finds himself torn between his calling and passion in life or returning forever to his previous existence as a rat. He learns the truth about friendship, family and having no choice but to be who he really is, a rat who wants to be a chef.

Really the buzz word when it comes to this film has to be ‘Brad Bird’ the man with golden touch, and the right ideas behind animated films. So I’ve seen ‘The Iron Giant’ and ‘The Incredibles’ and of course love them both. So I’d heard rumblings from the US that Ratatouille was hot stuff, but honestly I’ve been so worn down by kids CGI movies and 3 whole shrek films that I’m kind of numb to it all (I expect most parents feel the same). I hadn’t read a review fully and I’d skimmed through the trailer. So consider me neutral when I sat down in the screening room.