I can’t believe we ever thought he was crazy. Harrelson is to be applauded for his vigilance against the zombie plague, and for stepping into an ages-old and diverse cinematic tradition in which movie characters and their real-life counterparts square off against the walking, hungry dead.
From the heroes of the Irish indie horror Dead Meat…
‘Terminator: Salvation’ director McG at New York Comic Con. Photo by Eric Kohn.
“What don’t you f***ing understand?”
This time, the confrontational remark didn’t come from Christian Bale. Instead, it was the comical retort of director McG, whose production of Terminator: Salvation played host to the now-infamous freakout of its hot-blooded lead. At the New York Comic Con on Saturday, McG couldn’t dance around the overly publicized documentation of Bale’s June tantrum — when cinematographer Shane Hurlbut accidentally ruined an important take — instead, he had to confront the situation head-on. When an audience member asked the filmmaker to elaborate on the incident, he keenly responded with the aforementioned remark, a direct quote from that overexposed tirade.
McG, however, was only kidding. The way he spun it, Bale just took his performance a little too far. As John Connor, the badass leader of the human resistance in a post-apocalyptic future where the world has been overrun by machines, Bale needed to tap into a certain psychotic range. It’s possible he may have tapped a bit too hard, and even shattered some glass in the process. However, based on the clips McG showed to the crowd, it looks like the fourth Terminator film features a lot of shouting and stuff blowing up, so Bale’s rage actually does appear to fit the picture.
“I wanted that passion to show up in the character,” McG said. According to the director, Bale actually rejected the original version of the screenplay when McG brought it to him on the set of The Dark Knight. “He didn’t want a loud action movie,” McG said. “He wanted to articulate the arc of the character.” Connor, whom audiences watched grow up in T2 and T3, finally reaches his potential as the heroic icon that the mythology predicted he would become. Bale wanted to make that transition seem convincing. So if T4 works, thank his f***ing professionalism. Here’s a refresher on Bale’s intensity as a performer:
One of the hilarious things about fan conventions is that audience members tend to present immensely confrontational questions (when they’re not lavishing their icons with embarrassing amounts of praise). So it was fairly amusing when somebody asked McG to discuss the way public perception of his work — the highlights of which include two Charlie’s Angels movies — might make a fourth Terminator movie sound a little, you know, crass with him behind the camera.
The director didn’t hesitate.
“I hate McG, too,” he said, to a confusion of scattered applause and giggles. “Look, let’s talk about what it is. I started out making Charlie’s Angels. It’s not in keeping with the Terminator idea, but we all look for a break. All I wanted to do with those movies was make original films, and break down the ceiling of, ‘You can’t have a successful female action franchise.’ In that respect, I stand by those movies completely.”
McG admitted that Terminator creator James Cameron had no interest in another entry in the franchise, but Titanic auteur compared McG’s involvement to his own ultimately satisfying experience directing the second Alien movie in the wake of Ridley Scott’s success with the first one. It’s hard to compare McG to a young James Cameron, but maybe I’m just giving into the pervasive hatred McG himself understands. The Terminator: Salvation clip showed some potential: It’s dark, filled with mechanical gray tones and a lot of atmospheric details, suggesting more of a Mad Max thing than the Terminator world of yore. Franchises tend to get uglier as they go along, but I’m willing to give this one a chance.
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Then again, look at Pixar, a company that appears to view franchises as the Achilles heel of the industry. With the exception of Toy Story, Pixar has never expressed a major need to expand on its original animated worlds, which allows most of their impressive accomplishments to achieve an almost holy distinctiveness. Years ago, Pixar’s owner, Disney, created a special unit called Circle 7 with the sole intention of creating sequels to popular Pixar movies. The project didn’t last long, since none of the employees were really on board in the first place. (Now, Disney’s creative output is monitored by Toy Story creator John Lasseter, and all is more or less right in the world).
The point is that Pixar thrives on originality. None of its chief animators works on adaptations or remakes, and so their track records remain wholly unique without an iota of redundancy. Pixar’s next release, Up, will almost definitely continue this progress. The movie, which was previewed for a crowd at the Con over the weekend, looks delightfully bittersweet. Centered on the journey of an elderly man named Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Christopher Plummer), the story revolves around his wildly imaginative attempts to go to South America, fulfilling a pact he made with his dearly departed wife. Several absurd plot devices carry him there, including a series of balloons tied to his house that carry the structure right off its foundation and more or less take it in the right direction. Accompanies by a loquacious boy scout, Carl hurtles through a series of misadventures in search of his final destination.
It’s the sort of basic outline that allows animators to work their magic, and director Pete Docter (currently one of three Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominees for writing Wall-E) appears to have done just that. Docter spent four year working on Up, having launched pre-production shortly after completing Monster’s Inc. (a personal favorite of mine). Based on the clips I saw at the Con, he has crafted a nifty brand of adventurous storytelling — simultaneously a throwback to Saturday matinee appeal and an ode the timelessness of the travel narrative.
And then there’s the humor. In one clip, the duo encounter a dog with a mechanical collar that translates his thoughts into a mechanical voice, resulting in a clever twist on the talking animal conceit of innumerable animated films. Of course, Docter and his team could just make the dog talk, but why bother making his lips move when simply projecting them yields a funnier result? As you can see from the informative clip below, computer animated movies have always been able to replicate speech. The real talent comes from people like the folks at Pixar, who know how to say something new.
What can I say about the upcoming big screen adaptation of Watchmen, the first fifteen minutes of which screened at New York Comic Con this weekend? It looks like one helluva gorgeous, intense ride. Alan Moore’s late 1980s graphic novel centered on a bleak world not so different from our own, where superheroes have been deemed illegal at a time when society could really use them. Few superhero stories ever endeavored to make the sort of profound brushstrokes Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons made with Watchmen; rather than developing a lavish escapist premise, they managed to arrive at a surrealist portrait of contemporary problems. The Watchmen world suffers as much from standard evildoers as it does from the twilight of the Cold War and President Richard Nixon — yes, in this universe, he’s somehow managed to get elected for a third term.
About Nixon: We see the guy during the very first opening minutes of the movie, blabbering on at a press conference about the Soviet threat. When Watchmen first hit stands, it presented a nightmarish alternative reality, but the new Watchmen goes back to the eighties to provide an alternative history, and it’s a little disorienting. Media chatter swirls through the soundtrack in the first scene, while the Comedian (a character played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan whose murder will establish the main plot thread of the story), looking weary and middle aged in his secluded high rise apartment, glares at the tube. The creepy familiarity gets creepier moments later, when we see Pat Buchanan on a talk show. But it’s Nixon who really got my goat: The actor (a fellow named Robert Wisden) is no Dan Hedaya or Frank Langella. He plays Nixon as a cartoon-like mockery of the character not too dissimilar from the disembodied head of Nixon often featured in Futurama. It’s hard not to view the performance as a darkly tinted Saturday Night Live skit. While I can’t say I didn’t dig the strangeness of it, I do fear director Zack Snyder has downgraded the cultural references that give Watchmen its distinctive identity from a place of eerie familiarity to a less impressive level of playful satire. I never saw Watchmen as satire, and worry that such an added ingredient might overwhelm the grittier aspects of the story.
But of course I’m going to worry. Millions of Watchmen fans will worry — it means we care about the property. During a Q&A with Gibbons after the preview screening, fans freaked out about a slight change to the ending, which apparently does away with the giant squid element in place of something subtler. Fair enough, but don’t expect Watchmen to be a particularly subtle film. If anything, it seems that Snyder has really ramped up the ultraviolence, punctuating the harsher moments with more graphic revelations. The Comedian has an extraordinarily speedy fist fight with his anonymous murderer in the opening scene, something that remained merely implied in the graphic novel. Later, rogue hero Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) imprisoned for practicing his antics, pours scalding hot oil on a threatening prison mate before dropping his classic line in frightening monotone (”I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me”). In the book, the depth of pain Rorschach brings to the burnt man remains implied, but Snyder gives us a full-on, detailed shot of the damage as it happens. I wonder if this cutaway helps realize the potential of the scene, or merely serves to flaunt the movie’s grimy aura to the nth degree.
Despite these curious additions, I’m also nervous about Watchmen from the other side of the fence. Script-wise and visually, it appears almost obscenely loyal to the source material. When the Comedian goes flying out the glass window of his apartment, Snyder slows down the frame so that you can practically see the panels in photographic terms. This approach suggests Snyder (who took a similar live action comic book approach with his last feature, 300) aimed less for making a new work than for freshening up an old one. Either way, Gibbons, fielding questions after the screening, seemed pleased. (Moore, as he always does, refused to be associated with the project.) “It’s the kind of movie I saw in my head — but crystallized,” Gibbons said. “It’s amazing how faithful Zack has been.”
And it makes me wonder: Does faithfulness always yield a healthy product? The movie’s opening minutes feature a frenetic pace, clearly the result of Snyder’s passionate, well-meaning attempts to include so many details from the book. He has reportedly fought with Warner Brothers to keep his nearly three-hour cut. Great, but the Watchmen book doesn’t move like that. It’s a busy story, but a patient one. It’s quite possible that Watchmen the movie, clearly a beautiful accomplishment in atmospheric storytelling, loses patience in the shuffle.
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Watchmen wasn’t the only highly anticipated adaptation at the Con. Ridiculously prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike (above, wearing his trademark glasses) made the unorthodox decision to have the world premiere of his new feature, Yatterman, at the convention. (It actually screened at the Directors Guild of America on 57th Street.) Based on the utterly confounding Japanese animated series of the late 1970s, Yatterman focuses on a high energy team of superheroes attempting to stop their villainous counterparts from tracking down a mythological object called the Skull Stone. Whatever. I didn’t watch the show, so I can’t bring nostalgia to the table, even though it obviously plays a big role in the appeal of the live action movie. At a panel discussion on Friday, Miike said he really enjoyed the way the show mixed risqué humor with hyperbolic action. From what I saw of the movie, that much is preserved. A jarring, CG-heavy action sequence opens the movie, and Miike carries that sense of forward motion throughout the feature. However, since the action takes on an exaggerated tone, Miike’s ability to combine slapstick with colorful visuals takes on a delightful energy. Check out the trailer here.
Miike makes a lot of movies, something like three or four per year. But even if he aims for quantity over quality, there’s no denying his skill at elevating low culture to a place of complex film language. In particular, his horror films are typically smart, dense creative endeavors. Yatterman looks like it does something remarkably clever with a relatively simplistic property. So it was especially enticing to hear Miike tell the Con audience that he would love to make a live action version of the animated series Afro Samurai. My colleague John Lichman tells me that Samuel L. Jackson, the hilariously appropriate source of the samurai’s funky delivery, has a contractual agreement where only he can star in a live action Afro Samurai movie. Bring it on, guys. Maybe the world at large doesn’t need it, but the Con audience showed oodles enthusiasm, so what more incentive do you need? As I said before, this is a universe with its own set of rules.
Check back soon for notes on the next Terminator movie and Pixar’s upcoming Up.
It was clear I had made it into Comic Con territory when I made my first Stormtrooper sighting around 34th Street and 10th Avenue on a chilly Friday afternoon. A block or so from the Jacob Javitz Convention Center where New York Comic Con annually roosts, he was a science fiction anomaly amid the familiar backdrop of a mundane urban landscape. Inside the convention center, however, the universe shifted to his favor. Talk about industrial life and magic; here, the movies truly do come to life.
I’ve attended film festivals as far reaching as Cannes and Sundance, but nothing comes close to the surreal aura of the Con, where storytelling’s greatest extremes literally come to life within a gigantic bubble of zany imagination and personal expression. Comics are only one part of the equation, albeit a crucial one: It’s here that witches and warlocks, not to mention battlecruisers and savage beasts, discover common ground with literary counterparts such as the graphic novels. Many have blurred the line between those two vastly different categories — remember The Odyssey? — but when it comes to the art of the narrative, few contemporary environments remain as non-discriminatory as the Con. The comic book world has become voraciously accepted by the mainstream, and the popularity of gatherings such as this one now serve as a celebration of its ongoing vitality.
I’m mainly a movies guy, hence my dispatch here, but I never hesitate to check out examples of cinema invading other turf. On the massive ground floor of the Con, I spotted a sneak peak at Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and couldn’t look away. This goofy, nostalgia-inducing title, a 2009 release, suggests a counterpoint to subpar movie-to-videogame translations, if only because original Ghostbusters writers Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd supplied new content. The game allows you to play through the same storyline as any of the original characters, although each of them goes through a different experience. I can now attest that the game itself, with its colorful graphics (which even look solid on the generally middlebrow Nintendo Wii) appears to capture the spirit of the franchise. Ghostbusters has taken on the appeal of a mini-Star Wars, as demonstrated by a fellow at the booth wearing in a remarkably believable proton back.
Actually, much of the Con experience revolves around franchises, which would mainly provide a dispiriting reminder of the corporate agenda behind the affair if said franchises weren’t meritorious in the first place, which they are. Fans won’t accept the product if it doesn’t suit their own needs, and as a Watchmen buff, I must admit the trailer for the game left me worrying that exploitation was afoot. (I mean, you can only play as Rorschach and Nite Owl? Come on, people, everyone wants to be Doctor Manhattan!) The movie is a different story, of course. If you’re one of the few unfamiliar with it, just look at that sensational trailer:
Meanwhile, another franchise on display at the Con played well enough. Futurama: Into the Wild Blue Yonder screened in the early evening to an appreciative crowd. The final direct-to-DVD movie to resurrect Matt Groening’s Simpsons-esque sci-fi series (a favorite of ten devout Jaman users), it features the show’s usual hit-or-miss appeal, although the hits are pretty frequent in this one. The plot has the usual absurd slant: Fry, our bumbling hero from 1999, now pretty darn comfortable 1000 years in the future, finds himself suddenly able to read people’s minds (”What’s with the obnoxious voices?” he wonders. “Am I on The View?”) Naturally, this leads to his unreliable role in saving the human race, and pretty much every other race in the universe, from complete extinction. As usual, Groening’s green politics creep into the frame, but not without a palpable sense of fun. Still, let it not be forgotten that Futurama, which ends its life on a bittersweet note for real this time, harbored some legitimate science fiction ideas, and successfully married them to its comedy: The movie begins with a DNA molecule transforming into the shape of rollercoaster as the scene changes from the depths of outer space to…Mars Vegas. With one broad stroke, Futurama mocks the way human progress leads to greater commercial exploitation — just like the Con, come to think of it.
Check back soon for news about Takashi Miike’s trippy Yatterman movie, plus more nuggets excitement on Watchmen, Terminator, and other pop cultural treats.
Mickey Rourke, the edgy indie king of intense films and dodgy characters has had a rough time for the past few years. Making films that garnered little critical acclaim and low numbers at the box office, some would say his best years were behind him.
His fortune seemed to be changing with his eye catching role of the expat, chihuahua loving hitman in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico where Rourke quite possibly stole every scene he was in.
Fast forward to this years New York Film Festival where Rourke’s new film The Wrestler showed to an enthusiastic audience and, more importantly, energized the blogosphere and the film scene with almost universally positive glowing reviews. It’s no harm that The Wrestler pairs Rourke with Darren Aronofsky, the visionary autuer behind Pi and Requiem for a Dream. These two films have cemented Aronofsky as one of the true outsider filmmakers, bringing dark and haunting visions to movie audiences with a one two punch of raw human emotion.
I am already hunting for which theater locally is going to be premiering The Wrestler in my town. But meanwhile - I will be brushing up on these two Aronofsky favorites - both convienently available on Jaman.
Yesterday my family went to see “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” a movie about a chic dog that gets lost in Mexico, meets some doggy friends, learns that life isn’t about money, falls in love, and gets home. Ok, so its not the most original plot, and frankly the movie was pretty boring. My kids enjoyed it, but that was to be expected, and that’s why we went. So no harm, no foul, right? Well, that is until you total it up. In the end, the movie cost us around $65.00! That, of course, included the tickets, popcorn, and drinks. Parking was free, because at least the theater validates parking.
How much would that movie have cost if we had watched it at home? Probably less than $10.00 (including popcorn and drinks). And, it clearly wasn’t the kind of movie that required dolby surround or a particularly big screen.
In these times of economic uncertainty, movies used to be a refuge — a low cost way to escape the realities of the day. Now, its just plain too expensive. For $10.00, I probably would have enjoyed “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” more.
Gotta say, this makes Jaman look even more attractive. No lines, low cost, no driving, better food. And, we’ve got a pretty good collection of family friendly movies with more on the way. We’ve got movies like “Jimmy Neutron.” See the trailer below.
Gogol Bordello is one of my absolute favorite bands. Me and accordions and gypsy music, we all just get a little crazy together. When Jaman first got the Gogol Bordello documentary The Pied Piper of Hutznovia I dragged friends over to all watch it together. And then I watched it again. Honestly I think the folks in the office were happy when I got some headphones since they were just hearing the same addictive bouncy amazing accordion songs over and over coming from my desk. I’ve been sharing the link to the film with countless accordion buddies in anticipation for the Gogol Bordello appearances this weekend in San Francisco at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and at the Benefit for Muttville at Slim’s music club.
Today though, my excitement and joy just went through the roof when I got a link to the below trailer in my email. First of all, it’s Madonna’s directorial debut - and that alone would make me want to check out the film. However, Madonna AND Eugene Hutz?!?! The film is called Filth and Wisdom and it just looks so good. Funny, smart and totally sexy.
The Tribeca Film Festival kicks off on April 23, and right now there are two movies screening at the fest that have my attention and giving me the goose pimples. First is Brian Hecker’s debut feature “Bart Got a Room.” Now, okay, the plot sounds like a rejected Judd Apatow script, but a single look at the kick-butt character actor William H. Macy demands it be seen.
“Bart Got a Room” is about a high school student, Danny (Steven Kaplan), who’s feeling the pressure to land a prom date after he learns that his insufferably geeky classmate not only already has a date, but he’s got a hotel room to seal the deal (see movie’s title). Meanwhile, his divorced parents are each struggling with their own problems finding love. This is where the world-class Macy comes in. He plays Danny’s father, with, it seems, the same sad sack hang-doggedness with which he made “Fargo” the modern classic that it is. In any case, what other white actor could pull off the ‘fro you see right here? That hairdo takes guts, a faith in the inherent comedic value of the material. Never before has a haircut given me so much hope…
The other movie just seems hysterical — a kind of spoof of “Boogie Nights” with a “Spinal Tap” absurdity about it. It’s James Westby’s “The Auteur,” about Arturo Domingo, a flamboyant Spanish (Italian?) porno director who fancies himself in a class with Fellini, and, judging from the trailer, it’s got Melik Malkasian (”the Armenian Brando”) delivering what could be the year’s must-be-seen-to-be-believed performance. I can’t tell if “The Auteur” is a documentary-style comedy, or if the trailer’s simply designed to look that way. A little more snooping should solve that mystery. In the meantime, here’s the trailer. Now, where did I put my hacky sack?
For the past two weeks, we’ve been punished collectively and individually with a trailer from an abomination called “Baby Mama,” supposedly about this infertile (is that the word?) thirtysomething who hires a woman to make a baby for her. Look, I like Tina Fey as much as the next guy — the bright, funny, pretty anchorwoman of SNL’s “Weekend Update” and, last time I checked, the show’s head writer (is she still?). But, holy moly, I challenge anyone with an average IQ, a college education, and anything approaching good taste to watch this trailer and crack a smile…even once. Okay, the “chocolate or poop” bit is kind of funny, but the joke wears out WHILE IT’S PLAYING, and that’s just lame. Meanwhile, playing the moronic Baby Mama herself, Amy Poehler comes one step closer to being the feminine equivalent of Will “National Nuisance” Ferrell. What shocks me is that someone as sharp and funny and, well, pretty as Tina Fey didn’t see this trainwreck while it was still in paper phase, and throw it into the fire. But there you have it…watch it and weep (and I mean that literally, my Jaman comrades)…
It’s absolutely amazing to me how guys like Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard — all of whom are in their 70’s and 80’s, and major players in world cinema — are still cranking out movies at a regular and energetic pace. These guys are unstoppable. And this week, Jacques Rivette’s new movie, “The Duchess of Langeais,” is getting its New York debut.
The New York Times has got a thorough and very entertaining appreciation of Rivette, written by film critic Dennis Lim and titled “An Uncertain Je Ne Sais Quoi.” In it, Lim rightly points out that, among all the French moviemakers who came out of the New Wave, Rivette is probably the least appreciated and understood.
My feeling is that Rivette’s artistic-philosophical themes never quite connected with audiences in the same emotional-visceral way Truffaut’s sentimentality or Godard’s politicking did, or, likewise, Rohmer’s (slightly kinky) deviant romances, or Chabrol’s thrillers. Lim spells it all out quite well, and also elaborates on just how amazing, important, enlightening, and hypnotic Rivette’s movies really are — they’re immersive experiences in exactly the way he describes, as if the characters are conjuring up the stories as we watch them, or the viewer is conjuring them up by the act of watching. It’s truly a magical experience.
And that brings me to the great tragedy here, which is that filmmakers even as well-esteemed as Rivette (and so, so many others) — unless they get the full-on Criterion treatment — just get shoved aside in the helter skelter of the theatrical and home video marketplace. Only a few of his movies are available on Netflix, and Amazon prices to buy them are running in the $35-$45 range — not exactly friendly enough to entice a Rivette newbie.
The good news for the moment is that I discovered that Jaman has THREE of Rivette’s movies. Mind you, none of the guy’s movies (with the exception of “La Belle Noiseusse”) is that well-known, so this is the perfect opportunity to get a taste of this man’s brand of cinema, and familiarize yourself with a major filmmaker with DVD quality viewing that won’t set back the wallets of bohemian cinephiles the world over.
Here are the trailers to Jaman’s Rivette collection: “Secret Defense,” “Gang of Four,” and “Wuthering Heights” to give you a head-start on your Rivette discoveries. Check them out:
Here’s hoping that online cinema makes the world a friendlier place for underserved artists like Rivette, Satyajit Ray, and their younger generations of proteges.
Its Friday, and I’m getting ready to roll to Sundance. I know I should be scouring out reviews on those premiering movies that are all the buzz, but I have to admit to you, I’m stuck in a rat hole watching some cool trailers. Jaman has some fun ‘in theatre’ hollywood blockbuster trailers, and I love watching them. Yes, I’m that annoying movie friend/date that insists on getting to the theatre on time, just to kick back and watch the trailers.
