Here is the trailer for Spike Jones' adapatation of Where the Wild Thing Are...looks terrific.
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/where-the-wild-things-are/trailer
Thursday, March 26, 2009
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND
I had thought, after leaving the packed-house, Friday evening Cinerama screening of X-Men: The Last Stand that the movie was not all bad. The people I saw it with liked it, the crowd gave up the applause and so I got fooled by the mob mood of it all. Yet, throughout the movie I remember being under-whelmed and confused by the disjointed tone and utter lack of dramatic punch throughout the movie. Then, over the weekend I saw parts of Bryan Singer’s sharp first and brilliant second contributions to the series, and read over some Marvel comics, and realized all at once that this new movie was not just a lame duck, but an exceptionally bad picture – a real disappointment, in light of the tremendous momentum that Singer had built at the conclusion of part two. Where the second film had been crisp, charming and propulsive, this new one is muddled, bland and inert – and there is a good reason behind its stagnancy.
The story goes that Tom Rothman, the head of production at 20th Century Fox (the film’s producers) had engaged in some kind of personal vendetta against Singer, who had left Fox and the X-Men series (temporarily in Singer’s mind) for Warners and their Superman project. Rothman was allegedly incensed and charged ahead with the movie, rather than wait for Singer to return later to produce and/or direct, and continue his great work. This kind of ego-driven, megalomaniacal decision making always spells disaster in the filmmaking business.
For a brief moment the project had looked to be back on the right track even without Singer – the promising new director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) had come on board and seemed to have a smart read on the material – he had facilitated the (very savvy) casting of Vinnie Jones as the henchman villain Juggernaut – but then Vaughn suddenly departed the project for “personal reasons”, which can be interpreted in any number of ways. With the production already underway and a deadline to beat on the horizon (that is, Warners and Singer’s Superman Returns on June 30th) Rothman, instead of stepping back and re-assessing the lay, barreled on and brought on a hired gun helmer – the capable, entirely unimaginative film-school product Brett Ratner who, it must be noted, is himself a casualty of the same long-gestating Superman project that ultimately lured Singer away from Fox (an impressive list that also includes Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, J.J. Abrams, McG and, allegedly, Michael Bay and Robert Rodriguez.) Ratner, rather than making the movie his own, simply picked up the pieces and shot a big-budget effects picture and X-men 3 became a bastard movie, belonging to no one father, and having all the traits of a bastard – namely a vague, unfocused anger and a lack of belonging.
There are some neat tricks (a prelude sequence set in the past uses a great effect to remove twenty years of age from Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s faces) and a handful of guffaws, but it is not a successful movie (despite that $100 million-plus opening weekend, whose 60% Sunday drop off in sales is a very telling fact). The whole effort is nothing more than another vacuous, paint-by-numbers studio seat-filler, and a meaningless conclusion to a “trilogy” – if ever there was a franchise that should not have been constrained to the George Lucas trilogy mindset, it is this one, with its rich, endless already written plotlines and multitudes of characters and realities. This could have been a wonderful, slowly developed masterpiece of six or seven movies. Instead, Rothman and Ratner have rolled it all into one, 90 minute headache, neutered Hugh Jackman’s great Wolverine characterization (the virile engine of the other two pictures) and carelessly killed off three of the best characters (it’d be the equivalent of killing off Han, Leia and Yoda right in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back.) Above and beyond any bad plot concerns, the actors simply have nothing to do because the movie is designed to be quick, flashy (not even good flash) and clear out the theater for the next showing. Quantity, not quality, and the wasted promise of yet another great franchise by Fox (I count the eventual Predator and Alien debacles as two of the most spectacular examples of banker shortsightedness in film history – imagine what could have come from those original germs.) It has the effect of making you feel like Wolverine is giving you the middle claw.
John Wood
June 01, 2006
The story goes that Tom Rothman, the head of production at 20th Century Fox (the film’s producers) had engaged in some kind of personal vendetta against Singer, who had left Fox and the X-Men series (temporarily in Singer’s mind) for Warners and their Superman project. Rothman was allegedly incensed and charged ahead with the movie, rather than wait for Singer to return later to produce and/or direct, and continue his great work. This kind of ego-driven, megalomaniacal decision making always spells disaster in the filmmaking business.
For a brief moment the project had looked to be back on the right track even without Singer – the promising new director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) had come on board and seemed to have a smart read on the material – he had facilitated the (very savvy) casting of Vinnie Jones as the henchman villain Juggernaut – but then Vaughn suddenly departed the project for “personal reasons”, which can be interpreted in any number of ways. With the production already underway and a deadline to beat on the horizon (that is, Warners and Singer’s Superman Returns on June 30th) Rothman, instead of stepping back and re-assessing the lay, barreled on and brought on a hired gun helmer – the capable, entirely unimaginative film-school product Brett Ratner who, it must be noted, is himself a casualty of the same long-gestating Superman project that ultimately lured Singer away from Fox (an impressive list that also includes Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, J.J. Abrams, McG and, allegedly, Michael Bay and Robert Rodriguez.) Ratner, rather than making the movie his own, simply picked up the pieces and shot a big-budget effects picture and X-men 3 became a bastard movie, belonging to no one father, and having all the traits of a bastard – namely a vague, unfocused anger and a lack of belonging.
There are some neat tricks (a prelude sequence set in the past uses a great effect to remove twenty years of age from Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s faces) and a handful of guffaws, but it is not a successful movie (despite that $100 million-plus opening weekend, whose 60% Sunday drop off in sales is a very telling fact). The whole effort is nothing more than another vacuous, paint-by-numbers studio seat-filler, and a meaningless conclusion to a “trilogy” – if ever there was a franchise that should not have been constrained to the George Lucas trilogy mindset, it is this one, with its rich, endless already written plotlines and multitudes of characters and realities. This could have been a wonderful, slowly developed masterpiece of six or seven movies. Instead, Rothman and Ratner have rolled it all into one, 90 minute headache, neutered Hugh Jackman’s great Wolverine characterization (the virile engine of the other two pictures) and carelessly killed off three of the best characters (it’d be the equivalent of killing off Han, Leia and Yoda right in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back.) Above and beyond any bad plot concerns, the actors simply have nothing to do because the movie is designed to be quick, flashy (not even good flash) and clear out the theater for the next showing. Quantity, not quality, and the wasted promise of yet another great franchise by Fox (I count the eventual Predator and Alien debacles as two of the most spectacular examples of banker shortsightedness in film history – imagine what could have come from those original germs.) It has the effect of making you feel like Wolverine is giving you the middle claw.
John Wood
June 01, 2006
300
300
This new film 300 is a glimpse into the window of the future of filmmaking. It is a film, like Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City from a couple of years back, that was composed almost entirely within the camera and the digital computer; that is, the actors were filmed almost exclusively against the process know as green screen, in costume and with minimal props and sets, and the rest of the world was built within the computer. Some critics have noted a dislike for this new stage in moviemaking, an assumed deviation from the old process of location shooting and massive set building. While the older method will, one hopes, continue to flourish for years to come, the limitless vision enabled by the new digital process will surely allow for grander and more robust films than we have seen for some time. The Lord of the Rings utilized this tool to great effect, revealing an epic scope that was, previous to the advent of the digital revolution, beyond prohibitive – it is a simple matter and dollars and cents: the grand epic has become too costly to stage in the real world.
300, like Sin City, is based on the graphic novel work of writer-illustrator Frank Miller, and like Sin City attempts a literal, moving recreation of Miller’s pages. Miller himself was a revolutionary figure in the history of comic books – his bold re-imagining of Batman forever changed the temperament of the Dark Knight into a harsh harbinger of justice, unrestrained by the social laws that for so long defined the superhero. It is only fitting that two of his masterworks (Sin City and 300) should serve as templates for the next stage in filmed entertainment.
300 revolves around the actual events of the Battle of Thermopylae, or the “Hot Gates”, wherein a small band of three-hundred Spartans and some few thousand additional Greeks made a stand against the encroaching conquest of Xerses of Persia. Led by King Leonidas of Sparta, this small phalanx of citizen soldiers stood in the way of millions, and for a few days at least, held them at bay. There had never been a fighting force like the Spartans, trained from the time they could stand to fight or die, baptized in combat. To them, a “beautiful death” in battle was the highest honor. Before the end of the days long siege by Xerxes, the Spartans had cut their way through thousands of Persians, their bodies stacked high on the battlefield. It is one of the greatest battles ever fought in history, and it could nto have been a pleasant thing.
Director Zack Snyder, taking his inspiration from Miller’s book, give us a brutal, blood soaked vision of primitive warfare – limbs fly heedlessly about, spears pierce the chests of man and beast alike and growls and howls of death and victory. It is definitely not a film for all tastes, by which I mean mostly teenage boys and grown boys of the 25 to 35 year old variety will like the film.
This new film 300 is a glimpse into the window of the future of filmmaking. It is a film, like Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City from a couple of years back, that was composed almost entirely within the camera and the digital computer; that is, the actors were filmed almost exclusively against the process know as green screen, in costume and with minimal props and sets, and the rest of the world was built within the computer. Some critics have noted a dislike for this new stage in moviemaking, an assumed deviation from the old process of location shooting and massive set building. While the older method will, one hopes, continue to flourish for years to come, the limitless vision enabled by the new digital process will surely allow for grander and more robust films than we have seen for some time. The Lord of the Rings utilized this tool to great effect, revealing an epic scope that was, previous to the advent of the digital revolution, beyond prohibitive – it is a simple matter and dollars and cents: the grand epic has become too costly to stage in the real world.
300, like Sin City, is based on the graphic novel work of writer-illustrator Frank Miller, and like Sin City attempts a literal, moving recreation of Miller’s pages. Miller himself was a revolutionary figure in the history of comic books – his bold re-imagining of Batman forever changed the temperament of the Dark Knight into a harsh harbinger of justice, unrestrained by the social laws that for so long defined the superhero. It is only fitting that two of his masterworks (Sin City and 300) should serve as templates for the next stage in filmed entertainment.
300 revolves around the actual events of the Battle of Thermopylae, or the “Hot Gates”, wherein a small band of three-hundred Spartans and some few thousand additional Greeks made a stand against the encroaching conquest of Xerses of Persia. Led by King Leonidas of Sparta, this small phalanx of citizen soldiers stood in the way of millions, and for a few days at least, held them at bay. There had never been a fighting force like the Spartans, trained from the time they could stand to fight or die, baptized in combat. To them, a “beautiful death” in battle was the highest honor. Before the end of the days long siege by Xerxes, the Spartans had cut their way through thousands of Persians, their bodies stacked high on the battlefield. It is one of the greatest battles ever fought in history, and it could nto have been a pleasant thing.
Director Zack Snyder, taking his inspiration from Miller’s book, give us a brutal, blood soaked vision of primitive warfare – limbs fly heedlessly about, spears pierce the chests of man and beast alike and growls and howls of death and victory. It is definitely not a film for all tastes, by which I mean mostly teenage boys and grown boys of the 25 to 35 year old variety will like the film.
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