Jul
31
Unnecessary Prequel/Sequel News!
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People say there’s no such thing as an original idea. I think that’s hokum. Why, just last night I came up with an idea for a reality show called “Deucing with the D-Listers,” a program about half-celebrities taking a shit. Tell me that someone else has had the very same idea. I highly doubt that!
At any rate, Hollywood is reticent to try anything new. The community is so insular and sanctimonious, which seems odd. The decision makers act like they’re indispensable, like no one else could possibly do what they do when what they do seems like a no-brainer. Take sequels and prequels. If a movie is successful, they’ll greenlight a sequel. Once the sequels are played out and the actors are too expensive and/or too old, they’ll greenlight a prequel. Man alive, I couldn’t possibly do their job!
That being said, two franchises that have played themselves out — the “Alien” quadrilogy and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy — are getting a prequel and a sequel respectively, according to Chud. Now I’m quite a fan of the first two “Alien” movies and more than a little forgiving of the latter two “Pirates” movies. Nonetheless, these two franchises are done. Unless they did something wholly original like blended the two movies — “Dead Man’s Chestburster?” — I can’t possibly think of a route either series can go that won’t seem pointless and stupid.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
28
“Maniac Cop 2″ Review
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I still own a VCR. It’s almost 20 years old, but it works for the most part. It does eat tapes like a bastard. Unfortunately, not every movie has been “digitally remastered” for the DVD format. There are still tons of films that are only available on VHS. If I were to get rid of my VCR, I’d have no way of viewing such wonderful films as “The Incredible Melting Man.” And so, I thought I’d start a regular column about movies that aren’t on DVD, forgotten gems doomed to exist only on antiquated videotape with bad audio and a panned-and-scanned image. This week’s entry will be the 1990 William Lustig classic, “Maniac Cop 2.”
The “Maniac Cop” trilogy came and went in the late-’80s/early-’90s as the slasher genre was winding down. What’s noteworthy about movies one and two in the series is that they star a very young, very skinny Bruce Campbell as rookie cop Jack Forrest. I haven’t gotten around to seeing part three yet. And since the first film is available on DVD, I’m going to limit my review to the second installment — “The Empire Strikes Back” of the “Maniac Cop” trilogy.
“Maniac Cop 2″ begins with a flashback to the climax of the first film. Undead ex-cop Matt Cordell, played by the mega-chinned actor Robert Z’Dar, has a ship’s mast plunged into his chest before he drives a police van off a pier in what appears to be a rather dangerous looking stunt. Of course, Cordell’s body is never recovered, and he resumes his killing spree, going after the victims of violent crime rather than the criminals themselves. Cordell’s a silent killer in the vein of Jason Voorhees. He wears a police uniform, and his face has been disfigured from his brief stint in prison, where he was believed to have been killed by the very criminals he put away. I have no idea why Cordell’s victims are innocent people and not the corrupt bureaucrats who had him sent up in the first place. The film was written by the highly overrated genre scribe Larry Cohen, who never quite grasped the concept of causality.
But slashers typically have weird motives anyway. I’m willing to go along with it.
Surviving a slasher film is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory. Anyone who makes it through a horror flick will almost assuredly die within the first fifteen minutes of the follow-up. Jack Forrest is no exception, meeting his bitter end at the point of Cordell’s dagger, a dagger he keeps sheathed in his nightstick. “Maniac Cop 2″ is one of the few films that contains a Bruce Campbell comeuppance; “Congo” is another. At any rate, with Forrest dead, it falls on grizzled Det. Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) to track down Cordell with the help of police head-shrinker Susan Reilly (Claudia Christian).
Cordell meanwhile teams up with a serial killer who targets exotic dancers, thereby satisfying the cop movie cliche that all good detective work requires a visit to a strip club. From there, Cordell starts building an army of psychopaths to break back into Sing-Sing and have his revenge. The climax contains one of the longest full-body burns I’ve seen since “Swamp Thing.” But this is definitely that ass-kickingest full-body burn by far. And the “Maniac Cop Rap” over the closing credits is easily the best musical composition 1990 had to offer.
I love the concept behind “Maniac Cop.” It’s “Dirty Harry” meets “Friday the 13th.” I’m astonished no one’s attempted a remake. I don’t think movie two quite lives up to its full potential, but it’s still fun to watch. VHS has a weird sort of quality — or lack thereof — that enhances the experience, like seeing a bad print of a b-movie in a grindhouse theater. The crummy picture and the garbled sound give it a je ne se qua that’d be lost if it had been cleaned up for DVD.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
24
“The Incredible Melting Man” Review
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Sometimes I’ll stumble upon a rare, OOP title at CineFile — a flick that isn’t on Netflix or even available on DVD — and have a much better time with it than I should. Last night, I found “The Incredible Melting Man,” a gooey 1977 creature feature about an astronaut who returns to Earth with problem skin. Now I’ve often maintained that there’s really no such thing as a movie that’s “so bad, it’s good.” However, TIMM can only be described as such. It’s astonishingly awful, but nonetheless a cinematic revelation. The sheer level of ineptitude on display (Rick Baker’s effects work notwithstanding) somehow works in the film’s favor. It’s in fact better because it’s incompetent. Were someone to remake this, they’d doubtless screw it up by introducing talent and technical proficiency where none belongs.
In the film Alex Rebar stars as astronaut Steve West/The Incredible Melting Man. During a mission to Saturn, West looks directly at stock footage of the sun, gets a bloody nose, then somehow wakes up in a hospital bed with his face wrapped in gauze. Worse, the other two astronauts that accompanied him on his trip are dead, and he’s melting for whatever reason.
Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) is called in to investigate West’s condition. But before Nelson even arrives at the hospital, West escapes and goes on a killing spree. Now if you’re saying to yourself, “That sounds just like ‘The Quatermass Xperiment!’” then you and I should be BFFs. It is like “Quatermass Xperiment,” which I just so happened to rent from CineFile a couple weeks ago.
I’ve sat through some dizzyingly bad movies before, but none quite as refreshingly rotten as TIMM. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with ADR. It’s a process where actors will re-record their dialogue in post-production for scenes where there was too much noise on set during shooting for the existing audio track to be considered useable. Well, they clearly didn’t do that for TIMM. In fact, there’s a scene where Nelson is having a conversation with another doctor on a moving platform that’s humming like a bastard. There’s no reason for them to be on this platform. More, they have to shout over all the noise the platform’s making. What they’re shouting — pages of exposition — seems pretty important, yet it’s almost completely drowned out by all the din. Of course, they could’ve just done some ADR work and laid in a useable audio track for that scene, but Michael Mann doesn’t bother with ADR. So why would TIMM director William Sachs?
ADR is for weenises!
The internal logic of the film is in a constant state of flux. Nelson’s desperate to find West before he kills a whole bunch of innocent people. But he keeps dropping in on his wife at home, where West is most assuredly not. Still, it’s rather hilarious when Nelson gives his wife hell for not buying crackers at the supermarket while some drippy astronaut is beheading a poor fisherman in the woods. Nelson’s priorities are all over the place.
Despite all the awkward pacing and bizarre character motivations in the film, Rick Baker’s effects work does deserve to be singled out as exceptional. I’d even go so far as to say I was somewhat moved when West finally melts into oblivion at the film’s climax. Baker was able to get more of a performance out of wax and Ultraslime than the Sachs could coax from his actors.
TIMM is a film that I’d absolutely love to see with a midnight audience at the New Beverly. I bet this thing plays like a mother. The first half is admittedly stronger than the second. It does become a little reptitious after awhile. Even so, this is a flick that I’m surprised doesn’t have a serious cult following. It’s entertaining in spite of itself, which I guess is the very definition of a movie that’s “so bad, it’s good.”
-Brad Lohan
Jul
23
So the big news this week is that Sam Raimi is attached to direct a “World of Warcraft” movie. I think he’s a pretty odd choice, considering that A) he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker, B) he’s up to his eyeballs in “Spider-Man 4″ preproduction and C) “WoW” is an effing video game. It’s a MMORPG — a “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” — but it’s still a video game. And if history has taught me anything, it’s that exposure to massive amounts of radiation will give you superpowers AND it’s virtually impossible to make a video game into a movie that’s any damn good.
Now I’m not saying that “WoW” is a shitty video game. I’ve never played it, so I couldn’t say. No, I’m saying that the medium simply does not translate well to the big screen. Video games have become much more sprawling and open-ended than they were a decade or two ago. The experience of playing a video game is mutually exclusive from the experience of watching a film. It’s interactive for one thing. For another thing, if something as simple and straightforward as “Super Mario Bros.” can’t make a successful transition to cinema screens, how is it possible to pull off something like friggin’ “Halo” or “Bioshock?”
Look at some of the sorry video game movies that have come out in recent years: the “Resident Evil” series, “Silent Hill,” “Doom,” “Hitman,” “Max Payne,” and quite literally everything with Uwe Boll’s name attached to it. I believe “Silent Hill” has its defenders, and RE flicks are immensely popular (a fourth is about to go before cameras). But come on. Where comic book movies have become a legitimate geek sub-genre, video game movies haven’t. And they won’t, not if I have my way!
Maybe — and this is a big maybe – video game movies haven’t been good because they never had top talent attached to them. Paul W.S. Anderson isn’t exactly as good a director as Paul Thomas Anderson, and “Mortal Kombat” isn’t exactly as good a film as “There Will Be Blood.” That being said, if a filmmaker with actual chops took on a video game project, I guess there’s a remote possibility the finished product might be better than “Double Dragon.” However, it still begs the question: Why would an A-list director like Raimi want to tackle such material in the first place? It seems like he’d be slumming.
All that being said, “Spider-Man 4″ is two years out. Directors also have a tendency to sign on to eleventeen films that are currently development without really intending to make all of them. Chances are, at least one will get the greenlight, and that’s what the director moves forward with. Raimi signing on to “WoW” doesn’t necessarily mean that Raimi will direct “WoW” or that “WoW” will even get made. But it’s just damn peculiar that Raimi would pick that project as a potential follow-up to “Spider-Man 4.” I’d much rather see him tackle “Evil Dead 4″ or pretty much anything that hasn’t been lampooned on “South Park.”
-Brad Lohan
Jul
22
Sometimes, less is more. I was not outraged by the exclusion of anything from the theatrical version of “Watchmen” — like the heavy-handed “Tales From the Black Freighter” story — but I was nonetheless curious about what had been cut out of the film. So yesterday I picked up the Director’s Cut of the film on DVD. Clocking in at a little over 3 hours, the DC has more than twenty minutes of additional footage. If that’s not enough for you, an “Ultimate Edition” of the film, which will intercut the animated short “Tales From the Black Freighter” with the DC and pad out the runtime by another twenty minutes, is due this Christmas. I don’t know about you, but I’ve watched more than enough “Watchmen” already.
I prefer the theatrical cut of “Watchmen” over the director’s cut. The theatrical version is a bit too long to begin with, since director Zack Snyder was way too married to the source material. The more I think about it, the more I wish Paul Greengrass had done the film and set it in the modern day. But to his credit, Snyder does a remarkable job recreating the graphic novel. There is, however, sort of an undercurrent of pointlessness in being extremely faithful to the original work. Alan Moore, who co-created the graphic novel with Dave Gibbons, has vowed never to watch the movie. And the fanbase will never accept any screen translation, so why even bother pandering to that audience? The few changes Snyder did make, notably the exlusion of the Squid, were met with an uproar on the messageboard bully pulpit. I never found the conclusion of the book or the film (either version) to be as satisfying as everything that leads up to it. Still, the one instance where I would’ve expected Snyder to defer to the graphic novel, he parted ways from it and bungled the climax of the film version.
Anyway, what’s different about the two versions? Well, for the most part, the director’s cut doesn’t include too many new scenes. It mostly just extends a few of the existing ones. It’s fairly easy to see why these scenes were trimmed. Too often I got the feeling that the longer bits were cut for good reason, and the movie now feels flabby and uneven. I can’t imagine what the dumbass scene in the beginning where two cops stumble upon Rorschach in the Comedian’s apartment adds to the film. Instead, it just stops the movie dead during its opening minutes when things should be moving at a much faster clip.
There’s some business about Laurie Jupiter and the G-Men keeping tabs on her, making sure she’s remaining faithful to Dr. Manhattan. This is also extraneous and stupid. Laurie’s relationship with Manhattan doesn’t work for two reasons: one, Malin Ackerman is not a terribly good actress, and two, Manhattan’s lost almost all of his humanity by this point, giving us little reason to care if Laurie dumps him. I like the idea of seeing a relationship between two superheroes, but the execution is weak in both versions of the film, where Laurie and Manhattan seem like they should’ve parted ways years ago.
Perhaps the one scene in the director’s cut that I did like is the infamous bit with Hollis Mason (the original Nite-Owl) fighting off a gang of Knot-Tops in his apartment before being bludgeoned to death by a Nite-Owl trophy. During the fight, where the aging Mason gets in a few good punches, he imagines himself battling his old foes. I’d have enjoyed seeing a Minutemen film, watching the original costumed heroes in action during the ’40s. Here, we get a few glimpses of what that’d have been like. I think this scene works pretty well. It’s not terribly lengthy, but it does feel like it’d be the first thing to go when they’d start making trims.
In all, I feel that the theatrical cut is the definitive film version of “Watchmen.” The DC is worth watching if you’re curious what wound up on the cutting room floor, but once you’ve seen it, I doubt you’ll feel like sitting through it again. It simply reincorporates scenes that don’t work or scenes that are unnecessary — stuff that’s usually cut out for good reason.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
17
Adapting Something for the Big Screen
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With a new Harry Potter movie in theaters, the backlash begins afresh. Hardcore Potter-philes are livid over the filmmakers having changed this or excluded that. I haven’t read book 6, so I’m not sure what’s different, nor do I care. Thing is, a movie adaptation is — are you sitting down? — not supposed to be a direct translation of a work that already exists in another medium. People seem to have a hard time reconciling that. When hasn’t someone grumbled that “the book was better” than the movie? It’s such a trite analysis of a film. And it rings false. If books were sooo much better than movies, theaters would be largely empty this time of year and folks would be lining up outside local libraries and big box bookstores. More, no one watches a movie and says, “They should make that into a NOVEL!”
Books and movies are apples and oranges. Even if the film is based on a book, it’s a different ball of wax. The limitations of the cinematic medium are different than the limits of one’s imagination. A film must tell a story visually, economically. You see the story play out through the performances, the direction, the cinematography, the editing. You hear the score. The confluence of all these elements — not to mention art direction, costume design and whatever a best boy does — is a movie. It’s cinema. It’s a different breed of storytelling altogether.
As you may already know, books tell stories entirely with the written word. Language is the only tool in the author’s belt, but fortunately, avid readers tend to have pretty good imaginations. I love reading. I read all the time. In fact, I wish I had time to read even more. Books have all sorts of advantages over films in that their budgets are limitless, and they’re not restricted to three-act structures or being directed by Brett Ratner.
I remember reading a book by screenwriting guru Syd Field. It has not been made into a film. However, it does discuss writing an adaptation. Field says that screenwriters should put the five best scenes from a book into their adaptated screenplays. I guess when adapting a work of popular fiction, the filmmakers should remain somewhat faithful to the source material. Audiences want to see Ewan MacGregor parachute out of a helicopter as an anti-matter bomb goes off in “Angels & Demons” regardless of how dumbass it sounds. It’s in the book, and by Joe, it should be in the movie. But is an adaptation only satisfying if it hews closely to what’s on the page?
Modern fiction generally reads like 400-page screenplay treatments. Authors want to be the next Stephen King (pre-accident) or John Grisham or Tom Clancy. They don’t want to be that guy who wrote “Confederacy of Dunces” or the other guy who wrote “Life of Pi” or Michael Crichton because he’s dead. Ultimately, they want Hollywood to come knocking and their work to be adapted for the silver screen. So their books are fairly cinematic and not very internal. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. I just sort of wish they’d start blending the genres to spice things up. I want to see a techno-legal thriller. I’m curently reading Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain,” a post-9/11 vampire novel. Funnily enough, Del Toro originally tried to make “The Strain” into a film.
So with books that read more like novelizations rather than novels, am I totally off my rocker in suggesting that adaptations should be their own animal? Well, I’m not trying to say that movies should radically depart from the source material. But audiences shouldn’t be expecting what they pictured in their read while reading the book to the novel to be exactly what’s projected onto the screen. I think that adaptations should maintain the spirit of the novel, without being so slavish to the work that it becomes a boring retread. If you can’t do something interesting with the work when translating it to the screen, why are you adapting it in the first place?
-Brad Lohan
Jul
16
Theatrical Cuts vs. Director’s Cuts
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Blogging about the “Watchmen: Director’s Cut” the other day got me thinking about this topic. Which version of a film is better, the theatrical cut or the director’s cut? Well, it depends on the movie, really. Sometimes, a movie is gutted by a studio. Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” is as good an example as any. The theatrical cut of that film is unwatchable, absolutely unwatchable. The director’s cut — depending on which version you see — restores about 45 minutes to an hour of footage and Gilliam’s original vision. The theatrical version of “Brazil” bombed, so despite the studio’s weak efforts to make the film more audience friendly, audiences stayed away. But the director’s cut has found an audience thanks to home video.
Most director’s don’t have the clout in Hollywood to demand final cut. In other words, the theatrical cut and the director’s cut will be one and the same. I think the studio’s logic behind ordering cuts is goofy and that a filmmaker’s vision should remain intact, regardless of what some dipshit focus group says. That’s just me. Fact is, studio interference is a given, and cuts are going to be mandated.
Fortunately, there’s home video, where multiple versions of a film can be made available for audiences to decide which version they prefer. Studios get this. It’s why they sometimes release a “director’s cut” of a movie that isn’t really the director’s cut. Take the 2003 director’s cut of “Alien.” Ridley Scott himself prefers the theatrical version of the film over the so-called director’s cut. However, slapping the words “director’s cut” onto a film gives it a certain je ne sais quoi. And that’s why there are “director’s cuts” of the first three “Lethal Weapon” movies that weren’t approved by Richard Donner. Those are simply extended cuts, like the needless “X-Men 1.5″ and “Spider-Man 2.5″ double-dips I’ve seen available. Deleted scenes are reinstated, but not because the director necessarily wanted them put back in.
All that being said, the following films are available in at least two different versions. Some I think have stronger director’s cuts, others stronger theatrical cuts. Let’s begin with the obvious.
Blade Runner
The DVD set I have of this film contains five (5) different cuts — the original 1982 theatrical version, the international version, the workprint, the 1992 director’s cut and the 2007 “final cut.” I’ve watched all of them, save for the workprint that I turned off at the halfway point. Now, let’s ignore the international version. I didn’t notice many differences between that one and the 1992 director’s cut. Ridley Scott oversaw the final cut, which I believe is his true director’s cut. So we can ignore the 1992 director’s cut as well. This really comes down to comparing the 1982 theatrical version to the final cut.
The major difference between the theatrical version and the final cut is Harrison Ford’s voiceover. It was decided that “Blade Runner” was too difficult to follow and a VO would lend the film a more noir-ish feel. So Harrison Ford was brought in to narrate certain portions of the movie, talking about how his ex-wife used to refer to him as “raw fish” and so forth. It’s fairly tacked on and useless, like most voiceover. The theatrical cut is also missing the “unicorn scene” that pointlessly suggests the Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, is a Replicant. It does, however, have a seemingly happier ending, where Deckard and Rachael drive off into the sunset, using footage that was originally shot for the opening of Kubrick’s “The Shining.” On the other hand, the final cut of the film has no voiceover, cleans up the special effects and drops the dopey final scene. I still don’t buy that Deckard is a Replicant, but I’ll agree to disagree with Ridley Scott on that one.
Better version: The Final Cut
Alien 3
Technically, there is no director’s cut of David Fincher’s “Alien 3.” When 20th Century Fox released the Alien Quadrilogy in 2003, they included two cuts of each film. For the third “Alien,” the set has the theatrical version and a workprint version that Fincher delivered to the studio. What’s a workprint, you ask? It’s a work-in-progress. The special effects aren’t completed, the dialogue isn’t sweetened, the score has a temp track. As far as “Alien 3″ goes, the workprint version is as close to the director’s cut as 20th Century Fox has in its vault. Fincher refused to work with the studio on overseeing an authentic director’s cut because the film is the very embodiment of a compromised work.
To their credit, Fox did what they could with the workprint, adding in subtitles for scenes where the dialogue is unclear, and using CGI for effects shots that were never finished before the film was released in 1991. The [un]finished product is vastly different from the theatrical version. “Alien 3″ in any form is not the crowd-pleasing actioner that James Cameron’s “Aliens” is. It’s a rare summer blockbuster that has a downer ending, not to mention a downer beginning and a downer middle. But where the theatrical version feels incomplete and unsatisfying, the workprint restores 30 to 45 minutes of additional footage and brings much more texture and character to the film. The Xenomorph bursts out of an ox rather than a dog, one of the loopier prisoners sets the creature free after the convicts manage to trap it, and most shocking off all, the chest-buster doesn’t explode out of Ripley as she plunges to her fiery death at the climax. It feels like a different film, not a great film, but something approaching greatness.
Better Version: The Workprint
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
I have to include an example of a film that has a better theatrical cut. I obviously couldn’t include James Cameron’s “The Abyss,” though I have some problems with the director’s cut of that film too. No, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” has an essentially perfect theatrical version. For years after I got the Special Edition on VHS, I found myself exclusively revisiting the director’s cut. Now I’m convinced that the bits Cameron removed for the theatrical version don’t harm the film in any way. The implication of a director’s cut typically is that the theatrical version is lacking. I don’t think this is the case with “T2.”
Perhaps the most interesting segment that was excised from the theatrical version is a dream sequence where the late Kyle Reese pays Sarah Connor a visit while she’s in a mental hospital. The scene feels a little out of left field, and it doesn’t really advance the plot. I’m certain it was first on the list when they started making a list of things to cut. There are other character moments sprinkled throughout, including shots of the T-1000 beginning to malfunction in the steel plant at the climax. That’s something I’d've liked them to leave in. Still, the T-1000 seems more unstoppable without those few glitches he starts having. Dramatically, I can see why they’d want to drop that stuff.
Better Version: Theatrical Cut
The thing about theatrical cuts vs. director’s cuts is that it’s very subjective when it comes to which is the “better” version. I like both cuts of “Aliens.” I can’t remember anything about the director’s cut of “Gladiator,” so I guess prefer the theatrical version. And I’ve never bothered to watch any version but the director’s cut of “Kingdom of Heaven.” It also depends on the film. A movie that’s already great, like “Alien” or “T2,” is tough to improve upon. A flawed film like “Alien 3″ is a stronger candidate for a director’s cut because it gives viewers a completely different approach to the material. And that’s really what it’s all about, seeing the quintessential version of a movie you enjoy.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
15
It feels like this movie’s been coming out forever. And it has. Originally slated for release in November of last year, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was bumped to mid-July ‘09 after “The Dark Knight” put Warner Bros. well into the black for 2008. So Harry Potter fans were forced to wait, to endure “Twilight” mania and a long boring holiday season without everyone’s favorite boy wizard back on the big screen. I’ve always felt Harry Potter flicks were a better fit for the Christmas season than the dog days of summer. But after being inundated with one meh-worthy rebootquel after another of late, I think “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is easily the best big ticket blockbuster of the summer, which is not too shabby for a flick that was supposed to come out 9 months ago.
I never read the sixth book. Of the Harry Potter novels, I’ve read 1-3, the first 100 pages or so of book 4, and “The Deathly Hallows.” JK Rowling started to get a little too wordy for my liking when “Goblet of Fire” hit stands. I think a good 200 or 300 pages could be excised from book 7 without sacrificing much. The films generally manage to trim away much of the fat without losing the richness of the story world. Still, I didn’t want to wait until 2012 to see how Voldemort gets his comeuppance. Not knowing much about what happened in book 6, I managed to fill in most of the blanks while reading the final installment.
That said, I liked how “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” doesn’t inundate viewers with exposition, bringing everyone up to speed on the story so far. The first two Harry Potter films are both a bit of a slog because of all the place-setting that’s going on. Chris Columbus, who directed movies one and two (and more recently “I Love You, Beth Cooper!”), also wasn’t really suited for the fantasy genre. The film series found its stride with “The Prisoner of Azkaban.” The directors became bolder and the storytelling more confident. Quiddich matches were dumped if they weren’t essential to the plot. I like how little time is spent in the classroom in the more recent films, particularly this one, where I believe there’s only one scene with the characters doing actual schoolwork.
No, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has other things on its mind. Everyone seems to be going through Pon Farr in this one, and I found myself really enjoying how the romantic entanglements played themselves out. This isn’t the most action-heavy Harry Potter installment. It is, however, the most emotionally involving chapter. The characters are allowed to grow rather than simply being plugged into one major setpiece after another. This film really makes the bullshit subplot in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” — the one about Shia LaBeouf’s vacuous character not being able to tell Megan Fox’s vacuous character that he loves her — seem like the thudding bore it is.
I imagine that the book goes into more detail about the relationship troubles as well as the A-story, which has something to do with vanishing cabinets and Death Eaters and who the Half-Blood Prince is. I was okay with not being totally clear on everything because the character bits were so strong. I’m looking forward to seeing the how the film franchise shakes out. Although book 7 is being split into two installments, I’m not disappointed that it’ll be three years before I can see the conclusion. I don’t want this series to end just yet.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
13
Ryan Reynolds Is Green Lantern
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Ryan Reynolds has already been in two superhero films, “Blade Trinity” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Both were supposed to be franchise starters. But a Nightstalkers film, starring Reynolds as the vampire hunter Hannibal King, never materialized after the third “Blade” film bombed. And a Deadpool movie with Reynolds cast as the “Merc With a Mouth” doesn’t seem likely, either, in the wake of the universal hatred the “Wolverine” picture received earlier this summer.
Maybe the third time will be the charm! In a boring bit of casting news, it’s been announced that Reynolds will play Hal Jordan — no relation to HAL 9000 — in the upcoming “Green Lantern” movie. Reynolds beat out other hopefuls, including Justin Timberlake(!), that may have been a better fit. I’d have preferred Bradley Cooper, but Jared Leto didn’t seem like a bad choice, either. Cooper has the right swagger to play Jordan and doesn’t already have two piss-poor superhero flicks to his credit.
With Martin Campbell — a director who relaunched the Bond franchise twice! — behind the camera, I’m still hopeful that the film will be a thing of greatness. One of my criticisms of “Goldeneye,” Campbell’s first Bond film, is that it’s too comic book-y. So this could turn out nicely. Since I’ll be old and gray before they ever make another Superman movie, I want to remain cautiously optimistic about a GL. movie He’s a DC superhero with a goofy power — a ring that creates ginormous green objects at the wearer’s will — and an even goofier weakness (the color yellow). That said, he’s an awesome throwback to the Silver Age of comics.
I hope they don’t go the tired “grim and gritty” route with this. I doubt the franchise will come off the rails like the GL comics did back in the ’90s. After Superman returned from the dead, Jordan’s hometown of Coast City was destroyed in a battle royale between Supes and Mongul. Jordan went crazier than a shithouse rat, killed a bunch of other Green Lanterns (there are thousands of ‘em scattered across the universe) and stole all their rings. He then became the villain Parallax but redeemed himself during “Final Night” by destroying the Sun-Eater. During Jordan’s descent into madness, a graphic designer named Kyle Rayner became the Green Lantern for this sector of the galaxy, earning the scorn of Hal Jordan fans the world over. I even remember signing some petition to bring Hal Jordan back at some point during the mid-1990s. That’s how badass I was as a teen! At any rate, Jordan was recently resurrected and is now ring-slinging once more. I’m sure Wikipedia can fill in the blanks, but if you really cared that much about GL, you’d know all this shit already.
So Reynolds is going to be Green Lantern. Meh. I guess he’ll do fine. I want to hear some casting news in regards to the big bad, Sinestro. I think Sacha Baron Cohen would be a fantastic choice.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
10
“Bruno” Review
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Sacha Baron Cohen is the funniest comedian alive today. That he’s been able to top “Borat” is no small feat. But “Bruno” brings the funny unlike any film I’ve seen since Cohen’s 2006 hit. He’s given a whole new meaning to the word “mockumentary.” Cohen’s absolutely fearless, and his commitment to his role is without equal.
The film is about the titular Austrian fashion reporter — a tragically hip 19-year-old — who also happens to be gay. After being fired for disrupting a fashion show with his all-Velcro outfit and dumped by his pygmy boyfriend, Bruno decides to pick up the pieces of his life, move to Los Angeles with his “assistant’s assistant,” and become world famous. It’s as good as reason as any, I suppose. “Bruno” deconstructs the celebutard culture, people seeking some sort of validation in life by becoming famous. Bruno’s clear lack of any discernible talents is beside the point. His relentless pursuit of celebrity more than makes up for his shortcomings as a performer. To go into detail about his efforts would give away too many of the film’s best gags.
The film also goes after homophobia and intolerance. You have to laugh at the cartoonish bedroom gymnastics that Bruno participates in early in the film. It’s so over-the-top, it’s almost performance art. But it isn’t difficult to imagine that the homophobic oddballs who are seemingly omnipresent these days believe that Bruno’s lifestyle isn’t far removed from reality. What’s great about “Bruno” is that his “straight men” — celebs, politicians, dim-witted yokels — aren’t going to change after having some mortifying interaction with him. That’s not the point. No, the joke is simply on them. And he doesn’t go after anyone who doesn’t have it coming. None of his targets are people I felt guilty about laughing at. It’s incredible how much he gets away with and that he’s somehow able to get out of some situations in one piece.
What’ll be even more incredible is seeing him find some new way to top himself again.
-Brad Lohan