July 6, 2009
Summer Movies - Part 1
I really liked the latest Star Trek film - Disclaimer: I am pretty much a yellow-belt Trekkie. I'm not quite up there with the nerds who can name the episode number that featured Tribbles, but I did watch a fair amount of The Next Generation and Voyager as an extremely geeky teenager (Unfortunately for me we didn't have the WB where I grew up so there was no option for me to obsess over Buffy the Vampire Slayer) so I did have a fair bit of anticipation for this movie. Director JJ Abrams (who has been responsible as director or producer for films and shows such as: LOST, and Cloverfield) did an excellent job restarting this film franchise. And he did so using a very sly plot technique (so here begin movie spoilers...). This is not a prequel as I was expecting, instead by using the element of time travel, the story rewrites Star Trek history by altering events that happened before the original television series, totally changing the circumstances that introduce Kirk and Spock, and creating a huge difference in the time line upon which all previous Star Trek shows are based. The casting was great. I especially liked Simon Pegg playing the part of Scotty. I was totally won over by this latest Trek, and I look forward to future installments in this altered Trek universe.
If you like the earlier Terminator films you'll probably appreciate Terminator Salvation. This movie, the forth in the Terminator series, takes place in the future when T-600s are prevalent and the machines are about to start production on the T-800 model, which you will remember was the version of Terminator that was the main antagonist in the original film.
There really are two main characters in Terminator Salvation, which for me is its biggest detraction. The real main character of the story is Marcus who believes he is human but is in fact partially a terminator created by the machines. His character is enough to make an interesting story. John Conner, played by Christian Bale is the leader of the human rebellion, and he is the most important character overall between all the films. But this story is focused on Marcus who must cope with being both machine and human while sheparding the young Kyle Reese until he meets with John Conner who will become his son. Bale is good as John Conner and I think another sequel that focuses on his role and Reese would be interesting.
I was pretty young when Terminator 2 came out, but I remember it being a big deal. It was at a time when my parents and I were moving into a new house that had a large satellite dish in the backyard. We wern't paying for anything but we received a lot of ramdom broadcasts, such as: broadcasts of baseball games without commercials, we just heard what the announcers were saying to each other during commercial breaks, and we got American games with Japanese announcers, and we also got the E Entertainment Television network. And I remember that E ran a Terminator 2 promotional special highlighting the amazing computer effects over and over. I'll remember that summer for having to , and I had to mow two yards since it took several months for my parents to sell our old house.
Two movies I'm interested in on the horizon are Surrogates (IMDb) (trailer) and The Road (IMDb) (trailer). Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, is about a detective solving a mystery in a futuristic world where people live their lives through robotic surrogates. The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen, is a post-apocalyptic film about a man and his son on a journey across an American wasteland that looks incredibly bleak - based on a story by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country For Old Men.
Labels: movies, Star Trek, Surrogates, Terminator Salvation, The Road
December 22, 2008
Holiday (and Upcoming) Movies
One of my favorite things about the Holidays is the many movie possibilities usually available. It was great the few years when there was either a Lord of the Rings or a Harry Potter film to choose from.
Right now there are a few options: You can save your money on The Day The Earth Stood Still (see below for reasons why). If you can find a theater showing RocknRolla (IMDb) and you've enjoyed past Guy Ritchie British gangster movies I would recommend seeing it. Quantum of Solace (IMDb) is a direct sequel to Casino Royal and second film to cast Danial Craig as 007. Although not as excellent as Casino Royal, it was still worth watching, especially if you liked Casino Royal.
I was really looking forward to the reincarnation of Star Trek that originally was set to release Christmas day 2008. Alas, it has been pushed back to May 9th. This will be either a total restart of the original, or at least a prequel to the original television series. Aside from awesome looking special effects, one aspect this project that excited me is the casting of Simon Pegg as the character Scotty who you would recognize as Shaun from the excellent Shaun of the Dead. Also, while all of the characters are cast with younger actors for obvious reasons, Leonard Nimoy is reprising his role as an aged Spock (perhaps by way of a flashback or other plot devise).
The film I'm most interested in this Christmas is The Spirit (IMDb). The trailer for The Spirit sort of caught me off guard since all my attention has been focused on The Watchmen. The Spirit is directed by, although not originally written by, talented graphic novelist Frank Miller -- who wrote the graphic novels which have become the films Sin City and 300. From a comic series from the 1940s, the film's style looks very similar to the animated style of Sin City. I don't know much about the story, but I imagine it will have all the traditional hard-boiled crime story themes, and film noir elements...a conflicted love story, a hero with an unyielding and confusing sense of justice, etc. (Scarlett Johansson as a bad-girl is also quite intriguing.)Miller's 300 was directed by Zach Snyder who is behind the lens in the much-anticipated The Watchmen (IMDb), which is set for a March 6th 2009 opening. One of the more amazing aspects of The Watchmen is that now that its finally being created for the screen (there have been several prior attempts) the film makers are not only striving to recreate an authentic 1980s atmosphere, which itself is would be challenging, but an alternative one at that, where superheros are real and as such all other facets of that time are skewed, with odd historical similarities (I remember noticing when I read The Watchmen somewhere a sign for “RR for President,” but instead of being for the actor Ronald Reagan, it was for actor Robert Redford). Interestingly, one of the two writer/artists behind Watchmen, Moore has argued that graphic novels are not meant for the cinematic medium because it takes in-depth examination of each cell in the story to fully interpret all of its details and meanings. To Snyder's credit, from the trailers it appears that he has done as well as could be expected in replicating the elements within Watchmen. After Watchmen, according to the IMDb, Snyder has a few interesting projects on the way...including: a sequel/remake to the animated cult hit Heavy Metal in 2010, and a film version of the comic series Cobalt-60. Although, since story elements of the comic Cobalt-60 were incorporated into the Heavy Metal magazine, perhaps these separate projects are really one in the same.
Another film opening Christmas day possibly worth seeing is The Valkyrie (IMDb) -- based on a true story about an insurrection of German soldiers against their leaders during WWII. It seems a little silly to me that, judging only from the trailer, there is no attempt at having the characters use a German accent.
I'm much more excited for another WWII era film coming out soon called Defiance (IMDb) (staring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber), directed by Edward Zwick who is gifted at bringing true stories of war to the screen, such as: Glory, and The Last Samurai. Defiance is based on a true story of three Russian Jewish brothers who led a rebellion against German soldiers while taking refuge in the forest. Defiance is set to open January 16th 2008.Another movie I'm really excited about (set to open the same day as Defiance) is the new film by Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino (IMDb). Imagine all the grit of a hard-ass retired Dirty Harry in front of the lens, with the refined genius of Clint Eastwood as a director behind the lens.
I just went to see The Day The Earth Stood Still (IMDb), which looked very fascinating in the trailer, but overall left me feeling disapointed and slightly bored. The story was bland and unconvincing, but what irritated me the most about about TDTESS was the extremely obvious product placement thoroughout the film – from particular brands of phones, watches, fast food, cars and so on. There was nothing subtle about it. Movie editors take note: cool it on the over-the-top painfully obvious product placement. Just because the economy is terrible and nobody is buying anything doesn't excuse your excessive assault on our subconsciousness. No one wants to sit through a two-hour action-justified infomercial. These products must exist in a realistic film, sure, but when the camera hesitates a moment to give you a close-up glimpse of the sleek new phone and watch being used by the protagonist, it's more than a little heavy-handed. Not only that, this is in a film that already has a heavy-handed message about how the excesses of consumerism and so forth having brought an alien species to destroy humanity in order to save the planet. A little contradictory, eh? So, I recommend saving your money and waiting for this film to come out on dvd. Last winter's I Am Legend was a much more thrilling and emotional film by comparison.
Look below for trailers at Apple for some of the more exciting films I'm looking forward to:
Defiance
Gran Torino
Watchmen
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
For my list of upcoming films check my movie calendar page
Labels: Defiance, Gran Torino, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, The Spirit, Watchmen