Screenhead

Admittedly, when I went into New Moon this morning, I wasn’t expecting anything good.  My experience with Twilight was only a few months old, and it still hurt to think about that slow sludgy mess of sparkly emo boi vampires dragging the genre down with it.

But when I grit my teeth and walked in,  what I got was something somewhat different from what I was expecting.

Just to catch you up on the plot, we’re still with screechy loser Bella Swan and her sparkly emo boi vampire boyfriend Edward.  Only now, we discover that werewolves are also thrown in the mix (it was probably supposed to be a surprise but they tipped their own hand on this point MONTHS ago) and for some reason, both vampire Edward and relative newcomer werewolf Jacob Black are all very much into this pasty cipher of a girl who seems to exist for no other reason than to give the teenage girl fans in the audience an easy point for self-insertion.

Yes, there’s still plenty wrong with this whole thing.  One, none of these people can act worth a fart in a stiff wind–Kristen Stewart still seems dazed by the whole thing and is acting like she’s been suffering a concussion since about ten minutes into the first movie.  Robert Pattinson is a willowy mess–when he takes his shirt off and reveals his new “six pack” it looks like nothing so much as a man in desperate need of a SANDWICH.  Taylor Lautner is the girliest macho man I’ve ever SEEN.  He’s trying DESPERATELY hard to be some kind of bad-ass but then everything he tries is toned down so hard for the consumption of the tweenagers in the audience.  It’s like someone told him, “Be a bad boy, but don’t actually be THREATENING.”  He’s doing his best, I think, but he’s doing it under terribly strained conditions.

Also, why isn’t White Wolf suing holy hell out of Summit, Stephenie Meyer, et al for copyright violation?  I remember the nature-boy werewolves and cosmopolitan corporate vampires back when I was one of the handful of people playing the Rage card game back in 1995!  Now all of a sudden it’s a major motion picture and I don’t think White Wolf’s getting any taste on this.  They DO still have the license at last report even if it’s been sold more times than real estate.

But, like I said originally, this was better than I expected.  If for no other reason than the only way it could be much worse is if Stephenie Meyer personally came to theaters at random and gouged out the eyes of one of the viewers.  There was more action in this, and a developing storyline that still seems rather limited (White Wolf, for Pete’s sake, it’s werewolves versus vampires.  You did ALL this long before them!), but is actually somewhat bearable.

There’s still plenty of slow parts in this, though, and lots of reason to be unhappy, though not nearly as many as the FIRST Twilight installment gave us.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, naturally, agrees with me and hands over a five out of ten to a vampire franchise that may well be starting to look up.  If it continues improving at this rate, Breaking Dawn’s going to be a non-stop bloodbath and even I’ll be impressed.

No, seriously, you won’t.

In fact, rather than say it myself and risk you not believing me, I’m going to just quote the results of a recent interview Woo did with Cinema Blend.  Dig the word:

Yeah, a musical, yeah! I have a script for a musical for 12 years that I paid for with my own money. I still want to make a musical. It’s an original, not from any well-known existing musical. It’s an action musical. (laughs) It’s true! We have a very good script, I wanted to make it, but it’s hard to interest studios to make a musical right now. It’s in English. I love All That Jazz, Singin’ in the Rain, West Side Story. I miss musicals.

A John Woo musical.  Now, while that might be fun, especially if it were something like Hard Boiled-The Musical (especially if he does the double handgun thing that is his hallmark, along with the slow motion dove release), I’m terrified that some day I might well wake up and find Paint Your Wagon, directed by John Woo, on my list of things to watch.

I just got goosebumps.  And they’re not the fun kind, either.

I like this featurette because it tells about the human side of  Avatar.  The movie keeps getting better and better.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief  is looking good. I like the special effects and it seems the characters play well off each other well.  I like Pierce Brosnan’s character. I am not sure who he is, but it’s a stretch for Brosnan and he does a good job.

Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle is working on the development a film version of the upcoming video game Dark Void with Pitt possibly starring as the lead combatant. No writers have been hired as yet.

Void follows a cargo pilot named Will (Pitt’s presumed character) who, after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle, ends up in a parallel universe where a band of humans must fight an alien threat they had long been thought extinct. Will and the other humans are outmanned but have a number of weapons and powers to help them beat back the alien invasion.

In January, the game will be released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Now, it is obvious that video games are not always successful at the box office like Max Payne. Dark Void, as a game, was purposely developed to appeal to wide-screen mindsets in which they see a world full of adventure in cinematic scope and magnitude.

(Source)

We have a resistence to the remake. And it’s understandable, considering most of us only look forward to a remake because of the original. Yet the problem is that deep down we feel that the remake can never live up to the original, and thus nit-pick. But it’s rare to see a remake that isn’t so much an inferior rehash of the original’s premise, rather a remake whose philosophy is a complete reversal of the original, so much so that it’s a downright insult. The new miniseries remake of cult classic The Prisoner has managed to achieve that, by prioritising conformity above individualism.

The original The Prisoner was a TV anomaly. Lead actor in successful spy series Danger Man, Patrick McGoohan was tried of acting in un-enlightening adventures, and set out to make a show that appeared on the surface to be a spy show, but was actually a critique on modern society and its need to repress the rights of the individual and increases the level of governmental surveillance. And while the show is certainly a product of its time (with bright, almost garish colours, and psychadelic moments) in some ways, it was also incredibly important in the evolution of TV. For it was a show that was unafriad to make political commentary without being heavy-handed about it. Its final episodes were also left open for interpretation, another brave move by McGoohan that had members of the public in uproar at the time. One could argue that if it wasn’t for The Prisoner, we wouldn’t have Lost, Twin Peaks, or even the open ending of The Sopranos.

In this era of remakes, it was only a matter of time until they got around to The Prisoner. McGoohan wasn’t interested in being involved, having said everything he wanted to. For a while Christopher Nolan was interested in a feature film version, but that faded away. Instead, AMC and UK network ITV pooled resources to make a six-part miniseries starring Ian McKellan and Jim Caviezel.

Now, I’m all in favour of a remake of The Prisoner. Just like it dealt with social concerns of its own time, there was scope to do the very same with ours. An impressive cast also contributed to the hope that this could succeed. But oh how it didn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

All right, folks, strap in and keep your remotes handy because today I’m going to talk about Heat, one of the longest movies you’ll ever love.

The folks out at Warner Brothers sent me a copy of Heat, and you might be wondering why I’m talking about a movie this old.  Well, it’s not like some of you haven’t heard of it, but it was just released on Blu-ray, so we’ve got a responsibility to cover it.

Heat features Val Kilmer and the gigantic concentrated awesome heap that is Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the same movie.  It’s about a career thief who leads a team of thieves through an incredible robbery that nets the team just over a million and a half bucks in bearer bonds.  The bonds were insured, so the only real victim here is the insurance company, and we’ve all been able to agree that they could have used a kick in the slats since 1995 anyway.  Anyway, the fun really starts when the team tries to sell back the stolen bonds instead of laundering them.

Heat is a long–VERY long!–and incredibly involving tale of deceit, thievery and murder that’s actually very engrossing.  I’d actually seen this one maybe five or six times over the last (nearly) fifteen years, so it was a welcome treat.  But you will have to brace yourself adequately.  Clear your calendar, get your snacks together in advance, because this is a LONG movie.  Nearly THREE HOURS worth of long, in fact.

But the critical takeaway here is that it’s also really, REALLY exciting.

The Screenhead Ten Scale loves my taste in movies and hands this a seven out of ten for being a solid actioner with a lot of twists, even if it’s a bit too long.

Well, folks…bad news.  Terrible news in point of fact.

Apparently, Herr Doktor Uwe Boll hasn’t had enough of destroying video game to movie translations yet, because he’s somehow gotten access to the Far Cry series.

A trailer has emerged, and man, is it a doozy.  It has all the hallmarks of a Herr Doktor film–halfassed plot, weak dialogue, and lots of explosions.  The trailer doesn’t look too bad, but I’ve seen enough decent trailers built out of horrendous movies.  Naturally I’ll reserve judgment until the actual product emerges, but you’ll excuse my skepticism.

This IS, after all, Herr Doktor we’re talking about here.  Seriously, does the guy have any GOOD movies to his credit?  Sure, Postal was a riot but even that was still pretty weak. It’s hard to imagine a Boll movie going over well at all.

And of course, we have the trailer right here for you, so settle in and enjoy this newest wreckage in the making.

Rachel McAdams is saying that she absolutely has NOT been cast in Spider Man 4 in the role of Black Cat.

This would be a pretty definitive response, all right…if it weren’t for one critical problem. The rumor is that she AUDITIONED.  This is what she had to say:

“That’s a total rumor, I have to say,” going on to back up the story with a super-Canadian anecdote: “I was hanging out in Toronto the other day and someone came up to me and said, ‘I just heard you’re doing Spider-Man 4.‘ And I said, ‘Really? No one told me!’ It’s not true.”

There have been a lot of rumors swirling around the ether and the blogosphere alike about what’s going down with Spider Man 4. Everybody from Bruce Campbell to random toddlers has been mentioned.  And now with Rachel McAdams possibly stepping in to play Black Cat (unless what she says is actually true), well, that’s just a little more fuel on the fire.  You know we’ll be keeping an eye on this one!

So we’ve got a strange bit of news roaming around about the fourth installment of Spider Man, and it comes to us by way of a casting announcement that was made.  Check THIS out:

[TODDLER BOY]

2 or 3 year old boy to play 2 year old, Caucasian with RED HAIR, an adorable toddler with an engaging personality, on set experience preferred. IDENTICAL TWINS ONLY

…yeah.  Two year old Caucasian with red hair.  We’re all pretty much aware that Mary Jane has red hair…so is it possible at this point that Spider Man might become Spider Dad?  That’s entirely possible too, though it does kind of go against the established canon a bit.

Though let’s be honest…the established canon is in such tatters that there really isn’t a “going against it” at this point.  For crying out loud, Spidey’s been retconned so many times it’s not even funny any more.  He just sold his soul to Mephisto like ten, twelve issues ago.

So why not? Why not have Peter become a dad?