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.

Man, it’s just a big old day of mystery for you folks, isn’t it?  Got to be just KILLING you!  But don’t worry, you know your old buddy always takes care of you with the answers to his own questions in rapid fashion.

It’s Tim Allen, folks.  Tim Allen is actually making a reappearance on the big screen this January.  And even better, he’s directing.  So for once, if something goes wrong with a movie, we know EXACTLY who to blame.

And surely it’s not the writer of the upcoming train wreck in the making, Crazy on the Outside, featuring the grunt machine himself as a former prison inmate released into the care of his family, who as it turns out, is insane.

Even worse, joining this fray are none other than otherwise decent character actors Sigourney Weaver and Ray Liotta.  Now, Ray I understand.  Poor guy needs a paycheck.  But Sigourney, come on.  Surely you can hold off the tax man until the Ghostbusters remake hits!

Well, they don’t call it the January Curse for nothing, kids–brace yourselves, because this is going to be a doozy.

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.

…Will Ferrell.

You know, I’m not surprised.  Really.  I’d also include words like “overrated” and “over the hill” too, because frankly, I haven’t laughed at much he’s done since the Butomi era on Saturday Night Live, and even then because he was with Chris Kattan, whose wide-eyed insanity made Ferrell seem like a straight man.

Oh, sure, Elf could’ve been a LOT worse than it was, but my stomach still churns at the thought of Step Brothers, and I still can’t make it through a performance of Semi-Pro without wishing Michigan would fall into one of the lakes, even IF it took me with it.

Ferrell, on average, only brings in about three times what he’s paid, which is actually good by any objective standard, but in Hollywood, in which budgets on single films can easily surpass the GDP of entire countries (here I am thinking of pretty much anywhere in Africa), it takes a lot more than a three to one ratio to justify the big payday.

Oh, sure, Ferrell’s known for a good joke or two, but he often spends his time in one of three basic modes:

1. Whiny man-child Will

2. Entirely too confident of his appearance Will

3. Naked Will

And frankly, I think we’ve all had enough of number three by now.  Number one makes me want to gouge out most of my sensory apparatus and number two is just boring.

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.

Here are the 9 winners corrie (14), Susan Varney (19), Gena (30), Jessica Rogers (61), Janice (111), Brenda Park (117), Denis Howard (126), Steve M. (141) and Michelle Rosborough (144). Congratulations everyone!!!

The Guardian, the dramatic legal TV series starring Simon Baker, on DVD with the First Season in a 6 disc set, including all 22 first season episodes. In stores now from Paramount and CBS Home Entertainment.

The Guardian is truly a captivating legal drama starring Simon Baker (The Mentalist), is available now on a six-disc DVD set featuring all 22 riveting first season episodes from CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment.

When a hotshot corporate lawyer has a run-in with the law and is sentenced to 1,500 hours of community service, he becomes The Guardian – a part-time child advocate at Legal Aid Services, where one case after another is an eye-opening instance of kids caught up in difficult circumstances. The Guardian garnered a host of industry acclaim with Simon Baker earning a Golden Globe nomination for the lead role.

Oh man, this movie is creepy.  I would not want to be human in this social system.  I’d gladly be a vampire. 

Daybreakersstars Ethan Hawke who plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. 

However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race

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.