Dreamworks to make Martin Luther King biopic

A little while back I was blogged about Presidents and the movies that cropped up in their career. I didn't say too much about what we may see in Obama's term(s) however this bit of breaking news says quite alot.

Spielberg/Dreamworks/Martin Luther King - 1
Spielberg/Dreamworks/Martin Luther King - 2

Now may mean shit to a lot of people but to me it means a bit. Why?

The Malcolm X Film.

A quick glance to wikipedia gives you a quick insight into the amount of production issues that came with the movie.

But now in the realm of a biracial president it doesn't come to any surprise to me that not only the King estate have finally agreed to this, but a studio like Dreamworks look set to finance the film with Spielberg's name behind it on the producing side of things. Especially as this film annoucement as came so quickly within Obama's reign.

My questions now are:

Whose gonna direct this?
Will Spike Lee go nuts about the directors colour

But most importantly

Will this be a powerful, honest portyal of a life thats been way overdue?

Only time will tell

I love trailers I do!

You know the deal. New Trailers come out. I look at them, then make ridiculous judgment on them.

H2


For me I find Rob Zombie to be a frustrating director. He's different from most horror directors working out there, he has a strong viewpoint on the genre and his work displays great confidence. However I'm just never pleased with the finished product (save the lucid and lurid House of 100 corpses). The Halloween remake for me was a needless task which missed the point on why Micheal Myers was feared. However looking at the youtube comments of this trailer it seems that things change and violence and brutality win out over subtle and unquestionable evil. Each to his own. But H2 looks set to be an interesting entry into the slasher stable, with the trailer bringing up a far more intriguing element about it's killer than the all of the many sequel put together. It's a little too Friday The 13th in parts and I kinda hope Zombie stops placing his wife in all of his films (she was of the weakest elements of the remake) but this could be worth a peek.

The Girlfriend Experience:


Steven Soderbergh's back y'all and this time it's not another Oceans film, which usually doesn't bode will for the man. His indie record since his first film Sex lies and videotape hasn't been the greatest and unfortunately this movies trailer didn't make me think any different. But what gets me going about Soderbergh and his lesser seen movies is his willingness to do something a little different. Best example is Bubble. An experiment that didn't work but generally got favorable reviews from many who watched it. The girlfriend experience looks set to try and make it's porn star lead Sasha Grey a credible actress while allowing it's wily director go off on one of his indie exploits. Trailerwise this is a 2 minute trailer that could have been shorter. It gives us a tiny amount of info but takes a long time to tell us. While it's not revealing the plot of the whole film like many trailers do, it does feel like a needlessly lengthened teaser trailer. The music was good though.


District 9:




While I don't know too much about this...I'm going to have to find out asap. The trailer is one of the most unusual and yet relevant ideas I've seen in a while. It seems that the message that this film might portray may be an obvious one and that certain people won't be swayed by any arguments it brings up. But hell if it don't look interesting

Review: Angels and Demons

Year: 2009
Director: Ron Howard
Screenplay: David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård, Ayelet Zurer


I read The Da Vinci Code and thought it was ok in a trashy sort of way. It read like a goosebumps book and I got though it quickly. The film on the other hand was long hard slog. Much like really bad drunken sex where both parties aren't really into it, but plough though both their clothes are off. I didn't read Angels and Demons because life's too short and why read airport thrillers when I could read material that's far more testing and creative.

Why did I sit through Angels and Demons may you ask? Because an arsehole film blogger I have to. It's one of the bigger films and to have it omitted just wouldn't be right. Plus I have nothing else to do with myself at the moment except play Xbox or drink paint thinner (that's Wycombe for you).

So I enter the cinema, told the loudmouth kids to shut the fuck up (seriously they were like on a first date or something...talking about the kaiser chiefs, I didn't pay money to hear them talk shit), and sat in the dark waiting to see what Ron Howard was going to bring with this film sequel (book prequel).

Jesus.

Angels and Demons is an overlong, dull thriller that thinks it's more intelligent than it actually is. The films main plot is a very typical, bog standard thriller. If your a fan of something like Poirot you've already seen something far sharper (and shorter) than what you see here. This film is thriller by numbers. But what Dan Brown has done is wrap the film in a large catalogue of facts (read: dubious bullshit that sounds important) to hide the fact that what he's got is a naff direct to video movie. It's like taking the dumbass school jock, letting him hold A brief history of time and giving him a pair of glasses. The new boy may be fooled but the teachers ain't buying it.

I went into this film with no knowledge of the book, but guessed what would happen very quickly. I'm no (enter clever person name here) but I could see the protracted movements of the character coming a mile off. Unless of course when they do stupid things. Case in point Our "hero" Robert Langdon (amusingly played by Tom Hanks) is stuck in a glass archive room with a guard (with a full loaded gun). They are running out of oxygen and are looking frantically for something to smash the glass. With the information I've given you, what do you do? Yeah. They don't do it. In fact they wait until their lungs are almost completely filled with Carbon Dioxide until they do. They escape, they're both relieved and I die a little inside because i made a pact with myself never to walk out of a movie ever.

When characters aren't being idiots, they're explain huge sections of plot ad nausea for us. Fair enough it's probably loyal to the book but these people have got time to do this. Why? Because they are on a time limit. The amount of historical "facts" that these guys go through while some poor priest is dying just doesn't ring true. The vast amount of exposition took me out of the story and took away the tension, as a friend noted to me "there's a bomb LET'S GET TO THE LIBRARY!". Remember Hitchcock's theory on suspense? Well it appears that Howard forgot to look it up, which is frustrating due the fact that earlier in the year he was director of the tense and thrilling Frost/Nixon. But how can i blame him, he's got to work with sub par material.

I've gone on too long now as I will be quick with the acting which is bland to say the least. While Hanks is lucky enough to get the few humorous lines, he spends most of the time grimacing like a constipated pitbull. Everyone else is either as plain as Vanilla (Ayelet Zurer has NOTHING TO DO) or completely transparent. There's two other more recognisable names (in western world) I will not mention but they do nothing to make the viewer second guess their actions. In fact thanks to the script as well as their piss poor displays...you might not even be sure what their actions are.

It's decided to cut the review short as anyone reading this will be as sick of this review as much as I was sick of the film (especially if you actually enjoyed A&D). I didn't even get on to the preposterous third act which wants the viewer to make a leap of faith so great it would make the grand canyon look like a small fruit bowl.

The Da Vinci Code had quite a poor reception when it opened 3 years ago at Cannes. As snooty as those french bastards are, sometimes they get it spot on. To me it's no surprise that this didn't show this time around.

Review: Star Trek

Year: 2009
Director: JJ Abrams
Screenplay: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman.
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy

I'm not a trekkie. I found the original Star Trek series dated and I've never sat through any of the films all the way through. The documentary "Trekkie's" also helped cement my lack of interest in the series as despite being a great movie it showed that some of those fans are FUCKING WEIRD. Some people have to follow something I guess...but seriously. So if I'm not a Trekkie why watch Star Trek? Because the reboot is created with bastards like me in mind.

As a horror film fan, I can understand why the "hardcore" fans get all arsey about their baby being exploited. I've had to sit through some dubious remakes in my time, and it is frustrating. Halloween gave Micheal Myers a cliched white trash childhood, while The Ring believes that an audience needs everything explained to them. The curiosity about what the bastards have done to your flick kills you and you end up watching a pale imitation of something you really loved. It's horrible but it's what film nerds do.

Star Trek however, appears to be created by people who seem to respect the original material. Respect it enough that they have done their best to keep "canon" intact while giving no nothings like myself a chance to get involved with the USS Enterprise crew. The result is a well paced, visually arousing blockbuster filled to the brim with a humor and kept interesting by it's entertaining cast.

The film has the odd flaw of course, for one the film's villain Nero (Bana) is marginalized quite a bit while some of the plot points are incredibly inconsistent (I'm talking about the black holes that can do what ever they want.) but Abrams has made a movie which is FUN. It's easy to nit pick at the obvious fact that Star Trek has been "sexed up" but for me, Abrams' rejig captures an essence of the original series. I said before I know nothing about the series but I was quite surprised about the amount of in jokes I got. I also enjoyed the fact that many aspects of the show are kept within the film. Hecklers have bitched at great length about the film being made for "yoof" and blah blah blah. However Abrams has kept much of the Star Trek spirit within the film. It's this spirit that seperates this from other remakes, reboots and the like. Another small issue is the action, which is formidable but not as outstanding as i would have hoped. With this said it's worth watching to see John Cho fucking people up with a sword*.

But my negative issues with the film are tiny compared to what I enjoyed about the film. Star Trek clocks in at a hefty 127 mins but is never boring (save a small lull in the middle of the film). The films main conflict between Spock and Kirk is given a strong foundation for the inevitable sequels, while Abrams manages to touch on views of race with more class than George Lucas ever did.

I also found Star Trek to be extremely funny. Every one liner or crafty in joke hits home, while every main cast member pull off the humor with a huge amount of charm. The banter they bounce off each other doesn't feel forced in any way. Yes, at times there's a high level of chesse, but it's surprisingly refreshing in a film world where many summer adaptations are starting to take themselves VERY seriously.

Acting wise, I could not pick a weak link. I was impressed with everyone on board and couldn't pick who I wanted to spend more time with. Chris Pine is confident, brash and convincing as Kirk, Zachary Quinto is a dead on Spock, while Zoe Saldana plays a spunky Uhura. Simon Pegg's dubious Scottish accent is forgiven due to his great comic timing and Karl Urban is a revelation as "Bones". I also have nothing but superlatives to say about John Cho, Anton Yelchin and the intense (although underused) Eric Bana.

Like I said before I am not a Trekkie. Until a week ago I would have said a Kobayashi Maru is a Chinese take away dish. But Star Trek is such a refreshing and entertaining flick i will be adding the Original Series to my love film post haste, and that I say to any naysayer, can only be a good thing.


*While I wrote that line about the action I forgot the opening sequence which I will describe as awesome.

The Road Trailer is FINALLY up!

Yes it's been delayed, but the film adaptation Cormac McCathy's The Road finally has it's trailer up! Directed by John Hillcoat (maker of the SUPERB film The Proposition), The Road is a apocalyptic, eco, road western involving a father (played by Viggo Mortensen) and his son surviving in a world that has been savaged by an unknown environmental disaster.



Now while the marketers have gone and displayed the film has an "I am Legend" end of the world movie. Reports say much different, any anyone whose seen/read The Road or No Country for Old Men will know what they're into. For me I can't wait to see if it's as brutally honest as the book.

So while the trailer looks conventional....the material is anything but.