Saturday, September 23, 2006

THOUGHTS ON THE MOAN MOVIE'S MOANER


I’ve just had the rather unsettling experience of having sat through an HBO sponsored double-feature of Wes Craven's last two cinematic outings -- Red Eye and Cursed -- and as a direct result I've just come to a realization that it is definitely going to take me three to four paragraphs to completely explain. First of all, I'd like to say or rather write out for public consumption the simple fact that there are not now nor have there ever been a landfill-sized shit-load of Hollywood-based ingénues about whom one could honestly say: “I could literally watch that woman do anything, in anything, for however long the reels take to run the fuck out” but that Christina Ricci clearly belongs on that unquestionably short list.

"Whatever female-based, emotion-driven dilemma you may be dealing with right now, you have my sympathy. But right now, we need to break this down into male-based, fact-driven logic."

-- Red Eye

I mean, could someone, anyone please name another actress of her generation capable assaulting a role like Pumpkin's narcissistic cheerleader in love with a "developmentally challenged" classmate, Carolyn McDuffy , without even a hint of affectation or winking irony. I’ve always believed that the truest test of an actor’s talent was seeing what kind of performance they were capable of when either the scenario was laughably absurd or every other creative element was plainly stacked against their chances of hitting one out of the ball park. Which is to say that someone like say Sean Penn delivering brilliant work in an “All The Kings Men” is one thing but that the same Sean Penn being so unrecognizably good it hurt in a piece of seemingly unsalvageable tripe like “Carlito’s Way” was an altogether higher order of acting art.

"I'm feeling pain, Pumpkin, for the first time in my life. And now I know how it feels. It feels like everything inside me is shattered, like a broken mirror."
-- Pumpkin

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not here to suggest that Ms. Ricci’s slicked black turn in the utter waste of 99 minutes of my life that was Wes Craven's “Cursed” was one of those for the record books kind of performances, but I am prepared to go on record with the statement that despite being surrounded by excrement on all sides, Ricci managed to carve a real live character out of screenplay that called for her to be believably flipped-off by an neurotic werewolf (well, she-wolf to be precise) after having insulted the jealous lycanthrope’s skinny ass an chunky thighs.

To sum up for the moment, there just plain doesn’t seem to be any freaking lying in the woman.


TO BE CON'T . . .

Posted by Peter Collinson at 12:50 PM | | Comments

Friday, September 22, 2006

DAY FOR NIGHT


Here at ArsonPlus Entertainment, we're serious fans of Russia's so-called answer to the Matrix, Timur Bekmambetov "Night Watch," (i.e. "Nochnoi Dozor" ...and so-called because I'm convinced that it was a Russian's answer to Luc Besson) which was supposed to be the first entry of a trilogy. The second two movies were made, but for reasons related, somehow or another, to the Weinstein Bro's dislike of the word trilogy (they had Lord of the Rings before New Line but only wanted two films, remember) they've been edited together to form a very long—and from what we've seen, via 100% legal means by the by, was very good—but very lonely sequel called: "Dnevnoy Dozor" (Day Watch).


Evidently the "plot" turns on the quest for the "Chalk of Destiny", whatever that is.


Following a butt-kicking super-powered Tamerlane the great style opening sequence Day Watch offers up …Time's passed since the spectacularly blood-soaked finale of Night Watch and Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) has continued both his battle against the "forces of Darkness" and his quest to find and save his son from the clutches of those forces of Darkness. That's when the vampires of the Dark side start being killed in mysterious ways, and Anton winds up framed for the murders, so he must put his ultimate goals on hold to try and escape, the titular, Day Watch that's out for a taste of his blood.



Our full review of "Dnevnoy Dozor/ Day Watch" will be along shortly...why this movie isn't yet released in the U.S. is a mystery. Chalk it up to the usual haphazard attitude we get from the industry for this sort of thing.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 6:36 PM | | Comments

Thursday, September 21, 2006

PROTECTOR OF ALL CHILDREN and FIREBALL WEILDING KICKER OF "TONS" OF KAIJU ASS!!!


Despite what certain ill informed filmic pundits have claimed, Kaiju fans are incapable taking news of a new live action Gamera film from the Daiei Motion Picture Company badly, unless either Dean Devlin or Roland Emmerich are involved that is. In this case the Kaiju news in question involves both the upcoming "Gamera: the Little Braves" – representing Gamera's return to his 1970's incarnation: "friend of all children", (as opposed to Gamera's 90's Shusuke Kaneko directed incarnation: "the guardian of the universe and fireball spiting kicker of much monster ass) and the Cartoon Network's announcement that it's just licensed the Little G of The Little Braves with an eye toward producing a Gamera-based cartoon series scheduled to debut in Spring 2007.


Just a bit more about "Gamera: the Little Braves" . . .

The story courtesy of producer Yoichi Arashige ("One Missed Call"), Masked Rider Agito director Ryuta Tazaki and screenwriter Yukari Tatsui (a veteran of 1997's Japanese television drama "Virgin Road") opens as Gamera saves a young boy from a flock of maurading Gyaos birds. 30 years later, that boy's son (11 year-old Ryo Tomioka) discovers an egg that hatches into a baby Gamera. (the aforementioned Little G) Of course, the two become fast friends and the little jet-propelled turtle grows up fast – soon, after a series of bizarre incidents across the Pacific, the baby Gamera is spinning through the air belching fireballs getting ready to come of age by facing down the challenge posed by a new monster -- the frill-necked / chameleon-tongued / man-eating sea monster known as Zedus.

"Gamera: the Little Braves will contrast the strained relationship between a father and son with the strong bond of the boy and a young monster growing up together." said Arashige "Our film is set in the world in which we live, with one glaring exception… it is also a world inhabited by giant monsters."


If you're a fan of the 60's Gamera films, you know what to expect next. Our heroic turtle will be overwhelmed by an initial assault—perhaps barely managing to hold off his sea iguana-like for just long enough for a group of endangered children then get to safety. His shell penetrated by Zedus’ tongue or some-such – because Gamera always bleeds before he wins and often as he wins (laser-sliced by Gyaos, impaled by Iris and Zigra, stabbed by Guiron, slashed by Legion, impregnated by Jiger, etc.) he'll valiantly collapse into the street or maybe half submerge in a nearby body of water – beaten in all but spirit, as a victorious Zedus continues his rampage. In the end of course he'll be revived stronger than ever, due to the intervention of children he's befriended (perhaps co-star Kaho) and proceed to lay a decisive tortuga-sized smack down on Zedus' ass.

"Gamera: the Little Braves" (Chiisaki Yusha-tachi, Gamera) premiered in Japan on April 29, 2006

Posted by Peter Collinson at 9:45 AM | | Comments

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

3:10 TO YUMA, THE REMAKE REBORN, NO SERIOUSLY


This is a bad, and I do mean reading ancient Sumerian out of the Necronomicon bad, idea.


"Girl, Interrupted" and "Walk the Line" director James Mangold and his bride, "Kids" and "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead "producer Cathy Konrad, have set the Columbia Pictures remake of legendary director Delmer Daves' classic Elmore Leonard short story based 1957 western "3:10 to Yuma" as their next film. (the flick or should I say "abomination of all the gods hold holy will begin shooting next) summer. Konrad and Mangold finally hopped aboard the train to Yuma after getting a new screenplay from Michael Mann's "Collateral" collaborator Stuart Beattie, (who was rewriting the script delivered by hacks of the moment Michael Brandt and Derek Haas.) and more importantly the variety of pre-production troubles that have plagued the proposed film ever since Sony Pictures dropped it from their slate over over-sized back-end deal concerns despite having true blue megastars Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise attached and just plain interested respectively.

"There are a lot of good-bad themes that were only touched on in the original," Mangold said. "A lot of Westerns are meditative, but this is a total struggle and a climactic showdown, that has the potential to be one of the great movie gunfights."


So anyway, even though the folks at Sony didn't want to board the 3:10 to Yuma, the folks at Lionsgate do. The abomination (sorry, there I go again – I just can't seem to help it) I mean film, will now be staring Russell Crowe and "The Prestige" star Christian Bale instead of Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise—who dropped out of the pic over concerns that reportedly had something or other to do with hydrogen bombs, ancient alien ghosts and volcanoes (whatever the hell that means).

The 1957 classic (read: the original), went something like this:

In the wake of the capture of an outlaw leader named Ben Wade (the incomparable Glenn Ford) a small town rancher, named Dan Evans (the steadfast Van Heflin), gets himself talked into taking the outlaw in secret to a neighboring town so as to avoid Wade's decidedly out of control outlaw gang. Of course things don't quite go as planed and while the two wait in one of those perfectly stark black-n-white hotel rooms there for the titular 3:10 train to Yuma, a battle of wills (and a fair number of six guns) ensues when it becomes clear that Wade's gang knows all about the "secret" move.

It may all sound like just another western but the original "3:10 to Yuma" is so much more than it's difficult to describe. First off Glenn Ford may be best remembered for playing reliable authority figures (from the untouchable cop in Otto Preminger's "The Big Heat" to Jonathan Kent in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie), but he was at his best whenever he got the chance to play a real bastard (remember "Gilda"). Like Henry Fonda's villainous turns in "Warlock" or Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West," it's just more fun to watch a decent guy play a rotten one.

Watching Ford play Ben Wade, leader of the west's meanest gang, is quiet simply electric. He underplays his munificent but charismatic bad guy beautifully. After a stagecoach robbery that ends with a dead driver, Wade and gang casually head into Bisbee (your basic smaller than small old west town) for a few post robbery and murder drinks. Unfortunately Wade bumps into a pretty townie (assailed by the lovely Felicia Farr) he just can't not stop and seduce. In the meantime, Dan Evans — a henpecked farmer Wade didn't kill during the stagecoach hold up — helps the law trap Wade.

Now, Bisbee happens to be such a small town that Wade's gang could wipe it out with out much of problem, so the folk their only way out from under is to get Wade to the 3:10 train to Yuma — which is a day and a whole town away and Evans and the town drunk (Henry Jones). But, Wade doesn't go easily, but Evans — whose wife scolds him for not being moral enough — has something to prove, and so he sets out to prove it.

The film has an uneven start, decidedly pedestrian cinematography and a few dull Heflin setup scenes. But Ford's character commands the screen, and once he rides into frame "3:10 to Yuma starts cooking and it never lets up. It's often been said that 90% of good directing is good casting, and there might not be a better case study for why that's true than "3:10 to Yuma" . . . Both Heflin and Glen Ford are just right for their roles — Heflin with a look of failure that forces us to wonder what past transgressions are fueling his almost perverse obstinacy, and a provocatively, virile Ford delivers a bad man any woman would love to cozy up to. A taunt piece of sagebrush cinema, "3:10 to Yuma" more than deserves its reputation as a classic of the western genre.

Which brings me to my question.



"Why remake this film? What do Russell Crowe and Christian Bale have to offer it? Why not remake a film with some room for improvement like say The Last Train from Gun Hill instead? Or why not do something completely crazy like make something new."

Posted by Peter Collinson at 9:34 PM | | Comments

BRIDGES AT WAR NIGHT ON TCM

Don't know if anyone else has noticed, but tonight seems to be "bridges at war" night over at TCM. By way of a thank-you we've decided to offer up a bit of info on two of the best war films ever made to the curious but uninitiated.

First up we have . . . The Bridge Over the River Kwai

David Lean's gratifying but often maddening 1957 account of a British major (a pre Obi Wan Alec Guinness) whose defiance of a Japanese POW-camp commandant takes a peculiarly and particularly British counterproductive turn. (read: the bridge) A post "Sunset Boulevard" William Holden is the American ordered to lead a commando raid intended to set things right. "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" is one of those consistently involving, often surprising films that manages an epic sweep but balances it with the sharply focused adversarial personal relationship of Guinness to the Japanese commandant (Sessue Hayakawa, who is sharply effective) Then there's a the part where it's score is so justifiably recognizable that every eighties refugee knows it by heart.

In all, it's a superb melding of extravagant entertainment and adult drama.

"The fact is, what we're doing could be construed as - forgive me sir - collaboration with the enemy. Perhaps even as treasonable activity. Must we work so well? Must we build them a better bridge than they could have built for themselves?"




Next you'll get a shot at . . . The Bridges at Toko-Ri


Mark Robson 1954 chronicle of the outbreak of the Korean War . . . the tale of a midwestern lawyer in the Air Force Reserve who's called back to active duty as a carrier-based jet pilot. Slick, big-budget adventure surprises with its tightly focused look at the flier (also the aforementioned William Holden, giving another one of his best performances), who wonders just how in hell he got there, and if he’s going to get out alive to see his wife and daughter again. The climax, featuring Holden and Mickey Rooney (making one of his many comebacks), is unbearably tense.


"I'm a lawyer from Denver, Colorado."

"Then what are you doing in a smelly ditch in Korea, Sir?"

"I was just asking myself that same question. "


Not that Robson's direction is shabby but in your humble narrator's opinion its unusually intelligent script, courtesy of Valentine Davies (adapting James Michener's novel) is the real hero here.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 4:09 PM | | Comments

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

THE VIDEO DOWNLOAD GREEN MACHINE


Guess what . . . It's only been a week since Apple started offering feature length movies on iTunes, and even though only one major studio is participating (which is to say: Disney or rather The Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group along with its slave-like subsidiaries Miramax Films, Hollywood Pictures and Touchstone Pictures), Apple has already raked up a grand total of 125,000 downloads, (read: a cool $1 million in profits). Now that may not seem like an astronomical figure in the context of your average DVD's weekly earnings, but it is a damn good debut for a product that no one was even sure the general public would go for two weeks ago and that on the surface at least has less obvious appeal than traditional bricks-n-mortar DVD sales. Nevertheless, those initial numbers seem to speak for themselves and while they may only be a checking out Katie Couric like sign of initial curiosity, Apple has trod this road before successfully by offering television shows via iTunes and looks to be on the same path again.
Buena Vista is expecting their total earnings from iTunes to hit $50 million within the year so don't be surprised when the rest of Hollywood reconsiders and decides to get in on this video download green machine.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 9:27 PM | | Comments

Monday, September 18, 2006

DEATH RIDES A HORSE

Here’s one that one our not so humble readers just tipped us off to.

There's a name spreading in whispers through the dusty towns of the old west, it belongs to a young bounty hunter known only as Twenty-One. (because of the six fingers on his left hand and his deadly reputation with a gun). Soon enough, Twenty-One comes face to face with an enigmatic fellow bounty hunter named Rellick, (Chow Yun-Fat) who has plans for the younger gunslinger.


Together, the two make their way to a mysterious destination that turns out to be the Monstery of the Wretched Sisters, an isolated desert outpost guarded by a secretive order of monks (though personally I think I'd prefer a secret order of nuns – there aren't enough of those in movies anymore) where Twenty-One discovers that Rellik is a bounty hunter of the undead, that the catacombs beneath the monastery conceal a zombie prison the monks guard with their lives and that a wagon train worth of misguided settlers have just unwittingly released its undead inmates – leaving Rellnik and Twenty-One with mucho zombie ass to kick.

By offering up equal parts American gothic / spaghetti-western / grindhouse horror, director Andrew Goth's "The Wretched" promises to be "For a Few Dollars More" meets "Dawn of the Dead".


But, you may not want to start jumping for joy just yet though, it's basically just a rumor and Chow Yun Fat has had one hellova horrible time filmography-wise since he left Hong Kong for western shores (Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon aside of course), so there are reasons to treat all of the promise of the above with a yard stick worth of skepticism. (remember how cool Underworld sounded before you actually saw it).

On the other hand ... Chow's appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End bodes well, and re-teaming with John Woo for "The Battle of Red Cliff," sounds intriguing and there's the news floating around that Chow Yun will appear in Hero and House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou's third martial arts epic, "Curse of the Golden Flower," opposite Miami Vice and Emperor and the Assassin star Gong Li … All of which suggest that he may be under new management.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 11:28 PM | | Comments

Sunday, September 17, 2006

THE BRIDE WITH JET BLACK HAIR


Here's an item someone out there might just be interested in . . .

The place: Japan in 1966, a few months before the Vietnam War begins. The person: Saya, the last remaining original – a shinso vampire and the supernatural muscle of a secret U.S. government backed team of daemon hunters (they're referred to as Chiroptera – whatever that means). The mission: Just before Halloween Saya takes on an undercover job, that poses her as (yep, you guessed it) a Japanese school girl and sends her into the gaijin packed halls of Yokota Air Base in Fussa-shi, Tokyo. In no time flat, she uncovers two classmates who are Chiroptera in disguise and starts up with a damn fine impression of Connor McCloud.

I hope you recognize that, because there are words and whispers drifting around the highways and byways hinting and outright saying that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" producer Billy Kong has inked a deal to produce the live-action version of Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Kenji Kamiyama and Katsuya Terada's semi-cult havin' but not quite feature length anime "Blood: The Last Vampire" with a pretty freakin' promising helping hand from none other than "Bride With White Hair" director Ronny Yu.

Who:

  • Plans on making the live action Blood: The Last Vampire his next project.
  • Will probably start shooting it early as late October/early November 2006.
  • Is determined to "reinvent" the rather beleaguered vampire genre (god bless him) and will avoid the standard "greys and blues" familiar to Underworld fans in favor of a "full multimedia color" scheme.
  • Will change the setting from the pre 'Nam Tokyo of 1966 to the post WWII Tokyo of 1948.

Yu also plans to shoot the live action Blood in several languages, including English I'd imagine. The project will reportedly also coincide with a animated TV series based on the same character.

I'm quite a fan of Blood, so I hope some of the above is true.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 11:49 PM | | Comments