Warning: Don't make this man turn around.
From the blog More Than Fine, enjoy -- or fear -- the Top Five Jason Bourne Improvised Weapons. Complete with video and photos.
1) A good book.
2) Kitchenware
3) Candle holder, brass
I haven't had this much fun since I learned, in a self-defense class, how to disable an attacker with a rolled up copy of Allure magazine.
From RadarOnline, some photos from the intriguing JJ Abrams movie CLOVERFIELD
Production crews made a convincing-looking overnight mess on Orchard and Stanton Streets in Lower Manhattan, but by morning the neighborhood had been restored to its usual state of overpriced grime and trendiness.
Comic-Con will get a preview of Robert Zemeckis' intriguing BEOWULF, starring Ray Winstone as the Old English hero, Crispin Glover as Grendel, and Angelina Jolie as Grendel's Mother.
Sheigh Crabtree of Los Angeles Times had an early look and puts us in the picture.
I retain an irrational fondness for the Icelandic-Canadian coproduction BEOWULF & GRENDEL, starring a pre-300 Gerard Butler -- born to play the hero. If anyone could have swum for seven days in the open sea, it's him. (Winstone's a magnetic, ultramanly actor in his own way, but no matter how much CG muscle work they do to the guy, he doesn't have what Butler's got: major chick appeal)
From BEOWULF & GRENDEL:
Some classic quotable dialogue: When Beowulf, as clever as he is strong, realizes that Grendel's bloody attacks on the Danes aren't as random as they seem, he questions king Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) about the creature's motives, he gets a hilarious answer.
"Beowulf! It's a fucking troll! It's what they do!" yells the mead-drunk Danish king. "Somebody probably looked at it the wrong way."
Continue reading "BEOWULF Without Gerard "300" Butler? No!!!!" »
The Sunday New York Times gives up its opinion page to some fan fic and art, allowing a few writers and one illustrator to end the HARRY POTTER series. For me, the artist Andrea Dezso's Guernica-meets-Kara Walker vision of the final battle is the most compelling.
Celebrate 30 years of STAR WARS with Edward Copeland's blogathon -- essays, polls, rants on a huge variety of subjects, including the notorious holiday special. (There's even an essay in defense of the Ewoks: I do love a contrarian.)
I wrote about the enduring power of Princess Leia's metal bikini from RETURN OF THE JEDI.
Midway through American Idol, there's a punchy ad for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END
"In 23 hours, 9 minutes, all will be revealed"
And I have to wonder: Is that a countdown to opening day...or the threatened running time of the movie?
Shelagh Crabtree of the Los Angeles Times talks to cinematographer Dean Semler about the technical aspects of making APOCALYPTO (Buena Vista, Dec. 8). Semler is the Academy Award winning DP of (DANCES WITH WOLVES). The Times piece is a fascinating look at the how -- not the why -- of making this visionary, batshit, balmy, balls-out (and about) fascist-romantic adventure film.
(I hadn't intended on posting my review till Monday, but there it is in brief.
Semler and his crew used digital video cameras for 98% of what's onscreen. But at least one visual effect was achieved in camera with a trick that's as old as moviemaking itself: reverse action--something that Gibson learned when playing the lead in Mad Max for director George Miller.
"Mel is a master of pulling off optical tricks in-camera that he learned from George," Semler says. "He taught the actors on 'Apocalypto' how to do it too. He would walk or run in slow-motion to achieve the desired speed and they followed." In fact one scene was acted out backward and in slow motion: Gibson had Rudy Youngblood, who plays Jaguar Paw, run backward and pull a spike ball out of a tree for a scene in which he is attacked by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo)."
Continue reading "Apocalypto: LA Times On How (Not Why) They Did That" »
What does Daniel Craig have to do--kill a guy--before all the whiners accept him as the new James Bond?
ABC online has the brief on his interview with Entertainment Weekly. And the September issue of Esquire's got a good profile of him online. (I like David Katz's description of Craig's "crazy blue" eyes--yes, he is a rather intimidating looking man.) "I think there has to be an element of cruelty," says Craig of his Bond. "Certain things he does should be questionable. I think you should go, 'Fuck, that's not nice.' He is an assassin."
Is it not enough that he's the first Bond who's got stage cred ("Angels in America"), indie film cred (THE MOTHER, LOVE IS THE DEVIL), and serious menace (LAYER CAKE)? And how nice is it that an actor who follows the Harvey Keitel/Ewan McGregor tradition of Full Frontal Acting actually has something to front.
If anything, Craig is overqualified to play Bond. As an actor, I mean.
I wonder if the lingering resistance to Craig-as-Bond has to do with his looks (rough-hewn-handsome), his perceived class (Non-U/working) rather than public school-type/Eton-boy. Or is there some unspoken homophobia in play here -- Craig has played numerous gay and bisexual characters and done some unusually explicit man/man sex scenes.
Says Craig,
"I watched every single Bond movie three or four times, taking in everything I could about how the character had been portrayed in the past, then threw all that away once I started doing the role. There's no point in making this movie unless it's different. It'd be a waste of time unless we took Bond to a place he'd never been before."
And here's a quote from the Esquire piece. CASINO ROYAL director Martin Campbell promises that the movie will be not a fantasy spy film containing "sharks with laser beams." Well, we can hardly do worse than MOONRAKER, can we?
Before the announcement was made, I was hoping that Colin Salmon--the sophisticated, voice-sexy actor who plays Judi Dench's right hand man--would be named the new 007. Only later did I read that Salmon had portrayed Bond while the producers were screen testing various Bond Girls.
Casino Royale Web site: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/casinoroyale/site
"How Gay Is Superman?" asks Alonso Duralde of The Advocate.
The cover shot: Brandon Routh in costume SUPERMAN RETURNS, directed by Bryan Singer. (June 20, Warner Bros.)
Instead of trying to quantify or measure The Gay contained within Bryan Singer's summer blockbuster- to -be, Duralde, the magazine's entertainment editor, begins a personal essay about becoming a comic book fan as a sixth grader in the 1970s.
"So why was I drawn to these heroic tales of adventure and derring do?"
The Advocate's free site ends there. Read the magazine or subscribe to find out.
But I'm guessing it's got something to do with
1. A kid's identification with the superhero's life of artifice and hiding - half of the time - his unique qualities from a world that is obsessed by them. Yet sometimes the world persecutes and banishes him for these same heroic qualities.
(see: 8 million fan sites, Queer Theory, PhD dissertations on popular culture)
2. Good stories, cool pictures, EZ reading.
Should anyone at The Advocate require my opinion: when I look at the contemporary Superman, I think I'm seeing a fair amount of gay. Proud, strong and present. That's just me.
In a review of Poseidon, Michaeal Atkinson of the Village Voice suggests that this movie - like War of the Worlds - will go over better outside of big cities.
I wouldn't lump War of the Worlds in with 70s-style shlock.
I thought Steven Spielberg's 2005 film was three quarters a masterpiece of apocalyptic horror and one-quarter sentimental crap. (I'm talking to you, teenage-son-who-wouldn't-die) And if there had been another shot looking up the Martians rosy-pink snack baskets, I would have been carried out of the theater, having laughed myself into a coma.)
And what a relief that would have been. I used to live in Brooklyn, with a decent view of midtown and lower Manhattan. I recall no exhiliration whatsoever on 9-11, not on that day, not for days afterward.
Right now Poseidon and other forthcoming filmed excuses to watch shit blow up real good aren't on my list of must-see movies.
Atkinson writes (and I agree), "A supposedly fun thing I may never want to do again after 9-11, disaster films are simple death porn, and the easy wow factor of fireballs, massive explosions, flying bodies, and architectural obliteration on a large scale is, or should be, no longer a gimme."
As a friend and neighbor said when we heard about Oliver Stone's plans for his World Trade Center/firefighter-rescue movie, "Why should anyone be surprised or say it's too soon? People will make movies about anything. But I'm pretty sure I saw this movie already, and I didn't much like it the first time."