Monday, September 14th, 2009

After reading about two years of depressing tabloids, I thought I would be more prepared for Patrick Swayze's eventual passing at the hands of pancreatic cancer. Instead, I'm a grown heterosexual man eating ice cream, near the stage of weeping, watching the 80's icon stand up to stodgy old Jerry Orbach. Swayze leaves behind a memorable body of work including Dirty Dancing, Next of Kin, Road House, Ghost, Point Break, Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Black Dog, Donnie Darko and one of the better Saturday Night Live sketches of all time alongside Chris Farley among others. Swayze had the uncommon ability to balance carrying the Fabio complex of being manly to the point of comedy, self-parody and actual acting skills in a classy and memorable fashion. Rest in peace.

In an attempt to tear myself away from the proverbial tear-stained pottery wheel, a few decent news stories in the land of cinema to bring the spirits up comes our way... First, Access Hollywood interviewed Bruce Campbell recently in which the cult film icon spoke of the upcoming Spider-Man 4, which supposed to begin shooting early 2010. When asked about his role in this film, he responds that director Sam Raimi has a much bigger role in mind. The rumor mills have all been salivating at how plausible and obvious of a decision it would be to have Campbell play the villain Mysterio. One can only hope.

Also making rounds in the rumor circuit is Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds fame. The actor, who has been heavily touted as a huge Academy Award contender, has been mentioned, via DeadlineHollywood, as the replacement for Nicolas Cage as the baddy in Seth Rogen's The Green Hornet. I said earlier in the week when it was announced that Cage would be dropping out of the picture that it could turn around to be a wondrous Stephen Chow to Michel Gondry type change, and if they can nab Waltz, who deserves all the praise he is getting from Basterds, Rogen's superhero flick will have pulled another good-to-great crew change.

I can't believe that 9 garnered just $10 million at the box office, landing behind Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself. At least it didn't flop as bad as Sorority Row, which landed a debut at the six spot with just slightly over $5 million.

Last night, despite the absence of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Ben Folds being nominated, the MTV Video Music Awards played a sinister trick in the pre-show on my heart by introducing the Muppets into the mix, as Kermit the Frog escorted Lady Gaga (clad in a costume fit for a background character in Hellboy, plus a performance that included dancing cripples, vaginal piano playing and Carrie-esque blood covered female, so I sickenly, disappointingly can't even call it a terrible happening). Anyhow, aside from the whole Twitter drama regarding Kanye West's douchebaggery, the award show focused on film a bit, by debuting trailer's for The Twilight Saga: New Moon and the Michael Jackson documentary This is It. Instead of displaying any of these trailers, I opted for a challenge to any readers that I have. In Janet Jackson's tribute to her brother that opened the show, much of the video for "Scream" was shown and I noticed that some anime is prominently displayed in the background. I can't find anywhere what anime it is, although the Answerman on AnimeNewsNetwork says that it is often claimed to be Akira, although there has never been confirmation. Happy hunting kiddos. Oh, on a side note that I find interesting about the VMA's, big names in film that have won in the technical awards include Steve Barron, David Fincher, Tarsem Singh, Mark Pellington, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Samuel Bayer, Dylan Tichenor and the Brothers Quay.

Finally, to close today's blog, a few of the most memorable Swayze moments.

Patrick Swayze - Chippendale
by tressage

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Well, I said in the last blog that I would be back on Sunday, yet somehow in the past few days I've actually found something to do to keep me out long enough so that sleep is more important than blogging. Luckily, there hasn't been much movie news. Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson's District 9 took the box office, and a few other trivial things that I'll get to later.

Firstly, we'll bring Jackson back into the picture, as MarketSaw, a fellow Blogger member, has a post circulating three rather huge rumors on the upcoming film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic tale The Hobbit, which got reported on several other major blog sites as well. To begin with, the most believable of the rumor mill, is that the films will be shot in 3-D. This really comes as no surprise seeing that Jackson was vocal during the San Diego Comic Con on converting The Lord of the Rings over to the format a few weeks ago. Another believable piece of the story is that Jackson and director Guillermo del Toro will be making the fantasy book's characters a little darker. This really comes as no surprise, especially an emphasis on Smaug, which I feel was rather dark in the first place. At the same time, I love the difference of tone from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, so I hope that in connecting the films in the franchise, the unique tone of the book isn't lost. Lastly, the article mentions that there will be a third film, bridging the two works, and that Jackson will return as director for the bridge movie. This gets to a point that is debatable, no matter how capable Jackson's hands are. What do you think? Also, should we trust a Blogspot? Without looking further into the MarketSaw subsite, I could easily assume it is a fledging college student/grocery store bag boy/cinephile like myself that created a massive rumor to stir up site traffic.

A story that I missed over the past few days of absence was that Robert Downey, Jr. was being rumored to play the vampire Lestat in a new film based on Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles series. Today, BSC has a few quotes from Rice herself on the topic of Downey becoming the third actor to take on the role of the lead vampire. The article still doesn't confirm or dismiss the original speculation.

Speaking of vampires, I found a rather odd item circulating the cinema blogsphere... a Twilight themed dildo. From the tiny bit of the description I could bring myself to read, I understand that it sparkles like Edward's skin, as well as having the "pale flesh tone reminiscent of a new moon's glow". Feeling left out of the apparently new "hip" thing of masturbating to Twilight, I looked up the more appropriate topic on Google search of a Star Wars sex toy. What I ended up finding was this terribly unsettling article from Landover Baptist Church's web site, about a boy having carnal relations with a seven foot replica of Jar Jar Binks.

ComingSoon has a story up that Lionsgate is developing a remake of the 1987 classic Dirty Dancing. Now, I bitch and moan a lot, but there's very few news items I report on here that would cause me to go out and protest, and I'll be damned if Lionsgate didn't pull one of those scenarios out of the hat when I just imagined someone other than Patrick Swayze saying "Nobody puts Baby in a corner".

Finally, the other day, a new trailer for the David Lynch produced, Werner Herzog directed flick My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done debuted. I have to admit, it looks watchable, but coming from the minds of Lynch and Herzog, as a team, I am quite disappointed that I'm not blown away watching this. Still, I think it is worth your time.


P.S. As an added bonus for my absence, here is the more than likely illegal way I spent an afternoon the other day, watching Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver on YouTube.