Monday, January 18th, 2010

The Avatar mania will not subside. Last night, despite facing a few more deserving films, James Cameron's blue cat people love story toppled the award show, pulling away with Best Picture - Drama, as well as Best Director for Cameron's part. Of course, this leads to the buzz that nobody really wants to hear, that Avatar now pretty much pulls out in front in the race for the top honor at the Oscars. The silver lining in the show, other than the Martin Scorsese tribute which I just watched online, was that Todd Phillips' raunchy comedy The Hangover pulled out the win in the Best Picture - Musical or Comedy category. Could this mean that the comedy could be a shocking entry into the contention for the Academy's ten nominees for Best Picture?

Building off the topic of Avatar, the film took the box office again this weekend, for the fifth straight time. Of course, as normal, it would also break a few records within the process, setting the record for the best fifth week showing of all time, beating out The Dark Knight and Titanic, as well as taking in the best long weekend for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, beating out Cloverfield's opening. Maybe even more impressive, the feat was accomplished with actual competition, toppling the opening weekend of The Book of Eli and the expansion of The Lovely Bones (which had a 53,000% increase). Next week, Legion and The Tooth Fairy will take on the blockbuster, but it is quite possible that we are looking at a sixth weekend at the top.

After it was announced that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire was out of Sony's plans for a new Spider-Man flick, I didn't read any stories about it, but I thought back on the rumor that Maguire would be taking on the role of Bilbo Baggins. Well, the most concrete of all news sources, The Sun, has put Maguire's role in Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic The Hobbit as confirmed.

Variety announced today that Clark Gregg will reprise his role as Agent Coulson not only in Iron Man 2, but in Thor as well, presumably also leading to a role in The Avengers sometime in the future.

On a final thought, I spent the day not celebrating Dr. King's infamous speech, or sadly even the fate of our favorite late night host Conan O'Brien, but by celebrating the anniversary of my trip through the womb some 25 years back. It is a bit depressing, added with the workload of school bearing down on my procrastinating conscience awful heavily, but I also got motivated to start road-tripping as much as possible before the ability to do so enjoyably exits. One of the contemplated areas to go soon before the bigger trips begin is Philadelphia, so to give me a bit of hope, here is a low quality video of Sylvester Stallone running up the Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps in Rocky. Now, I bid you adieu to watch Scorsese on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Sunday, November 1st, 2009 (Short Film Sunday: The Big Shave)

The day after Halloween. Feels a bit empty, doesn't it? Horror films are slightly less relevant today than they were yesterday, and I am bordering from the second day in a role of severe migraine headaches due to high sugar intake. Even though we are leaving much of the horror film discussions in the past week, the countdown of the most horrifying scenes in film history that I included on the blog from Total Film last week is still swimming in my head, as it was my inaugural viewing of Martin Scorsese's 1967 short film The Big Shave, as the entire 5 minute short was number four on the list.

The film stems from Scorsese's tenure at New York University's film program, and was originally titled Viet '67, which has caused many critics to compare the nameless lead character's titular shave to America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The dark flick is considered by many the most famous of the shorts Scorsese made during his school career, and would definitely pave the way for some of the darker movie tones he would deal with later in the iconic reign over the cinematic universe that would follow. The plot may not be thick, as it is just five minutes of a man shaving his facial hair, and eventually, his skin, but in his only film appearance, Peter Bernuth, plays the stone faced role perfectly.

Most of the time during my Short Film Sunday post, I speak of what the director went on to accomplish, but I think it goes without saying that we are all familiar with Scorsese's work, as he is arguably one of the greatest directors alive or dead in the history of cinema. Some of his works include Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and the upcoming Shutter Island just to name a few of the masterpieces. Anyhow, without anything additional to say about Scorsese that has not already been uttered thousands of times previously, enjoy The Big Shave.

P.S. Please don't go to YouTube to watch the video, as for some awkward happening beyond my reasoning ability, a plethora of extremely graphic taped vaginal exams are in the related video list to the side.

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

With Halloween drawing ever nearer, I've been researching something more in the spirit of the times to post on my blog, and I ran across a great countdown of the 28 most horrifying film scenes of all time, courtesy of Total Film. Of course, the list doesn't completely stay within the genre of horror, as the infamous Divine coprophagia scene that closes John Waters' cult filth manifesto Pink Flamingos, that is picture is among the list dwellers. Also outside of the horror genre is the American History X curb stomp, the entire duration of an incredibly nauseating Martin Scorsese short The Big Shave, the eye slice in Luis Bunuel's surreal masterpiece Un Chien Andalou, and the lashing of Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ among others. Still, there is plenty of horror fun on the list at the hands of The Last House on the Left, An American Werewolf in London and Misery. A really incredible list, with video links to every scene if you're bored, and in a rather morbid mood.

In other news today, Empire posted the nominees for the British Independent Film Awards. I'm not extremely familiar with all, or hardly any, of the flicks that garnered nods. Regardless, the film Fish Tank led the pack with eight nominations, while more importantly for this blog, Duncan Jones' Moon picked up seven, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Sam Rockwell, which will certainly build a little steam towards Rockwell getting the big Oscar nod. Also, I am currently searching through YouTube to find the trailer to one of the films nominated, Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, which was honored in the form of Best Actor for Andy Serkis. The title and Serkis is enough to have me interested.

Finally, I spoke of Scorsese's appearance on the brilliant Total Film countdown up there. It may seem kind of weird to have the famed director of Taxi Driver and The Departed on a countdown of horrifying scenes, but once you think of the brutal realism usually displayed in his films, his two places in the countdown (the other being the buried alive scene from Casino) seem right at home. So what would happen when Scorsese ventures into the realm of horror? Well, a new trailer for his latest, the upcoming Shutter Island, hit the Interwebs today and looks as creepy as one could imagine. Leonardo DiCaprio stars, and it has jumped right on top of the most anticipated films for 2010 in my mind. Enjoy.

Shutter Island - Exclusive Trailer

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

When did the 3-D fad go too far? Well, I think it came with the release of The Final Destination. However, there is still some good things to be done with 3-D. I'm looking forward to James Cameron's Avatar, the annual Halloween release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D is nice, and whenever I visited the Blogger account MarketSaw, and thought that I read a headline that the original Star Wars trilogy would be re-released in 3-D, I was halfway excited. Yet, the complaints and raves that was swirling around in the ol' noggin was soon abolished by wondering who the hell runs the MarketSaw site, and how reliable are they, seeing that the rumor I'm about to repeat has made its way around the blogsphere, as I first saw it on MovieWeb. Anyhow, after scanning down from the title, I realized the article actually states that George Lucas and company is contemplating a third trilogy in the Star Wars canon, all to be filmed in stereoscopic 3-D. The article goes on to say that Lucas would just have a production credit with the new films, and that Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola are being considered as directors of installments in the trilogy. Excited? Well, the article seems to doubt itself at the end, so don't get too bent out of shape. Oh, the accompanying picture to today's blog is just about as great as you can get, so if its apparently kosher to throw out crazy bits of info, I'll go ahead and drop Martin Scorsese's name in the hat to create the trifecta of new directors.

A story that to me is almost as absurd, but awkwardly true is that, via IWatchStuff, The Weather Channel has decided to start showing weather-related films, beginning with The Perfect Storm, and including Deep Blue Sea(?!). I mean, at least it makes sense for VH-1 to air Purple Rain, but Deep Blue Sea!? How does that work? And even if it came be considered a "weather movie", has it even got an audience? Is this for ratings? Ridiculous.

SlashControl was showing The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas for free today. Seeing that I'm writing this quite close to midnight, the link was broken. Still, it may be worth checking the site out, who knows what the free movie of the day will be tomorrow. And if you're really bored, the top five most watched movies includes the late Patrick Swayze in Black Dog, what looks to be a few softcore porn flicks and an old Sherlock Holmes movie.

An interview with David Duchovny over at The Daily Beast hints at a third X-Files film, but it is basically just Duchovny speaking on how much he would enjoy returning to the character of Special Agent Fox Mulder one more time. This is at least something to make my fiance's day a little happier if she reads this before work.

Finally, a good Cinematical article by Jessica Barnes is up on movies you feel that only you enjoy, her pick being About Last Night. I have two. The first being Howard the Duck, as the movie is pretty much considered one of the worst ever made on several review sites. I don't know if it's the nostalgia behind enjoying this as a kid or what. I do know a few people that like this, but according to Internet reviews, we are a rare breed. Also, we have Spider-Man 3. Sure, Venom was in the movie for only fifteen seconds, and was met with a demise that didn't even tip the iceberg of what the David Michelinie-created villain deserved. On the flip side, the transformation of Eddie Brock to Venom in the bell tower was a decent scene, Flint Marko was a pretty decent villain, and as much as everybody hated the cheesiness of it, all of the corny extras oozed Stan Lee's personality and wasn't so farfetched from any of the other stuff we had seen from the film's predecessors. So, anyways, join in on that discussion.

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

One of the few things I do involving social networking on the daily basis is check on the John Waters MySpace Fan Page to make sure the iconic cult filmmaker isn't doing something I'm missing. Since I've been blogging, I've yet to record any actual news regarding Waters working on a new project, but occasionally, I do get a self-portrait or some artwork that he is doing, the featured picture being from the Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts. If you're bored, check out the site, see some of Waters' non-cinematic artwork, and also check out a new CD of live recordings from one of his most infamous leading ladies, the late Edith Massey.

Into actual news, I was shocked to hear today, via Deadline Hollywood Daily, that Martin Scorsese's upcoming, highly anticipated thriller Shutter Island, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, has been pushed back to a February 19th release date. Really, just the pairing of Scorsese and DiCaprio (other pairings being Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed) has gained attention as being an early contender for Oscar gold. Paramount Pictures gave the reasoning that they just didn't have the money to spend to push and promote the movie as an award contender in the late part of the year, giving it just a general release with hope for award contention in 2010. One promising note the article leaves us with, is that the release date the film now has set, is the exact date another popular thriller, the Academy Award winning The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991. I personally hate the politics involved in securing the Oscar nomination anyhow, and award season or no, I'm still pretty stoked for this movie, and it gives me a reason to look forward to what would probably be a rather bland February in a cinephile's life.

On the topic of Leonardo DiCaprio, his production company Appian Way has announced, via Variety, who will helm the new feature film adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood folktale, Catherine Hardwicke of Twilight fame. The brief article also gives us an official title of the movie, The Girl with the Red Riding Hood.

Variety also reports that Bryan Singer and Warner Brothers are set to remake John Boorman's 1981 version of the Excalibur story. Some of the special effects may be dated, but this is actually a fantasy film that I feel stands the test of time. I don't really see a need to reboot this thing, but with this past week's news of possible remakes of Dirty Dancing and Yellow Submarine, this would be a mild argument to take up.

Finally, all the web troubles with the trailer for James Cameron's Avatar seems to be resolved, so here it is. Enjoy.

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Last year, when I first saw the trailer to the Zach Galifianakis-starring film Visioneers, I got way overexcited, and proclaimed to all two people that would ever listen to me, that he could be the movie geek's frontrunner for Oscar contention. Because, let's face it, as great as Sean Penn, Richard Jenkins, Frank Langella, Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke was in all five respective nominated performances of last year, none has the everyman appeal that Galifianakis does. But did I go a little too far with that statement? Well, seeing that theatrical distribution fell through, I won't know for sure until July 21st, when the film goes direct-to-DVD. However, I have faith, after watching the new trailer for Robert D. Siegel's Big Fan, that Patton Oswalt will take up the mantel for the unexpected contender that we will all be cheering for come this Academy Awards. The trailer is incredible, and seeing that director/writer Siegel also wrote last year's hit The Wrestler, as well as being the former senior editor of the satirical newspaper/web site The Onion, we know he understands drama and humor, and seems capable of mixing the two perfectly. In fact, the first film I thought of when watching the trailer, mixing kind of a gritty, serious storyline with what will surely have its fair share of humor, was Todd Solondz' excellent 1998 film Happiness. To top such a film, in my personal opinion, is a tall order, but watch and see what you think.

Other things in brief... MSN Cinemash has featured an entertaining video from 500 Days of Summer, based on a snippet of dialogue from the film, where Joseph Gordon-Levitt portrays Nancy Spungen, and Zooey Deschanel takes the role of Sid Vicious in a nice parody of Sid and Nancy. Definitely worth a view if you're bored.

Cinematical has an interesting story up, stemming from an interview Francis Ford Coppola did with Esquire, where he said that he originally didn't want to do a sequel to The Godfather, and when finally convinced, he just wanted to take a role to help with the screenplay, and had considered passing off the directorial job to then young Martin Scorsese.

Not shockingly, but sadly, it was announced that Rob Zombie's inaugural animation film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, will be released straight-to-DVD. This adds on to the previously mentioned Visioneers as two kind of anticipated straight-to-DVD efforts this year. Maybe one day, we could look forward to the medium not being dominated by rejected Lifetime films and Steven Seagal.

Speaking of Galifianakis, MovieWeb reports he is considering a new film directed by The Hangover's Todd Phillips called Man-Witch, where the bearded comedian will be the only male in a school for witchcraft. Sounds like solid comedy, let's just hope this one gets made.

Stephen Dorff mentioned somewhere that Blade could get a reboot. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fan of the first film, but does anybody really want this?

I'll close with another discussion of Michael Jackson. In honor of the media insanity of his funeral today, added with the fact that Bruno debuts this coming Friday, do you think that it was the right choice to completely cut Sacha Baron Cohen's interview with LaToya Jackson out of the film? Sure, the premiere night right after he died, I get that. But, let's face it, the people most likely to be offended at a tactless joke about a recently deceased person would be Christians, homosexuals, and seeing the role Michael Jackson played in breaking down walls, African Americans. And can't we already be sure that the theater will be emptied of these groups? I can't wait to see how many people Baron Cohen offends, why not add a few more?