Monday, October 19th, 2009

One of the most unfortunate things about living in the part of the country that I do, is that spectacular looking films, such as Robert D. Siegel's Big Fan, didn't come within a hundred miles. Still, the Patton Oswalt starring dark comedy has been championed in this blog for sometime as I wait with bated breath for the DVD release. While I wait, via Cinematical, the independent sports flick has nabbed three nominations (Best Feature and nods for Siegel and Oswalt's work respectively) at the Gotham Awards, honoring the best in independent cinema. Two other films that are high priority on my list to catch-up on when they finally hit store shelves is Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker and the Coen Brothers' latest, A Serious Man.

Speaking of A Serious Man, the flick took a decent leap in the box office this week, taking an 84% rise, still only netting it in the top 15. Also, Paranormal Activity still continues to climb its way to the top, landing at number three this weekend, taking sales up 148%, after a 1000+% increase last weekend. Still, the top story is that Spike Jonze's incredible Where the Wild Things Are took the top spot easily with approximately $33 million. Law Abiding Citizen and The Stepfather also debuted within the top five, which if not for Wild Things getting such a great release, would be cause to shoot ourselves in the head in honor of intriguing cinema, such as the 35th spot, Black Dynamite, which essentially will go unnoticed.

On the topic of Where the Wild Things Are, I was left with affirmation that Jonze is, in fact, one of the greatest geniuses in modern movies. The director of Being John Malkovich has really done no wrong thus far in his career, and prior to film, he has helmed such wonderful music videos as the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" and Wax's "California". So, it was definitely a shock to see an article on Cinematical highlighting a short film Jonze had done with douchebag extraordinaire, Kanye West, entitled We Were Once a Fairytale. It is hard for me to believe that, despite the high level of talent behind the camera, West could do anything remotely entertaining... on purpose. This thought continued as the embedded YouTube video provided by the link was taken down due to noncompliance in the form of a copyright claim from West himself.

Variety ran a story today about the possibility of reviving the failed attempt of a Broadway adaptation of Brian De Palma's classic horror flick Carrie. I don't really see why this wouldn't work. Actually, this makes me wonder why, when speaking of great Halloween staples in the same vein of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, why Carrie doesn't get some costumed midnight showings around this time of the year. Given, the Stephen King adaptation isn't nowhere near the same amount of fun as Rocky Horror, but the kitschy horror, and what would surely be a plethora of prom dress clad moviegoers doused in pig blood in the audience, definitely makes for at least one hell of an opening act. The Variety article also gives me reason to put up the prom scene clip from the movie, which has been on my mind recently, stemming from a rather comical incident during classes the other day. Enjoy.

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

I've yet to see Halloween II yet, and even though I still plan to do so, most of my class and work conversations today somehow drifted off to how awful Rob Zombie's latest in the franchise reboot actually is. The good thing however, is that the release has given us reasons to talk about classic horror cinema, like John Carpenter's original flick. In fact, the picture in the corner there of Jamie Lee Curtis is part of a gallery on Rotten Tomatoes of their favorite pictures of movie scream queens, which covers everyone from Faye Wray of the original 1933 version of King Kong to Scout Taylor-Compton, the actress that took over the role of Laurie Strode in Zombie's version of the Halloween franchise, originally portrayed by Curtis, as evidenced above. Worth a look on a slow news day.

Continuing on the topic of Rob Zombie, when he announced yesterday that a possible re-make of the 1958 horror flick The Blob could be in the works, he must have loosened the ground for Joel Silver not to care to upset a few horror fanatics by announcing today, via Collider, that he plans on remaking the 1982 comic-to-film adaptation of Swamp Thing, originally directed by Wes Craven. This is a case that to me, is exactly like yesterday's statement concerning The Blob. Sure, special effects could update the film, but really, the only reason people even remember the mostly bad Swamp Thing is the kitsch factor and that should be left alone. Also, if you read the article, it sounds more like Silver is concerned with capitalizing on the medium of 3-D instead of searching for a film that would actually work well with the gimmick. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon with the first property he can find, maybe he should focus on a finding a project that works on its own. I would jump aboard this though if it got a decent enough writer that would follow Alan Moore's work with the comics, but if anybody's ever read what Silver said his version of Watchmen would have been like, I seriously doubt we could see the representation of the un-commercial work of Moore make the big-screen horror/3-D market.

Cinematical has an interview up with Patton Oswalt. If there is anybody that actually reads my blog, you may recall that I've been saying from what I've seen, I am very much hoping for an Oscar caliber performance from Oswalt in Big Fan, which debuted yesterday. Do I think it will happen, not a shot in hell, but I'm still very much a supporter of this film even though it came nowhere near me and once again, I will probably have to wait for the DVD release before I can enjoy it. The directorial debut of Robert D. Siegel looks great though, and if you are like me and awaiting your chance to see this, the interview should tide you over for a bit.

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?