The UBS Evening Television & Movie News 08.27.09
Posted by George H. Sirois on 08.27.2009
The trailer to Jared Hess’ latest film, casting news on Wall Street II, a revealing of another “Complete Series” DVD box set and a detailed breakdown of my second viewing of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. All this and Andy bringing the goodness in the “Zombie, We STILL Have a Problem” Edition…
Welcome everyone to the latest edition of the UBS Evening Movie News. I'm George H. Sirois, and if you're on Twitter, you can find me HERE! And don't forget, for all of you who are new to 411Mania.com, make sure you check out all of our zones. We have some of the best writers on the Internet right here, and we love to hear from all of you! So keep coming back to read what we have for you, make us your homepage and if you have Facebook, make sure to join our group HERE!
As promised, I have a little something to say in my Mad Prophet of the Airwaves section, and Andy keeps the photo news brief goodness flowing. Plus, here's a little progress report on the editing. Chapter 12 is almost done, but when you read it – AND YOU WILL READ IT! – expect it to be pretty damn long. A lot happens in it, and it just works better to keep it together rather than split it into two chapters.
And now, on with the news…
SYBIL THE SOOTHSAYER
UPCOMING MOVIES
Halloween II: The sequel to Rob Zombie's 2007 revamp of the horror classic "Halloween."
I'll be going into more details regarding my thoughts on this franchise later on in this edition. Safe to say I got a lot of opinions…
The Final Destination: After a teen's premonition of a deadly race-car crash helps saves the lives of his peers, "Death" sets out to collect those who evaded their end
With titles like Fast & Furious – which is the fourth film in a franchise that started with THE Fast & THE Furious – I have to give New Line a bit of credit for using their title wisely instead of just adding another number to their series that starts with the word "FINAL." (It reminds me of The Neverending Story II. Wouldn't the first neverending story have to end before there's another one?)
I've had a bit of a soft spot for this franchise. Sure, it's incredibly contrived with the way it sets up its deaths, but you can tell they're having fun with it and I've done the same while watching it. Besides, they were able to maintain some sense of continuity despite using new characters. So with that in mind, why not just jump on the 3D bandwagon for the series finale? With all the over-the-top killings we've already seen, adding another dimension can't hurt, so I'll say I'm interested in this. Yeah.
Taking Woodstock: A man (Demetri Martin) working at his parents' motel in the Catskills inadvertently sets in motion the generation-defining concert in the summer of 1969.
I always liked Demetri Martin, so it's good to see him getting a role like this in an Ang Lee movie. I'm sure Lee's done at least one comedy already, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were his first since he always likes to try different things. I'd see this, if anything for the music. You know that's gonna be great.
Big Fan: Patton Oswalt plays a hardcore New York Giants football fan, who struggles to deal with the consequences when he is beaten up by his favorite player
My review for this should be up tomorrow.
Credit: TheMovieBox.net
DVD NEWS
I bet you thought the "Complete Saga" box set was the last Rocky DVD set you'd be seeing for a while, right? Well, you're wrong because Rocky: The Undisputed Collection is coming to Blu-Ray in November. Since II – V still haven't gotten the Blu-Ray treatment, now's as good a time as any to make it happen.
One thing that the constant box sets have had – other than the discs for the first film and for Rocky Balboa – is a total lack of special features. Since MGM is reporting a seven-disc set for six movies, there's a good chance there will be something new to enjoy. This set arrives on November 3rd.
But wait! There's more to enjoy on November 3rd! If you've been holding off on buying season box sets like I recommended, a big treat awaits you from Sony Pictures. The Shield: The Complete Series is coming!
Arriving as a 28-disc DVD set, this release will feature all 88 episodes, with a collectible 34-page bound Anthology Book filled with photos, quotes, and a special letter from creator Shawn Ryan. There are also two all-new Featurettes - a documentary about the Los Angeles Rampart division police scandal that served as the inspiration for the series and a Behind-the-scenes Set Tour of the "The Barn," the location where the series was shot.
The retail price for this collection is expected to be $159.95.
Credit: DVDReview.com
MOVIE TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Gentlemen Broncos
JIM WEBBING AND HIS IT'S THE HONEST TRUTH DEPARTMENT
Want to remember a time when you had to do more than just sit on your ass and punch a few buttons to set up dinner and a movie? There's an app for that.: Online movie site Flixster has launched version 3.0 of "Movies," its free iPhone app.
The newest version of "Movies" offers movie ticketing via Movietickets.com; digital-download integration with iTunes; movie rental queue management with Netflix; and local restaurant listings through Yelp.
"Planning a trip to the movies is a one-stop experience with Movies 3.0," Flixster founder and CEO Joe Greenstein said. "It lets you search for recommendations from other users, find your local showtimes, invite friends, purchase tickets, make dinner plans and even choose your in-home entertainment - from wherever you are."
As of last week, Flixster said, the app had reached six million users.
Flixster also offers movie apps for the Palm Pre, the Blackberry and Android based devices.
We've really gotten ourselves to a point where we're just totally dependant on portable computers, huh? And I'm pleading guilty to this as well; ever since I got my netbook, I can't do any work on my book on the desktop. It has to be on that.
So I'll just re-iterate what I said way back in the first edition of The UBS Evening Television & Movie News. If we all take some time to remember certain phone numbers or e-mail addresses without just going to our cell phone speed dial, we'll be just fine. Or if anything, we can GO TO A MOVIE THEATER and BUY TICKETS there instead of getting them online or on the phone. We don't have to do it all the time, just once in a while. Baby steps, you know…
Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
Random TV show adaptation news of the week: Warner Bros. has hired Malcolm Spellman to write a feature based on the classic TV show "Soul Train."
Darryl Porter and Aaron Geller of Porter/Geller Prods. will produce with Don Cornelius, the host and producer of the famed show, which ran from 1971-2006.
Spellman said that he's writing a film set in the 1980s.
"All of the hip-hop street dances you see today were born during that time period and were first seen on that show, and I remember doing all of them when I was a kid," said Spellman, whose credits include "Dead Presidents."
Protag comes from the L.A. hood, and his ticket out is his gift for "popping," a street dance that became popular in the period. Cornelius told Spellman he'd always wanted to mount a tour with bands and dancers, and the writer will make that fictional tour a centerpiece of the film.
"This guy is a serious popper, with street edge, and he wants to get on that tour, with the hottest of the hot," Spellman said. "Writing with Don involved is quite an experience. He's still the godfather of cool."
You gotta admit, Hollywood is going to great lengths to avoid creativity. Now they're coming out with a movie based on a dance show? I'll give them points that it's set in the 80s and has Don Cornelius producing, but what exactly are they going to do with this? Is it going to be a biopic or just another dance movie? Or both?
I'm not in a rush to see this if it happens. Once you've seen The Last Dragon, no other movie that involves a TV dance show will do. "Who's the master??!!!"
Credit: Variety
At least we know the acting will be good: Susan Sarandon is negotiating to join the Oliver Stone-directed "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" for 20th Century Fox.
Sarandon will play the mother of a young Wall Street trader (Shia LaBeouf) who falls under the seductive influence of Gordon Gekko. Michael Douglas and Frank Langella also star. Production begins next month in New York.
The drama was scripted by Allan Loeb. Stone and Douglas produce with Edward R. Pressman and Eric Kopeloff.
I'm still very much on the fence about this. Will this just follow the same formula of the first film, where Shia will be playing the new Bud Fox role and Gordon will be taking him under his wing and corrupting him? Or will this show us a different side of Gordon that we didn't get to see the first time because he was on such a high with the excess of the 80s? This screams "unnecessary" and it's got me really skeptical, but at least having Stone behind the camera and actors of such caliber as Sarandon and Douglas give me a little bit of hope.
ANDY CRITCHELL'S INTERACTIVE BABE PHOTO NEWS BRIEF WITH ANDY CRITCHELL
Hey there everyone! Hope you're all doing well. This week's gal comes to us from sunny southern California and is a rising star in the modeling world; Destiny Daniels!
Destiny has a pretty extensive resume that includes Maxim, Lowrider Magazine, and Trashy Lingerie. She has said she will only do nude for Playboy so there is still hope. Usually I am not a huge fan of girls with a lot of ink, but she wears it pretty well. Anyway, let's see her pics:
And there you have it! Hope you enjoyed. You can see more of Destiny here and here
Also, don't forget to check me out over in the wrestling zone where I write the hottest new TV Report, ECW Extreme Extracts. I'm keeping a blog here on 411 which you can read here.
Of course, if you were smart and checked out my blog, you would have already seen a picture of this week's gal. If you didn't, well keep an eye on my blog for a preview of next week's girl.
MAD PROPHET OF THE AIRWAVES
A while back, I got my first taste of the trailer to Rob Zombie's new movie Halloween II. If you guys are familiar with my UBS reports, you know that I was not happy with Rob's take on the first film, not at all. Call me a purist, call me just bitter that it was remade, I don't care. It just didn't work for me, but I saw its potential for being its own movie and that made the viewing of it even more frustrating.
In my opinion, it didn't have to be a Halloween film. Rob could have used what he wrote and created his own slasher icon and that would have been pretty damn cool to watch. Instead, since the Michael Myers lore was shoehorned into the movie, I was taken out of it pretty quickly and it just never recovered.
But once I saw the trailer to Rob's sequel, I was intrigued. Re-doing the first film may border on cinematic blasphemy, but if you want to re-do the sequel, hell go right ahead! I always looked at that one as one of the weaker sequels since Laurie spent over half the movie stuck in a hospital bed. Also, I enjoyed the news that Zombie had no problem going in whatever direction he wanted since he already covered the first film. Apparently, he had the same feeling about the original sequel that I did.
This had me thinking: maybe I should give Rob's original film another look. The only time I saw it was on opening night at the movie theater, and I didn't want to see it again. However, reading reviews and getting feedback about the first remake from various readers and writers here at 411Mania had me thinking, maybe I was a little too hard on it. So we Netflixed it, I watched it again for the first time in two years, and I was able to see some good in it but the same parts that agonized me the first time around were still right there to piss me off.
First, the good. I will say that even though I didn't care AT ALL for the white trash version of Haddonfield, the backstory elements that Rob wrote were pretty damn intriguing. Daeg Faerch can do the creepy kid really well, and he played the hell out of it here. The moment where he slowly pulled the clown mask down before he pummeled the bully to death was truly awesome. You got to see the killer in him coming out, and you can tell that Rob was really into showing you this development.
Also, I liked Malcolm McDowell's portrayal of Loomis much more the second time around. It still wasn't as wonderfully eerie as Donald Pleasence was, but how can you really improve on perfection when it comes to that role? However, I will say that the back-and-forth Loomis and Michael have in Smith's Grove was terrific. You actually saw that Loomis wanted to help him rather than immediately have him put away, which is what we saw in the extended version of the original 1978 film. Here, we actually saw Loomis spending eight years to reach him. Hell, here he almost goes the full fifteen before he gives up. So kudos to Rob on that.
And I really liked how vicious everything was. There was no quiet stalking, Michael was a force to be reckoned with and sure there was plenty of blood to replace the atmosphere that John Carpenter used so well, but it wasn't completely over-the-top gory. It was just enough to make a visceral impact, so mission accomplished there.
HOWEVER, as soon as we reach the second half of the film and we go into remake-land, this is where the movie falls apart. I understand Rob wanting to make the kids look and sound like they popped 37 Red Bulls before he yelled "Action," since this really is how a lot of kids these days act. That doesn't make them any less annoying. It only made me want them to die, and it seemed Rob did too since the only real focused character he has in this film is Michael Myers.
And herein lies the problem.
Rob himself once talked about how you can have a faceless movie when you have faceless characters being chased by the faceless monster. That's what he has here because he spent so much of the film's first half giving Michael a bit of a righteous edge that conjures up a bit of sympathy. We saw his white trash upbringing, we saw the kids picking on him and the first real killing he shows off is against a bully. Judith and his mother's boyfriend treated him like shit, so why should we care when he kills them? And in the director's cut, we saw employees at Smith's Grove raping a fellow inmate, so why should we feel pity when Michael goes apeshit on them?
It only makes sense that Tyler Mane – a pro wrestler – was cast as Michael since you can tell the exact moment when Michael Myers "turns heel" and becomes the bad guy. And that's when Danny Trejo's character gets killed. He's there for one reason and one reason only, to be a character that you don't want Michael to kill. That's it.
This is the main problem I had with the film. We're asked to feel sympathy for a character that we're not supposed to like. He's supposed to be "pure evil," so what the hell does that make me when I want annoying characters like this new Laurie Strode to die?! And what the hell does that make Rob when he's making a movie where the only fully developed character is the one that doesn't have a face?
I'll re-iterate what I said a long time ago. If Rob had only made this an original slasher character, he would have had something here. But no, he took a kid who originally grew up in suburbia and stuck him in a white trash home where we would see some kind of excuse for him becoming what he is. So he basically killed the whole mystery element of the series – how a kid who would want for nothing would become such a force of evil – and put a serious handicap on his character.
Now that he doesn't have to follow the direction of the rest of the Halloween franchise, we'll see what he can do with the sequel. It looks like he's combined elements of II and H20 since Laurie is up and squaring off with Michael in the hospital. I'm looking forward to seeing if Rob can give me some characters to give a shit about other than Michael, and hopefully he can pull that off.
At this rate, as long as Busta Rhymes isn't karate-chopping Michael, I'll be happy.
And that's a wrap for Chapter 127 of The UBS Evening Movie News! For Andy Critchell, I'm George H. Sirois and we'll see you next week!
I'm not in a rush to see this if it happens. Once you've seen The Last Dragon, no other movie that involves a TV dance show will do. "Who's the master??!!!"
Sho-nuff!! The Shogun of Harlem Sucka!!!
How is it that this weeks chick has ever changing tattoos.
Posted By: Todd Vote (Registered) on August 27, 2009 at 10:27 AM
Awesome as always George. I still didn't see the remake of Halloween and I am a strong supporter of the original. Should I at least check it out? I also will say Halloween II looks good.
Posted By: JM (Guest) on August 27, 2009 at 07:29 PM
