Furious on Film Movie News Report 05.07.08

Posted by Arnold Furious on 05.07.2008

The latest on Marvel releases, Terminator: Salvation, Anchorman 2 and the Dark Knight. Plus reviews of Tears of the Sun and British disaster flick Flood and Rebecca DeMornay joins the Hollywood Whores!

Furious on Film Movie News 05.07.08

The latest on Marvel releases, Terminator: Salvation, Anchorman 2 and the Dark Knight. Plus reviews of Tears of the Sun and British disaster flick Flood and Rebecca DeMornay joins the Hollywood Whores!

Issue 138

Welcome ladies and gents to the latest news from Hollywood. Plus some other stuff. I've really been pushed for time this week. I've been trying to set up a blog archive seeing as FR is down. That's taking a lot more time than I hoped for. In that I have to find all the old articles and throw it together. But your basic blog has no archiving preferences like getting things in date order or changing the posting date, which would be handy. Regardless it's a pain in the arse. Anyone want to give me a hand with that?

HERE IS THE GNUS



Make Mine Marvel

Credit: Marvel.

Marvel Entertainment released its first quarter report to shareholders today and confirmed the next four titles they're putting into production. First up will be "Iron Man 2" which has been scheduled for April 30th 2010. Matthew Vaughn's take on "Thor" is also set for release on June 4th 2010. "The First Avenger: Captain America" will swing his shield on May 6th 2011. The much anticipated superhero team-up "The Avengers" has been scheduled for July 2011. The company's "Ant-Man" and "The Sub-Mariner" remain in development with no fixed release dates. Their "Wolverine" film remains on course for next May.



Ironman has done better than expected but it is the first big movie of the summer. Sometimes that works in the favour of the ‘first' Blockbuster of the season. The campaign from Marvel has been spot on though and the casting inspired. Interesting to note that Ironman 2 is due up next for Marvel ahead of other ventures. I guess you strike while the iron is hot (pun intended). Still no solid casting news on Thor. Kevin McKidd has been strongly rumoured for some time. I personally thought Triple H wouldn't have been a bad choice but would he be available for the Avengers movie as well? It'll eat up a lot of time and he's always preferred wrestling. I'm certainly more worried about Captain America. Whoever gets that gig has to own the screen. Cap is one of the most charismatic leaders the world of comics has ever known. He has to be immediately a hero and dominate the others. I'm hearing Paul Walker as an option and I'm really not sure that'll work at all. I would have thought they'd have wanted to get Ant-Man out before the Avengers movie as well in order to have all the characters introduced in their own movies to really drive home an enormous box office. 2011 looks to be a monster year for Marvel and could make the company one of the biggest on the planet. They've had huge success with X-Men & Spiderman franchises and now they have another winner with Ironman. I think the Avengers movie could potentially be a disaster but at least they're building up to it so people really want to see it.

I'm in a glass box of sequel!

Credit: Collider.com

Adam McKay: I'm looking to do another movie, I might do this other movie called Channel 3 Billion which is kind of this science fiction/Brazil type comedy. Then after that, Will and I are like let's do Anchorman 2…so you're talking like 2 years maybe we'll do it. But we're going to do it, for sure.

Collider: That's like 100%?

Adam McKay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're dying to do it. Unless we can't get the cast together, which is always kind of a tricky thing. But, I think, with that cast we're all friends, so yeah, we want to do it.



Sold! I loved Anchorman. Will Ferrell seems to be hitting a brick wall with the continued appearances in sports movies. Semi-Pro didn't do as well as expected and that could be because of the repetition. Talladega Nights then Blades of Glory then Semi-Pro. It all seemed to be too much for the viewing public. Going back to tried and trusted ground could work well for him and Anchorman has a strong following on DVD so should be well supported at the box office. Especially if the sequel is as funny as the original. Ferrell's improvisational skills could well work in his favour to provide some ‘moments'.

You magnificent Two-Faced bastard

More news on Batman character Harvey Dent courtesy of an interview with star Aaron Eckhart.

Credit: LA Times.

"There are fans on the Internet who have done artist's versions of what they think it will look like, and I can tell you this: They're thinking small; Chris [Nolan, Director] is going way farther than people think."

He says that "I can tell you that, basically, when you look at Two-Face, you should get sick to your stomach. Being the guy under all that, well, that was a lot of fun for me. It's like you would feel if you met someone whose face had pretty much been ripped off or burned off with acid."



So not like this then?

Harvey Dent is a key character in this new Batman universe. I'm almost surprised he didn't find his way into the first movie but then that may have given us one character too many. Nolan is doing a terrific job on the series so far. The huge disappointment for me is that with Heath Ledger being dead it means no more Joker after this film. Unless they re-cast but I really don't see that happening. So they'll have to come up with something worthwhile for the third movie in the series, which I'm assuming they'll do, and whether it can stand up to what Nolan has already introduced into the storyline. Whichever way you look at it the elements are coming together for Nolan to create one of the great comic book series on film. I think it has potential to surpass the Tim Burton films, which in retrospect don't have the same dark edge and are a little too Edward Scissorhands and not enough Batman. Good time to be a comic book fan though. With Marvel dominating the scene DC has its work cut out to compete but with the Batman franchise they have probably the most iconic of all superheroes. And despite damage done to Batman (through various failures including Joel Schumacher) he's one of these characters that is open to wide ranges of interpretation. Nolan has however taken the key elements of all of them (minus the campy 60's TV show) and along with Christian Bale has given us a definitive Batman. Here's to Aaron Eckhart providing a definitive Two-Face. Hey, he can't do any worse than Tommy Lee Jones!

So, no gouging out of eyeballs allowed?

Credit: Variety.

The "Terminator" will indeed be back -- but this time with a more kid-friendly rating.
As production starts today on "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins," the next installment in the action franchise, producers at the Halcyon Co. say they aim to deliver a PG-13 movie to Warner Bros. for release on May 22, 2009. The "Terminator" series is one of the highest-grossing R-rated franchises of all time, with the first three films having grossed more than $1.03 billion worldwide. But Halcyon producers thought it was time to broaden the upcoming fourth film's audience base, and they believe the PG-13 won't compromise the series' gritty vision.

"The ratings have changed," said Halcyon co-founder and co-CEO Victor Kubicek, a broker-turned-writer-producer. "The PG-13 has increased in intensity." Move follows last year's "Die Hard" film, "Live Free or Die Hard," which went out with a PG-13 after three prior R-rated installments. That pic went on to gross $382.1 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing in the series.



After both the success of Die Hard 4.0 and Aliens v Predator it wasn't a shock to see the PG-13 rating on the new Terminator movie. The fanboys can cry about it all they like but these franchises are now part of the modern mythos and the movie studios want them to be available to as many people as possible. Especially after the two huge box office successes mentioned above. It's been proven that you can tone down a franchise in terms of violence and still make it a winner. Well, AVP sucked but that wasn't the fault of the rating. They could have made a perfectly good PG-13 movie. My big concern with the new Terminator movie is how they'll approach it. Its basically going to be a re-boot in an attempt to make a new series set in the future. All previous Terminator movies, with the exception of flashback sequences, have been shot in the present. I'm personally looking forward to it. There's tremendous potential there and with Christian Bale on board they're guaranteed a strong performance from their lead actor. Still not sure about McG but this is his big chance to prove his critics wrong.

What do you mean you've never seen…?

Remember in High Fidelity where the potential record buyer is confronted by Jack Black? "Don't tell anyone you don't own Blonde on Blonde?" Well, if you were to enter a serious film buff's rental place, which sadly doesn't exist nowadays thanks to Blockbuster and online rentals, and happened to make a comment about liking movies then I like to think somewhere out there that a clerk still exists who would chastise you for not having seen certain movies. Seeing as that place doesn't exist you'll just have to imagine you're walking into my rental place and happened to mention conspiracy movies. Odd how they always seem to be fictional (Parallax View etc). But what's that? You've never seen…

#8 All the President's Men (1976)



Watergate was a conspiracy so large it took down a president. Ever since conspiracies within government circles and other assorted cover-up's have gained the word "gate" at the end of them because Watergate is the godfather of all government cover-up's. Although that only happened because they screwed up so bad and failed to cover their tracks. The clues were all there for two young reporters at the Washington Post to uncover the whole conspiracy and bring down President Richard M Nixon in the process. Now people consider Nixon a crook based on his knowledge of Watergate ahead of time. Yeah, he was a crook and one who did far worse things than Watergate but that's what he got caught for. There have probably been other equally corrupt presidents and world leaders in their time but Nixon is the one everyone knows because of his guilt being uncovered. And that's what All the President's Men is about. The two reporters Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) who dug into Watergate and exposed Nixon for what he was. They were also aided by the mysterious Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), who in 2005 was revealed as former second in command of the FBI. The worrying thing about All the President's Men is how real the events are. I've read other accounts of the time, mostly through Hunter S. Thompson, and these guys did great journalistic work. If anything deserved to be made into a popular movie the exposing of Nixon through Watergate was it.

The movie won 4 Oscars including best supporting actor for the Post's editor Jason Robards. Alan Pakula didn't win but he did get the acclaim his usual paranoia didn't get. He'd been responsible for the Parallax View 2 years earlier and was obsessed with conspiracies. Having the opportunity to get at Watergate gave him an opening to express himself with something that was real. If you're not familiar with what happened the slow process of getting people to talk and suddenly discovering the depth of the conspiracy is part of the fun. I'm saddened there's no footage of Nixon being brought down. The way Hunter S. Thompson told it in his articles it sounded like a grand moment for truth, justice and the American way. All the President's Men tends to ignore the spectacular, the ostentatious and goes more in favour of digging out the truth. They don't make films like this anymore. The bustling newsroom is enough atmosphere. The dark parking garage is enough atmosphere. It's a film that uses it's own weight to tell a simple story. It's a movie about details and facts. Sometimes that bogs it down but it can't hold back several terrific performances. Not least of all from the director finally getting his chance to tell ‘the truth'.

BEST BIT – Deep Throat's revelation that "everyone" is involved in Watergate. That and Robards telling the reporters that everything is riding on their story including the First Amendment and the future of the country.



THIS WEEK'S REVIEWS

Tears of the Sun, Flood

Tears of the Sun (2003)



EXPECTATIONS – I've always liked Bruce Willis. It was said at some point his days as an action hero were over but then I saw Die Hard 4.0 so I have to disagree. That made me reconsider this film. Also director Antoine Fuqua did a great job with Training Day. I also Monica Bellucci, even if she can't act in English.

TRAILER –



PLOT – Lt AK Waters (Bruce Willis) is sent into Nigeria with seven men to rescue health worker Dr Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci). He runs into trouble when the doctor won't leave without her many patients and his men begin to doubt his actions.

OPINION – This film was made with good intentions. Africa is something that many people in Hollywood want to get across as a global issue. Because it is. There's nowhere on the planet that's as badly broken as Africa and it's been that way for a long, long time. Nigeria is one of many countries to suffer from internal strife caused by differing cultures and military coups. The country is pretty much torn in half as it is with a Muslim north and a Christian Colonial south where the oil money comes from. Nigeria is generally ignored by the West when it comes to appeals because the country isn't poor thanks to it's oil money. Compare the problems there to Rwanda or Somalia and it doesn't seem as bad. But it's just another country in Africa that's broken. I appreciate the director and star wanting to showcase the problem. But the problem they have is trying to make a film with conscience and an action film at the same time. Like Blood Diamond. Except Blood Diamond had a lot more going for it. It was better written, better directed and had better actors. Tears of the Sun can't find the moral high ground it keeps reaching for. That's not the only problem for them though. Monica Bellucci is horribly miscast and is only entertaining when she's running somewhere (bouncy, bouncy) like a jungle version of Baywatch. It was only missing some slo-mo. Oh, and if you agree with Randal that Lord of the Rings was just a bunch of people walking then you won't care for this. The first 90 minutes or so is basically just people walking through the jungle. It has none of the tension Fuqua was aiming for and Bruce Willis seems to struggle to find a good place for his character to be coming from. The result is his face looking blanker in every scene he's in. And with character development thin on the ground they play a really sentimental and out of place scene where the soldiers reveal they "can't look at these people as packages anymore". Then there's about 20 minutes of explosions that use up most of the budget. And by the end of it you've forgotten entirely where the film is set or why you should care. For a film with lofty goals it really does fall flat and drop itself into the cliches of an average action movie. Hell, if that was what had been advertised I'd have had no problem with it. But you can't make movies about the plight in Africa and then abandon your goals in order to make a film full of explosions. It's also at least 20 minutes too long and loaded with factual errors. The ethnicities depicted within Nigeria are inaccurate and many scenes are just there to push the sympathy of a nonexistent plight on the audience. Although Nigeria is a very violent country, large areas of it are off-limits to whites, the events depicted in Tears of the Sun are entirely fictional.

BEST BIT – "Cowboy the fuck up" – Bruce Willis tries to motivate one of the locals into running away from heavy machine gun fire.

RATING - **1/2. A slick action film mascarading as a message movie.

ONCE UPON A TIMELINE – the real Nigeria

• 500BC. The Nok people are the first real civilisation in Nigeria. They would be dominant for 700 years.
• 200-1500. Nigeria gradually formed among various ethnic based states. These early states included the Yoruba kingdoms, the Igbo kingdom of Nri, the Edo kingdom of Benin, the Efik kingdom, the Ibibio kingdom, the Annang kingdom, the Hausa cities, and Nupe. The Yoruba were the most powerful and grew at a quick rate because of their absorbing of migrants into their number.
• 1464-1492. Sonni Ali founds the Songhai Empire in the savanna lands to the north. His successor Askiya Ture named Islam the official religion in 1493.
• 16th Century. Benin became more important during this time thanks to a connection with Portugal. This became part of the Slave Trade.
• 1591. The Songhai Empire fell when Morocco conquered most of it leaving only the hard to reach Hausa States, which became the basis for modern northern Nigeria. At the same time several Kingdom's grew in power in the south of Nigeria including Igbo Kingdoms and Ibibio/Efik/Annang Kingdom in the south-east (the oil rich part).
• 1885. The British begin trading with Nigeria.
• 1901. Nigeria becomes part of the British Empire. Which was the foremost power in the world at the time. By 1914 the entire region was united as the Colony of Nigeria. Despite British rule the country remained divided into north and south and Lagos in the south-west had a culture all of its own.
• 1960. Nigeria received its independence from the British. Three political parties were soon formed. The NPC (Nigerian people's Congress) represented conservative, Muslim, largely Hausa interests, and dominated the Northern Region. The NCNC (National Convention of Nigerian Citizens), was Igbo- and Christian-dominated, ruling in the Eastern Region, and the AG (Action Group) was a left-leaning party that controlled the Yoruba west. The first government consisted of NPC & NCNC alliance with a Hausa as leader.
• 1963. Because of how divided Nigeria was economically there was political unrest. The opposition AG party was overthrown by a new NNDP party that was pro-government. The AG party leader was thrown in jail on unfounded charges of treason. It seems they couldn't quite get their heads around democracy. Riots erupted in the Yaruba areas where the people they voted for didn't get into power.
• 1966. The military had seen enough and overthrew the government. The officers in charge were mostly Igbo's causing further religious and ethnic unrest. The Eastern Region of Biafra declared independence causing a huge Civil War that lasted 4 years killing over a million people.
• 1973. Oil prices rise dramatically. The Suez Canal was still closed. The country gained in wealth. The leader at this time was General Yakubu (the dictator in Tears of the Sun).
• 1975. The military staged a military coup and overthrew the existing military government. The new leader General Mohammed believed that Yakubu was delaying the return to civilian rule and took over to ensure that it happened by 1979. In 1976 he was assassinated.
• 1979. The return of free elections. All five political parties gained representation.
• 1983. The NPN lead by Shagari came to power in a landslide victory marred by allegations of vote rigging. Violence erupted over the results.
• December 1983. The military once again overthrew the republic. In 1985 the military overthrew itself again with General Babangida coming to power. He made some positive strides in returning the country to free elections. He promised civilian rule by 1990 and then delayed that until 1993.
• 1992. Nigeria has its fairest ever elections. Previous banned parties and candidates competed and there was minimal violence. A wealthy Yoruba businessman called Abiola won. Babangida, using pending lawsuits as an excuse, annulled the elections. He tried to hang on to power but his army wouldn't back him and instead power transferred to Sani Abacha. However the crisis in Nigeria deepened because of the failure of the elections and failing economy.
• 1993-1998. Abacha ran the country as a military dictatorship. Local elections held in 1997 had less than 10% turn out and counted for nothing. Abacha had no qualms about executing people he thought were about to commit a coup.
• 1998. Abacha dies of a heart attack. It took another year, thanks to corruption within the system, to get elections. When they finally took place in 1999 Nigeria gained its first democratically elected government in 16 years. The country remained in turmoil thanks to a collapsed infrastructure. The military were looking for handouts and communal violence was rampant. One incident saw 12 policemen killed by a gang in Odi. The military took in their hands to quell what they saw as an uprising and massacred thousands of people and burned the town to the ground.
• 2000. Between February and May over a thousand people died in riots in Kaduna after an attempt to bring in Sharia law.
• 2001. Over 2000 people were killed in inter-religious riots in Jos.
• 2007. Free elections saw a new government come into power although International observers denounced the election as the "worst ever seen" due to widespread vote rigging. Some things never change.

Flood (2007) not to be confused with Christian Slater movie Hard Rain.

EXPECTATIONS – I'm a sucker for disaster movies. I even quite liked the Day After Tomorrow up to the point where the CGI wolves attack the tanker. Everything before that is quite fun. It's rare to see a disaster movie that's made outside of the USA though. Sure there are often shots of other parts of the planet getting destroyed (like Paris in Armageddon) but never a whole film. The appeal of Flood is that it's entirely based in the UK. It should, therefore, provide a different approach to the disaster movie genre.

TRAILER –



PLOT – A big storm hits England. The Thames Barrier can't hold the water back. Some people drown.

OPINION – If the USA was always considered to be the home of big dumb movies then perhaps times are a changin'. Flood is the best example to date of the Americanization of Great Britain. Flood is a blatant attempt to capitalise on the success of bigger budget American disaster movies. The script follows, complete with every cliché, the standard American disaster flick to the letter. The star is Robert Carlyle (giving easily the worst performance of his entire career) who worked on the Thames Barrier project. This in itself is a bit of a reach as Carlyle would have been 24 when the Barrier was first operational and 14 when it began construction. But we'll overlook that. The woman who runs the Barrier is his ex-wife Sam (Canadian Jessalyn Gilsig). Coincidence? His father (played by Tom Courtney) also had a hand in the design of the Barrier and claimed all along that "it'll fail" much like the naysaying Dennis Quaid in the Day After Tomorrow. And the authorities ignored him. Much like Dennis Quaid in the Day After Tomorrow. This three-way dance of bad acting absorbs much of the opening 30 minutes of the film. The petty arguing and atrocious dialogue makes this a little like watching a episode of EastEnders. I almost expected the theme music to kick in as Carlyle strolled onto the Barrier around the 30 minute mark. Sadly that isn't even the worst of it. The effects are ok, which is basically down to the ease of CGI these days. The water height has no kind of continuity but at least shots of flood water sweeping cars away is fun to watch. That's about all the kicks I got out of Flood. As soon as people see the water coming they start making bizarre and retarded decisions. My favourite being Robert Carlyle's "if we stay here, we die" before jumping into flood water and nearly killing himself. His father, left behind on the Barrier, has no problems whatsoever surviving because the water isn't that high. Basically Carlyle's character comes off as a complete idiot. Then he hops into a dinghy and rides it down the floodwater falling off another precipice, to my amusement, and then spends about 20 minutes hanging around underground thus defying the laws of psychics as the entire surface is underwater. He gathers together a gang of other idiots and spends a while running away from water before an anticlimatic climb up an air shaft (only allows air in, no water, I guess). The other idiots include two tube workers (one of which being Angus Barnett). They run away from some water and close a door at the end of a passageway. Then stand there and wait for the water to knock the door down and sweep them away. Instead of, yanno, running. Which would be the smart move. Speaking of smart; near the conclusion someone has to sacrifice themselves by taking a trip underwater. "There won't be enough air" bemoans another character. Or, they could have just taken two cylinders. And not died. The film features career worst peformances from an assortment of actors including Joanne Whalley, Nigel Planer and David Suchet. The latter giving an Independence Day-esque speak about how "London will prevail". Yeah, that script sure does suck.

BEST BIT – When Tower Bridge gets hit by the wave. Quite why people are still driving across is it remains a mystery but if Flood has taught me one thing its that London is inhabited entirely by people too stupid to have any kind of basic survival instinct.

RATING - *. For kicks and effects. A big dumb movie full of big dumb people. A disaster in almost every respect. One of the worst scripts in years complete with terrible acting all round. If you like watching stuff get slammed by tidal waves you'd be best off renting it and then fast-forwarding all the bits where people are talking. Should get the film down to about 20 minutes. If Carlyle had used the term "cowboy the fuck up" I'd have given the film an extra star.

Sidenote – the tagline "it's coming straight for us" reminded me of South Park. I had this mental image of Ned and Jimbo shooting at 50 feet high waves. "Thin out its numbers!"

HOLLYWOOD WHORES

When growing up one of my favourite actresses, perhaps for looks more than anything else, was Rebecca DeMornay. If you've not seen the re-make of And God Created Woman then you've really not seen the best of Rebecca DeMornay. And by the best of, I mean all of her. But I'm not just paying tribute to random babes of my youth. Oh, no, you have to have played a prostitute to get in this section. Two words folks…



RISKY BUSINESS! It wasn't all Tom Cruise dancing around the house in his underwear.



Oh yeah. Rebecca played the call girl, and an incredibly sexy one at that, summoned by the Cruiser to satisfy his teenage needs. And boy does she!



You lucky bastard. I swear I've been envious of the Cruiser since 1983. That'll do it for Hollywood Whores this week.



You stay classy…The World.