The UBS Evening Movie News 05.08.08
Posted by George H. Sirois on 05.08.2008
The “Glory Years” Edition…
Welcome everyone to the latest edition of The UBS Evening Movie News. I'm George H. Sirois, and in case you didn't read yesterday's Scene Anatomy 101 column, the end of this month marks four years that I have been writing for 411Mania. At the end of May, I will be taking a month-long hiatus from the site to participate in National Novel Writing Month, although I would be five months early since the actual month is November. The object of the event is to write a 50,000 word draft of a novel in only 30 days, so this should be a hell of a challenge.
However, that's still less than a month away and I'll be talking more about it in my Mad Prophet of the Airwaves rants during the next three weeks. So you still have me as your UBS anchor until then, and we got some news to report…
TOP STORY
Looking beyond "Iron Man 2, Marvel said it will roll out Thor on June 4, 2010, and The First Avenger: Captain America on May 6, 2011.
Thor will be released about six weeks after Iron Man 2, and Marvel is waiting for a script polish from scribe Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend). Matthew Vaughn no longer is attached to direct the project because his holding deal expired December.
"It's very much a Marvel superhero story but against the backdrop of nothing you've seen before," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in describing Thor as a period fantasy in the vein of The Lord of the Rings.
The Captain America project is looking for a rewrite as well as a director.
All of Marvel's movies, beginning with Iron Man, are now being designed to lead up to the July 2011 release of The Avengers, which will see Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and Thor teaming up. The studio has Zak Penn on board to write the project, which he will do so in concert with the development of the other projects during the next year and a half.
"It will tie in with all the other films preceding it," Feige said. "Almost nothing is cooler than three or four of your favorite heroes coming together for some mega event."
Marvel hopes that the same actors who portray the heroes in the individual movies will reprise their roles for Avengers, though no agreements are in place.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!! SCROLL PAST THIS QUICKLY IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE YET!!!!! Although Samuel L. Jackson makes a surprise appearance as Nick Fury in Iron Man, that does not necessarily mean the actor will be back as super spy Fury in Avengers.
"That was a stunt and a treat for fans," Feige said.END SPOILER ALERT!!!!
No release date has been set for Marvel's Ant-Man, which is being co-written by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, with Wright on board to direct. Wright likely will tackle Universal's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which has Michael Cera attached to star, before getting down to work on Ant-Man.
Feige said he wasn't worried about over-crowding from his company's fare or from competing studios' comic book projects.
"Comic books are like novels; as long as they are not the same, as long as the films can stand on their own, I'm OK if there's one every two or three weeks," he said.
In his conference call, Maisel said that his production team, unlike that of New Line, which for years sat on Iron Man rights without turning it into a feature film, was able to succeed where more entrenched players failed.
Maisel also said that -- now that Marvel has more control over the movies its characters star in -- audiences can expect some cross-referencing. For example, Downey's Tony Stark, Iron Man's alter ego, will pop up in the upcoming The Incredible Hulk, and the Hulk might be featured in Iron Man 2.
In fact, Marvel proved that its five-year goal of becoming a full-fledged movie production company was worth the wait, and investors rewarded the company by bidding its shares up 9.4% on Monday to $33.10. It was the day's leading gainer on The Hollywood Reporter's Showbiz 50 stock index.
The share price, the highest Marvel stock has been since going public in 1998 at a split-adjusted $4.54, values the company at $2.6 billion, just shy of the market capitalization of DreamWorks Animation.
Marvel posted a $45.2 million profit in the first quarter, or 58 cents per share, besting by a wide margin the 43 cents that Wall Street predicted. Revenue fell 26% to $112.6 million, though beat projections of $111.7 million.
Marvel said it would earn up to $1.55 per share this year on revenue of up to $400 million.
All of a sudden, it seems like a great time to be a comic book movie fan again, huh? Just like all five (so far) of our Iron Man reviews stated, Marvel not only provided audiences with a terrific comic book film, but it also established the Marvel Universe where all of these great characters live. There was no way I was going to write up my review of this after 5 have already been posted, and there's not much of a point of doing so since I basically agree with all of them. This film, Robert and Jon deserve all the success they get; I loved it!
However, while the establishment of the Marvel Universe was pulled off flawlessly, it wasn't the first time this was done. If you happened to catch the 1990 atrocity that is Captain America, two characters are conversing that the person attached to the rocket aimed for the White House couldn't have been Sub-Mariner or The Human Torch. Just a little piece of Marvel trivia for ya.
Anyway, strangely enough, I'm really looking forward to seeing what Edgar Wright's going to do with Ant-Man. So many people have been really skeptical about this one ("Ant-Man? Really?" being the most common response), and I would have been the same way if it was anyone other than Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) signed on to direct.
Whatever happens over the next few years, it looks like Marvel's learned from its mistakes and wants to give us fans the big screen representations that these characters deserve. I'd say another Golden Age is on the horizon…
Credit: HollywoodReporter.com
SYBIL THE SOOTHSAYER
UPCOMING FILMS
Speed Racer: The Wachowski Brothers ("The Matrix") direct this live-action adaptation of the classic cartoon.
I've never been a fan of the original animated series, but after seeing clips from this, I'm definitely interested in seeing what I missed out on. The look of this is great, tailor-made for an IMAX screening and the very able cast has me even more curious. Nice to see Emile get a chance to carry a movie with a scope like this.
What Happens In Vegas: A comedy about strangers (Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher) who wind up married after a wild night and find they must stay together if they want to keep the fortune they won.
I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but what the hell… it can stay in Vegas! (insert canned laughter here) Actually, with a premise like this, I'm surprised there isn't canned laughter in the movie. It's been a while since I've seen a commercial for a film that looks like a paint-by-numbers sitcom. Total strangers getting hitched and "must stay together if they want to keep the fortune they won?" They might as well say, "They're on a collision course to wackiness" while they're at it. Hell, they even have the wacky-looking font in the title. I bet in the movie itself, the letters are jumping up and down.
I can watch sitcoms for free at home, so I won't be paying to see this one.
Credit:TheMovieBox.net
DVD NEWS
Ben Piper, this one's for you! Buena Vista Home Entertainment has announced that the fourth season of "Lost" will be found in stores (lame obvious pun intended) on December 9. Like the third season, this will be available on both standard and Blu-Ray DVD, and there will be plenty of extras this time around as well.
In addition to various commentary tracks, this six-disc set will include featurettes about shooting on location, the firearms used this season, the crew members of the freighter that is now an integral part of the show and about transforming the island in Hawaii into The Island. Plus, there will be a look at the music used in the series, complete with a live performance of the score by the Honolulu Symphony!
The discs are expected to sell at a retail price of $59.99 for the standard and $96.99 for Blu-Ray.
Credit: DVDReview.com
MOVIE TRAILER OF THE WEEK: The Dark Knight
No explanation necessary.
And here's another YouTube video by yours truly. After sitting on this for a while, I went back to my Friday the 13th video, switched out the music for a better version of Alice Cooper's song, and made some tweaks here and there. Enjoy…
JIM WEBBING AND HIS IT'S-THE-HONEST-TRUTH-DEPARTMENT
The Love Guru Gives the Internet a Virus: Based on what I saw in the trailer, Mike Myers' new movie The Love Guru doesn't look all that impressive. I think the trailer got about half as many laughs as the one for Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan, so take that as you will.
That being said, I do have to give him credit with the way he's hyping the film. Apparently, he took a page from the stellar viral marketing campaign used for The Dark Knight and has created a fake web site for the character Guru Pitka, as well as some photoshopped pics with celebrities and Paris Hilton (I refuse to call her one), a couple videos on YouTube and even an ad for Sitar lessons in the Village Voice.
Credit: Iced Media / Kent Sanderson & Charlie Kessler
Here We Go Again: SAG has run out of time to make a new feature-primetime deal with the majors and has been pushed aside in favor of AFTRA -- probably until late May.
The failure of SAG and the companies to make a deal after 18 days of talks will ignite fears that SAG will strike when its deal expires June 30. SAG president Alan Rosenberg told Daily Variety that SAG will now "take the temperature of the membership" and may seek a strike authorization from members as early as next week but he also portrayed the guild leadership as wanting to avoid a work stoppage.
"Our negotiating team is prepared to work around the clock for as long as it takes to get a fair deal," he said. "We want to keep the town working." Rosenberg said the two sides were within reach of a deal on Tuesday -- an assessment in stark contrast with how the companies portrayed the collapse of the talks.
The companies said SAG's been unreasonable and unrealistic and said differences remain on DVD residuals, streaming, made for new media, and new-media use of clips and library material.
"Under these circumstances, with SAG's continued adherence to unreasonable demands in both new and traditional media, continuing negotiations at this time does not make sense," the AMPTP said. "In the end, this round of SAG negotiations ended without an agreement because SAG simply refused to recognize the fundamental business and labor principles that have already been accepted by directors, writers and producers."
In the meantime, the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists will launch its primetime bargaining this morning with the AMPTP. That negotiation's widely expected to end in a deal within two weeks.
I suppose this is a case of people not remembering their history and are being doomed to repeat it. Only this time, the possible work stoppage will be much more severe since it's everyone in front of the cameras that could wind up putting the film and television industry on hold. The questions that are bound to come up now are how the other guilds – specifically the WGA – will respond to this since SAG was willing to help them out, and whether or not similar side deals with smaller production companies can be reached.
I can't help but wonder if the actors will be given the blame for the work stoppage by the media like the writers were during the WGA strike. Remember the backlash they got for all the various crew members that were out of work? Think the newspapers will be teeing off on the A-listers the same way? Or will they just shift the blame over to the producers for not giving the superstars what they want?
Oh, and another quick side note. The Writer's Guild members had to do their picket lines in December, January and February. The SAG picket lines will be seen in July, August and September. Lucky bastards.
Credit: Variety.com
Giving Credit Where It is Most Certainly Due: David Vanacore and Russ Landau's music for Survivor, Hans Zimmer's scores for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and The Simpsons Movie, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's Hairspray were among the honorees at ASCAP'S 23rd annual Film & Television Music Awards held Tuesday at the Beverly Hilton.
ASCAP composers whose works earned the highest number of performance credits on television in the category of themes for the 2007 survey year were Joel Beckerman, Sean Callery, David Nichtern, Mark Snow and Vanacore. For underscore in TV, awards went to D. Brent Nelson, Nichtern, Brian D. Siewert, Snow and Vanacore.
Receiving honors for scoring the year's top films at the box office were Marco Beltrami, John Debney, Michael Giacchino, Nick Hooper, James Newton Howard, John Powell, Stephen Schwartz, Alan Silvestri, Marc Streitenfeld, Lyle Workman, Gabriel Yared, Geoff Zanelli, Shaiman, Wittman and Zimmer.
During the ceremony Alan and Marilyn Bergman were honored with the ASCAP Founders Award. Tributes to the Bergmans were delivered by Siedah Garrett, Lari White and pianist Mike Lang. Marilyn Bergman is the chairman and president of ASCAP.
The industry really has to keep giving these composers this kind of credit, because they provide so much to the final product and they work just as hard at what they do as any other participants. Plus, reading names such as Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Marc Shaiman, John Powell, Michael Giacchino, Mark Snow, Alan Silvestri and so many others gives me hope that more people are becoming aware of who they are and the contributions they make.
Oh, and one name that is jumping out in this article is David Vanacore. You may not have heard of him, but he's responsible for the music from "Survivor," "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader," "The Apprentice," "America's Next Top Model" and "Big Brother," among other shows. Just thought you ought to know this.
Credit: Variety.com
FILM MUSIC NEWS
In This Week's Film Music Weekly:
* Garritan Announces Steinway Sampled Piano Release
* Varese Sarabande 30th Anniversary Features Top Composers
* ASCAP Honors Bergmans at Film & TV Music Awards Tonight
* SONiVOX Announces "Anatomy" Sound Library
* The Scoreboard: Hundreds of Composers and Their Projects
* Signings and Projects: David Newman, Alex Wurnam and More
* The Chart Doctor - by Ron Hess, "To Orchestrate or Not To Orchestrate: What Is The Question?"
* Music Technology and You - by Peter Lawrence Alexander, "Something Completely Different"
* Soundtrack Review - by Daniel Schweiger, Sudden Impact by Lalo Schifrin
Here's one hell of a good candidate for the Photo News Brief, once again courtesy of the 411 legend DivasRGr8. Here's the model / B-movie actress / alleged call-girl, Alley Baggett…
We all have those films or television shows that we watched when we were younger, that appealed to us for one reason or another, and that seem incredibly dated when we eventually revisit them. But there's still something about them that keeps us watching it no matter how lame it must be to first-time viewers, which is why you're not in the biggest rush to show this film or show to other people.
I very unexpectedly found my perfect example of this. Back in the spring of 1987, when I was in 5th grade I was watching HBO one night when a new mini-series started up. It claimed to be from the producers of the HBO show "1st and Ten" (remember that one? It featured OJ Simpson and Delta Burke was in the early couple of seasons.) It was called "Glory Years." There was nothing else worth watching at that period of time and I wasn't tired yet, so I decided to give the first episode a look.
For some strange reason, I was hooked on it enough to want to watch the entire mini-series, and when an edited down feature-length version of the whole story was shown on HBO, I taped it. And whenever I had some free time, I would watch it again. There was something about it that appealed to me, even though it was so different than what I would normally watch.
This mini-series stars George Dzundza (the Chief of the Boat from Crimson Tide) as John Moss, Archie Hahn (character actor that Joe Dante likes to use in his movies like Gremlins 2 and Innerspace) as Gerald Arkin and Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth himself, Bryan!) as Jack Sanders. They're all Coney Island high school graduates back in town for their 20-year class reunion, and Gerald's biggest project as a senior – the formation of an alumni fund to use for disadvantaged students – is unveiled to everyone there: $25,000.
This happens to be the amount of money that Jack owes a loan shark, so he coerces Gerald into loaning him the alumni fund to set up a bet on a mid-card fight in Vegas. The three old friends go out there and promptly lose the money when the guy Jack thought would take a dive knocks out his opponent. Meanwhile, Jack's girlfriend Melinda (Tawny Kitaen) comes into town to see what he's up to, her father hires a pair of thugs to cut up Jack's face, the guy Melinda jilted at the altar comes into town to get revenge on Jack, and the loan shark's muscle man Drummond (Chazz Palminteri!) comes to collect on the $25,000 debt. And somewhere along the way, we see John fall in love with a waitress named Norma (Donna Pescow from Saturday Night Fever) and Gerald gets over his impotency with a hooker with Gina (Donna Denton), despite still being a married father back home.
It's not quite the sort of show for someone that had Darth Vader and Optimus Prime on his list of favorite characters. (Oh, who am I kidding, they're both still there.) But something about it appealed to me. And this past week, wouldn't you know it, I found "Glory Years" on DVD in the NetFlix catalog. So I had to rent it to see how it holds up.
It turns out that nobody involved in this mini-series cares about this getting a first-class release on disc, because not only are there no features on the "Glory Years" DVD, but there isn't a scene selection option. I've never seen that before. There's Chapter 1, which takes up the whole 2 hours and 20 minutes. Oh, and it's in fullscreen, obviously.
The production values are pretty much for shit. Whoever put this DVD together obviously just ripped it from an old VHS tape. The music gets louder one second, then softer, then the voices drop to the point where you can barely hear anything other than the song that's playing. And don't even get me started on the music. Here, I thought that the budget of the show was completely spent on getting the rights to all these great 60s tunes, but that was very much not the case. Every single song is done by a cover band which sounds somewhat like the original artist. It's like the compilation albums that are at the end of every genre in a CD store, where the songs are all re-recorded for $3.78 by a high school band.
That's not the only thing wrong with this mini-series that I've discovered after 21 years. The writing is pretty sub-standard as well. The way each line is constructed, I'm shocked there isn't a fake laugh track. Plus, for guys approaching their 40s, the dialogue's pretty juvenile. So many moments, Gerald's just talking about breasts like he was still in high school. Never mind the fact that he's married and has a kid.
So yeah, there's a whole lot of problems with this mini-series, and yet as I was watching it, I felt like I was 11 years old again watching the story unfold on HBO. For all its faults, "Glory Years" still has a certain charm to me, like a look back to a simpler time for this channel. This was during a decade-long era in between the push towards original programming and the earlier time when the initials stood for "Hey, Beastmaster's On." Back then, the big shows that were on were "1st and Ten" and "The Hitchhiker." Not even "Tales from the Crypt" started up then.
When all is said and done, would I recommend watching "Glory Years?" Not really. It wouldn't work for a modern-day audience. Not even for an audience that would have watched it back then. You can only really watch this if now you had watched it and liked it back then.
We all have at least one of those guilty pleasures. This just happens to be mine. If you have one, feel free to discuss here!
And that's a wrap for Chapter 64 of The UBS Evening News. I'm George H. Sirois, and I'll see you next week!
Id Baggett....(get it?)...no?...ok. But isnt x-pac or 6 pac or gut pac from the
last lucha match i saw him in (yes, he's wrestling down in mexico) tappin that.
I think she was his valet
Posted By: Stealth (Guest) on May 08, 2008 at 01:28 AM
I still talk about breasts like a kid. Of course I'm talking about my own
breasts...so that kinda sucks.
Damn you Burger King and your delicious steakhouse burger!
Posted By: Rhuin (Registered) on May 08, 2008 at 03:57 AM
I thought I was the only one who remembered the mini-series Glory Years.
Posted By: Nick (Guest) on May 08, 2008 at 06:23 AM
It's gonna be hot as fuck if we have to picket in August in LA. It was not that
bad in the "colder" days.
Posted By: Mr. C. (Guest) on May 08, 2008 at 10:40 AM
1st & 10 ruled everything.
Funny you called Ally Bagget a B-movie actress. Isn't she a porn star? If not,
there certainly are some very explicit pics of her around.
Posted By: Toddo (Guest) on May 08, 2008 at 12:30 PM
Ally+bikini=happy pants!!
Posted By: SaveECW222 (Guest) on May 08, 2008 at 04:21 PM
