The UBS Evening Movie News 12.04.08
Posted by George H. Sirois on 12.04.2008
The “When Chick Flicks Collide” Edition…
Welcome everyone to the latest edition of the UBS Evening Movie News. I'm George H. Sirois, and it's always interesting when I discover the topic of this week's Mad Prophets rant a little more than 24 hours before this report is due. One section of the rant is long overdue and the other part… well, I didn't know I was going to be talking about it until Tuesday night.
So let's get on with things. First, we got news!
SYBIL THE SOOTHSAYER
UPCOMING MOVIES
Punisher: War Zone: After hunting down and killing hundreds of violent criminals, Frank Castle, aka The Punisher (Ray Stevenson), faces his most deadly foe yet: Jigsaw.
I've never been the biggest fan of the Punisher character, but out of all three movies including the Dolph Lundgren version, this one looks like it's the most faithful in terms of the villain, the over-the-top violence and Ray Stevenson looking a hell of a lot like Frank Castle. I have to admit I'm somewhat interested since Lexi Alexander has a solid reputation for directing action. Plus, Dominic West looks like he's having a blast as Jigsaw.
Frost/Nixon: A dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella).
All I can say is that this looks absolutely fantastic! Can't wait to see this!
Credit: TheMovieBox.net
DVD NEWS
Lionsgate is preparing for a couple big releases in February and March, which is nice since I missed seeing both of them in theaters. On February 20th, Saw V hits both standard and Blu-Ray shelves. The standard version will have both the rated and unrated cuts, while the Blu-Ray is expected to only have the Unrated cut. Be prepared for the usual batch of extras, like the making of each trap and an audio commentary track. Oh, and a digital copy of the film will come with it as well.
W. will be released on March 10th. There will be a very interesting batch of extras, like the documentary "Dangerous Dynasty: The Bush Presidency," the featurette "No Stranger to Controversy: Oliver Stone's George W. Bush," deleted scenes and an audio commentary.
Two Lionsgate films, and equally scary depending on where you lean on the political spectrum.
Credit: DVDReview.com
MOVIE TRAILER OF THE WEEK: The Spirit: Christmas Commercial
Ah, another reason why this is such a great time of year. Whenever there is a big movie coming out during Christmas, studios' marketing divisions love to take the opportunity to use a carol in their commercials. This year, we have no exception with the latest commercial for The Spirit.
Like I said in last week's podcast, I would really like this to be good but I don't have the highest of expectations for it. But I have to give credit where it's due for the very nice use of "Carol of the Bells." During Thanksgiving, we got to see a different version of this commercial, one with a more somber use of the song. However, this version's pretty damn cool too. Enjoy...
JIM WEBBING AND HIS IT'S-THE-HONEST-TRUTH-DEPARTMENT
A different director? Good! Then I'm interested…: Fresh from the success of "Twilight," Kristen Stewart is set to portray Joan Jett in "The Runaways," the rock 'n' roll biopic of the 1970s all-girl band.
Video director Floria Sigismondi wrote the screenplay and is directing, while John and Art Linson and River Road Entertainment's Bill Pohlad are producing. Jett will act as an executive producer.
The Runaways were hugely influential as the first successful all-girl hard rock band; its members included guitarists Jett and Lita Ford, drummer Sandy West, singer-keyboardist Cherie Currie and bassist Jackie Fox. The band was brought together in late 1975 by impresario Kim Fowley, who thought a novelty act of teenaged girls performing in leather and lace would be an easy sell, but the girls ended up proving to be serious and influential musicians with songs like "Cherry Bomb." The band lasted about four years together, falling apart over management and money issues.
Jett continued her rock career into the '80s, forming the Blackhearts and scoring with such hits as "I Love Rock N' Roll" and "I Hate Myself for Loving You." She continues to record and tour.
The film will revolve around Jett and Currie and follow them from the band's meteoric rise as teenagers to their dissolution and disillusionment.
The movie is eyeing a 2009 start and will work around Stewart's commitments to the two "Twilight" sequels. The first one, "New Moon," is expected to shoot sometime in first-quarter 2009, with Stewart reprising her role as Bella, the human who falls for a vampire.
"Twilight" has made more than $120 million since opening Nov. 21.
This sounds like it could be a pretty entertaining film, and one that can only be helped by Joan Jett's involvement as executive producer. I'm looking forward to seeing who's going to play the rest of the band, but more than anything, I'm looking forward to seeing Kristen Stewart play a character who's not frowning or acting bored all the time. I'll get to more of that later…
Credit: Hollywood Reporter
Silver Goes German: Germany's Studio Babelsberg has inked a five-year, 15-pic co-production pact with producer Joel Silver. The films will be produced under the Dark Castle Entertainment label, and will be distributed by Warner Bros.
Carl Woebcken, topper at Babelsberg, would not specify how many of the pics would shoot at the company's studio facilities, located just outside Berlin, but said the first project is expected to shoot there in the spring.
Last year was Babelsberg's most profitable year since 1992, thanks to a slew of major Hollywood productions, including Silver's "Speed Racer." It saw net earnings soar to $9.3 million, after a $4.2 million loss in 2006.
Aside from "Speed Racer," Warner Bros. has used Babelsberg for "Ninja Assassin" and "V for Vendetta."
Other pics made at Babelsberg include Stephen Daldry's "The Reader," starring Kate Winslet, Bryan Singer's "Valkyrie" and Tom Tykwer's "The International."
Babelsberg, which had fallen on hard times in the decade after the Berlin Wall fell, is the main beneficiary of the German Federal Film Fund, which the government launched last year to support domestic and international productions shooting in the country.
The Dark Castle films can be counted on to have relatively low budgets – low by today's standards – so it looks like there's a better chance that Babelsberg will get to make some money off the deal. As much as I loved V for Vendetta, it wasn't a huge winner at the box office, and there were plenty of stories about Speed Racer failing to catch on last summer. I'm still curious to see that one, but hopefully this deal will help get Joel Silver back in gear, especially since the fifth Lethal Weapon isn't happening.
ANDY CRITCHELL'S INTERACTIVE BABE PHOTO NEWS BRIEF WITH ANDY CRITCHELL
This week we're going to do things a little differently and plug something going on in the 411 Forum; the Xmas Battle of the Babes! Erstwhile 411 poster and fellow babeophile Idlewild put this thing together and it's sure to be a lot of fun for the holiday season. You can check it out it the Hot or Not section of the forum. The first match up is already in the books with Megan Fox coming (oh doctor!) out on top of Jessica Simpson. Here are a couple of pics just because…
Currently, the match-up is between long time favorite Jessica Alba and WWE diva Maria. Personally, I have always found Alba to be quite overrated and Maria is one of my favorite divas so I think the choice in this contest is pretty clear. Here are some pics to help you decide…
Now, usually I encourage you to voice your opinions in the comments section below, but this time I am going to highly encourage you to join the forum and get involved. Voice your opinion on these hot pieces of tail and really anything else you have on your mind. The wrestling section is the most popular but there are sub-forums for pretty much any topic…unless you're one of those weirdos. You know who you are.
As of last night, I have 96 people joining my Facebook group for my novel, which I'm still re-writing. (2 chapters down, 9 to go.) Since I posted my link to yesterday's Scene Anatomy 101 column, 5 of the latest people to join are all 411 readers, so kudos to you guys. Very much appreciated.
There will be a special pre-holiday gift going out to everyone in the group, but not until I get to 150 members...
So on Tuesday night, Cheryl and I took the inevitable trip to the movie theater to take in Twilight, the first adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's four novels about Bella Swan and the love of her life Edward Cullen. I hadn't read the books, so we were going to get two different points-of-view here. Cheryl was ready to fill me in on any pieces of information that were left out, and I was prepared to judge this as just a movie and not an adaptation.
Unfortunately, the more she went on about what was different between the film and the book, the more frustrated she was getting. After the first twenty minutes, we were thinking the same thing: the direction was TERRIBLE!
Twilight could have been something pretty cool for the fans that made this book series a success, but instead it came off as a cheap-looking, awfully directed 2nd rate pilot episode on the CW. Everything in the first hour and a half just angered me because there was so little life in everyone's performances that the only emotion that came off the screen was boredom. Was Kristen Stewart told to just frown throughout the film and keep the same tone of voice? Was Robert Pattinson not given enough time to work on his American accent and instead given too much time in the makeup chair? Where he would look like Tom Hulce in Amadeus and nobody in this school would notice?
I could go on and on about all the moments that either pissed me off or made me almost laugh out loud, but all it takes is one specific camera shot to show that this film's failure starts and ends with director Catherine Hardwicke. During the big moment where Bella reveals to Edward that she knows what he is, Hardwicke has the camera circling around the two characters before she says her lines. We can almost see this shot's conclusion before it happens, a slow zoom in on her face after the 360-degree panning. That would have worked really well, and it would have only helped to elevate the tension.
Instead, Hardwicke cuts to a different shot right when the 360 ends. And all of a sudden, the scene is all about where the camera is placed and the drama of the moment is shot to hell. Damn shame. A real damn shame, and even though I haven't read any of Meyer's books, her fans deserved a better telling of this story.
That being said, Will Helm asked me if this trumps Sex and the City as the movie that pissed me off the most this year, and I had to tell him that Sex and the City is still the winner of my least favorite film this year. I will give Hardwicke & Co. credit for the film getting somewhat better as time passed and the Cullen family's nemeses make themselves known. And I expected the final fight between Edward and Jacob to be a lot worse than it turned out to be, so there was some entertainment that happened in the theater that wasn't unintentional.
But Sex and the City is a whole different kind of animal, and one that reeeeally pissed me off. Why? Because, as a lot of you guys know, I've seen all six seasons of the show. Hell, we HAVE all six seasons of the show, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a fan of it. I know all of the major characters very well, and I know how the quality really picked up after they ditched the man/woman on the street segments and just concentrated on the stories. In fact, I know these characters more than writer/director Michael Patrick King would want me to know them, because he proceeded to give fans a movie that went out of its way to undo all of the good will the series finale had.
What King put in theaters was exactly what people who didn't like the show thought the show was. All the men are either idiots, assholes or meat. The girls are either whores, whiners or bitches. And no matter what is happening, everyone has to drop everything and hit 5th Avenue for Fashion Week.
Out of the 2 dozen people in the theater watching this film, I was one of about three guys, but it seemed like I was the only one who realized the shit that was thrown on the screen. Was I the only one who remembered that Samantha told her consistently cheating boyfriend Richard, "I love you, but I love me more" before she broke up with him? I must have been, because I seemed to be the only one insulted when she used the same line to Smith, the only guy who ever treated her right and stuck by her through every single one of her faults. That's lazy writing, King, and I may sound like I have my fucking panties in a bunch about this, but that doesn't mean I'm not right!
I'd give more thought to the other three girls, but they don't deserve it. Not in this movie. King turns Charlotte into a spaz, Carrie into a self-pitying whiner and Miranda into a total bitch. And he completely shits on the two strongest male characters in the series by making Steve cheat on Miranda (actually, he only confesses he did; we don't see him doing it, which makes sense because fans couldn't see him doing it either) and pushing Harry completely into the background. Only one real moment seems to reach out to the fans, which was when Stanford and Anthony kiss during New Year's. The fans get the humor since we remember them always being at odds, and this little moment got the only genuine laugh out of me.
Okay, I'm gonna cut this rant off here before my estrogen level rises any higher. Wait, let me put my Giants cap on.
That's better.
I'll just wrap this up by saying that here we have two equally frustrating films that are supposed to appeal to girls – and have succeeded in doing so according to the box office – but both could have been so much better.
If Twilight had a director that could keep her actors from looking like they would rather be anywhere else but in front of the camera, it could have been a solidly entertaining film that might have held on to Number 1 at the box office instead of dropping all the way down to Number 3. And if Michael Patrick King focused on giving fans of the series a satisfying way to close out this saga instead of giving us a 2-hour-long season (without any of the depth and character development that we remember), I might have added this DVD to my bookshelf next to the complete series.
Ladies, you deserve better than this!
And that's a wrap for Chapter 89 of The UBS Evening News. For Andy Critchell, I'm George H. Sirois and we'll see you next week!
Comparing anyone to that last photo of Maria is going to be a tough task.
Maria > Jessica Alba
Posted By: Jake Fury (Guest) on December 04, 2008 at 10:37 AM
Maybe its because she's been around for so long, but Alba, for all her beauty, isn't at the top of my hotties list anymore. Hey, don't get me wrong, if I ever had the shot, then batter up, but in this case, gotta take Maria.
As for the Punisher, I'm glad to read someone else is interested in seeing this. Not a one of my friends and seemingly nothing I read anywhere makes it sound like anyone but me wants to see this. I never thought the Thomas Jane flicked looked all that great, and I am a Jane fan, as it seemed just from previews it didn't look close to the comics. The previews for War Zone has looked like out of the comic from day one. Dark, gritty, violent, that's what the Punisher is all about. Hopefully it pays off.
Posted By: Butters4Prez (Guest) on December 04, 2008 at 11:54 AM
That last pic of Maria looks horrible. A for cleavage, D- for hideous lip purse that would make Ashley Massaro look sexy.
Posted By: Guest#4442 (Guest) on December 05, 2008 at 07:48 PM
Copyright � 2011 411mania.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
Click here for our privacy policy. Please help us serve you better, fill out our survey.
Use of this site signifies your agreement to our terms of use.
