Category: Movies

James Bond writer ‘reinvents’ spy:

James Bond is to be given a new image as a younger character with no gadgets, a writer on the next film has told trade paper the Hollywood Reporter.

Paul Haggis, who is working on the script for Casino Royale, said: “It’s going to be good.

“We’re trying to reinvent Bond. He’s 28 – no Q, no gadgets.”

Just like the time they made the movie James Bond into a modern 80s man. Or so I’ve heard; I’ve never actually seen a Dalton James Bond movie, but it took a return to the old form and to Pierce Brosnan to keep the franchise going for another decade or so.

This writer and the studios are willing to sacrifice the traditional Bond fan for a young, edgy audience that might not be there anyway. Like other entertainment businesses, such as sports teams, who might underestimate the traditional appeal of a franchise and the effects of altering/moving it.

‘Transporter’ carries holiday weekend.

Did you know that the Transporter drives an Audi? I do, and I’ve never seen either movie; I did, however, see the trailer for Transporter 2 and noted that the Audi logo on the grill of the car was visible no fewer than 9 times in the two minute trailer.

Angelina Jolie Grabs Monster-Mom Role, Teams with De Niro:

Finally, an Angelina Jolie movie her kids can watch. Jolie has signed on to star in a big-screen adaptation of the epic English poem “Beowulf” to be directed by Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”).

The film, like Zemeckis’ previous movie, “The Polar Express,” will use performance-capture technology to transform live acting into computer animation, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The story of the Scandinavian hero of the sixth century who slays a beast will star Ray Winstone (“Sexy Beast”) as Beowulf, who saves the Danes from Grendel the monster, portrayed by the always creepy Crispin Glover (“Willard,” “Charlie’s Angels”).

Jolie, who played Colin Farrell’s youngish mother in “Alexander,” will again portray a maternal character in the film, taking on the role of Grendel’s mom.

Fortunately, with Zemeckis at the head, it’s unlikely that Grendel will be an allegory for the imperialistic American hegemon and Angelina Jolie will channel Cindy Sheehan, but one never can tell with Hollywood….

I’ve made that assertion before, but Junkyard Blog lists some coming attractions. Friends and countrymen, I ask: are you the target audience for these?

I think not.

Perhaps it’s time for an alternate movie industry to emerge in the midwest, built on new video technology, new Internet distribution, and actors who’d work for points and not millions of dollars up front.

Last week, Land of the Dead exemplified something bad about Republicans. Now, Joe Williams explains how War of the Worlds symbolizes 9/11:

It’s a thrilling ride, but even those viewers who aren’t troubled that the most expensive film ever made is a parable of American victimhood may grow weary of the family’s close-call heroics.

There you have it, you crude reader of this blog. 9/11 is a parable of American victimhood, not a trespass to which America responded. If you’re reading this blog, you wouldn’t be troubled to equate something with 9/11, although victimhood would be another matter. But you’re not a cognac-swilling intellectual paid to write criticism of cinema in a dwindling major paper in a diminishing city in the middle America.

I didn’t catch his review, gentle reader, of Herbie Fully Loaded, but I surmise it was a parable of environmentally-conscious and fuel-efficient small cars fighting pluckily against the Republican Big Oil machine.

Muppets Statler, Waldorf review movies: Curmudgeonly commentators on Movies.com

From a review of Land of the Dead:

Then again, maybe you’re one of those people who are incapable of running. In director George Romero’s parallel universe, “walkers” are the living dead, the zombies who are slowly invading Pittsburgh. They’ve been doing it since 1968, biting and converting one victim at a time. As the zombies have become increasingly resourceful in tracking human prey, they’ve also been increasingly potent symbols of the conformity and consumerism that Romero sees as sucking the life out of America.

The fourth installment in the series (not counting the recent remake of “Dawn of the Dead”) is his most unmistakably symbolic movie yet, a savage indictment of the bunker mentality that has zombified the United States in the age of terror.

In the Nixon years, it was conformity and consumerism. In the George W. Bush years, it’s the bunker mentality. Undoubtedly, for most of the Clinton years, they represented the restrictive legislators and their government protection limitation. One wonders what the zombies represented between 1992 and 1994. Probably the undead menace of “Republican Democracy” that could erupt at any time and did.

UPDATE: In a later review by the same “critic,” War of the Worlds becomes a symbol of Republicans run amok, too.

I’m glad I am neither a politician nor a celebrity flogging a product. Regardless of what you think of this blog’s quality, gentle reader, it vapidousity falls below the common watermark of truly inspired.

For example, Jane Seymour on filming her first topless scene at 54:

“But I wanted to appeal to this generation. The script was the funniest thing I’d ever read. I thought the topless scene in particular was the funniest moment in the whole movie. Despite my anxiety I recognised this to be a great role.”

Inadvertent condescension to this generation and a skewed sense of humor that finds Owen Wilson tearing the shirt and bra off of Jane Seymour the funniest moment in a movie in which Owen Wilson appears?

Ew.

UPDATE: Double ew.

Over at A Small Victory, Michele has posted a couple of radio spots for the original Star Wars.

In his review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Mark Steyn makes a gaffe:

The ordinariness of Freeman is just right for the Dent role. To see him on some dusty lunarscape is to see the essence of Douglas Adams’s paradoxical world: a vast corner of a very foreign galaxy that is forever England — or, as one book title put it, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

But The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is a Dirk Gently novel, not one of the five books (and one short story *) in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

* Of course, the short story is “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe” which is available in the anthology editions. You did know that, didn’t you?

Mark Steyn, who has a British-sounding accent, should have known better. He’s trying to pass as informed but, :: sniff ::, he is obviously not.

Like Die Hard with a kid.

If you can watch a child in a Bruce Willis movie crawling through HVAC ducts without saying, “Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs,” well, you’re a more polite movie goer than I.

It’s different from the book by Robert Crais, but just as good. For what that’s worth.

Villain announced for ‘Spider-Man 3’: Thomas Haden Church will play unnamed nemesis.

So the studio identified the actor but has not identified the villain. Whomever the character is, undoubtedly Marvel Comics named it in one comic book or another.

I’ll take Venom in the pool, please.

In an article entitled “Twist and Shout: Readers nominate the most-idiotic-twist endings.“, Slate’s movie guy offers an editorial comment:

One thing you can say for The Village that you can’t for many of the movies with cheap reversals: !!! Whatever the film’s absurdities (the redirection of flight paths is an especial giggle), the Shyamster was trying to explore, with sympathy, the age-old difficulty of separating oneself and one’s family from a diseased society, be it crime-ridden, chaotic, and amoral or governed by rapacious, right-wing corporatists. (Well, the ultraconservative Shyamster didn’t exactly focus on the latter, but it strikes me as the bigger threat right now.) The problem with The Village is that the Shyamster bungled the suspense and couldn’t manage to come up with a cathartic payoff. Audiences felt rooked.

Dear movie guy: I don’t give a pawn what you think about politics. I clicked the article because it looked like an interesting pop culture read. Your beliefs in politics, particularly your insertion without comment or development, matter not a whit to the story you’re writing. It is gratuitous and doesn’t make me think well of you at all.

But it does put you on Eric Mink’s career path–from television critic to editor of the op-ed pages.