Regardless of his legal troubles and his innate weirdness, Michael Jackson was one of the greatest entertainers of all-time to grace the pop music landscape. I was a huge MJ fan in elementary school and enjoyed most of his music, even the more recent stuff that didn’t quite have the velcro-stick of his “Thriller,” “Bad” and “Dangerous” recordings. I remember wanting a “Beat It” and “Thriller” jacket in 4th grade and having to settle for sparkly socks that just didn’t …
Month: June 2009
The lovely and wonderfully bubbly Amy Adams is set to star alongside Christian “It’s F***ing Distracting” Bale and Mark “Say Hi to Your Mother For Me” Wahlberg in David O. Russell’s (“Three Kings”) soon-to-film boxer pic, “The Fighter.” According to Variety, Adams would play the love interest of Wahlberg, a “gritty” Massachusetts bartender. Bale would play Wahlberg’s half-brother and boxing trainer. The article also mentions Melissa Leo (“Frozen River”) as also being cast in the film. I don’t know about …
After the one star reviews started piling up earlier this week, I wondered if “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” would be a box office bomb and another causality in a summer movie season that has been balancing precariously between the chasms of surprise and letdown. However, two things changed my mind: One, I caught a showing of “Revenge of the Fallen” and watched the audience ooh, ahh and laugh, like Michael Bay had left a trail of moldy bread crumbs …
I use the word “edgy” in the title of this post because “ridonkulous” wouldn’t quite fit. I thought this “Beastly” was a Sci-Fi channel or made-for-television movie when I first saw it advertised, but now I realize it’s something planned for a July 30th, 2010 release to the big screen. The studio is calling it a retelling of the classic “Beauty and the Beast” tale; I call it latching on to the “Twilight” teat and hoping to ride the wave …
While the motto for the first 30 years of my life could easily be described as “Live for today because the nukes are coming tomorrow”, the motto of my last four years would probably be “Vampires are dumb”. I know I’m in the minority here but I’m pretty sure that somewhere around 1987, scientific research did indeed show that vampires, with their crazy eyes and pointy-toothed hissing preferences, were somewhere around 93% lame. So hey, imagine my surprise when I …
Richard Kelly. Way back in 2001, when the writer/director stormed the scene with his dark, brain-twisting cult fave/critically examined Donny Darko, he was touted as the next genius auteur. Of course, a second film has a way of changing overblown expectation and when Kelly followed up with the bloated, unintelligible cluster-hump known as Southland Tales in 2006, the same folks originally singing his praises were left holding a wet bag of dog crap, wondering if their pretentiousness had jumped in …
The upcoming film District 9 has been working on gaining your attention by not really trying hard to gain your attention. In some circles, this is called viral, but viral actually spreads. Nevertheless, District 9 has released another “viral” video in its line of its universe-based trailers. I’m not a the biggest fan of the technique and voice over. It feels too Starship Troopers/campy, while the film footage contrasts gritty and radtastic. Maybe I’m over anlayzing. Maybe I’m not, but …
Remember the film adaptation of Eidos’ video game Hitman? A shoven-headed and not-all-that-intimidating Timothy “Where’s he go?” Olyphant? A constantly stripping generic Eastern European Olga something or other? Shooting? Exploding? I do. Barely. And it was boring, pastiche and blah. But that don’t matter because apparently, it made some kind of money. IESB is reporting that Kyle Ward (screenwriter for another video game adaptation, Kane & Lynch, with Bruce Willis attached to star) has been given quill and parchment for …
Sid Ganis, president of The Motion Picture Academy, announced today the best picture category at next year’s Oscars will be enlarged from five nominees to 10. Ganis said, “Having 10 best picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.” Translation: The Pixar mafia henchmen beat the ever-lovin’ snot out of them …
Anime (Japanese animation), in the U.S. at least, has always been a niche format. I’m not sure why it’s been so hard for American audiences to embrace it, but it’s probably because a) the style is reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons (ie-“crappy”) and b) years of ridiculous dubbing have made it a running joke (“NO! NNNNNNN… IDON’TWANTOTOGOWITHYOUWAITWHATAREYOUDOINGNNNNNYAAAAH!”) Over the last few years, Disney’s been trying to bridge the cultural divide with their U.S. releases of Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki films Spirited …