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 …
Author: Dan
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 …
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 …
So the last few years haven’t been good for one Manoj (that’s “M.” for short) Night Shyamalan. The trouble all started with The Village, which was genuinely creepy but lost audiences with bait and switch marketing and yet another twist ending that deflated almost all of the preceding narrative. Lady in the Water, commendable for its intent, failed to connect with anyone but the actors, ego and monkey tree-things it cut paychecks for. The Happening… wince. So yeah, yeah, M. …
I don’t think you can say Tim Burton is a bad director, but to call anything he does “visionary” any more is a big, fat overstatement. His stuff isn’t so much “visionary” as simply stamped “Tim Burton”– all the stripes and gaunt makeup and twisted architecture are variants on everything else he’s done to date and is expected. Of course, the whole conceit usually works, but I do have two nitpicks/requests: A) Give the hollow/red-tinged eyeball socket a rest and …
So everyone knows Inglorious Basterds is coming, but you may not know what it’s about beyond a bunch of hairy Americans putting Bowie Knife and baseball bat to Nazi noggin. Wonder no more. The new trailer reveals the alternate universe plot and has worked my heart over from brittle and jaded to warm and mushy.
I don’t think this trailer makes Zombieland look particularly great (the zom-com genre was played well and once with Shaun of the Dead and has grown a little sleepy since), but there’s no denying the joy found in Woody Harrelson’s impish and casual zombie annihilation skills and, as Andy and I just agreed, the poster is fantastic. Zombieland opens in October, which, thanks to a craptastically rain-soaked summer, doesn’t feel all that far away.
As we mentioned on The KVNU Movie Show a few weeks back, one of the best films to never hit a cineplex is HBO’s WW II D-Day to V-Day saga Band of Brothers– a 10-part series based on the late Steven Ambrose’s book of the same name. It’s companion piece, The Pacific (covering the Marines WW II Pacific theater and the fight against Japan), has been swirling in rumor and production ever since. Thankfully, production has wrapped up and we’re …