Well, the Academy has released their Oscar Nominees, and I’m pleased to see that The Incredibles was nominated in four categories:
Congratulations to Brad Bird, everyone at Pixar, and congratulations to me!
Addendum: Yahoo! has a complete list of all the nominees.
I had intended to go catch Elektra, the latest of the many Marvel epics, last night after Wil Wheaton’s booksigning, but by the time we got out of that it was after 10 and we really weren’t up to it. So, instead we waited till this morning and caught as a matinee.
On the way there, I read yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle review which showed the little theater guy sleeping in his chair. The reviewer mused that if Jennifer Garner continued doing Elektra, that we’d look back fondly on her appearance in 13 going on 30 as the apex of her acting career.
Having seen the movie, I think that’s a bit harsh. If Spiderman and X-men represent the apex of the pantheon of Marvel properties, then I think that Elektra, while not reaching those lofty heights, does not belong in the sub-basement with Daredevil, Catwoman and Hulk.
The story is very similar to the Batman theme: seemingly rich child suffers the death of her parents, leads a troubled life, guided by an older mentor who tries to guide her back to the path of good. If it was a man, he’d be Bruce Wayne. As a woman in red lingerie with sais, she’s Elektra.
Because the plot is so predictable, I won’t really bother giving any details. It is neither poorly nor masterfully done: it was a decent matinee, and I neither feel that my $5.75 was stolen, nor am I putting it on my list of much have DVDs. I give it a solid C+: if you are a fan of the genre or Ms. Garner, check it out.
Note to future casting directors though: Ms. Garner is radiant when she smiles, so try to give her a role where smiling occurs at regular intervals. It’s money in the bank.
I haven’t done a movie review in quite some time, but I did manage to get out with my better half to see White Noise, starring actors Michael Keaton, Chandra West, Debra Unger and Ian McNiece.
The film begins with the tragic death of author Anna Rivers under mysterious circumstances. Her husband, Jonathan Rivers, is distraught, but begins to receive strange phone calls from his dead wife’s cell phone. He then meets Raymond Price, a self-made psychic investigator who uses EVP, or electronic voice phenomena, to contact the dead. Rivers becomes obsessed with trying to contact Anna and to resolve the situation surrounding her death.
The problem is that it isn’t always safe to talk to the dead.
To give much more of the plot would probably give away too much, but I’ll just say this: while the performances were credible, I really didn’t find the movie that scary, nor did I find the use of EVP to be in anyway critical or central to the story. It could have just been a conventional ghost story, and it would have been just as effective. I give the movie about a C+: no nightmares or glancing over my shoulder as I exit into the dark parking lot.
By the way, EVP is something that some people take very seriously, including concerns about its safety, although they note:
We believe that working with EVP and ITC is fundamentally safe. It is difficult to find a single example in which an individual has been harmed because of their communication across the veil. Yes, people have occasionally been “bothered.” It is known that the time we spend carefully listening too hard to hear EVP examples seems to enhance our clairvoyant and clairaudient senses. To many people, this is exciting and something they want. To others, it can be disturbing. This enhanced sensing has been reported to fade if one takes a break from EVP or other development work.
Indeed.
Slate is running a scathing article by science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. Apparently a movie with a title similar to some of her books is running on the Sci Fi channel, and she’s not enormously happy about it.
Apple has just posted the teaser for Stephen Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds. Not much to see, but try comparing voice over to the great introduction done by Orson Welles for his famous Mercury Theater Broadcast. Orson’s radio voice and delivery may be unequalled in the history of radio, and he’s at his best here.
More War of the Worlds links: The classic 1953 film, the terrible but strangely addictive short-lived television series, and the text of H.G. Wells original from Project Gutenberg.
Today is the opening day for the latest Pixar Animation Studios film, The Incredibles directed by Brad Bird. In the interest of full disclosure, any opinions I have about it are highly suspect, since I have two credits on the film, but you can trust my wife, and she thinks it is the best movie that Pixar has ever released.
Warning: it is the first Pixar film ever released which carries a PG rating. If you have young children, they may find it a bit intense. Of course, when I went out to see The Grudge a surprising (to me at least) number of parents seemed to be bringing their five and six year old kids with them, so what do I know?
Addendum: I’ll be wearing my Incredibles crew jacket at Bloggercon tomorrow. Be sure to say “hello”.
Wherein your movie going host gives a brief update on his experiments with Asterisk, and reviews the mediocre new movie release Team America. Sorry folks, it just wasn’t very funny.
Wherein your host experiments with a remote on-the-street feed, thanks his patient and benevolent listeners for their comments, and reviews the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. Download the MP3 for the complete review, but the summary is: it’s a terrific zombie movie and a terrific comedy welded together to make a really great film.
I like Dave’s new habit of posting URLs relevant to his audioblog, so I think I’ll copy him.
Ob. mistake for the episode: odd mp3 artifacts of the Monster Mash at the end. Please visit the Misfits and download their version directly from their website.
Update: actually, the entire thing sounds a little hot and clippy. I will figure out a better way to set levels. I will…
It’s sometimes important for me to remember that working for Pixar Animation Studios does have its perks: today we were blessed with a preview screening of the new movie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and were also blessed with a special guest appearance by its director Kerry Conran, editor Sabrina Plisco and production designer Kevin Conran.
The movie begins in the New York of old: the New York of the 30s, the New York of Zeppelins and Radio City Music Hall. Six scientists have disappeared, and reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is trying to crack the story. She meets a mysterious scientist in a movie theater, and he tells her that he is next.
And then the robots attack.
I’m not going to go into more of the story. It is a comic book adventure story, and if you go for that kind of thing, you’ll enjoy it. The real amazing bit about this film is just how beautiful it looks: it has a very classic “old-film” look, and yet has amazingly beautiful sets, creepy robots and exciting combat sequences, all inspired from black and white photography of the period. Go and drink it in: I don’t think a more innovative visual look has been developed since The Wizard of Oz.
The Q&A we had with Kerry was great: he was genuinely intimidated by the Pixar crowd, but everyone was blown away at the innovation and the achievement. This movie began as a very budget independent film, and was ten years in the making. He graduated from Cal Arts with (paraphrasing) “only a marginally greater chance of being able to direct a film than when I went in”, so he set out (literally in his own apartment) with developing the technology, look and script. It was really a very shoestring affair, with many of the scenes shot nearly entirely in blue screen, and many animators who were “literally high school students”. He tried to incorporate many of the ideas from traditional animation to give his film a unique style. I was enormously impressed by his humor, his humility and his talent: it is a stupendous achievement.
Go see it. It’s fun, and marvel at the beauty. I can’t wait to see the DVD with extras, or the article from Cinefex.
Well, today’s weekend movie extravaganza was the long awaited (at least in the VandeWettering house) Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
For those of you who have been living in a hole for the last decade, the Resident Evil franchise began as a popular videogame series on the Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation. I must admit that I have spent a few dozen hours myself trying to shoot and evade zombies, so I was already a fan. This movie is the second installment of the burgeoning movie franchise, and pretty much takes up where the previous movie left off.
Alice (played by super model Milla Jovovich) returns in the state she ended the previous movie: wearing only a flimsy hospital gown and carrying a shotgun in the middle of Racoon City. The infamous T-Virus has escaped the Umbrella Corporation’s underground bioweapons lab, and zombies are walking the earth.
Cool.
This movie is pretty much a cliché, but it’s one that the videogames helped popularize and promote. We have the evil Umbrella Corporation, willing to test bioweapons on innocent civilians and ultimately to kill them. We have the former security officer for Umbrella who now is trying to take down the corporation. We have the scientist whose daughter is caught inside the perimeter of the infectious zone, who tries to make a bargain with a band of rag tag survivors to get them out. And we have zombies: lots of ’em, with lots of chomping of various minor characters.
Let’s face it, if you are going to see this movie, you know what to expect and what you want to see, and I suspect you’ll agree that this movie delivers. It isn’t destined to be the classic that Night of the Living Dead is, but it’s a good, solid, exciting and at times even scary story. The one major drawback is the cliffhanger ending, which no doubt sets up the already planned-for Resident Evil: Battle Beyond the Stars or whatever they are going to call the third installment.
I rank it a good 8/10. I had a great time, jumped in my seat on at least two occasions, and generally enjoyed the flesh-chomping action. If this is the genre that floats your boat, go see it. If you aren’t thrilled by zombie movies, don’t bother going, because I won’t be interested in hearing you complain about the lack of character development or emotional growth on the part of the main characters.
Hero is the U.S. release of the movie Ying xiong, starring Jet Li as Nameless, a man who has defeated the three top assassins who were all sworn to kill the king of the Qin.
I’m not sure what else to say about it without spoiling the story, which unfolds slowly and with some finesse. The movie itself is really incredibly beautiful, with bold use of color, staging and terrific action sequences. While it isn’t as sophisticated as Crouching Tiger, it is very well done. The story of Nameless, Sky, Broken Sword and Frozen Snow is a compelling one of ancient heros. I enjoyed it a great deal, and give it a B+ rating.
This weekend’s movie extravaganza was Garden State, starring, written and directed by Zach Braff. Braff is perhaps best known for his role on the TV show Scrubs, but here he stretches beyond the comedy antics and tries to tell us a story of considerable warmth, emotion and humanity. Braff plays Andrew Largeman, an L.A. actor who returns home to New Jersey to attend the funeral of his mother. Largemen has lived a life dominated by anti-depressants and ineffective therapy, and for the first time begins to realize that he’s better off without chemicals. While he is back, he meets Sam (played by Natalie Portman), and strikes up an unlikely friendship with her.
The movie alternates between moments of significant comedy and moments of surprising poignancy. The one slightly disturbing thing that I found was the less pleasant parts of the plot kept nagging at me, and I kept wondering whether I was being lead down a certain path by the comedy, and that I would be emotionally ambushed by some strong tragedy at the end. But in the end, the film is actually rather gentle, no strong tragedy climaxes the film, and it remains an extended sketch of life.
I think Braff did a marvelous job with this film. If I have a criticism of it, it is perhaps in its subtlety and its gentleness. Still, Braff managed to coax a convincing and charming performance out of Natalie Portman, which is something that George Lucas could not. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of his work as a writer and director. Well done. I would rank this movie as 8/10: not the kind of thing I normally go see, but I’ll make up for it by going to see Hero or Anaconda 2 really soon.
I had a rare “middle of the week” movie attack last night (there was nothing on television) so the wife and I trundled off to see Michael Mann’s latest noir-ish creation Collateral.
An aside: I’ve got a pet theory that 50% of a movie’s gross is determined by it’s choice of title. By my estimation, Collateral is the worst title to appear from Hollywood since the ill-fated Gigli experiment. With a better title, this film might have had a shot at opening at #1.
Tom Cruise stars as Vincent, an assassin sent to Los Angeles to kill five people in a single night. Jamie Foxx stars is Max, a knowledgeable cabbie who dreams of opening his own limosine company. Vincent hires Max to drive him on his rounds, and when the first hit goes wrong, Max is forced to continue to drive Vincent around.
This is classic Michael Mann material, and it is quite well done. I’m not a huge fan of Los Angeles, and just seeing the backdrop reminded me of just how little I like the city. It’s a dark, morose film with some good acting performances by both Cruise (in a slightly less heroic role than is usual, and better done than his usual performance) and by Foxx. I must admit that I think that Jamie Foxx is turning out to be a very good actor, despite my initial impressions of him from In Living Color. I’m struck by the same sort of surprise that made me realize that Tom Hanks could rise above Bosom Buddies and Bachelor Party.
Ultimately I didn’t find the movie that entertaining, and as such it isn’t really he kind of movie I like. It also (if I may borrow a comment from my wife) tends to look like The Terminator in spots. Still, it is a well done glimpse into the world of L.A. crime after dark, and I think it is quite successful. I’ll give it 8 out of 10.
Warning: This may contain something you will view as a spoiler. You’ve been warned.
It was with some mixed feelings that I decided to go see Alien vs. Predator this weekend. After all, if you average out all four Alien movies and both Predator movies, you end up with a grade of C. In each case, half of the franchise was good to excellent, and the second half was, well, terrible. Really bad. Highlander 2 bad.
So I was expecting nothing at all from Alien vs. Predator. Actually, I was expecting it to really actively suck. But sometimes you just have to pay your $8.50 and hope for the best.
And, sometimes, you are pleasantly surprised.
Mind you, not that surprised. It certainly doesn’t compare to the first movie of either franchise, both of which I consider to be excellent, but neither do they make you cringe much. You won’t find any remarkable characters in this movie. You won’t remember any of their names, be able to tell your friends what jobs they had, or anything about them. The humans exist solely as punching (or should I say puncturing) bags for the two alien species, and true to form of both series, only one will survive to tell the tale.
The basic outline: a mysterious pyramid is found underneath the ice of Antartica. Science team led by ailing robotics expert decide to go check it out. It’s an alien pyramid, built by the Predators as sort of a rite of passage for their warriors: they enter to battle Aliens. If they win, they are branded as victors and get pay raises. If they fail, an explosion kills all remaining Aliens, ala the self destruct of Predator.
Okay, there is one cringe-worthy part: the whole “archaelogy” aspect of it. The pyramid shows signs of “Aztec, Egyptian and Cambodian” influences, and in fact the Predators were known to all three civilizations, or so the story goes. Wince. That’s not even remotely possible to anyone who doesn’t wear a tinfoil hat.
But let’s move on. The vast majority of the humans (be they archaelogists, soldiers, or… whatever) exist only as empty place holders until folded, spindled, mutilated or impregnated by alien face huggers. The real stars are the Aliens and Predators, and they are pretty cool. The battle sequences are pretty damned nifty. They’ve really got that “dripping Alien, quivering lips, double-rack of teeth” thing working in this one. Cool stuff.
I’d rate it a good B-. Above average, but not memorable. Fun Saturday matinee fare, and shouldn’t totally make you tear up your ticket in disgust.
Friday nights are terrible for television. Usually I’m out teaching people how to make telescopes, but last night I was just not in the mood. In fact, I was in a tremendously grumpy mood. It turned out to be 9pm, and I just didn’t want to be in the house anymore. A quick check of the movie listings showed that The Manchurian Candidate was out, but I didn’t feel like anything that serious or intense.
Enter Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.
I must admit: in the two years or so I spent in Princeton, I never once went to the White Castle in New Brunswick, although I remember passing it dozens of times. I feel now like I obviously missed something.
Oh well, enough about me: back to the movie. It employs classic thematic elements. Friends Harold (a young junior investment banker) and Kumar (a genius would-be doctor except for the fact that he’s essentially lazy) go on a quest for the perfect food: a six pack of sliders from White Castle. Adventure and hilarity ensues: enjoy.
And enjoy I did. If you take yourself too seriously, you’ll probably find this movie a bit over the top. Drug use (in the form of marijuana) is a common theme (indeed, motivation) in the film, so if you are sensitive to that, perhaps you might consider a different film. But perhaps you should consider that Neil Patrick Harris (TV’s Doogie Houser M.D.) plays himself in the film, and obviously relishes in the raunchy humor. It also plays off a number of common stereotypes, but in a generally light hearted way, and mocks stereotypes even while perpetuating certain ones for comic effect.
It’s raunchy. It’s silly. And it’s damned funny. I couldn’t decide if it was funnier than Dodgeball, but it’s darned close, and well worth your time.