Universal Pictures has revealed the initial trailer for the fourth installment of The Bourne series. Haters throughout the blogosphere have been chattering incessantly about the film since it was announced several months ago that Matt Damon would not be reprising his role in the film as Jason Bourne. Instead, Jeremy Renner stars as Aaron Cross, another recruit in the Agency's Treadstone Program.
The first look at the trailer certainly makes it look like Renner has the goods to pull this sort of thing off, and the supporting cast of Edward Norton, Rachel Weisz, and Stacy Keach seem like great counterparts to make this happen. The Bourne Legacy was written and directed by Tony Gilroy and hits theaters on August 3, 2012.
The editors over at Paste Magazine have compiled their list of the best movie poster from each of the last 100 years at the movies. Some iconic choices like Metropolis, Sunset Boulevard and Casablanca of course made the list. But, because each year only gets one entry, there are some questionable omissions. Most obviously, how in the hell did they manage to presume that the broadsheet for Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman was better than the glorious poster for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo?
In any case, you can see the full list on the Paste Magazine site and check out the Vertigo poster below just so you know once and for all how remarkably great it is.
During spring break of 1981, my parents took me to Washington DC. I was nearly nine years old and elated about the trip. We saw the capitol and the White House. There were visits to the various halls of the Smithsonian and while eating at a table in front of a pizza joint, a motorcade went by with Anwar Sadat and his aides inside. Do you have any idea how exciting it is for an eight - almost nine - year old to get to see the President of Egypt in the flesh? As great as that was, and still is, the highlight of the trip would be going to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur exhibit. Except that when we arrived, the dino exhibit was "Closed For Renovations".
After a full fifteen minutes of sobbing, snot-wiping and wishing it to not be so, my folks corralled me away from the gathered onlookers and took me for ice cream. Even a double scoop of chocolate chip could not heal my wounds that day. So, my parents began hatching a plan to remedy the situation later that very summer. They said that after school let out, we would take a trip to Toronto.
Now you know you're loved when your folks plan another vacation just to make up for the fact that the dinosaurs you've pined so hard for, were unseeable. I mean it's just bones and wire, but my third grade soul could accept no substitute. We soldiered happily through our remaining time in the nation's capitol and I began to fantasize about the collection of T-Rexes and Brachiosaurs that the Royal Ontario Museum had to offer.
After the school year ended my folks made good on their promise. We packed the car and headed to Canada, which from our home in Michigan's thumb, was only four or so hours away. That evening we checked in to our hotel and in the lobby I found a brochure for the Royal Ontario Museum. I pored over its contents and photos until I finally fell asleep, dreaming of running with the Stegosaurus and watching the Pterodactyls fly overhead.
We arrived the hour the museum opened and I insisted that we head for the dinosaurs first. Our tickets were handed over and guide maps were doled out and I bee-lined for the dinosaur wing. Almost immediately, I saw the sign. CLOSED FOR RENOVATION. Could this be possible? Was there some great conspiracy to prevent me from seeing the creatures of the Jurassic era? After the initial stage of denial, I moved to the second and most prolonged stage of grief for the American eight year old: Anger and Tears.
A full meltdown ensued and it was worse than the D.C. episode. My sobs and cries echoed back and forth of the marble halls of Toronto's glorious old museum. There is much of the next several hours that I have blocked out of my memory completely. It seems that we must have seen the rest of the museum, but I have no memory of it. Until our early dinner that evening at the Spaghetti Factory, I can recall virtually nothing.
After dinner, the suggestion surfaced that maybe a movie would cheer me up. I was not in the mood, but I was quickly instructed that I would not, "Sit in the hotel room feeling sorry for myself". The vacation was a family outing and we were going to see a movie.
Arriving at the theater, I saw a cartoonish poster with a series of images that included snakes, a man appearing to be in mid-scream, and a guy with a whip wearing a fancy hat. My bullshit meter went through the roof and I assumed that I was being dragged to some dumb-ass Disney thing with a couple of clever kids and an evil witch or some shit. Never mind that there were no kids anywhere on the poster. It seemed certain that I was being patronized with a sort of dreck I didn't even like anymore. The sophisticated tastes of a Midwestern nine year old were too much for my parents to handle and they just ducked into the first movie hall they could find with a "family style film" showing that night. Oh Lord, how wrong I was.
It seems certain to me now that after thirty years of consideration, in many ways I had not truly seen a film before Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Sure, I had watched lots of movies, and even enjoyed them greatly. But, this was an experience alone unto itself.
The music made the blood pump faster. Harrison Ford's charm and cool and wit made you positive he was the coolest dude on the planet. I watched Nazis and Egyptian and Gypsies fight over lost relics and talk about the Bible like a treasure map in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and not like some boring ass Sunday school lesson. This shit can make the Bible seem interesting? I'm sold.
From the motorcycle chases to fighting natives in the jungle to wondering why it had to be snakes, and of course to that massive and unforgettable boulder, I was utterly transfixed. The memory of missed dinosaurs vanished and I was ready to trade my natural history penchant in for a pith helmet and an Archaeology workshop at a moment's notice. The misery and horror from earlier that very day had melted away in the powerful glow of a projector.
Hundreds of movies have this effect on millions of people. It is corny and trite and obvious to say that movies are transformative. That of course, is inherent in their nature. What happened to me in that theater in a country not so far away was that I noticed that power for the first time. I realized I was in the church of the cinema and I was a devout believer.
I now have children of my own and have watched Raiders with them. For them it is another movie they sort of enjoyed that their old man likes a little too much. It feels great to watch it with them and I still love it a great deal. But even with them, it can never be like that first time that night in Toronto when I was just a sad little boy hunting for dinosaurs.
Some production stills from the Tim Burton film treatment of Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, have very recently surfaced on the intertubes, and just one image can bring on a whole bag of ughhh to the ribcage! In the first place, they've made Johnny Depp look precisely what Elliott from ET: The Extra Terrestrial would like if he had gone goth and become a recluse in a secluded New England castle. Furthermore, these images serve as a reminder of why the remake is an awful idea, why Tim Burton is a terrible filmmaker these days, and what a waste of talent it is to see Johnny Depp play these kinds of roles.
A flurry of emotions gobsmacked me across the chaw when I saw these photos. Not because of how they looked or even what they were of, but that the Dark Shadows project encapsulates so many things worth hating about Hollywood right now. So, let's get them all out before I show you the other still.
Someone needs to take Tim Burton's camera and notepads away. He's run out of original ideas and we're sick and goddamned tired of watching him filch source material only to make it worse. From Alice In Wonderland to Planet Of The Apes to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, he's taken good things and sullied them with his deliberate weirdness and pseudo-gothic bullshit.
The Dark Shadows television program doesn't even hold any allure to me and yet I still feel like he's ruining it. There is a sense that Burton has this cadre of things he loves and wants to control, so he remakes them. Yet, this only leads to an inferior version of the thing he loved. It is sad to watch and damaging to the source material. Someone make him stop.
Johnny Depp is a very talented actor and yet he keeps palling around with Burton hoping to rekindle that Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood magic. Those are very good films, but that light has long since gone out and now one gets the sens that Depp will play out his days as Jack Sparrow in a rest home, doing the bidding of the evil Dr. Burton or, after the failure of Rum Punch, perhaps just continue making bad film adaptations of Hunter S. Thompson novels. Dude, just get back to being an actor and stop trying to be a movie star.
Finally, we get down to the whole vampire nonsense. Between this, the Underworld franchise, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and that Twilight Saga bullshit, the American movie making syndicate have basically created a cottage industry for fake blood purveyors and the makers of prosthetic fangs. At what point will the movie going public overload on this horseshit? It's hard to tell what teenage girls will be into next, but anything other than bloodsucking douchebags would be a wonderful reprieve for this cineaste.
Your local cineplex may be stocked up right now with all the big awards season nominees and a few leftover holiday blockbusters, but soon that theater complex will look more like a prison with 18 different options for your two hour sentence.
After the big Christmas time films and awards contenders run out of gas at the box office, America's worst movie drought of the year begins. From late January until the middle of May when the unofficial hunting season opens for the summer blockbusters to be, the offerings at the ticket window are, in a word, shitty.
The chance does exist for a bright spot or two, and I'm not so cynical about it that I have completely given up all hope. So, here are few films scheduled to hit theaters during the dry spell that just might break the mold for the typical first quarter drought we're usually treated to. No promises on these though, they're coming out now for a reason.
HAYWIRE | Starring: Gina Carano, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael
Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas | Directed by
Steven Soderbergh | Opens January 20, 2012
Synopsis:
Beautiful freelance covert operative Mallory Kane (Carano) is hired out by her
handler to various global entities to perform jobs which governments
can't authorize and heads of state would rather not know about. After a
mission to rescue a hostage in Barcelona, Mallory is quickly dispatched
on another mission to Dublin. When the operation goes awry and Mallory
finds she has been double crossed, she needs to use all of her skills,
tricks and abilities to escape an international manhunt, make it back to
the United States, protect her family, and exact revenge on those that have betrayed her.
Outlook:
It sure looks a lot like the Bourne Vagina, but it is Steven Soderbergh. And, if it were a femme fatale meets Jason Bourne, wouldn't that be bad ass too? Soderbergh is generally pretty reliable and his use of non-actors is always interesting and here he's chosen to work with Gina Carano who made her name in women's MMA. The supporting cast looks solid (super-duper solid - Michael Fassbender I am looking at YOU!) and Soderbergh has the potential to make really fascinating choices as the director of a fast paced action film. Don't go in expecting an award winner, but it could be a fun gender twist on a fun genre that usually winds up worth the price of admission. Oh yeah and it's Soderbergh plus Fassbender. Did I mention I kinda like those guys?
RETURN | Starring: Linda Cardellini, Michael Shannon and John Slattery | Directed Liza Johnson | Opens in limited release on February 10, 2012
Synopsis: Linda Cardellini, best known for her work on the under-appreciated TV series Freaks and Geeks plays a woman (Kelli) just back from a tour of duty trying to assimilate with her old life back in the town where she grew up. However, it becomes apparent that her husband and family have no idea what she has been through and her return to her old way of life will be anything but easy.
Outlook: It's nice to see Cardellini get a meaty role. She deserves the chance and I hope she can pull it off. The supporting cast looks terrific, what with the use of ringers like Shannon and Slattery. This film looks to have lots of promise as long as it stays away from obvious choices, like a soundtrack filled with Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp numbers.
BEING FLYNN | Starring: Robert Deniro, Paul Dano, Julianne Moore, Olivia Thurlby and Lili Taylor | Directed by Paul Weitz | Opens March 2, 2012
Synopsis: Being Flynn is the new dramatic feature from Academy Award-nominated writer/director Paul Weitz (About a Boy). Adapted from Nick Flynn’s 2004 memoir Another Bulls—t Night in Suck City. Nick Flynn (Dano)
is a young writer seeking to define himself. He misses his late
mother, Jody (four-time Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore), and her
loving nature. But his father, Jonathan, is not even a memory, as Nick
has not seen the man in 18 years.
Jonathan Flynn (De Niro) has long defined himself as a great writer,“a
master storyteller.” After abandoning his wife and child, Jonathan
scrapes through life on his own terms, and ends up serving time in
prison for cashing forged checks. After prison, he drives a cab for a
number of years, but with his drinking and eccentricities now
accelerating, he loses his job. Despite the occasional grandiose letter
to his son, he has remained absent from Nick’s life.
Suddenly facing eviction from his apartment, Jonathan impulsively
reaches out to Nick and the two come face-to-face. The older man is
eloquent and formidable; overwhelmed, Nick nonetheless prepares to
integrate his father into his own life. But, as quickly as he
materialized, Jonathan flits away again.
Outlook:
The trailer gives the impression that Deniro might be back after a very long dry spell. Weitz did a nice job with his previous feature, About A Boy and with Dano and Moore onboard along with a good supporting cast, this has promise. Don't forget though, that this is in essence a biopic, and one based on a memoir to boot. Those are a tricky lot and in the hands of the wrong script writer and director it can mean a very mushy and tedious night out. It's probably worth a ticket just to see if Deniro still has it.
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE | Starring: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch and Harry Dean Stanton | Directed by Paolo Sorrentino | Opens March, 2012
Synopsis:
Cheyenne, a wealthy former rock star (Penn), now bored and jaded in his
retirement embarks on a quest to find his father's persecutor, an
ex-Nazi war criminal now hiding out in the U.S. Learning his father is
close to death, he travels to New York in the hope of being reconciled
with him during his final hours, only to arrive too late. Having been
estranged for over 30 years, it is only now in death that he learns the
true extent of his father's humiliation in Auschwitz at the hands of
former SS Officer Aloise Muller - an event he is determined to avenge.
So begins a life-altering journey across the heartland of America to
track down and confront his father's nemesis. As his quest unfolds,
Cheyenne is reawakened by the people he encounters and his journey is
transformed into one of reconciliation and self discovery. As his date
with destiny arrives and he tracks down Muller, Cheyenne must finally
decide if it is redemption he seeks ....or revenge. Starring two time
Academy Award winner Sean Penn and marking the much-anticipated
English-language debut of acclaimed director Paolo Sorrentino,
Outlook:
It seems tough to imagine watching Sean Penn dressed as a guy from The Cure for two hours, but like him or hate him, he's always making interesting choices as an actor. The road movie meets family reunitement meets black sheep all seems pretty hokey until you toss in the part about a hunt for a Nazi War criminal! In reality, it has a "this is so crazy it just might work" kind of feel to it. I'm sort of skeptical on this one, but hearing a pudgy middle schooler ask for an Arcade Fire song that's really a Talking Heads song in the trailer probably puts on my Netflix queue at the very least.
Focus Features today unveiled the trailer for the upcoming Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom. Written by Anderson and Roman Coppolla, the film marks Anderson's first live action film five years.
The press sheet for the film describes it thusly, "Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965,
MOONRISE KINGDOM tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in
love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As
various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing
off-shore -- and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in
more ways than anyone can handle. Bruce Willis plays the local sheriff.
Edward Norton is a Khaki Scout troop leader. Bill Murray and Frances
McDormand portray the young girl's parents. The cast also includes Tilda
Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, and Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the
boy and girl."
Now, the real question here is whether we'll get the wit and quirky charms of Anderson's first three films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and Royal Tennenbaums), or if his rambling and vague tendencies as they've been on display in his last two live action films, The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited. Based on the trailer, it appears it could go either way. The inclusion of Edward Norton, Bruce Willis and Frances McDormand to the Anderson repertory players in the cast is a good sign though.
Moonrise Kingdom opens in limited release on May 25. Watch the trailer below.
In the summer of 1984, at the age of 12, my family forced me to move to a little town I had never heard of and didn't give a damn about. At the time, we were living a miraculously happy and idyllic existence in the heart of Michigan's thumb region in a little berg known as Sandusky. My school, my friends, my little league team and therefore my entire life was located squarely in Sandusky. Moving was not an option. How was I expected to survive? Like virtually every middle-schooler in the history of time that has ever been forced to do anything they were not 100% thrilled with, I hated this idea. More importantly, I hated my parents for coming up with the idea and loathed them still further for bringing the plan to fruition and relocating our family to some bullshit place.
The summer was rough and fall sucked once school started. A ping pong table installed in the basement was about the only saving grace of our first few months in Bath, a tiny nothing of a town just north of East Lansing. Change is difficult for any adolescent, but especially so for me. New friends were made slowly and the reduction of my fury over the move cooled very, very slowly and the transition took even longer than under normal circumstances due to my self-inflicted emotional duress.
One Saturday evening after dinner, my Dad and I were down in the basement playing ping pong and talking intermittently. He would ask about school or make inconsequential chit chat. Every effort was being made to have a real conversation or to get me to open up, but I was having none of it. Then at the end of a volley, a point which I won by the way, he asked if I wanted to go to a movie.
After a discussion of what the movie was called and what it was about, I was able to glean, basically, that my old man wanted to drag me out to see a movie about a teenager who befriends an old lady because he's depressed and lonely. In fact, they begin their friendly bonds by running into one another at a funeral. Old lady, weird friendship, depression, funerals for amusement - no thanks dude.
Was my father doing this because he thought of this as my way out? I mean, I was depressed and lonely and perhaps he thought that I could start spending time with some old bitty in the neighborhood to make up for the fact that I hated my new school, I hated our new house and reminded my folks daily of the nearly complete absence of any friends within a 125 mile radius. Let's just say I was dubious.
There were two factors that aligned to get me to the theater that night. The first was that as an adolescent and young adult, I was absolutely terrible about telling people how I genuinely felt about stuff, if it made anyone feel bad; even when their feeling bad was my partial intent. Therefore, the only way to get across the message of my lack of enthusiasm for this particular flick trip was to not react much to it all. My physical reaction of indifference was then completely overwhelmed by factor number two; the movie didn't start until midnight.
Now as a twelve year old there was still some cache to being up past midnight. This endeavor was fully two gears past that. Not only would we be up past midnight, our thing didn't start until midnight. And the event was outside the house! As such I would be rolling home at 2:00 in the morning like a real, actual adult. Dad thought I would like this thing so much, he was willing to take me out at the witching hour to see a weird movie at an arthouse theater to show it to me. I tried to conceal my sudden and bursting desire to go, so I simply said, "That sounds like it might be alright".
The theater, called The Odeon, was incredibly small. It was situated in a sort of strip mall sort of building and couldn't hold more than 60 or 70 people. I remember the smells vividly; a concoction of popcorn, cigarettes and adulthood. The seats creaked loudly when you pulled them down to sit and were filled with cracked tributaries of torn pleather. Sticky sweet sheers of gum and sodas spills glazed the floor like a kind of carnival velcro. After loading up on popcorn and Cokes, we found some creaky seats in which to park ourselves and sat down. There might have been something like 20 other people in the room, but I really don't remember. For the next two hours it was just me and Steve.
As much as the theater and time of night wowed me, I still had little or no hope for the movie. The description left a lot to be desired and after my initiation to the after dark ambience of The Odeon I began to fixate on people and things in the theater that would hold my attention once I got bored from the lame picture. I spent some time watching the older guy with a balding crown, beard and corduroy jacket laughing awkwardly with a lady much younger than he was. It seemed likely that he was a professor at the college or something, but beyond that I was out of my element and not that interested. Had this event taken place about four years later, I would have invented an entire Woody Allen film about him in my head. Middle aged nerds, a couple of lonely women, and my Dad and I made up the rest of the crowd.
Over the next two hours I felt transformed. If you've ever seen just a few minutes of Harold and Maude you know precisely what I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, there is no way for me to explain it to you. I laughed at things that I had never imagined could possibly be funny. The dark humor of the film and its myriad oddities spoke to me instantly. Yet what I was mostly shocked by was that I had been brought to this movie by father - at midnight.
On the ride home I just felt happy. Genuinely happy. Other than going to a baseball game I could never remember another time when I felt like a friend to my Dad. This however, was a different thing entirely. My Dad had displayed the faith in me to share something weird and odd that he cared for in a sincere way as if to show me that he gave a damn. He went out of his way to get me to laugh at life's absurdity and to take me to a place that I probably didn't belong at a time when I probably shouldn't be there. He wanted to be my friend and to lift me up out of my shitty adolescent malaise that he surely felt some responsibility for. While he may not know it, he succeeded admirably.
Now, I am the parent of adolescents. With the perspective of parenthood, I know that whatever I got out of that night at the Odeon, my Dad got just as much if not more if he paid any attention at all. It is my hope that someday, or if I am very lucky, maybe already, I have given my kids a moment something even close to this. While this essay is meant to be a thank you to my Father for that night and what it means, perhaps the best thank you I could give to him would be to learn by his example. Thanks Dad.
