People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Dark Knight double-dip
Like millions of humans, yesterday I picked up my copy of The Dark Knight on DVD. The movie is still amazing (I think it’ll only get better with age as the cringe-inducing hype that still surrounds the film dies away and we can just appreciate it on its own merits – I look forward to a day when Heath Ledger’s death is more of a footnote in the film’s legacy), but I’m pretty underwhelmed by the DVD’s extras.
First of all, this “digital copy included” thing has got to go as a selling point or an excuse to add another disc to a package in order to make it seem like it’s more bang for the customer’s proverbial buck. I’m not interested in watching a two-and-a-half hour c
rime epic on my iPod or my laptop, though I guess I appreciate the option they’re giving me to do so, especially with the growing spectre of online piracy, and I realize that some people do enjoy that sort of thing, but as an excuse to bolt an extra disc onto a release and proclaim it a “special edition” is pretty weak (no commentary and a couple of featurettes and trailers). It’s not that I had a problem with the extras that are on the two-disc Dark Knight DVD – I dug the fake talk-show segments, particularly the one with Eric Roberts, whose presence in the film is a gift that keeps on giving – but it’s pretty obvious that there’s a much more in-depth DVD of The Dark Knight coming down the pipe. Which I’m not necessarily complaining about – I’ve happily done the DVD double-dip for movies like Sin City, which director Robert Rodriguez was pretty up-front about doing more DVD editions of down the line from the get-go, which is either commendably honest or shockingly cynical, I’m not sure which. And I, like millions of others, has been patiently awaiting the long-promised Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which Quentin Tarantino has been promising for several years now. But the bottom like is, The Dark Knight is a pretty astounding piece of cinema, and I will happily shell out for the even-more-special edition I’m sure is coming some time in 2009 – presumably with another digital copy.
* * *
This week saw the release of complete-series DVD sets for the two best televisions shows I’ve ever seen, HBO’s The Wire and Deadwood. Both are so good I want to punch someone in the face, but I personally prefer The Wire because 1) I prefer cop dramas to westerns and 2) it has an actual ending and is therefore more satisfying on the whole. And for some connective tissue between these three items, Dominic West, who plays the lead character in The Wire, is absolutely phenomenal as the villain Jigsaw in Punisher: War Zone. If Heath Ledger hadn’t changed the game up for comic book movie bad guys in Dark Knight, West would have been my pick as best movie villain of 2008, hands down.
A little bit of movie news: John Stevenson, director of the excellent animated film Kung Fu Panda (read my review here), is attached to adapt the comic book WE3 into a film. WE3 is a three-issue s
eries by probably my two favourite comic creators working today, writer Grant Morrison (to whom I refer as a genius without hesitation) and artist Frank Quitely. The story follows three animals, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who are the subjects of brutal government experiments aimed at creating living weapons, fusing the animals’ nervous systems with cybernetic weaponry. It’s a remarkable piece of storytelling, both incredibly violent (for a while the film was rumoured to have been “cleaned up” to be more family friendly, which couldn’t miss the point of the source material more) and utterly heartbreaking. I’m not among them but I’ve heard many people who’ve read it admit that WE3 is the only comic that has made them cry. With a talented filmmaker like Stevenson at the helm, and an apparent desire on the part of the producers to keep the material in R-rating territory, WE3 could be something pretty special.
* * *
The last thing I’ve got for today is a fulfillment of my earlier promise in this space to not miss an opportunity to talk about Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen, due in theatres in March. Apple has the three minutes of footage shown at Comicon last summer, which initially set the Internet afire with buzz. Several months (and three to four trailers) later and the footage is officially online courtesy of iTunes. Check it out here, but be warned, you must have iTunes installed on your computer to watch it. Also be warned that this movie looks totally awesome.
First of all, this “digital copy included” thing has got to go as a selling point or an excuse to add another disc to a package in order to make it seem like it’s more bang for the customer’s proverbial buck. I’m not interested in watching a two-and-a-half hour c
rime epic on my iPod or my laptop, though I guess I appreciate the option they’re giving me to do so, especially with the growing spectre of online piracy, and I realize that some people do enjoy that sort of thing, but as an excuse to bolt an extra disc onto a release and proclaim it a “special edition” is pretty weak (no commentary and a couple of featurettes and trailers). It’s not that I had a problem with the extras that are on the two-disc Dark Knight DVD – I dug the fake talk-show segments, particularly the one with Eric Roberts, whose presence in the film is a gift that keeps on giving – but it’s pretty obvious that there’s a much more in-depth DVD of The Dark Knight coming down the pipe. Which I’m not necessarily complaining about – I’ve happily done the DVD double-dip for movies like Sin City, which director Robert Rodriguez was pretty up-front about doing more DVD editions of down the line from the get-go, which is either commendably honest or shockingly cynical, I’m not sure which. And I, like millions of others, has been patiently awaiting the long-promised Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which Quentin Tarantino has been promising for several years now. But the bottom like is, The Dark Knight is a pretty astounding piece of cinema, and I will happily shell out for the even-more-special edition I’m sure is coming some time in 2009 – presumably with another digital copy. * * *
I mentioned my skepticism about Lionsgate’s new Punisher movie, Punisher: War Zone in this space not too long ago, and I checked it out last weekend. I’m happy to report my skepticism was totally unfounded, as it’s the most fun pure action movie I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s shockingly violent in all the right ways – the rocket launcher/parkour scene alone was worth the price of admission – and manages to capture the tongue-in-cheek black humour of the best recent Punisher comics. It’s too bad the movie opened pretty poorly, barely making $4 million in its first weekend. Hopefully it will find the audience it deserves on DVD (as many Lionsgate films do), because to me, Punisher: War Zone is second only to Iron Man in terms of Marvel movies in 2008. The worst movie Marvel Studios released this year was The Incredible Hulk, and that was a solid B+ in my estimation. So if you want to have a laugh at mobsters getting their faces blown off with shotguns, Punisher: War Zone is the movie for you.
* * *
This week saw the release of complete-series DVD sets for the two best televisions shows I’ve ever seen, HBO’s The Wire and Deadwood. Both are so good I want to punch someone in the face, but I personally prefer The Wire because 1) I prefer cop dramas to westerns and 2) it has an actual ending and is therefore more satisfying on the whole. And for some connective tissue between these three items, Dominic West, who plays the lead character in The Wire, is absolutely phenomenal as the villain Jigsaw in Punisher: War Zone. If Heath Ledger hadn’t changed the game up for comic book movie bad guys in Dark Knight, West would have been my pick as best movie villain of 2008, hands down.
* * *
A little bit of movie news: John Stevenson, director of the excellent animated film Kung Fu Panda (read my review here), is attached to adapt the comic book WE3 into a film. WE3 is a three-issue s
eries by probably my two favourite comic creators working today, writer Grant Morrison (to whom I refer as a genius without hesitation) and artist Frank Quitely. The story follows three animals, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who are the subjects of brutal government experiments aimed at creating living weapons, fusing the animals’ nervous systems with cybernetic weaponry. It’s a remarkable piece of storytelling, both incredibly violent (for a while the film was rumoured to have been “cleaned up” to be more family friendly, which couldn’t miss the point of the source material more) and utterly heartbreaking. I’m not among them but I’ve heard many people who’ve read it admit that WE3 is the only comic that has made them cry. With a talented filmmaker like Stevenson at the helm, and an apparent desire on the part of the producers to keep the material in R-rating territory, WE3 could be something pretty special. * * *
The last thing I’ve got for today is a fulfillment of my earlier promise in this space to not miss an opportunity to talk about Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen, due in theatres in March. Apple has the three minutes of footage shown at Comicon last summer, which initially set the Internet afire with buzz. Several months (and three to four trailers) later and the footage is officially online courtesy of iTunes. Check it out here, but be warned, you must have iTunes installed on your computer to watch it. Also be warned that this movie looks totally awesome.
Labels: comics, Iron Man, Movie news, Random thoughts, TV on DVD, Watchmen
¶ 11:12 AM 0 Comments
Friday, September 12, 2008
Iron Man 2 talk
The Internet is afire today with talk of Iron Man 2. Director Jon Favreau’s been doing press to promote the upcoming DVD of Iron Man (out on Sept. 30). Favs (I’ve never met him, but I’ve watched most or all of his audio commentaries, so I feel comfortable calling him that) says he was impressed with Christopher Nolan’s use of IMAX technology in The Dark Knight
, and is open to similarly doing sequences in IMAX and even in IMAX 3D.
While he’s clearly just speculating here (though I’m sure “Iron Man 2 in IMAX and 3D?” headlines are really helping a lot of movie-news sites generate traffic), I think Favreau should tread carefully when it comes to using 3D for just some sequences in the film. I’ve been quite impressed with the IMAX 3D stuff I’ve seen – Beowulf was incredible in 3D and I saw a Tom Hanks-narrated documentary about the moon landing that was pretty cool – but those were films made specifically for IMAX 3D presentation. I also saw a partially-in-3D version of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, and it was an underwhelming moviegoing experience. How it worked was, certain sequences in the movie were enhanced (seemingly at the last minute; the whole thing reeked of having been hurriedly thrown together a few weeks before release to generate some more buzz) for 3D, and when they started, a little 3D-glasses icon appeared at the bottom of the screen telling the audience to put on their glasses – which we were otherwise just holding in our laps the entire time, though I did notice a few people just left them on for most or all of the movie. The problem with this (well, one of them) is that it completely took me out of the movie. I spent the whole time glancing at the bottom of the screen every few minutes to see if I was supposed to put my glasses on. (“Now? No? Okay. Wait…now? Hang on a sec, why did I need to see him lift a big rock in 3D? This movie f***ing sucks,” etc.)
Not helping matters was the fact that the actual 3D stuff looked pretty weak, presumably because of the last-second nature of it. I’d been following the movie’s decade-long trip to the screen just like most comic geeks (though I've never really been much of a Superman fan), and not until a few weeks before it’s theatrical release did I hear anything about the filmmakers planning to do anything with IMAX technology, which, as I understand it, is quite complicated to use and very different from tradition
al film equipment. One of the main reasons the IMAX stuff worked in The Dark Knight is that Nolan decided before he started filming that he would use the actual IMAX cameras to shoot those scenes, and set them up accordingly; when regular film stock is just blown up on the giant IMAX screen, it tends to look kind of blurry, but the tradeoff is that you get to watch something like 300 on a movie screen the approximate size of a city block.
Now that I’ve gotten that digression about IMAX and Superman Returns out of my system: Iron Man 2. Favreau also apparently met recently with star Robert Downey Jr. and actor/screenwriter Justin Theroux, who co-wrote Downey’s other big hit this summer, Tropic Thunder (check out my review here), to discuss ideas for the next two movies in the planned Iron Man trilogy. And Favreau says he’s interested in making his Iron Man films work as one big, cohesive story, likening it to the Lord of the Rings movies or even a season of a serialized TV show. Between this and the talk that Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk will eventually lead to an Avengers film (which would also include classic Marvel heroes Captain America and Thor), I really couldn’t be more excited for the future of not only the Iron Man franchise, but this larger “Marvel Universe” cinematic world they seem to be building.
, and is open to similarly doing sequences in IMAX and even in IMAX 3D.While he’s clearly just speculating here (though I’m sure “Iron Man 2 in IMAX and 3D?” headlines are really helping a lot of movie-news sites generate traffic), I think Favreau should tread carefully when it comes to using 3D for just some sequences in the film. I’ve been quite impressed with the IMAX 3D stuff I’ve seen – Beowulf was incredible in 3D and I saw a Tom Hanks-narrated documentary about the moon landing that was pretty cool – but those were films made specifically for IMAX 3D presentation. I also saw a partially-in-3D version of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, and it was an underwhelming moviegoing experience. How it worked was, certain sequences in the movie were enhanced (seemingly at the last minute; the whole thing reeked of having been hurriedly thrown together a few weeks before release to generate some more buzz) for 3D, and when they started, a little 3D-glasses icon appeared at the bottom of the screen telling the audience to put on their glasses – which we were otherwise just holding in our laps the entire time, though I did notice a few people just left them on for most or all of the movie. The problem with this (well, one of them) is that it completely took me out of the movie. I spent the whole time glancing at the bottom of the screen every few minutes to see if I was supposed to put my glasses on. (“Now? No? Okay. Wait…now? Hang on a sec, why did I need to see him lift a big rock in 3D? This movie f***ing sucks,” etc.)
Not helping matters was the fact that the actual 3D stuff looked pretty weak, presumably because of the last-second nature of it. I’d been following the movie’s decade-long trip to the screen just like most comic geeks (though I've never really been much of a Superman fan), and not until a few weeks before it’s theatrical release did I hear anything about the filmmakers planning to do anything with IMAX technology, which, as I understand it, is quite complicated to use and very different from tradition
al film equipment. One of the main reasons the IMAX stuff worked in The Dark Knight is that Nolan decided before he started filming that he would use the actual IMAX cameras to shoot those scenes, and set them up accordingly; when regular film stock is just blown up on the giant IMAX screen, it tends to look kind of blurry, but the tradeoff is that you get to watch something like 300 on a movie screen the approximate size of a city block. Now that I’ve gotten that digression about IMAX and Superman Returns out of my system: Iron Man 2. Favreau also apparently met recently with star Robert Downey Jr. and actor/screenwriter Justin Theroux, who co-wrote Downey’s other big hit this summer, Tropic Thunder (check out my review here), to discuss ideas for the next two movies in the planned Iron Man trilogy. And Favreau says he’s interested in making his Iron Man films work as one big, cohesive story, likening it to the Lord of the Rings movies or even a season of a serialized TV show. Between this and the talk that Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk will eventually lead to an Avengers film (which would also include classic Marvel heroes Captain America and Thor), I really couldn’t be more excited for the future of not only the Iron Man franchise, but this larger “Marvel Universe” cinematic world they seem to be building.
Labels: Iron Man, Random thoughts, superheroes
¶ 9:13 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Random Thoughts: Hulk, Hellboy and Holmes
It occured to me recently that I posted about The Incredible Hulk a few weeks ago before I saw it and never followed up my thoughts as promised, so the two or three of you that regularly read this blog may be kind of disappointed (it was pretty good). Since then I also managed to check out Wanted, which I also really dug (it was loads better than the comic it was based on, which I hated despite the gorgeous art by J.G. Jones), and it got me thinking that, at least in terms of the blockbusters I've bothered to see, they're pretty much all good-to-great. It's the first time I can remember that I got halfway through a summer without any big disappointments (though I haven't seen Hancock yet and, box office aside, the word on that one is not encouraging) Iron Man was excellent, Hulk was solid, Wanted was far better than I was expecting it to be (thank Nightwatch and Daywatch director Timur Bekmambetov for crafting the most fun American action movie I've seen since The Rundown), and I've still got Hellboy II, The Dark Knight, Step Brothers, Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express to look forward to.
Speaking of which, Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens this Friday and I cannot wait to see it. I know The Dark Knight is the better-known property and is getting all the crazy hype and attention -- I'm expecting a top-shelf superhero movie, but this stuff I've been reading about how it's some kind of "cinematic revolution" and a "potent provocation" (what does that even mean?) seems like it's laying it on a bit thick -- but for my money Hellboy II is the one to keep an eye out for, even if it's the movie I think has the best chance of being lost in the proverbial shuffle. But Guillermo del Toro is one of the best directors working today, and I'm expecting something truly special with this movie. I should also probably mention I'm a pretty huge fan of the Hellboy comics as well as the first movie, which is a great little gem of a comic book adaptation, so that could factor in to my excitement. But anyone who was impressed by Pan's Labyrinth (that should be ALL of you, and if you haven't seen it yet you should remedy that situation immediately), even if you don't typically go in for sci-fi/fantasy/superhero stuff, should give it a chance. I think it has the pontential to be the best movie of the summer that not enough people went to see.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention an interesting press release that crossed my desk last week I wanted to mention: apparently Sacha Baron Cohen, the genius behind Borat/Ali G., will play Sherlock Holmes in a new movie opposite Will Ferrell as Dr. Watson, with Judd Apatow producing. As much as it seems like a retread of the minor classic Without A Clue, I've got enough confidence in all involved that it'll be something pretty awesome, even if the reaction to my positive review of Semi-Pro has all but confirmed that I seem to like Will Ferrell more than most. (Anyone interested in my thoughts about a comedy that totally does not work on any level should stay tuned for my Drillbit Taylor review, which I plan to have up some time next week.)
Speaking of which, Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens this Friday and I cannot wait to see it. I know The Dark Knight is the better-known property and is getting all the crazy hype and attention -- I'm expecting a top-shelf superhero movie, but this stuff I've been reading about how it's some kind of "cinematic revolution" and a "potent provocation" (what does that even mean?) seems like it's laying it on a bit thick -- but for my money Hellboy II is the one to keep an eye out for, even if it's the movie I think has the best chance of being lost in the proverbial shuffle. But Guillermo del Toro is one of the best directors working today, and I'm expecting something truly special with this movie. I should also probably mention I'm a pretty huge fan of the Hellboy comics as well as the first movie, which is a great little gem of a comic book adaptation, so that could factor in to my excitement. But anyone who was impressed by Pan's Labyrinth (that should be ALL of you, and if you haven't seen it yet you should remedy that situation immediately), even if you don't typically go in for sci-fi/fantasy/superhero stuff, should give it a chance. I think it has the pontential to be the best movie of the summer that not enough people went to see.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention an interesting press release that crossed my desk last week I wanted to mention: apparently Sacha Baron Cohen, the genius behind Borat/Ali G., will play Sherlock Holmes in a new movie opposite Will Ferrell as Dr. Watson, with Judd Apatow producing. As much as it seems like a retread of the minor classic Without A Clue, I've got enough confidence in all involved that it'll be something pretty awesome, even if the reaction to my positive review of Semi-Pro has all but confirmed that I seem to like Will Ferrell more than most. (Anyone interested in my thoughts about a comedy that totally does not work on any level should stay tuned for my Drillbit Taylor review, which I plan to have up some time next week.)
Labels: comics, Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy, Iron Man, Random thoughts
¶ 10:36 AM 0 Comments
