Film News: Week Commencing 14/12/2009

Well well, a few little bits and pieces I came across, that I decided were worthy of a sneaky little mention.

Firstly, home for Christmas now, fantastic times, massive stress throughout the majority of the semester, so it's gonna be good to not have any work to do for a month or so. General chilling out and eating lots of food. Sorted.

Secondly, Avatar is released anytime now, so soon i'll be hitting an IMax and getting on that. Expect a review at some point.

Onto business time.

Inception
The teaser poster for Inception has been released and my-oh-my, what does it mean? Christopher Nolan's first film since directing the mega-super-blockbuster The Dark Knight raises all sorts of questions. It's been under more secrecy than Area 51 and the poster just adds to the teaser trailer released earlier this year.

Alice In Wonderland

Now here's a film that's looking oh so very interesting, directed by Tim Burton and featuring Johnny Depp in the role of the Mad Hatter, this looks set to be an amazing take on the Lewis Carroll books. Tim Burton of course is the master of weirdness, and this fits right into his train of thought. He did a decent job (some may disagree) on Charlie and The Chocolate Factor, but this looks like it might work a whole lot better, and in 3D, what can go wrong?

The official trailer was released this week and fills in all the gaps that the teaser didn't. Plus we see more of the characters instead of it just being 'The Johnny Depp Show'.

Robin Hood

The first trailer for the latest incarnation of 'Gladiator 2: The Bow and Arrow Years' Robin Hood has hit the net this week, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe have teamed up again to give the 'true' story behind the legend, and well, it has forest death-trap a la Rambo, landing on the beaches in boats a la Saving Private Ryan and then some sword-play like Gladiator. All of this set in Nottinghamshire, with a very angry Russell Crowe, it looks like it might just kick-off. Take a peek below.

Music DVDs The Answer To Piracy?

Maybe music DVDs are the answer to stopping people from downloading illegally?

It seems that artists are adding an extra disc, or some extra goodies to entice a buyer to their particular product. It may be more expensive on their part, but for completists and fans looking to get some more for their money. This could be a good solution.

Pendulum released a live CD/DVD earlier this year, which illegal music downloaders could download the CD, but downloading video too, is altogether more time-consuming for them. I've just bought myself the Prodigy's special edition CD, which follows this exact little idea. They didn't release the album all that long ago, but they've re-released it with an extra disc of remixed version from the biggest names in drum 'n' bass and dubstep. Tailoring their music to a new target audience, I would easily put myself in the second generation of Prodigy fans, following their recent soaring back to the top of the electronic music game. This matters not, what matters is that they are moving forward, picking up fans from everywhere they can. On top of the extra CD is a DVD with their latest music videos and some live videos. Milking every little piece they can to create as much content as possible for their listeners.

Some artists release an out and out DVD, a high quality release of a live show. These are quite often expensive and although top quality and amazingly mixed, the future might be these CD/DVD combinations. Muse did it after their Wembley show, Green Day did it after their Milton Keynes show and these soar straight to the top of the sales charts.

Another idea is that it splits up the time between an artists CD releases. No one wants to drop out of the spotlight. So they're bringing out album after album quickly, bringing out a live CD means that they're throwing another CD out without having to write new material. Artists like Franz Ferdinand disappear for a good couple of years before coming back, bringing out a new album, doing the tour circuit and going again. Other artists like Bloc Party have seemingly been constantly on the tour circuit and bringing out album after album the past few years. Before taking a much needed break.

I may have gone off my original point, but something to be mentioned nonetheless. Now, enough procrastinatin'. Back to work I go.

Jennifers Body Review and other unrelated nonsense.

I feel sorry for this blog these days, other things get in the way, time passes by. Yet this blog stays as a pointless place to vent nonsense, or to write reviews on. Becoming Entertainment Editor means that every couple of weeks, that's all i'm doing, staring at reviews, collecting them, sending them on, writing them. So then this blog becomes a chore rather than somewhere good to place my writings. It's not like I need to take care over this, i'm not being graded on it. However, once you've written and written, being judged, being forced, it doesn't really feel like fun anymore. So, i'm here to rediscover that.

University is back and along with that comes a few things, assignments, being busy and most importantly of all, cinema trips on the regular. This little blog might become a bit more loved soon.



So, without further ado, my thoughts on Jennifers Body.

The poster is graced with the fine features of Miss Megan Fox, who most males will agree is a perfect specimen of the female species.

Here is the film where she can finally show her true acting credentials and she doesn't disappoint. She actually has dialogue in this, other than being a piece of eye-candy amongst robots blowing seven shade of shit out of each other.

The film is written by Diablo Cody who shot into the limelight following the indie smash Juno. The dialogue is tight, snappy and actually sounds like something teenagers might say.

The whole thing is somewhat cheesy, but strangely enough it works, it's knowingly cheesy and very funny. The humour is dark and Diablo Cody milks those little one-liners for all their worth, with superb delivery from Fox and her co-star Amanda Seyfried, the goody goody best friend of Megan Fox's title character.

All in all, this film is most likely going to be pretty love-hate, if you get it, it'll be great, if not, it might just look a bit stupid.

So, boys, go and see it, it's got Megan Fox in, you probably won't need to know much else...Oh apart from there's one scene, which will make you love her even more than you already do.

Girls, well, it's written by a woman, directed by a woman, and it makes little knowing jokes at men. Bring out the feminist in you.

Now, that little blog post wasn't too hard, and if it's not very good, well, you can suck it.

:)

The 'non-film' post.

Film is where I generally feel safe, feel comfortable, I can hold my own and talk about films easily. Though it would be difficult to forge a career out of that one single direction.

Last week I went on work experience to the Teesdale Mercury, you'll see your Suns and your Times and your Guardians all lined up neatly, a new issue everyday. Once a week though, in the Teesdale area, this is the paper that matters, anything and everything that's going on in the area, birthdays, deaths. It's basically the fuel that drives the gossip in the town.

Before doing work experience on the paper, I hadn't a care for 'news' as such, at least not news in the generic sense of the word. I'd look at the news, but most of the time, it would only be to see if I could find something funny, or see what new film has been announced.

The week opened my eyes to some genuinely interesting people. I interviewed a man named Alan Fentiman, he moved himself and his family to Barnard Castle from London, he's a film maker and has been creating films for the Barnard Castle Vision. I went down to meet him and spent an hour talking about anything and everything, somewhat off topic half the time, which i'm sure i'll learn better as time goes on, but I felt thoroughly pleased to be writing a piece about this man and putting the word out about himself and his business.

Pushing away my nervousness was also something I had to do. Going along to a summer school event. Speaking to the lady running it, and then having to take a picture for the paper of roughly 60 kids all gathered together, trying to bunch them all up into the picture, in the middle of the main hall, with parents and teachers alike around. Generally i'm confident, but with people I don't know, it's entirely different.

Somehow talking to people I don't know as a job doesn't seem nearly as scary as when it's simply idle conversation to pass the time. When there's a point, it matters all the more and you have something to aim for.

Oh and things seem to be getting brighter and brighter every day.

(I realise this post doesn't have much point, but it's nearly 2 in the morning and I felt the need to vent.)

In The Summertime...

It's summer, the sun isn't shining, the grass is still green. It's Britain, what do you expect?

Again, this little blog as become unloved and uncherished, so it's about time it got a nice little addition and some love and attention.

Big Brother is the first topic on the agenda. It's been running for the entire summer, and everyone has forgotten they're even there. Essentially they are now just there as a precaution against swine flu. While everyone else in the country is being struck off, one by one. The dimwitted retards in the Big Brother compound will come out fine and well, with the eventual winner being given the task of re-populating the human race. A new human race, with every one of them coming from the same celebrity hungry gene pool. Superb.

So, in order to prevent this catastrophe, five new housemates were added. One of which has since escaped, and then another has simply walked out. Leaving Bea, the hippy, Hira, the one who no one actually knows is in the house and of course David, the gay from't Dewsbury. Awesome. So the only good reason to watch Big Brother now, is to hope and pray that Marcus flips and kills everyone.

In other news, the daytime TV of choice is Come Dine With Me, probably the most simple TV show, yet, the most effective. Jeremy Kyle can carry on doing what he's doing, but give me a sarcastic narration and some rubbish chefs any day over him.

In the world of film:

Bruno = Hilarious.
Transformers 2 = Fun.
The Hangover = Hilarious.

Bye for now.

Terminator Salvation

The 4th installment has intrigued everyone for quite a while. The first thoughts weren't good as McG was given the task of rebooting and breathing new life into this franchise, but not only that, bringing Judgement Day to our screens in the present. The future had been hinted at throughout, but now it was time to see it, to see this barren wasteland across our cinema screens.

McG of course is the man who brought Charlie's Angels kicking and screaming onto the big screen, with lots of explosions, thumping soundtrack and a lot of girl power. Not many people liked the idea of this guy being in control of one of the most popular and successful franchises around. Then something happened. He consulted James Cameron, somehow wrangled himself Christian Bale, the man of the hour, and Sam Worthington, the man of the next hour. Then the pictures and trailers hit the net, and people actually started getting excited. Maybe, McG actually had some talent somewhere.

The result isn't much of a disappointment, this isn't quite the future we've been looking for yet, but there's still time and we look to be heading in the right direction. Let's just hope that we've got everyone back on board for round 2.

The film begins pretty suddenly, there's no messing around, straight away Bale is in the shit as John Connor, and nothing really is going well. He is straight away billed as the messiah of the future, and he is a damn sight better of a messiah than Keanu was as Neo. It seems though, that Bale is forgetting how to speak in accents now, immersing himself from character to character, he sounds like Batman with his deep and gruff voice. Eventually he seems to find where he is.

The surprise of the film was Sam Worthington who plays Marcus Wright, a man who we see on death row at the beginning of the film and then he reappears 15 years later with no recollection of what's happened in those missing years. He is the star of the future, fantastic in the role and easily the most interesting character in the film.

Bryce Dallas Howard is utterly pointless, apart from showing that John Connor has a wife, she has no point whatsoever. Moon Bloodgood is pretty decent, but overall it's a boys show and bringing up the rear is Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese, generally he's OK, but he doesn't really offer much, he's too boyish to fill the role, hopefully he'll be better in a follow-up, but so far he's too much of a kid to make it look believable.

A small annoyance was the shoe-horning of catchphrases into the film. 'Come with me if you want to live' and 'i'll be back' snuck into the mix along with Guns 'N' Roses track 'You could be mine'. It offered a titter in the cinema, but was still a little bit annoying, it's unnecessary, it didn't suit the style of the film, but fair enough, they kind of have to do it.

The storyline is fine, the set-pieces are spectacular. The film starts off pretty confusing, there's no set-up and the action begins straight away, leaving no time to ease yourself in. Around the mid-point of the film, it starts to come together and the last two thirds of the film are fantastic. Once all the actions over at the end, it starts to get pretty useless.

Overall, this is a top film and probably the best of the summer so far. Enjoyable, better than the third film and looks to be the start of something good. Bring on the next installment.

8/10

Remakes, Re-imaginings and Reboots

After watching Casino Royale last night, it came to me that this could be where the trend of rebooting franchises stemmed from along with Batman Begins. These have been done well, but look over at Superman Returns which carried on from where the original Superman films started and just stuttered and fell to the ground as though struck by a hunk of kryptonite.

Studios see the love of characters, franchises and they need them to be successful, so why not just try again? Hulk was released in 2003, with OK reviews, but generally the public weren't happy with it, especially the comic book fans. 5 years later, The Incredible Hulk was released, is it a sequel? well, no not really, it doesn't make it clear though. It's more of a reboot of the franchise, replacing all of the characters and putting lots more action in.

Now, re-imaginings are something altogether more confusing! Really, it's the same as a remake, but a re-imagining is said to be where they take the original film and completely change it to their own way of thinking. Halloween would be a prime example, it would be sacrilege to do a straight remake so Rob Zombie decided to do it his own way and make his own set of films. No one quite knows the point of it, but the studios love it. Especially when it comes to horror films, hence the slew of classic horrors coming back to us (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street).

Terminator Salvation is released this week and again we have the same problem, yes it is a sequel or is it a prequel? Because of the way time has confused us, is it a prequel because John Connor hasn't told Kyle Reese to go back in time and have sex with his mum? or is it a sequel because it's after Arnie has destroyed pretty much everything in his path? Really it's neither of these things, because it's meant to have a whole new feel to the film. Instead of being a rampaging machine, we've got a Mad Max looking barren wasteland. Reboot? Sequel? Who knows?

After recently viewing the original Psycho, it shows just why so many people scream and shout everytime something is remade. It may seem boring now, but this film is where the majority of modern horror takes its style from, in some or another it leads back to it. So, what was Gus Van Sant thinking when he decided to direct an exact shot for shot remake with Vince Vaughn in the role of Norman Bates...This is the same Vince Vaughn who stars in Wedding Crashers, Four Christmases and Dodgeball. I needn't go on.

A really genius way of doing remakes now is by not even acknowledging the fact they are a remake, in the way of Disturbia and Eagle Eye, D.J. Caruso is taking Hitchcock films and bringing them into the 21st century, with impressive results. So, it can be done well and appease the general viewing public.

Really, it's all a money game for those big Hollywood producers, but at last take the time to watch the originals or their predecessors before telling your friends it's 'the best film everrr, omg, wtf, so good, loved it 4evaaa'.