There’s something Monty Python-esque about the latest news
from the camp de Lindsay Lohan, a one-time actress-turned media circus. Even as
the 25-year-old is again trying to get her career pointed in the right
direction, she makes news for appearing unconscious in a hotel room, someone
gets worried and calls 911, and paramedics show up.
Her publicist told People magazine, the actress "was examined and is fine" and that her
condition was due to her "grueling schedule" on the set of the
Lifetime movie Liz & Dick, an
Elizabeth Taylor biopic with Lohan in the starring role.
Lohan also dismissed
any concern about her health via a Tweet.
"Note to
self.." she Tweeted, "after working 85 hours in 4 days, and being up
all night shooting, be very aware that you might pass out from exhaustion &
7 paramedics MIGHT show up @ your door."
A week ago, Lohan
escaped serious injury when her Porsche smashed into the back of a dump truck
on the Pacific Coast Highway. Lohan and her assistant were unhurt. The truck
driver alleges that a member of the actress’ entourage attempted to bribe him
into not calling the police, while a Lohan publicist denied this, and said that
the actress was cooperating fully with the police investigation.
Trouble never seems to
be far away from Lohan. As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as luck; you
make your own breaks. Could the same be said of misfortune?
Meanwhile, her
promising career is suffering. Prior to the Liz
& Dick cable film, Lohan was cast in a yet-to-be-released theatrical film,
InAPPropriate Comedy, directed by the ShamWow pitchman Vince Offer. She’s also
rumored to have a lead role in novelist/screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis’
sex-fueled Los Angeles drama The Canyons,
starring adult-film star James Deen.
Her first big-screen comeback, Robert
Rodriguez’s 2010 grindhouse nod Machete,
did make money — $44 million worldwide — but that was largely based on a
reasonable production budget of $10.5 million.
So how distant does
Lohan’s Disney past — including a platinum-selling debut record Speak in 2004 — seem now? Lohan was once
the freckled angelic face of several Disney family comedy remakes.
For a refresh of her
career, check out these Lohan films — proof that once
upon a time she was more than a celebrity, she was an up-and-coming actress.
The demon-for-good Ghost Rider is back, as the Devil
plots to assume a new, more powerful form to allow him to wreak havoc on Earth.
Motorcycle daredevil Johnny Blaze and his nighttime fiery alter ego Ghost Rider
are all that can stop him. It’s an easy plot for a film that chugs along at a
high rate of speed — and doing its best not to be slowed down by plot or
character development.
Considering the collective letdown from 2007’s Ghost
Rider, the approach to the 2011 sequel from everyone — new directors Mark
Neveldine and Brian Taylor and star Nicolas Cage — is “let’s not pretend this
is anything but what you expect it to be and just have fun doing it.”
With no air of pretension hanging over this suitable for
drive-in comic-book hero film now out on DVD and Blu-ray, there’s no other way
to take anything that happens in the 90-plus minutes than with than with a
smile, a shrug, and the acknowledgement, “Hey, the special effects are much
better this time.”
Cage, as most everyone knows, owes millions in unpaid
taxes to the IRS, which means you can see him in just about anything these
days. The actor may be selling his soul to Hollywood to square himself with the
government, but at least he’s having fun doing it. And in a purely guilty
pleasure kind of way, so are we with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
20-year-old Harold is obsessed with
death — particularly his own — until he learns how to really live through a youthful
80-year-old woman named Maude. Theirs was a love story as told in 1971’s Harold and Maude, an avant-garde
flop-turned cult classic that gets the deluxe treatment via Criterion
Collection on DVD and Blu-ray.
Harold and
Maude is also the template for numerous indie comedies to come: quirky
characters, contemporary soundtrack to punctuate emotions, poignant camera
shots, taboo subject matter and/or themes. (Director Hal Ashby essentially made
a Wes Anderson film while the 43-year-old Anderson was still in diapers.)
It’s the considerable age gap between
Harold and Maude that draws creeped-out looks from those who haven’t seen the
movie, but Higgins and Ashby handle the relationship with considerable care and
warm affection; Harold and Maude
makes a strong case that age isn’t necessarily a barrier for what the heart
feels. Standout performances by Bud Cort as the sullen and withdrawn youth, and
Ruth Gordon as his firecracker love interest effectively sell the premise of
the sweet and enduring relationship.
More than an offbeat love story, Harold and Maude packs a wicked sense of
humor, poking at contemporary mores, authority figures, and even the U.S. military
with pointed observations and amusing insults. It’s also a deceptively simple
story, refreshingly unencumbered by goofy side plots or oddball characters on
screen for strangeness sake.
Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) provides
the memorable soundtrack, led by “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” and “Don’t
Be Shy.” Unfortunately, Harold and Maude
soundtrack is not available for purchase — though it can be pieced together
through various CD releases. Criterion does include a recent interview with
Yusuf about recording the music for the film.
Among other interesting tidbits:
Ashby, pleased with the music as it was, used demo versions of the songs rather
than waiting for Yusuf to re-record them. Harold
and Maude pointed to a brilliant career for Ashby, who followed up the
black comedy with 1970s classics The LastDetail, Shampoo, Coming Home, and Being There, before a vicious drug habit made him persona non grata
in Hollywood by the mid-1980s.
Ashby died in 1988 at the age of 59
from pancreatic cancer that had spread throughout his body. But
Harold and Maude remains a testament
of his talent, the times, and true love.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the
escape from Alcatraz, the supposedly escape-proof federal prison. In fact, there
were 14 escape attempts by 36 prisoners in the nearly 40 years of Alcatraz’s
operation as a prison to house the most difficult inmates. But it’s the mystery
surrounding the dramatic June 11, 1962, escape by inmates Frank Morris, and
brothers John and Clarence Anglin that’s captured the most attention.
The trio, along with another inmate, Allen West, who was
left behind, planned a daring escape that seemed like something out of a movie:
they used spoons to help carve out aging concrete around an air vent, shuffled
quietly through a small corridor, and ultimately escaped detection from
spotlights and guards on patrol when outside the prison. (A movie was made,
1979’s Escape From Alcatraz starring
Clint Eastwood.)
Did the three prisoners survive the chilly and treacherous bay
currents around Alcatraz Island to make it to shore? Some believe they did, and
either swam or floated on a raft to safety and freedom on the shore. Others
think they drowned in the bay during the final stages of their escape. The
bodies of Morris and the Anglin brothers were never found or recovered.
John Carter is now out
on Blu-ray and DVD. The film is best known for
being perhaps the year’s biggest flop, an
honor more dubious perhaps than merited.
I didn’t care for the film on the big screen. But movies in
theaters are bigger than life, which tends to magnify any flaws (like putting a
magnifying glass over someone’s face).
On the new Disney Blu-ray release, though, John Carter wasn’t half-bad. Which is a
polite way of saying it was only half good.
The trouble with John
Carter has a lot to do with redundancy. The film is based on a series of
pulp novels from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ written roughly a century ago. The story
concerns a Civil War vet named John Carter who finds himself teleported to the
dying surface of Mars, where he helps lead the resistance against a war-minded nation.
The book series was popular among the science-fiction crowd,
which means a lot of current directors read them growing up and were, in turn,
influenced by them. Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, who ultimately directed John Carter, being one of them. These
filmmakers also copied from Burroughs’ work – or, at least, borrowed liberally.
That’s a point of praise for Burroughs. It’s also a serious flaw in the John Carter film. We’ve seen so much of
its imaginative settings and sequences before in the Star Wars movies, Stargate,
Avatar, to name a few, that John Carter feels stale and old – even
though the movie was released only in late March. There’s very little wow
factor at play in the two-hour-plus film, which is not what you expect of a movie
budgeted at $250 million.
Perhaps that’s why it grossed less than $75 million of
that domestically. If you account for worldwide revenue, John Carter at least did respectably with nearly $210 million –
which would push the film past the break-even point, in theory.
The film is also hindered by the rather unimpressive
feature-film debut of Taylor Kitsch. Nice kid, good actor in small doses and
certainly on the small screen on Friday Night Lights, which is what he’s known
for. But as the centerpiece to a big-budget effects and action-driven film, he
lacks the requisite charisma. Kitsch is like a pretty vase placed on a football
field: he is swallowed up by the surroundings.
Lynn Collins, who plays his love interest Dejah Thoris, the
princess of Mars, isn’t much better. Lovely actress, but she cannot carry the
role.
And these problems are amplified on the big screen. In the
comfort of a living room, though, these flaws seem less significant; it’s easy
to dismiss the criticism of John Carter
as overblown and another instance of a film snobbery pile-on. And that’s not incorrect.
We critics can harp on a film. And when there’s blood in the water (meaning a
film is dying at the box office), we become even more vicious.
While I believe the collective dismissal of the film was
correct for the theatrical release of John
Carter, on Blu-ray/DVD the new format and smaller screen merits a do-over.
John Carter isn’t
a great film. But it’s not a bad either. And certainly not worthy of the
“box-office bomb to end all bombs” tag it’s been saddled with. It is worth checking out, if only to see what
all the criticism and bad press was about. And then decide if it’s true.
The other day I watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters for the third time. Director Seth
Gordon struck documentary gold with this 2007 tale of perennial second-place
finisher Steve Wiebe who sets out to be the best Donkey Kong player in the world.
Standing in his way is Billy Mitchell, the current world record holder for
highest Donkey Kong score, who will go to great lengths to keep his title.
Theirs is a classic gaming battle for the ages, one that’s
had several twists since the film was made. (But wait until AFTER you watch the
movie before you Google an update.)
More than a blast from the past for those who frequented
arcades in the early 1980s, The King of
Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is replete with unexpected drama, humor, and
emotions, along with subtle commentary about the human condition and what it
means to be the best. It’s also the kind of compelling underdog story that’s
often reserved only for sports movies. Think of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters as The Hustler meets Hoosiers,
and you’ll only begin to appreciate it.
Filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to his roots with Prometheus, a pseudo prequel to the director’s
classic 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien.
Scott isn’t finished mining his past for new films, with an announced sequel to
his 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, tentatively
scheduled for a 2014 release.
“Sometimes if you lose, you win.” — Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in The Color of Money.
In celebration of its 25th anniversary, The Color of Money makes its debut on Blu-ray. It’s a barebones release: movie only and no extra features. But what really matters is what’s on screen. Paul Newman earned his only Oscar as he revisits the role of pool shark Fast Eddie Felson from 1961’s The Hustler. Now a successful liquor salesman, Felson’s been away from pool for decades — until he sees a brash young pool shark named Vince (Tom Cruise).
“You remind me that money won is twice as sweet as money earned,” Felson tells Vince.
Intoxicated by the familiar smell of smoky pool halls and driven by the chance at redemption, Felson takes Vince and his girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) under his tutelage with the goal of making it to Atlantic City for a major nine-ball tournament. But Vince proves stubborn as his protégé and Felson discovers that old passions never fade away.
Martin Scorsese directed The Color of Money, and his fingerprints are all over the film: the effective use of rock and roll to punctuate the energy and emotion of a scene; the dazzling and creative camera shots; the crackling dialogue (written by Richard Price and based on Walter Tevis’ novel). Cruise’s smooth charisma and toothy smile have never been put to better use, with the possible exception of Risky Business, and Mastrantonio is funny and sexy as a former waitress who’s latched onto a good thing and will do anything to keep it.
It’s Newman, though, who drives the film as the aging Felson, who long ago gave up the regrets of past troubles, but never his passion for pool. It’s a wonderful performance that, in hindsight, seems the summation of many years of work, even though Newman actively worked in movies for another 15 years.
The Color of Money is hardly a classic, but it is a worthy follow-up to The Hustler, and an entertaining and emotionally story on its own. Above all, it’s the satisfying redemption of a man who lost his most precious gift and finds a way to get it back.
The fitness DVD industry has made tremendous strides in
spite of the recession. According to research conducted by IBIS World, the
popular trend of joining the gym to stay fit is shifting to a more convenient
alternative.
Consumers are choosing to conduct their workout regimens
from the comfort of their own home. Instead of running to nearby fitness
facilities, avid exercisers are frantically purchasing workout videos hosted by
professional gyms and their expert instructors.
Based on data collected by IBIS World, fitness DVD
production revenue increased significantly in 2012, climbing to nearly $265
million. These high-intensity programs feature extreme-interval training
sessions, appealing to fitness fanatics across the nation.
Commonly used by motivated gym members to expand on
traditional exercise techniques, fitness DVDs have turned routine regimens into
unique, interesting experiences. By replacing models or actresses as video
hosts with professional fitness gurus, more consumers are starting to take programs
seriously and abide by their advice.
In addition to appearing in numerous households nationwide, workout
videos are frequently used by famous celebrities. Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez are known to use fitness DVDs when starting up their vigorous exercise
programs.
To browse our full collection of workout videos, visit our
website and search “fitness.”
Which workout videos, if any, would you be willing to
follow?
It’s a man’s world when it comes to reigning American Idol
winners. Last Wednesday, Georgia native, Phillip Phillips was crowned the 11th
American Idol. Phillip took the title, leaving the young and talented diva to
be Jessica Sanchez with the runner-up spot, which in American Idol history is
not a bad placement either.
Many fans believed that Phillip’s debut song, Home, was what
earned him the title, along with his handsome grin and guitar. The American
Idol finale was filled with surprise performances from Neil Diamond, John Fogerty, Rihanna, Jordin Sparks, Reba McEntire, Jennifer Lopez, and Aerosmith.
The top 12 contestants also returned to the Idol stage before launching their
summer tour! Nothing like a little practice to 30 million viewers who tuned in
to watch the finale.
Ryan Seacrest reported that a record-breaking 165 Million
votes came in for Phillip and Jessica via text, twitter, and phone.
NYDailyNews.com is reporting that over a
million Facebook comments and tweets were posted (the most in American Idol
history), proving that our social media age is growing at a rapid pace.
Personally, I loved Phillip’s song Home. In fact, I didn’t
know that it was written for him and I kept trying to find whose song he was
performing. We have followed these contestants since January. They deserve the
best and hopefully the fans that followed them all this time will stick with
them during their blooming music career. Universal Music is saying that Phillip Phillip’s debut album
will be released in July.
Midwest Tape is in on the hunt for all new Idol
musicians to make sure your library patrons have the most recent and new music
from the best American Idol has to offer! Who knows what will happen to the
fate of American Idol. With the rumors of Jennifer Lopez leaving, to all the
new singing competition shows out there, one thing is for sure: there is a ton
of talent needed to be heard!
Thanks for reading this season, and again a big
Congratulations to Mr. Phillip Phillips! We are looking forward to hearing your
music.
What are your thoughts on this season's competition?
Lethal Weapon was
released in 1987, and its genre template has been emulated so many times –
including by three more Lethal Weapon
movies – that novel quickly turned cliché:
A cop on the edge; his veteran cop buddy, who wants to play
it safe until retirement; their snarling police captain, frequently given to
outbursts over their unorthodox methods; and lots of explosions, car chases,
and violence.
The original Lethal
Weapon may not have invented these fixtures of the R-rated buddy-cop
action-drama, but it successfully blended them in such a way that the result
felt original and even organic..
A quarter-century after its release, Warner Bros. thought it
an appropriate time to celebrate the Lethal
Weapon franchise with a five-disc Blu-ray set, including all four movies
and lots of extras that was just released.
The key to the first Lethal
Weapon’s success is a fresh script by a new UCLA graduate named Shane
Black, who wanted to explore a Western gunslinger mythos as a cop drama in Los
Angeles, and textbook action-film direction by Richard Donner (The Omen, Superman, The Goonies).
But their efforts – considerable as they are -- would have
been in vain without the film’s two leads. For all the off-the-set publicity
Mel Gibson has received the last few years from his erratic behavior, Lethal Weapon is a welcomed reminder
that, once upon a time, he was a triple threat in Hollywood: handsome, smart,
and talented. Danny Glover, who was a decade younger than his 50-year-old “I’m
too old for this … ” cop , was the steady presence in the film we identified
with.
Their buddy-buddy relationship wasn’t necessarily acting,
either. Gibson and Glover apparently developed a near-instant rapport before
shooting – enough to convince studio execs to quickly greenlight the film.
The pair still appears friendly in a series of interviews
together, along with Donner, who directed all four movies, filmed in March,
2010. The trio could probably make a fifth Lethal Weapon, though it looks like
the long-discussed project – if it happens at all – will feature a new cast.
Lethal Weapon was
a big hit, and for its 1989 sequel, Donner took the more is better approach,
with a bigger budget, more explosions and violence, and a scene-stealing new
character named Leo Getz – a drug cartel
accountant-turned government witness – to change the buddy dynamic of
Riggs(Gibson) and Murtaugh (Glover). Joe
Pesci plays Leo, in a comically inspired performance that delivered perhaps the
most memorable(and true to life) scene in the franchise: the fast-food rant.
If audiences loved the additions to the second film -- – or
so Donner and company reasoned -- they’ll LOVE Getz again in the third film,
along with the addition of Rene Russo as tough cop Lorna Cole and a love
interest of Riggs who doesn’t die. The fourth film added Chris Rock as another
cop, and martial arts maestro Jet Li as a deadly assassin working for a Chinese
crime lord. And yes, Pesci was back as well.
As the films turned sillier, Riggs became less of a “lethal
weapon” – a suicidal cop who was broken by the death of his wife and haunted by
memories of secret forces activities in Vietnam – and the original film’s edge
was dulled to a plastic knife. At least Riggs’ friendship with Murtaugh wisely
remained the center point of the Lethal Weapon movies.
The Lethal Weapon
franchise is a case of diminishing return, but the first film and even its
first sequel are good enough to carry this set on their own.
The Lethal Weapon
Collection Blu-ray set features all four movies, and a fifth disc featuring
new retrospective feaurettes. The interviews are good for a shot of nostalgia,
but Donner’s commentary through the four films is worth the time; of particular
interest is the director’s reminder that his movies were made in the pre-CGI
revolution, and many of the stunts employ some old school Hollywood techniques
that, frankly, hold up better than most of the CG action sequences today.
Alec Guinness’ towering performance
cast such a large shadow over the fictional character of George Smiley in the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy mini-series,
that Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy
novelist John le Carré could hear Guinness speaking as the character in his
head while he was writing a sequel to the book. It’s one of the major reasons
le Carré quit writing the novels.
The British writer offers these
confessions in a half-hour interview included as part of the new Blu-ray
release of the 1979 BBC production. There’s also a new half-hour interview with
the series’ director, John Irvin. While those features are nice ‑‑ though
rather sparse compared to some Blu-ray sets ‑‑ it’s the main attraction that
makes this two-disc package worthwhile.
If you were in a crowded room and
suddenly felt compelled to yell, “Tinker Tailor Solider Spy is the greatest spy
show ever made!” as a quote from NPR’s Fresh
Air declares on the cover of this Blu-ray case, there would be little to no
disagreement. Brilliant, tense, full of twists, and filled top-to-bottom with damn
fine acting, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
is the spy movie by which all films in the genre are — or at least, should be —
judged.
It’s everything today’s spy films aren’t:
high IQ, patiently paced, and with almost all the action on screen occurring in
the head of its lead character, Smiley. A former master spy with the British
Secret Intelligence Service (known to those in the organization as the
“Circus”), Smiley was forced into retirement with an organizational regime
change. But with the discovery that there’s a high-level double agent in the
Circus, Smiley is the only one smart enough, determined enough, steely enough,
and trustworthy enough to unearth the Soviet mole.
Guinness is perfection personified
in the role; like le Carré, it’s impossible not to think of the actor as
Smiley, though Gary Oldman’s Oscar-nominated performance in last year’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy comes close to
breaking that association. But there’s weary wisdom in the eyes of the older
Guinness, who was 65 when Tinker Tailor
Soldier Spy was released, that age make-up cannot replicate for the younger
Oldman, who was 53 when the film was released. Life experience is what the
character of Smiley is about; he’s an older, wiser, thinking man’s Bond or
Jason Bourne, scarred by past failures and regrets, including living with the
reminder of his adulterous wife. (To a fellow agent, no less.) But he is almost
without peer in the world of espionage, save his Soviet counterpart Karla
(played by a younger, balding Patrick Stewart).
Guinness’ Smiley is such a rich,
developed character, that it’s difficult to let him go after the six hour-long
episodes. Fortunately, he returned in the acclaimed 1982 mini-series Smiley’s People.
For those who felt the pacing of the
two-hour Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
movie was too slow, then don’t bother with this series, which offers half-hour Lost-like flashbacks to flesh out
characters and a windy plot that begs repeat viewings to fully grasp. But
anyone looking for a mentally engaging and witty spy thriller should find this
worthy of his or her time.
Never judge a book by its cover. But can you
judge a film by its trailer? See for yourself. Here are the latest trailers for
the big summer releases, beginning with today’s opening of The Dictator.
The Hulk
along with the other Avengers smashed the movie competition last weekend with a
record-breaking $207-million opening. (To put that figure in perspective,
consider that the previous No. 1 opening belonged to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, with nearly $170
million.) The Avengers is a superhero mash-up featuring some of Marvel Comics’
top names — Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Hulk —
who join forces to save Earth from an evil god and his alien invasion force. But
The Avengers is only the latest-greatest superhero film, with dozens of titles
featuring the heroes battling villains solo and in teams.
Summer officially kicks off June 20. But unofficially it
begins today with The Avengers. The highly anticipated Marvel superheroes
extravaganza launches the summer film season, a four-month lineup of original
blockbusters and must-see sequels. Here are 10 highlights.
Today:
The Avengers. Comic-book geek Josh Whedon made the mother
of all superhero films, featuring an all-star cast of do-gooders — Iron Man,
Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow — who
unite to stop an evil god and an invading army of aliens. Starring Chris
Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans,
Mark Ruffalo, and Tom Hiddleston.
May 11:
Dark Shadows. Tim Burton’s comic take on the 1960s cult
TV soap opera features Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins, who is
freed from two centuries of entombment to face the witch who imprisoned him as
well as the even more frightening early 1970s. Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer,
Eva Green, Jonny Lee Miller, and Chloë Grace Moretz.
June 1:
Snow White and the Huntsman. Charlize Theron camps it up
in a deliciously evil performance as the witchy queen obsessed with being the
fairest of them all, with Kristen Stewart’s beautiful Snow White as the one who
stands in her way. Also starring Chris Hemsworth.
June 13:
Prometheus. Ridley Scott revisits the Alien franchise, as
a group of outer-space explorers discovers a clue to the origins of humanity
... and then must battle to save it. Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender,
Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green, and Idris Elba.
June 22:
Brave. Pixar looks to regain its magic touch after last
summer’s disappointing Cars 2, with the story of Merida, the impetuous daughter
of a Scottish king and queen, who defies tradition and must undo a terrible
curse. Featuring the voices of Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly,
Julie Walters, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, and, of course,
John Ratzenberger.
July 3:
The Amazing Spider-Man. Only a decade since the first
Spider-Man movie, the Web crawler is back in another story of how Peter Parker
acquired his amazing powers and what he decides to do with them. Andrew
Garfield is the new Spider-Man and Rhys Ifans is his new nemesis, the Lizard.
Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, and Sally
Field.
July 6:
Savages. Based on the New York Times best-selling crime
novel by Don Winslow, Savages is the story of a trio of friends and marijuana
growers who wage war against the Mexican drug cartel. Oliver Stone’s violent
drug drama looks like Natural Born Killers-meets-Scarface. Starring Aaron
Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta, Salma
Hayek, and Emile Hirsch.
July 13:
Ted. Directed by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, the
R-rated Ted is the amusing tale of a grown man who must deal with a rude and
crude teddy bear come to life as a result of a childhood wish. Starring Mark
Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, with the voice of MacFarlane.
July 20:
The Dark Knight Rises. Christopher Nolan completes his
Batman trilogy with the masked vigilante (Christian Bale) facing off against
the only comic-book villain who ever "broke the bat," Bane (Tom
Hardy). Figuring into the plot is Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Anne Hathaway). Also
starring Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
and Morgan Freeman.
Aug. 3:
The Bourne Legacy. Jeremy Renner takes over for Matt
Damon as another super agent, Aaron Cross, who goes rogue. The Bourne Legacy
was co-written and directed by Tony Gilroy (Duplicity), who wrote the
screenplays for the original trilogy based on the Robert Ludlum novels. Also
starring Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Albert Finney, Joan Allen, Scott Glenn,
and Stacy Keach.
Denzel
Washington won an Oscar for his role as a crooked cop in Training Day.
Woody Harrelson didn’t even receive a nomination for his equally memorable turn
as a bad cop gone even worse in last year’s Rampart.
The
little-seen drama with a big-name cast — Sigourney Weaver, Cynthia Nixon,
Ice Cube, Anne Heche, Ben Foster, Robin Wright, Steve Buscemi, and Ned Beatty —
had film-transfer issues with the screening DVDs sent to voters, which the
actor in turn blamed for the lack of votes.
Those
with bad screeners and those who missed the film entirely have another
opportunity to see what they missed as Rampart debuts on DVD and Blu-ray
this week.
The
dark drama is set in Los Angeles in 1999, with Harrelson as veteran police
officer Dave Brown, a rogue cop who bends the rules as necessary for his
survival and that of his family. Brown has two exes, both of whom are sisters,
and two daughters. It’s a dysfunctional group, with Brown keeping tight reins.
He sees his controlling nature as loving; his family views it as tyranny.
It’s
when Brown is caught on camera chasing down an African-American suspect and
beating the man nearly to death that his world begins to crumble, as outside
forces seek to ruin him, making the renegade cop desperate and even more
dangerous.
Rampart was co-written and directed
Oren Moverman, who also co-wrote and directed 2009’s The Messenger, for
which Harrelson was nominated. The story of a renegade authority figure is
hardly fresh, but Harrelson breathes life into the bad cop cliché. His
commanding performance — his darkest role since playing a sociopath on a
murderous spree in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers — punctuates the
film.
Brown
is not as drug-fueled and over-the-top zany as Nicholas Cage’s rogue cop in
2009’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans. And, no,
Harrelson didn’t win an Oscar. But it is a memorable and unexpected role from
an actor once best known for playing a dimwitted but lovable bartender on a TV
sitcom.
The new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises was released
Monday. The film's director-cowriter Christopher Nolan is serious about besting
The Dark Knight and, by the looks of this footage, he may have pulled it off.
The trailer reveals loads of intense action, drama, cool gadgets, and a
bloodied, beaten and unmasked Bruce Wayne asking his hulking captor Bane,
"Why don't you just kill me?" "Your punishment must be more
severe," comes the chilling reply. July 20 can't get here quickly enough.
For those that can't wait like me, check out this amazing trailer.
What do you think? Are you excited to see it too? Let us know.
The Avengers kicks off this summer's film season and
is one of three hotly anticipated superhero films releasing in the next
three months along with The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing
Spider-Man. But it’s not all skin-tight suits and masks to be a good superhero
film—for every Dark Knight there’s a Batman and Robin. Here are some of the best from the genre:
Superman (1979): At the time of its 1978 release
this was the biggest superhero movie of all time. The film with the slogan “You
will believe a man can fly” was also the first superhero movie that got it
right. Richard Donner’s film strikes the perfect balance between reverence for
the Man of Steel and lighthearted fun, and newcomer Christopher Reeve embodied
the look and spirit of Superman as none before or since. But Superman
isn’t just Reeve’s movie; a marvelously hammy turn—some might say a bit too
campy—by Gene Hackman as Superman’s arch nemesis Lex Luther, and scene
stealer Ned Beatty as Luthor’s dimwitted assistant Otis are just a few of the
“other” highlight performances. Superman 2, while it doesn’t soar quite
as high as the original, remains a worthy sequel as well.
The Dark Knight (2008): Batman has at three
separate moments redefined the superhero film. In the 1960s on TV and with a
feature film, Adam West introduced Batman as celeb-happy campy fun for
kids and adults. That cartoony image and “bat-tastic” lingo stuck around for
years—until Frank Miller’s groundbreaking graphic novel The Dark Knight
Returns in 1986 redefined the hero as a grim force of violence and
vengeance.
Batman as a sociopathic hero inspired the look and feel of Tim
Burton’s Batman from 1989. Burton amped up the dark and brooding and
pondered what would compel a billionaire playboy to hide behind a black mask
and cape and fight crime. Then Christopher Nolan made the darkest superhero
film yet, The Dark Knight, including an iconic, Oscar-winning
performance by Heath Ledger as the immoral and catalyst-for-chaos Joker. Can
Nolan possibly top his 2008 classic? We have only until late July to find out.
X-Men (2000) and X-2 (2003): Filmmaker
Bryan Singer’s two X-Men movies, like the comics about the mutant heroes
that spawned them, are all allegory. But the films combine said allegory with
impressive effects, clever stories, and fine acting by most of the cast—James
Marsden as Cyclops never really fits the role—that make the first two X-Men
movies so entertaining.
Just as superhero movies were devolving into campy treatments
again, Singer resurrected the idea of real-world superheroes by treating their
comic-book world seriously on film. If Superman made you believe a man could
fly, the first two X-Men movies made you believe that mutants with
incredible powers walked among us. Unfortunately for the series, Singer left
before completing his trilogy and director Brett Ratner took over in 2006 with
his mutant version of the movies, X-Men: The Last Stand. The 2011 X-Men
prequel, X-Men: First Class, however, got the series on track again,
with Singer back on board as producer.
The Incredibles (2004): Brad Bird didn’t have much
box-office luck with his debut animation film in 1999, the painfully overlooked
The Iron Giant. So he joined the Pixar brain trust and with his first
feature at the animation studio made a film about a nuclear family of four
superheroes burdened with some of life’s most mundane problems: having a job
you hate, being invisible to others, the stresses of raising a family. In place
of too many wink-nod moments to the audience, there was considerable heart and
fun, along with some splendid animation and battle sequences. The
Incredibles is the Fantastic Four movie everyone wishes had been made—including Marvel.
Unbreakable(2000): At the time of Unbreakable’s
release, its director M. Night Shyamalan was at the peak of his career with the
unexpected 1999 blockbuster The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable
showcased a more mature filmmaker who delivered a tense thriller full of
surprises, including his signature twist ending. The film explores the origins
of an ordinary man played by Bruce Willis who discovers he has unique powers.
Samuel L. Jackson has a blast as the would-be hero’s mysterious purple-clad
adviser. It’s a shame there was no sequel, though given Shyamalan’s track
record lately with The Lady in the Water, The Happening, and TheLast Airbender, maybe that’s for the best.
Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2004):
Technology and Sam Raimi made the Spider-Man movies something special.
Special effects created a convincing Web crawler-slinger, and the filmmaker
delivered movies that were more than summer-event releases as he deftly weaved
drama and character arcs throughout the action-packed spectacle. Unlike many
superhero films, the antagonists never get in the way of the protagonist, but
only add to his story of triumph over adversity in super villain form. A sturdy
cast that buys into the make-believe world also helped audiences buy into the
movie. Unfortunately, everyone stuck around for one film too many with
2007’s Spider-Man 3, an excessive, more-is-worse anticlimax to the first
two films that’s in a rush to get to the ending.
Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2 (2010): Has
there ever been an actor born to play a superhero more than Robert Downey, Jr.,
as Tony Stark/Iron Man? The smart, witty actor brings those same traits to the
role, delivering an acerbic, bright, and petulant billionaire playboy found of
booze, women, and wearing a one-of-a-kind armor suit tricked out with rockets,
lasers, and enough gadgets to make Batman jealous. The films’ Achilles’ heel is
its villains: neither Jeff Bridges in the original nor Mickey Rourke in the
sequel were particularly memorable opponents for the man of iron. But Downey is
having such a blast in the role—and is such a blast to watch—none of it
really matters. Look for Downey as Iron Man in the upcoming The Avengers.
What do you think? What's the best superhero flick?
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