Archive for June, 2008

  • 21 Jun

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    Review: Mongol

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    Mongol poster

    Director: Sergei Bodrov (Running Free, Nomad)
    Writers: Sergei Bodrov, Arif Aliyev
    Producers: Sergei Bodrov, Anton Melnik, Sergei Selyanov
    Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Khulan Chuluun, Sun Honglei, Odnyam Odsuren, Pai Ying (II)
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 126 min

    One of the five nominees for best picture in the foreign language category at last year’s Oscar ceremony, Mongol was one of the films on my most anticipated list that I knew would be a long while before ever seeing (as is the case with almost all of the foreign language nominees). Trying to fuse Asian history into the Braveheart genre (yes, I just proclaimed Braveheart a genre), it succeeds fairly well at accomplishing what it wants to, but it’s not without some problems and I can praise the Academy for at least getting something right this past year by not awarding Mongol with the coveted prize. Although it is quite a fine film in its own right.

    Marketed as the rise of Genghis Khan, Mongol really doesn’t spend much time with the actual rise to power of Khan or any time with his subsequent conquests that he is famous for. Instead, we focus most of our time with Khan as a young boy and then later in his early life; of which he spent most of as a captive. In fact, not until the final 10 seconds of the movie is he even referred to as Genghis. Until that point, his name was Temudjin. Temudjin was a man of strong spirit and courage. As a young boy he chooses his wife from a neighboring clan. Unable to rejoin with her for several years, the film spends most of its time with one of them trying to rescue the other. Making friends and enemies along the way, Temudjin basically sets up his destiny piece by piece as he befriends and betrays various members of multiple clans.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Jun

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    Ten Bucks to Anyone Who Can Guess Who This Is

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    Kate Winslet

    Actually, I don’t have ten bucks or a checkbook right now anyway, so I’ll just tell you who it is… in a second.

    Stephen Daldry is a director whose name I don’t hear mentioned much and after reading about this, I have to admit that I had to look him up on the IMDb to see who he is. Well, he’s directed both Billy Elliot and The Hours. Both of which earned several Oscar nominations (12 total between the two of them) and four total wins. So it’s safe to say he’s a guy to watch for. Sadly though, he’s done nothing since The Hours, which was released six years ago. His newest film, The Reader, is a post WWII drama about a young man who has had an affair with a much older woman (pictured right) which leads headlong into a frenzied war crimes trial where he learns some awful truths.

    With a great cast including Bruno Ganz and Ralph Fiennes, this is sure to be one of those late entry movies that will make a run at the Oscars. Slated to open December 12, I’ll be there man.

    Oh yeah, the old lady in the film, is played by none other than 5-time Oscar nominee, Kate Winslet.

  • 20 Jun

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    American Psycho at Midnight

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    Since Kurt can pimp good films only playing in the Toronto area, I thought I’d mention that Mr. Christian Bale will be on screen at The Uptown tonight (Saturday the 21st) at midnight as one Patrick Bateman. FYI.


    Bale is an American Psycho

  • 20 Jun

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    Megan Fox Objectified and No One Cares

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    WomanI‘m saddened and a little shocked.

    Earlier this week, an interview came on-line of Megan Fox talking about Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen and the net went abuzz with the tidbits of information Fox had in regards to the upcoming summer 2009 tentpole production. One of the quotes that made headlines was Fox’s somewhat offhand remark of Michael Bay’s direction:

    “His main note to me is just to look hot; so I try my best.”

    The interview was picked up by a number of the large movie blogs yet none of them took any major issue with the fact that Michael Bay’s only words for Fox was to “look hot”. The only one which did make a point of even noting the fact that Bay’s comments are at all derogatory was Erik Davis at Cinematical and the most he could come up with was “Nice. What would we do without directors like Bay who really cherish the female character and what she means to the overall finished product? Bravo! Give this man an award”. Granted, at least he made the effort. Everyone else simply chose to ignore the sexist comment and decided instead to focus their attentions on the other tidbits of information about the movie itself.

    It’s one thing to not include women in movies at all or to include them as unimportant side characters whose only job is to “look hot”. Admittedly, I’m not looking for an intimate and deep character study from Transformers 2 but the very fact that Bay, a director who continues to work in Hollywood and who makes films seen by millions is telling one of his only female characters to just look good, angers me. Yet, it barely causes a splash with the majority of web writers. Are the masses so blinded by the crumbs of information about a film that they’re willing to overlook this blatant discriminatory remark? Appears so.

    Some may argue that this goes on all the time, just look at other films, magazines and even fan sites. I don’t disagree, it does go on all the time but when a news item is covered this widely with such few flags going up, it’s cause for concern and worth noting.

    For all I know, those were not Michael Bay’s exact words but rather Fox’s. Does it matter? I don’t think it does. Bottom line is that a woman has been publicly objectified and nearly no one took notice. For shame.

  • 20 Jun

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    Sam Rockwell’s Moon Gets a Poster

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    Back in February, we wrote about Sam Rockwell starring in a “sort of Cast Away in space” and now we have the first look at the poster and a brief synopsis for Moon, courtesy of Quiet Earth.

    Written and directed by Duncan Jones (better known as Zowie Bowie – son of David Bowie), the movie has Rockwell playing Sam Bell, a contractor who is assigned to be isolated on the moon to mine helium for three years by his employer, a helium mining corporation called LUNAR. He spends his days working mechanically all while reflecting on his life and longing to be with his family again as he waits for his contract to end. Two weeks before he is to depart, he begins seeing and hearing things – and then, well, the story just gets really twisted.

    Seeing as it’s from the son of David Bowie, we can bet this is going to be pretty weird. Hopefully, of course, a good weird though. But Sam Rockwell is the man with the plan and I trust his judgment (except last years’ Joshua – what a terrible movie).

    There is no distribution deal for this yet, but they’re hoping to get it into theatres on May 25th, 2009.

  • 20 Jun

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    Review: Global Metal

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    Global Metal One Sheet

    Directors: Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen (Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey)
    Producers: Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn
    MPAA Rating: NR
    Running time: 93 min

    A few years ago music’s black sheep, heavy metal, made a big splash in the film world when filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen released their documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. It’s safe to say that no one expected this little documentary to make the splashes that it did but here we are, two years later, taking in the filmmaker’s second adventure though the dark tunnels of metal. The first film traced the history of metal from its humble beginnings in the working class suburbs of the UK and the US but it was very apparent from the interviews with heavy metal greats and footage from various big events, including the Wacken Open Air, that metal was a global phenomenon.

    Global Metal Movie StillAfter receiving correspondence from metal fans in the most unlikely of places, Dunn and McFadyen decided that their look at metal wasn’t finished just yet and the pair set off to discover the metal offerings from places as varied as India, Japan and Israel. The result, Global Metal, is a unique anthropological research project that is much more interesting to study than anything I’ve seen in a textbook.

    Beginning in Brazil and making their way to such distant and exotic locales as Indonesia, Dunn and McFadyen speak to both fans and musicians who love their metal and what we find is that as suspected, metal speaks to many. The most interesting bit of information discovered thought their travels is that the sound of metal varies from country to country and culture to culture. Though many of the fans and musicians associate their beginnings with listening to the Scorpions, Deep Purple, Sepultura, Iron Maiden and a long line of notable predecessors, they have taken the sound and made it their own, infusing the music with their personal struggles, beliefs and politics. The result, is a varied landscape of sounds with a common ancestor.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 20 Jun

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    Burn After Reading…Again (International Trailer)

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    How did we miss this yesterday? It is always good to click through the names of our regular reader/commenters here. This snappy little international trailer for the Coen‘s latest courtesy of Youtube via Cinexcellence.

    Nice.

  • 20 Jun

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    Review: Young People Fucking

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    Young People Fucking is such a distinctly Canadian film that I do not even think the SCTV players, in their early 1980s prime could make a parody out of this one. They’ve perhaps got the wrong title though. I would like to nominate “An Inconvenient Fuck” mainly due to the fact that Aaron Abrams and Martin Gero‘s film plays like a filmed Power-Point presentation. This wasn’t so much directed as it was assembled from familiar fonts and clip art. That is not to say that the film is not funny, or offer an insight or three about the funk that couples find a way to get themselves into whether they are married, exes, or on a first date. I found myself laughing away and uncomfortable in certain parts and enjoyed my way through it. But in hindsight, I’m not sure if I want my films to play like a Meyer-Briggs test for what ‘Quadrant’ I fit into. There are plenty of junk chain-emails to do that already.

    The story is simple in that there isn’t a story. There are 4 couples (The Friends, The Exes, The Couple, The First Date) and a threesome (The Roommates) who over the course of a few hours get from (i.) Prelude to (vi.) Afterglow. Each couple (and a threesome) gets a single scene for each ‘stage’ of sex. Exposition and background are not that necessary because the characters are all cliches in one way or another. The production design of their apartments tells as much about them as the elements that can be gleaned by listening to them talk. The movie (according to the website) is aiming to say that each of the characters discover “that sex isn’t always simple.”

    Duh.

    I can’t think of a statement more obvious than that. Even if I try. It’s proven before you even start. Now some may say that a movie isn’t what it is about, but how it is about it. And here is where thinks get fairly quaint and politically correct, and the ending is ‘happy’ in its own way, although I don’t believe it earns it. I wish I had these peoples problems that can oh so conveniently settled over an evening of dysfunctional nookie.

    I’ll take the politics and toe-tapping outrageousness of Shortbus or the nasty cynicism of Neil LaBute‘s Your Friends and Neighbors, heck, even the rough and raw earnestness of The Butler Brothers‘ Confusions of an Unmarried Couple over the eager-beaver YPF. Yes, I get it – it is supposed to be a straight up foibles comedy aimed at adults sick of seeing stuff like American Pie pass off as a ‘sex comedy.’ But does YPF really offer anything beyond a slightly-more-advanced sit-com? 2 Days in Paris and High Fidelity – Hell, even the worst offender, Clerks. – overcome their respective sitcom moments to offer something constructive or cathartic between laughs. I am suspicious if YPF ever adds up to anything more than the filmmakers being able to write a highly competent screen play, populate it with very attractive and adequate actors, and throw out something as glossy and plastic as this. I want my sex intimate, maybe a bit dangerous and above all, as it always is: Messy. The closest the film ever comes to this is the confusion of The Exes as to where they now stand on a one night stand. Not co-incidentally this is the strongest segment of the bunch and the one with the least pat summation.

    Perhaps I expect too much from my comedies, but the great ones find a way to have things only a hairs breath from tragedy. Comedy and tragedy are Yin and Yang are they not? Isn’t that why so many comedians (Candy, Carrey, Murray, Lemmon to name a few) turn out to be great straight actors.

    The clever placement of sheets and warmly lit smooth skin indeed gives this the feeling of an office application and not a movie. A financial report that leaves out all the bad news with snappy graphs and bright animations. And in the moralizing department, I think Young People Fucking is at the the level of Dr. Phil, not Dr. Ruth.

  • 20 Jun

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    Actually Smart?

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    There are rumblings (here, here, here) out there that TV show re-envisioning Get Smart is actually good. Surely it is better than the Pink Panther reboot (which for some reason this film from start to finish always reminded me of even though I never saw that Steve Martin vehicle). But, really, is it worth $10 and two hours of my time?

    Perchance a family trip during a morning matinee – there is no sign of Kung Fu Fighting on the soundtrack and Wall*E is still a week away. Taking my impressionable kiddies out to see Young People Fucking may not be the wisest parental decision…

  • 20 Jun

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    Screen Shot Quiz #62

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    How about we make one of these a little bit challenging.

    screenshot 62

  • 20 Jun

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    Mutant Chronicles Poster

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    So about five months ago I bookmarked the official site for Mutant Chronicles (IMDb) after reading a small blurb about it over at Twitch. I’ve been popping back to the web site every couple of weeks hoping for some news. Every time I stop by, I find even more nothing updated than before.

    Why bother you might ask. Well, check out this cast: Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane (The Mist), Devon Aoki (Sin City, DOA), Sean Pertwee (Doomsday) and… ready? John Malkovich. On top of the interesting cast (though Malkovich automatically gets my money), it’s the synopsis that grabs my attention:

    In the 23rd century, Earth’s natural resources have been exhausted; but four major corporations (The Capitol, Bauhaus, Mishima and Imperial) wage war with one another to control what’s left. When an errant shell inadvertently opens a stone seal, the corporations find themselves pitted against a new enemy: “hideous necro-mutants with bone blades that grow from their arms. The necro-mutants multiply by the millions and destroy all that lies before them.”


    teaser poster
    Mutant Chronicles teaser poster

    Jane plays a marine hell-bent on leading what humans are left into a bloody battle to destroy the mutants once and for all. Sounds like a post-apocalyptic, demonic good time to me. The IMDb has this film being released in Russia(?) on December 11th, with only the year for American audiences.

    Frustrated that nothing new ever appears on the official web site, I went looking for more info at some other sites and found that a new poster was actually released yesterday! Also, I found some production stills as well – which you can find under the seats.

    The poster itself is kind of “whatever,” but nevertheless I think from what I’ve seen so far the movie looks like it will at least have a nice aesthetic – and the older, teaser poster (above) is pretty damn cool I think. How bout you? Up your alley and worth an admission ticket? Or more than likely gonna go straight to DVD? How can a Malkovich movie go straight to DVD I ask you? How?

    NEW poster – click for large version
    Mutant Chronicles cast poster

    production shots under the seats…
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 19 Jun

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    Blood Car One Sheet

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    This post seems a bit strange to me since I saw Blood Car (My Review at Film Grotto, Andrew’s Review at Movie Patron) over half a year ago at Toronto After Dark plus I also have owned the DVD since December. There is a new One Sheet for Blood Car. This is a way over the top horror comedy satire that was a near perfect midnight movie. If you haven’t seen this one yet I definitely suggest checking it out on DVD or I guess in Theatre.

    Blood Car

    Courtesy of HorrorMovies.Ca via MoviesOnline

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