Archive for July, 2010

  • 06 Jul

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    Cronenberg’s A DANGEROUS METHOD

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    We are unabashed David Cronenberg fans in these parts. It partially explains why there is so much love around these parts for films like Splice. It is true that the auteur director has been moving beyond his body-horror salad-days for more subdued takes on his mind/flesh themes, and we love that too, particularly because he has adopted Viggo Mortensen to star in his films. And Mortensen is getting a chance to play Sigmund Freud alongside the wonderful Michael Fassbender who will play Carl Jung in his latest film, A Dangerous Method (I prefer the less generic sounding original title, “The Talking Cure” but this one might get more butts in seats along with its dreamy casting) which is based on a play by Christopher Hampton.

    The film will also star Vincent Cassel and Keira Knightley and it cannot come out too soon. Cronenberg does dueling psychologists. I have The Prestige level expectations!

    The Playlist has more details, as well as some potential future Cronenberg projects and were the source of the wonderful comparison image of the actors to the real-life counterparts.

  • 06 Jul

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    Some Thoughts on A-Team and Knight and Day

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    I had the pleasure of watching Knight and Day and the A-Team back to back a couple of days ago. Over the past year I have not been too vocal about my growing dissatisfaction with summer blockbusters and I will admit that I’ve gone to more than a few out of obligation more than anything. For me the big summer blockbusters have been feeling like junk food. You eat it cause it is constantly thrown in you face and you are told that there is no way you can’t love it. This summer though, I have pretty much not gone out to any of the big dumb special effects action riddled movies. Two days ago during my Toronto wanderings (I’m hanging out with the movie bloggers and watching movies while waiting for Fantasia to start in Montreal later in the week) I found myself with an afternoon to kill. I was in the mood to just cool off and not think while watching a movie so I ended buying a ticket to Knight and Day. I had hear Matt talk about liking it on the Cinecast so I figured what the hell and I was pleasantly surprised. I won’t say the story was the most complex thought provoking piece that I watched but it did manage to tell a surprising well thought out tale. While, I was sure that Cruise’s character had to be the good guy I was still unsure more than a few times and I’m not going to say whether he does end up being the good guy or not. I also found myself wondering at a couple of points as to whether Diaz’s character knew more than she was letting on. Both actors perform their roles well and I found myself caring for their safety and whether or not they would actually end up together in the end.

    The biggest fault I can find in Knight and Day is its reliance on using CGI in some of the action scenes. I am all for CGI when it is used well but I am completely against movies that use it during action scenes to have someone do something that they are afraid to actually film. One of the reasons why movies like Bullitt and The French Connection are loved is that when the actor (or stuntman) gets behind the wheel they are actually driving. For me seeing a motorcycle sneak between two CGI vehicles just makes me feel like I am being robbed of a real action scene. This brings me to A-Team.

    A-Team is bigger and more outrageous than Knight and Day, although not by an extreme amount. Having a CGI tank firing at airplane drones while parachuting from an exploding airplane really didn’t bother me as it was complete silliness by that point. Unfortunately I did not feel the same way when it got to the final showdown with train cars falling off an exploding ship. I’m sure it would have costed billions of dollars to actually film this but it did feel like something I would have wanted to see done with practical effects. This final set piece really felt like a let down and has turned me a bit against the movie somewhat which is a bit of a shame because it actually is a pretty good action flick.

    The story never felt as strong as Knight and Day‘s but it made up for it with a lot of fun humour. During each of the action scenes it is a joy to watch the reactions of B.A, Hannibal, Face and Murdoch and even the guys they are fighting with. There is a scene near the beginning with a helicopter chase where the bad guys are laughing and smiling at what the A-Team just did. The laughs and smiles of the A-Team while they are flying the tank really is infectious. The characters know that what they are doing is beyond belief and instead of trying to play it seriously they are laughing and enjoying themselves right along with the audience.

    I am not going to say that either Knight and Day or A-Team are masterpieces but they are both fun and entertaining. You should notice that, I am not adding the qualifier of for a summer blockbuster. Knight and Day is the stronger movie for me but both movies kept me entertained and smiling the entire time. My only wish is that they would have relied a bit less on CGI for both movies when it came to the action scenes that could have been filmed using practical special effects.

  • 06 Jul

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    Mamo #171: Twilight of the M. Night

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    Shyamalan fever has come roaring back, as audiences and critics alike are enthralled and delighted by his latest… Oh wait, it’s not 1999. In 2010, The Last Airbender is also looking like the last go-round for America’s master of the disappointing twist. He’s getting his cultural ass kicked by a bunch of sparkly vampires! Some say this child of Pondicherry, India thinks white people are better than Asians when it comes to delivering the kung fu grip. He’s downtrodden and beleaguered, and what better time for the Matts to jump in and make it all that much worse.

    Standard Podcast [ 34:16 | 19.64 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup
  • 05 Jul

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    Film on TV: July 5-11

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    Little Children.jpg
    Little Children, playing on Sunday on Sundance

    As I started doing last week, I’ve included a number of films this week that I haven’t personally seen, but that I thought were worth highlighting. If anyone wants to speak up for them in the comments or send me a blurb about them to include in future columns, please feel free. Among those are This is England, Get Shorty, Wendy & Lucy, Fort Apache, American Psycho, and Cool Hand Luke. Other newly featured stuff to look out for: Marie Antoinette, which solidified Sofia Coppola among my favorite directors, hidden gem of a B-movie film noir The Narrow Margin, incredible modern melodrama Little Children, and D.W. Griffith silent epic Orphans of the Storm.

    Monday, July 5

    9:00pm – IFC – Barton Fink
    One of the Coen Brothers’ most brilliant dark comedies (heh, I think I say that about all of their dark comedies, though), Barton Fink follows its title character, a New York playwright whose hit play brings him to the attention of Hollywood, where he goes to work for the movies. And it all goes downhill from there. Surreal, quirky, and offbeat, even among the Coens work. It’s based loosely on the experiences of Clifford Odets, whose heightened poetic style of writing has clearly been influential on the Coens throughout their career.
    1991 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, Tony Shalhoub.

    10:00pm – TCM – To Kill a Mockingbird
    Widely regarded as one of the best adaptations of a great novel ever, To Kill a Mockingbird captures the themes and mood of the novel perfectly, following the racial and social tensions of a murder trial in the South.
    1962 USA. Director: Robert Mulligan. Starring: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Robert Duvall.
    Must See

    Tuesday, July 6

    7:00am – Sundance – This is England
    One I’ve been meaning to see but haven’t gotten to yet, about a young English boy being drawn into a group of skinheads in the early 1980s. Has anyone here seen it? Recommend it?
    2006 UK. Director: Shane Meadows. Starring: Thomas Turgoose, Jo Hartley, Stephen Graham, Andrew Shim.
    Newly Featured!
    (repeats at 12:45pm, and at 6:20am and 1:15pm on the 10th)

    11:30am – IFC – Before Sunrise
    Before Sunrise may be little more than an extended conversation between two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe and decide to spend all night talking and walking the streets of Vienna, I fell in love with it at first sight. Linklater has a way of making movies where nothing happens seem vibrant and fascinating, and call me a romantic if you wish, but this is my favorite of everything he’s done.
    1995 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.
    Must See

    6:45am – IFC – Sleeper
    One of Woody Allen’s early films, and a rare attempt at science fiction on his part, has meek Miles Monroe cryogenically frozen only to wake in a totalitarian future as part of a radical movement to overthrow the government. A rather different film for Woody, but still with his signature anxious wit and awkwardness.
    1973 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, John Beck, Mary Gregory.
    (repeats at 8:20am and 1:35pm on the 7th)

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Jul

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    After the Credits Episode 86 – July Preview

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    After the Credits Episode 86 – July Preview [ 1:03:40 | 58.29 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup

    To download show directly, paste this link into your downloader:
    http://www.rowthree.com/audio/AfterTheCredits-Episode86.mp3

    Dale (Digital Doodles), Colleen (Mary Ostler Wood Butchery & Other Stuff) and I talk about the possibly good (and even great) stuff opening in July.

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    Show Notes:

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Jul

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    Two Mad Max Films!? Nice.

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    George Miller, the name brand for P-A flicks, is reportedly working on a second Mad Max film to nearly coincide with the already underway Fury Road. Twitch is claiming the the second film is titled Mad Max: Furiosa. Just as filming is wrapped for Mad Max: Fury Road, shooting will begin on Furiosa.

    The idea apparently is that the two films will also be released in fairly rapid succession (ala Matrix 2 & 3 or the Kill Bill movies). Though no date has been set for the theatrical release, we might be able to bet on (or at least have our fingers crossed for) some early 2012 screenings.

    Though no Mel Gibson, Charlize Theron is set to star and the young Tom Hardy will be in the titular role…

    “It’s a relaunch and revisit to the world. An entire restructuring. That’s not to say that it’s not picking up or leaving off from the Mad Max you know already, but it’s a nice re-take on the entire world using the same character, depositing him in the same world but bringing him up to date by 30 years.”

    Two of these things? I’m down – even if I do have to wait a relatively long time to see them.

  • 04 Jul

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    Bookmarks for July 1-4

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    • The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What it Is.
      Errol Morris takes you through the literal and metaphorical ins and outs and whathaveyous of the strange condition of Anosognosia: From Donald Rumsfeld to Woodrow Wilson, to Lemon Juice induced ‘invisibility’ in bank robbers: “If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.” A wonderful Mega-Morris post to rival the Crimean War Cannon Ball Photos, In FIVE Parts!

    • Agora: the “Reel” vs. the “Real” Hypatia
      A look at how history was molded into narrative with Amenebar’s AGORA – “Bravo! The movie managed to get both versions of the story as told by Damascius in his Life of Isadore. The student wasn’t Orestes (I’ll talk about all the characters in a later post), but the sentiment was real. Damascius reports that after a student professed his love for her, Hypatia showed him her bloody menstrual rag and said, “This is what you really love, my young man, but you do not love beauty for its own sake.”” – In THREE Parts.
    • The Great Directors: David Lynch Segment
      In a snippet of video interview with Angela Ismailos, David Lynch talks about the perceived failure of his blockbuster version of Dune, and how it liberated him to do Blue Velvet.
    • The Carleton Cinema Reborn!
      “For fans of art-house cinema and independent film, the Carlton was often the one venue at which to catch an extended run of a first-run feature that might otherwise be out of theatres in a week. Canadian filmmakers such as Ron Mann and Atom Egoyan claimed it as the birthplace of their careers with an attempt to save the theatre several years ago, though the facilities had already fallen into disrepair. Members of Toronto’s cinema community expressed their outrage at the closing via social media, though critics like The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell bemoaned their “crocodile tears.” It seemed that the Carlton’s closure was just another example of Toronto’s cultural gentrification and the hypocrisy of its supporters in a year that had also seen the loss of another beloved yet unprofitable institution, Pages Bookstore. “
    • Writer Details the SUPERMAN Movie That Never Came To Be
      “The intent was to leapfrog over Superman III and especially IV, and return the series to the high mark achieved in 1 and 2,” Bates told Newsarama. “[It was] our desire to do a fully developed, balls-out science fiction story pitting Superman and Brainiac against each other mano a mano.”
    • Chris Doyle Used to Expose Himself from the Set of Chungking Express, According to Bill Murray“Wait, really? Doyle did indeed live in an apartment looking out over Hong Kong’s Central-Mid-Levels escalator—famously, it was his apartment that Wong used as the abode of the depressed cop played by Tony Leung in Chungking Express. You get a great view of Doyle’s/Cop 663′s apartment, and a bit of the escalator…”
    • Entrance Romance – NOWNESS (Video)
      A short and wonderful fashion video that showcases the super-slow motion used in both The Fall and Antichrist. Here, dog licking, flaming hairspray and smashing beer bottles over models head.

     

    You can now take a look at RowThree’s bookmarks at any time of your choosing simply by clicking the “delicious” button in the upper right of the page. It looks remarkably similar to this:

  • 02 Jul

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    Andrew Garfield is Spider-Man

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    My apologies for being a little late on this news, but I ran off into the wild for a couple of days. I was pretty surprised to come out of the wilderness and find news that the new Spider-Man reboot has its Peter Parker and it is none other than the 26 year old Andrew Garfield, the promising British actor from 2007′s Boy A and last year’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

    I guess my confusion lies in the actor chosen, not because of his talents (the dude is a good actor), but because director Marc Webb of (500) Days of Summer fame stressed the new reboot would focus on a high school aged Peter Parker. Garfield is going to be turning 27 in August, which makes him right about the same age as Tobey Maguire during production of the first Spider-Man, which while it had scenes from Peter’s high school days, his post-high school days were the focus of that film and the trilogy. While Garfield may be able to get away with it for one film, by the time they make a third one, will people be able to buy a 30+ year old as a high schooler? Or does that mean that only the first film will take place during his high school years and follow a similar trajectory as Sam Raimi’s movies?

    I suppose only time will tell.

  • 02 Jul

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    Talk Amongst Yourselves

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  • 01 Jul

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    Let Me In Teaser Has Arrived

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    We are pretty huge fans of Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In around here, and have been less than enthused about an American remake coming within two years. But I figure, who knows, maybe director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) will manage to put something original in it. Now Twitch has the first teaser for Let Me In, and I gotta say, I’m at least intrigued. The tone is completely different – far more suspense thriller and far less moody introspection, but that’s honestly to be expected, and if they can pull that off well, I’d prefer it to an attempt to capture the same mood that made the original so magical. In other words, better to do something different well than to do the same thing poorly.

    Check out the trailer under the seats and let us know what you think. Going to give Let Me In a shot, or are you still too upset about the whole idea to give it a glance? My main fear based on this is how on-the-nose it may be, but again – taking it on its own without reference to Let the Right One In, there’s a chance this might work. Certainly Chloe Moretz proved her chops in Kick-Ass; I’m curious to see how she tackles this role.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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