Tagged: film

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Review: ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ on DVD

slumdog-1254985Pop culture is influenced by so many different factors and timing determines what will catch on and endure while other things, quality be damned, wither and die.  A perfect example is the Award-Winning darling of 2008, Slumdog Millionaire.

Based on the 2005 novel by Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup, it was optioned for film by British production companies Celador Films and Film4 Productions who hired Simon Beaufoy to adapt it. By the time director Danny Boyle read the script and accepted the assignment, it was 2006. The budget was set at $15 million, meaning the producers needed a partner – enter Warner Independent which gambled $5 million for the right. Shooting began in November 2007 and it spent much of 2008 being screened at festivals starting with Telluride and the Toronto International.  But, a Warner Bros. exec saw the finished product and felt that once you added in prints and marketing, it was not likely to recoup its costs.

A different exec at 20th Century-Fox saw it but saw something different and bought the film from Warners and scheduled it for late in the year. By the time it opened on November 12, the economy tanked and people were in a mixed state of financial panic and political euphoria.  People wanted something to latch on to, something to make them forget the scary real world, at least for two hours.

[[[Slumdog Millionaire]]] was the perfect antidote for what was ailing our psyche. As a result, it has earned, through this past weekend, worldwide revenues of $268,103,477 making it hugely profitable and turning the stars Dev Patel and Freida Pinto into celebrities. Pretty heady stuff.

The movie, coming out on DVD Tuesday, is incredibly moving, exciting, funny, poignant and very predictable. While it was the Feel Good Movie of the Year and therefore swayed voters into giving it many prizes, it is not the greatest film of the year.  In addition to the enjoyable story, it also shined a documentary-style eye on India’s slum life and we watched in gaping fascination. This was not Bollywood or some idealized view of life, but the actual way the majority of the people lived in the heavily populated country. This, more than the story, may be one reason it was so well-received around the world.

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Review: ‘Quantum of Solace’ on DVD

Having grown up on James Bond movies, I have been conditioned to expect certain lines, images and sounds. As a result, I was curious to see what would survive when the franchise was rebooted with Casino Royale. They played with the martini line but maintained the title theme and gave us a fresh start (although I still think Daniel Craig is too old for Bond at this stage in his career).

The movie was pretty terrific although I noted at the time that the pacing was odd and the entire final third felt like a separate film. So, going into Quantum of Solace, which is released on DVD tomorrow., I wanted to see what they would do next especially since this is the first film that was a direct sequel.

The events from [[[Casino]]] provide Bond’s motivations and colors everything he does in this film. Here’s the first problem with the new film: it does a piss poor job of reminding you what happened in the previous installment. When Mathis is reintroduced, I had forgotten who he was and what his involvement with Bond and Vesper were. Similarly, when Bond says M was wrong about Vesper, I have no recollection what she said in the previous film.

While Bond films are known for their action sequences, this one felt by rote. We had fist fights, a car chase, a boat chase and a plane chase. Ho hum. They were uninvolving thanks to what I call “in your face” editing so things flash by so quickly, you have no real sense of what’s going on. You get impressions based on the glimpses you have in your field of vision. Storytelling is tossed out the window for style but leaves you either confused or frustrated.

The movie is praised for being a taut two hours but I would have dearly enjoyed ten more minutes if characters actually spoke to one another as characters not plot exposition and surface characterization. Also, the movie utterly ignores time. You have no idea how much time has passed from the first scene to the last. We have no idea how Bond changes his clothes so often, when he sleeps, eats and so on. After having no access to money or passports, we next see him in a boat heading to see Mathis. How?

It wasn’t all disappointing.

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Review: ‘Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology’ on Blu-ray

The current era of the super-hero movie can trace its roots to 1989 and the release of Tim Burton’s [[[Batman]]].  For the first time since Richard Donner’s [[[Superman]]], the comic book heroes were taken seriously and adapted for the screen with love and care.  In between, there was failure after failure as no one in Hollywood seemed to understand the source material.

Even Michael Uslan, who did understand, spent 1980 through 1988 trying to mount the film with little success. The stars seemed to finally align as Frank Miller’s [[[Dark Knight]]] in 1986 showed people what could be done with the character and suddenly Warner Bros. was interested. They tapped Burton, coming off the success of [[[Beetlejuice]]], a director with exactly the right sensibilities to take the Dark Knight and present him in a way that made you forget Adam West’s interpretation (at least for a little while).

You’re reminded of what a masterful job he did by rewatching Batman on a new crisp transfer as part of the Blu-ray box set Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997, on sale today. Gotham City is a dark, scary place, and its populace needs Batman, a vigilante protector. The architectural look, from designer Anton Furst, coupled with the moody lighting and off-kilter sensibilities of its director made Batman something to marvel at. He got fans to get over their complaints that Michael Keaton was the wrong choice to portray Bruce Wayne.  Instead, Keaton was a conflicted everyman who had some serious issues driving him to don the costume and endure the withering barbs from Alfred (Michael Gough). Jack Nicholson’s Joker nearly stole the movie but was a terrific foil for the hero.  The movie’s far from perfect with story holes and logic gaps (one bullet can take down the Batwing?).

Burton and Keaton came back for [[[Batman Returns]]] which unfortunately offered us no new insights into the hero but did give us refreshed looks at both Catwoman and Penguin. Selina Kyle’s story arc is the strongest in the film and Michelle Pfeiffer gives a strong but sympathetic performance.  Danny DeDevito made for a creepy, grotesque Penguin but his arc was taken from a 1967 plot and felt it.  The uneven storylines never meshed well and the movie felt divided.

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Review: ‘Watchmen’

After years of eager anticipation, the fan community was given a film version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic [[[Watchmen]]] story. DC President & Publisher has noted that after 20 years of attempts to mount this project, the sophistication of special effects and the growth of acceptance among the general audience for the super-heroic fare have come together.  After several years of successful comic book adaptations, the mass audience is now ready for a movie that essentially deconstructs the genre.  They have a better understanding of the unique vocabulary and storytelling needs of the super-hero story to appreciate what Watchmen attempts to do.

Zack Snyder, having proven adept at translating a graphic novel to the screen with [[[300]]], was perhaps the best possible choice to handle this project.  He also recognized the film had to resemble the graphic novel as opposed to various changes suggested by Paramount Pictures and later Warner Bros.

Having said that, the adaptation largely works but is far from perfect.  He has so faithfully replicated the dense look and feel of the movie that repeated viewers will be required and that’ll be something to look forward to.  On the other hand, his fidelity is so complete that it robs the film of its flow every now and then. One such example is Silk Spectre landing on a burning rooftop and pausing, perfectly capturing Gibbon’s panel but stopping the story when she should be in motion.

Snyder has stripped the film down to its core story: who murdered the Comedian and why?  In some ways, that makes it a lesser film for being a simple murder mystery and by evaluating how much screen time each Watchman receives also somewhat telegraphs the murderer’s identity. Gone all many of the touches that made the comic so rich a reading experience, from the [[[Tales of the Black Freighter]]] to the excerpts from Hollis Mason’s [[[Under the Hood]]].  These are necessary trims when considering you’re adapting 400 pages of story for a film. At 2:40 it certainly sounds long but was so riveting that it didn’t feel like it dragged but any longer, to add these touches, may prove problematic. We’ll see when the complete director’s cut is released in the future.

Other trims make sense such as downplaying the first generation of heroes and the man-on-the-street moments that added color to the comic book. Some threads such as the relationship between Rorschach and his prison psychiatrist are trimmed and are missed and the introduction of the New Frontiersmen late in the film robs the film of some of the moral issues at play.

The film is expertly cast from the celebrity impersonators to the main characters since none are that well-known you stop and recall their other parts.  Instead, you see them as the Watchmen.  Dramatically, Rorschach might be the toughest part since so much of it is done under the mask but Jackie Earle Haley is wonderful and imbues the figure with a sense of calm that belies his total dedication to protecting good from evil.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan clearly loved playing the Comedian.  And in watching the film, I came to realize that as immoral as the Comedian is, how despicable his acts are, in every case, he was the only one speaking the unvarnished truth, painful as it is to hear. You can somewhat understand what sort of attraction there is between him and the first Silk Spectre.

On the other hand, Malin Akerman’s second Spectre required more emotional shading in the performance.  As my daughter put it, “she’s a hot mess” and you don’t necessarily feel why she falls for Nite Owl. You certainly can see why Patrick Wilson’s Owl is attracted to her, though.  While nebbishy in appearance, he’s not the overweight figure poignantly depicted in the book. Their scenes together work well enough and their fight in the prison to free Rorschach may be the best action sequence in the entire film and one of the top super-hero fight sequences of all. They calmly walk through the prison, exploding into action when threatened, but do so with purpose. Nothing is wasted.

The biggest quibble people will have is with the changed ending.  How the world is to be denied Armageddon is altered, not the why.  My bigger issue has to do with the more dramatic change to Silk Spectre and Nite Owl. There resolution is a departure from the book and not necessarily a better one.

As an adaptation, it’s entertaining and exceptionally well done.  As a movie, it should satisfy the mass audience since it has a beginning, middle and an end.  There’s action, violence, sex, romance, moral ambivalence and some kickass music.  There’s no question you should see this whether you know the source material or not.

Review: ‘Friday the 13th’ I-III Special Editions

When Sean Cunningham and Victor Miller concocted the story for Friday the 13th, they were merely trying to cash in on the success of John Carpenter’s [[[Halloween]]]. The seasonality for horror and the death of the promiscuous were copied along with the plucky virginal heroine.

What they did, though, was layer it with an interesting story of a mother’s grief for her son, the only thing to sustain her for two decades. Betsy Palmer gave a nice performance as the murderous mom, grounding the story more than it probably deserved.  The movie, shot on a shoestring budget, went on to become a major hit and an unexpected series for Paramount Pictures.

With Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay’s schlock remake arm, striking fresh gold with the remake this month, Paramount Home Video released the first three films in the series as deluxe editions. Under the snazzy lenticular covers are the same quickly made, poorly acted and over scored films, with a smattering of extras.

The first film told a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end as a group of teens attempted to reopen Camp Crystal Lake, long closed after two counselors were brutally murdered in 1958.  “Camp Blood”, as the locals called it, needed some TLC and they were readying it a new summer but one by one, the teens vanish, killed by an unseen assailant.  Along the way, we get our requisite one scene with a bare boob, lots of talk about sex, and a group of under-developed characters headed by the heroine, Adrienne King. 

When we learn that the grieving mom was behind the deaths, blaming careless counselors on her son’s death, you feel something for her.  And once she’s dispatched, of course, you get the shock ending straight out of Carrie.

The second film picks up immediately after, just months after the first ends.  Adrienne King is still recovering from the emotionally difficult period but gets one final shock at finding Betsy’s severed head in her refrigerator (starting the whole women in refrigerators trend, I suppose) and Jason actually alive and seeking his own revenge.

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Batman sequel on hold until 2011

  • News
  • February 12, 2009

darkknight-2518257According to E! Online, a sequel to The Dark Knight is two years away. At least.

Director Christopher Nolan has inked a deal with Warner Bros. to helm Inception, based on his own screenplay. The sci-fi action film “set within the architecture of the mind” aims to begin shooting this summer and hit theaters in summer 2010, according to the studio.

This probably shouldn’t surprise anyone, though. It was three years between Batman Begins, and last year’s The Dark Knight. In between, Nolan made The Prestige, starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival magicians.

The only potential problem, of course, is if they want to do another Terminator sequel for 2011, which would keep Bale’s schedule very filled and could conceivable dilute the impact of each film in theaters.

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Review: ‘City of Ember’

25adde5a447d16413d463a98d1d09d2f-21-7736507Other than the [[[Narnia]]] movies, and more recently Inkheart, there really haven’t been many good fantasy films aimed at families. That’s why 20th Century-Fox’s [[[City of Ember]]] proved to be such a major disappointment.

The film opened last fall after an extensive marketing campaign aimed not at the families but at the fans who might have kids. The mainstream marketing was lackluster and may have resulted in the film earning just under $8 million at the box office and vanishing without a trace.  Which also goes to explain the plain vanilla DVD release, now on sale.

Based on the book series by Jeanne Duprau, the film quickly introduces us to the concept of the underground city of Ember, constructed and populated in the case of global calamity. The elders who conceived of this audacious plan prepared a container with instructions on how to exit the city and set a timer to unlock the box some 200 years hence. The box became a sacred relic, passed on from mayor to mayor until the seventh mayor unexpectedly died and the box was lost.  The movie opens more than 200 years later, well after the city’s warranty ran out.

The film focuses almost exclusively on the youngest generation, led by Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) and Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway), and their discovery of the box, its contents, and the race to find the exit before the massive power generator shorts out once and for all.  Standing in their way is the inept and possibly corrupt current mayor, played with dead-eyed nonchalance by Bill Murray.

The movie entirely fails to enter by being all surface and no substance.  We never understand how the society functions, what the hierarchies are, and why all the adults are idiots or sheep.  It appears out heroes are the only two in the entire city, population unknown, who can think for themselves.  And of course they get that genetically, since their fathers had both tried to escape the city in the past, costing Lina’s father his life.  Doon’s dad, in a wasted performance by Tim Robbins, is defeated and has given up. In fact, the film suffers from poor performances by actors ill-used including Robbins and more notably, Martin Landau.

There are countless gaps in story logic right up until the conclusion. One example is when the kids activate a mechanism that begins launching lifeboats, only to see them crushed under a waterwheel.  Quite some time passes by before our heroes get in one of these boats but there’s no sense of how many have been crushed in the meantime, costing who knows how many people the chance to leave the city for the surface.

It’s entirely possible to make entertaining children’s fantasy fare as witnessed by the more successful adaptations of Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling.  This movie, directed by Gil Kenan, fails on every level with the exception of nice set design and a winning performance by Ronan.

The bare-bones DVD looks and sounds fine.  There are some related trailers for other family films but not a single extra related to this misfire. Even Fox has lost faith in the franchise which is a shame since the award-winning book series has endured.

ComicMix QuickPicks – January 26, 2009

v-05-1113561Here is today’s list of comic-related news items that might not generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…

* V for ABC: ABC has announced that they’ve picked up the pilot for a remake of "V". Oh, don’t pretend you don’t remember the series. If nothing else, we wrote about it back in October.

* Shooting on Spielberg’s Tintin has finally started. Although I have to ask– $100 million budgeted for a motion capture film? Good grief. I would have pegged it at about $80 million.

* Because 6.5 million people haven’t gotten their act together, the Senate OKs 4-month delay to digital TV changeover.

* Cripes, now they’re laying off folks at Publisher’s Weekly, including editor-in-chief Sara Nelson and about 7% of the staff. So far, Calvin Reid and Heidi Macdonald are unaffected directly.

* And finally, Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenbery’s ashes will be shot into space next year, together in infinite eternity… unless they were picked up by V’G’r.

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.

‘Watchmen’ legal fight settled

  • News
  • January 16, 2009

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. and Fox have resolved their dispute over Watchmen, with the studios scheduled to present a likely settlement to Judge Gary Feess on Friday morning and request that the case be dismissed:

Terms of the agreement will not be disclosed, but it is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film’s boxoffice. Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it own a piece of the "Watchmen" property going forward. The studios are set to release a joint statement announcing the agreement Friday.

A Warners spokesperson would not comment on the settlement. A Fox spokesman said no final deal had been reached….

While [producer Lawrence] Gordon is not a party to the case, Warners is said to be pursuing the producer and his attorneys to reimburse it for the costs of the settlement. During the course of the litigation, Gordon’s then-attorney admitted that he negotiated Gordon’s 1994 separation from Fox without knowing about a pre-existing 1991 agreement on which Fox has based its lawsuit.

Boy, I wouldn’t like to be Gordon’s insurance company now…

In the meantime, it sounds like I will actually be able to see the film for my birthday. Which almost makes up for my impending decrepitude. And that’s worth a smiley face, blood stained though it may be.

Has anybody figured out how to make a blood stained smiley face emoticon?

(Hat tip: Mmike Wweber.)

Review: ‘Mirrors’

[[[Mirrors]]] are a reflection of reality or can be twisted into something that reveals another way to look at the world.  Ever since they were invented, the Greeks first thought your soul might be trapped within.  Through the years, stories have been told about what mirrors do or do not reveal.  Demons were thought to be revealed by mirrors while vampires do not cast reflections. It’s a rich subject that can make a wonderful thriller or horror movie.  The summer 2008 Mirrors, directed by Alexandre Aja, is not a worthy addition to the sub-genre.

Largely based on 2003’s [[[Into the Mirror]]] from South Korea, the movie involves a mirror universe, a demon, a divided family, and lots of ominous music.  Keifer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, a New York police detective currently on suspension and taking a job as a night watchman at an abandoned department store to support his family.  Carson’s a mess.  He’s defined by his job and without it, he began drinking which led him to be thrown out of his home by his loving wife Amy (Paula Patton), deprived of access to his two children.  Instead, he’s sleeping on his sister Angela’s (Amy Smart) couch and ripe for a mental breakdown.  As a result, he’s slow to accept that he’s seeing things in the mirrors that remain remarkably clean.

Over the course of nearly two hours, he learns that there’s a malevolent spirit trapped in the mirror world and has been accessing the real world through mirrors to manipulate various people to try and free it.  Being the good cop that he is, Carson traces the building’s history and learns it was once a psychiatric hospital, and its unique treatment room remains intact.  He then traces the key patient who was treated there and learns she had been possessed by the spirit but it was cast into the mirror and others will continue to suffer and die until the demon is vanquished.

Over the course of nearly two hours, the audience is treated to a tremendous amount of unexplained characterization and world building.  Carson’s predecessor sends him a box of clippings that provide a key clue, but since it was shipped after his death and to someone he never met, we’re never told how that worked.  We know little of this mirror world and how some they move through space and time, which becomes a vital plot point towards the climax. The police investigations into some of these incidents, including Angela’s death, never seem to be carried out.

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