Trailer Park

Here are the trailers we will mention on tonight's show:

D-War (a.k.a. Dragon War)


Control


Hunting Party


The Signal

Hung like Dirk Diggler?

That's the joke AICN made of Batman anyway. Here's a tourist photo they posted from The Dark Knight:



Before you accuse me of spoiling the ending, let me just say that I hope I didn't. I hope they do not end this film with the lynching of Batman. That would be a HORRIBLE place to end the film, so if that's the case, and I DID in fact spoil the ending, then so be it. A crappy ending like that deserves to be spoiled.

I don't think this is supposed to be the ending, though. Judging from all the pictures I have witnessed thus far, the Joker seems to be planting a lot of fake Batmen in order to frame Bats for a bunch of stuff he didn't do (i.e. assassinations, suicide, etc.). Hmmm. Sounds kinda like the plot for Burton's Batman Returns. At any rate, I am excited to see how it pans out.

No Country for Old Men 'Red Band' Trailer.

This trailer is awesome, and loaded with cattle-piston goodness.

But before you click HERE to view the 'restricted' (i.e. violent) trailer for the new Coen Brothers' film, No Country for Old Men, make sure that you don't have any outstanding parking tickets. The problem being, that the MPAA has enforced a new age verification system wherein they look up your name and birthday on a database of active driver's licenses. Because I refused to pay for a ticket I received while traveling in Maryland, I had to view the trailer under my wife's name. I had to the same thing before with the 'restricted' trailer of Beowulf. This is kind of frustrating.

I know the MPAA doesn't want kiddies to catch a glimpse of any gore or naughty bits via a movie trailer, but the fact that I was able to hack the system with my wife's name and birth date, means that any kid can do it with their parents'. It also means that the system is nothing more than a needless bother which makes it difficult for people like me to see a movie trailer.

So to subvert the annoyance of the age verification system, I thought I would go ahead and post an embedded version of the trailer, courtesy of dailymotion. If you decide to watch it, just promise me that you're not a kid. Enjoy.

No country for old men - red band trailer
Uploaded by neocinetv

Jolie goes nude in 3-D.

I'm not sure how smart it is to add semi-nudity to an American animated film with already limited kid-appeal, but I guess we'll find out when Beowulf is released mid-November. Paramount pictures recently debuted the 'Comi-Con Teaser,' which is more violent than all of the U.S. and European marketing materials thus far. It also features a glimpse of topless CGI Angelina Jolie.

No pun intended, but I didn't find the glimpse to be that titilating. First of all, she's covered with what looks to be golden mud, no doubt to ensure a PG-13 rating. Also, I have to say that the whole thing looks about as silly as the sex scene in Team America: World Police.

Want to see for yourself? Check out the 'Restricted' trailer below:

September Dawn review.

The intentions of September Dawn become clear within its opening scene. Wearing a haggard, fake beard, Terrance Stamp sits in a chair making a deposition. He’s supposed to be portraying Brigham Young, the man responsible for establishing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints after the death of Joseph Smith, Jr.

During the deposition, Stamp says, “I was and am an invalid, and I have been for some time.”

Dawn focuses on the historic Mountain Meadows Massacre, wherein a group of Mormons and Native Americans slaughtered 120 innocent Protestant settlers who were en route to California. The movie is supposed to be controversial and contradictory to the way historians and Mormons believe the events happened on September 11, 1857. Curious, I tried to arrange an interview with several prominent Mormon scholars regarding the film’s purported inaccuracies, but none of them had any intention of seeing the film, let alone discussing it on record.

Now that I have had the chance to see September Dawn, I can understand why no one would talk. The movie condemns not only those responsible for the gruesome attack, but all Mormons in general. I’d argue that even the Islamic terrorists responsible for the more recent September 11 fundamentalist attack got a fairer shake in Paul Greengrass’ superior film, United 93. One has to wonder, since comic book movies are so popular these days, if “September Dawn” was based on an old anti-Mormon tract by God-sploitation legend, Jack Chick.

As the Protestant settlers arrive in the Utah Territories, it’s clear that their wagons are pulled by higher horses of the moral variety than the LDS locals. The white-hatted Protestants – or ‘Gentiles’ as the Mormons call them – always smile and sing Jesus songs in their free time while the Mormons leer and growl prayers of condemnation. The Protestants are portrayed as being permissive of women’s freedoms (HA!) while the Mormons curse and perhaps drown one of the female Protestants for having the poor fortune of wearing pants and a cowboy hat on their terrain. Heck, even the actual horses the Protestants lead in their wagon train are better than those of the Mormons; the reason being that the goodly Protestant settlers intend to run a horse-betting racket when they settle in California. Of course even this detail is smoothed over in the Protestants’ favor.

Protestant elder Captain Fancher (Shaun Johnston) justifies the horse-racing, saying that he hopes to “give those miners something to do besides drinking and whoring.”

How charitable.

The closest September Dawn comes to humanizing the Mormons, or at least explaining their actions, would have to be the scene in which Joseph Smith, Jr. is assassinated by an angry mob in Missouri. Bishop Samuelson (Jon Voit, wearing another fake beard – notice a trend?) learns that some of the settlers also came from Missouri, and hears word that they may have bragged about killing Smith and owning the gun that did him in.

During a carriage ride home, Samuelson has a flashback to the day when his beloved prophet was murdered before his eyes. Strangely enough, Smith is played by Dean Cain, writer-director Chris Cain’s adopted son, as well as the guy who played Superman in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. At first I wondered if maybe the filmmakers were attempting a sociological comment on the relationship between martyred prophets and those who benefit from the organization of the martyr’s beliefs posthumously; the reason being that Terrance Stamp, who plays Brigham Young, also played General Zod, the main villain in Superman II. But alas, I doubt that anyone involved with the creation of September Dawn is capable of something that cerebral.

When September Dawn chooses not to devote its time towards the sinister depiction of Mormons, it’s water-logged with many Hallmark western romance clichés. Chris Cain attempts to pull off a weak Romeo and Juliet story between settler Emily Hudson (Tamara Hope), and Jonathan Samuelson, one of the Bishop’s many sons. Jonathan is played by the relatively new actor Trent Ford, the love child of Josh Hartnett and Brad Pitt – if such a thing were possible. To Ford’s credit, he’s actually just a few acting lessons shy of being a decent performer, and his character would have been likable had it not been constantly exploited as a story device to ruthlessly broadcast several of the private, and seemingly unorthodox, rituals and practices of his family’s belief system.

The character of Emily Hudson is doubly absurd. During the siege when Ms. Hudson’s fellow settlers are getting blown away left and right by Mormons dressed as Native Americans, she has the audacity to ask her Methodist pastor (Daniel Libman) if he will officiate hers and Jonathan’s wedding. The pastor says he would be honored to marry them off while smiling like the kind of believer who would knowingly drink poisoned Kool-Aid. While I’m no expert on Methodist pastors, I have to wonder why the minister didn’t have the good sense to say, ‘I know you kids love each other and all, but now’s really not the time!’

Judging by the three other people who were in attendance during the first Friday night screening, I’m certain this movie will soon be forgotten, if not suitable fare for people who watch bad movies for the joy of laughing at them. However, I can’t help but be curious as to how “September Dawn” will affect the inevitable sequel to Napoleon Dynamite. Brilliant character actor Jon Gries, who played one of the dastardly Mormons in the film, also played the hilarious Uncle Rico in Dynamite, a film created by Mormon director Jared Hess and actor John Heder. Could this mean that Uncle Rico will be omitted – or worse, recast – for Napoleon Dynamite 2: Socially Inept Boogaloo? Let’s just hope that Hess and Heder have something for Gries’ role in this film that director Chris Cain didn’t have in regards to an age-old massacre – human forgiveness.

Reviews from the 'Boro (Volume 5)

Orson Scott Card has taken yet another vacation from the world of film criticism to do a well-written essay on forgiveness . Fortunately, Yes!Weekly's Glen Baity managed to stay on top of his movie reviewing game. That's not saying much since I can only think of maybe three or four weeks where he coulnd't do a review for whatever reason, but anyway, Baity's review of The Invasion is probably one of the best that he's ever written.

Here's an excerpt:


Despite a perfectly okay plot and a decent first half, the film goes sour as it nears its conclusion. This happens for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is its staggering pretension. After the studio saw original director Oliver Hirschbiegel's first cut, they ordered rewrites by the gifted, if sometimes unforgivably haughty, Wachowski brothers. I'm not sure what the film was like before they climbed on board, but The Invasion touts a prevailing theme that, conspicuously, is a Wachowski favorite: human nature, the subjugation of which naturally leads to world peace. Humans, as we're helpfully informed during one of many weirdly preachy tangents, are naturally violent and destructive. To be without violence and conflict, therefore, is to be without humanity itself.

Of course, a great deal of science fiction is really about some real-world social ill, but that all falls apart if the metaphor becomes too obvious, as it does here. The Invasion is replete with cardboard characters flogging the dead horse of free will in as unsubtle a way as possible. After three Matrix movies riding shotgun with motor-mouthed Morpheus on the way to Zion, I don't think I'm alone in saying: Thanks, Wachowskis, but no thanks.

Simpson's Movie DVD extras.

I normally don't care to post the 'special features' for the upcoming DVD of a Hollywood blockbuster. Reason being that most of these so-called 'special features' are not so 'special' after all the ones that Peter Jackson did for the LOTR discs.

But it looks like the DVD The Simpson's Movie deserves major points for creativity. Not only can you watch the film in Widescreen (YAY!) and Full-screen (BOO!), but you can also see it in Half-screen (WHA?), and an even more revolutionary process called 'Ullman View' - meaning that you can watch the film in the way it looked when it used to run as shorts during the Tracy Ullman Show on FOX. Also, the 'Half-screen' is a joke to the fact that 'Full-Screen' is really nothing more than Two-third-screen, in terms of the preserving the way the film looked in theaters. Here's a look:



Click here to see the rest of the special features, including a list of deleted scenes, foreign subtitles (including the ones from Futurama), etc.

EDIT: Apparently, we've been had. The whole thing was a joke. Not very funny if you ask me, since these features would have made The Simpson's Movie WORTH OWNING. Now I will have to just wait for it to come on TV....

Signal trailer.

Here's the trailer for the new horror film Signal. The plot sounds very similar to Steven King's post retirement novel Cell, in that a transmission is sent out via cell phones, tv, radio, etc. that turns humans into murderers. Apparently the film is made up of three different parts from three different directors (called 'transmissions').


Since this is an independant film from Magnolia, it probably means we won't be seeing this film until I would say, oh, sometime mid '08. If we're lucky....

This AVP:2 trailer that looks like....

the trailer for a movie that has both Aliens and Predators in it. Bet you thought I was going to say 'crap,' didn't you? I did too, but it actually looks awesome. Check it out:



I own all the individual Alien and Predator films (including P2), but I could not stomach AVP. Paul Wes Anderson is a hack, and the movie was a neutered compromise of the 'Alien Vs. Predator' film of my childhood dreams. As I kid, I couldn't wait to see AVP, but when I finally got to see it in 2004, I was so pissed with its utter crappiness, that I kicked the exit door of the theater. The Cops had to warn the audience at the following screening that if there were any more outbursts like mine, that someone would be arrested. No joke, I was that disappointed and heart-broken by what should have ultimately been a sure thing. I mean Freddy vs. Jason at least delivered on a minor level of expectation.

Thankfully, that two-minute trailer had more geek-tastic splatter violence in it than the whole of the first Alien Vs. Predator. This trailer is actually so good, it has made me decide to renege my vow to never see AVP2. While one can't hope for a film to meet or exceed the works of James Cameron, Ridley Scott, or John McTiernan, the preview gives me hope that it will at least be Terminator 3 good, if you know what I mean.

I wonder what made 20th Century Fox decide to go for an R-rating this time out. I figured they would continue to make PG-13 sequels to R-rated franchises since AVP1 and Die Hard 4 were both pretty successful. Maybe it was the success of 300, but it really seems like they made this film - or the trailer at least - for adults who love the series. I mean the movie could be complete crap, but at least we got a pretty stellar trailer out of the deal.

But no matter what, I can't imagine the film could be any worse than the one Paul Wes Anderson directed. We'll have to see, though, won't we?

RE: Yesterday's show...

is on it's way. We got snagged with some technical difficulties, and that I mean that the new production director at WUAG accidentally locked us out of the control room during out show so that we couldn't upload the audio file for the show. (Sigh) Such is the life of a college radio DJ. If I didn't love doing it, I sure as heck would have quit a long time ago.

Also, this will be the first time I try to make a podcast with the WINDOWS version of Garageband. I am sure there will be a few setbacks, so please bear with me.

This week's Trailer Park.

Check out the trailers below:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


There Will Be Blood


I'm Not There


Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

So it's supposed to be the FBI's fault....

According to IMDB, Steve Seagal believes that the Feds are to blame for his last twelve films being released straight-to-DVD. Here's the story:

Actor Steven Seagal is seeking an apology from the Federal Bureau Of Investigation, for allegedly harming his career by implicating he hired a private detective to intimidate journalists from writing unflattering stories about him. The 56-year-old has made 12 movies since 2001's Exit Wounds - all have been released directly onto DVD, bypassing cinemas, and Seagal is convinced the leaked release of an October 2002 FBI affidavit linking him to the mob is responsible for his decline in popularity. The affidavit detailed how Seagal hired private eye Anthony Pellicano to threaten reporters, before the investigation focused entirely on Pellicano, who is now in prison awaiting a trial on charges including wire-tapping, But Seagal has never been publicly cleared by the FBI, and the actor wants this done so his reputation is immediately restored, reports the Los Angeles Times. Seagal recently said, "False FBI accusations fuelled thousands of articles saying that I terrorize journalists and associate with the Mafia. These kinds of inflammatory allegations scare studio heads and independent producers - and kill careers." He added, "I was sick of hearing my name associated with a crime the government knew I had nothing to do with. Until it happens to you, you can't imagine what it does to your life."

Man, after reading this, I have to admit that ole Steve could be on to something. I used to think that his acting career had turned sour because he was a terrible actor/aging has-been, who was never that good of a martial artist even in his hey-day. Sure, his ever-sagging box-office numbers might have played some role in his plight, but the FBI must ultimately be responsible somehow. I imagine that Jean Claude Van Damme might follow suit in the months ahead.

Okay, enough sarcasm here. I wish that Seagal would just stick to his music career so that the healing process for America can start to begin. I didn't even know that Seagal was involved with the whole Pellicano scandal. On top of that, if someone had reported that Seagal had paid a man to threaten reporters from writing negative things about him, I would have said something like, 'I guess he didn't pay the guy enough money.'

Seagal should just be grateful that, for a guy who never once tried to hone his craft as an actor, he has been allowed to continue making a living in motion pictures, regardless of whether his films make it to the big screen.

Reviews from the Boro (Volume 4)

It's been a month now since I got this segment running on the ole site here. I am hoping to keep the torch burning forever, so long as www.themovieshow.org continues to exist on the internets.

Anyway, looks like Yes! Weekly managed to break the conventions of Greensboro film criticism and catch an advanced screening of Superbad, which he declares, 'a teen sex comedy that's actually funny.' Baity obviously loved the film, but was surprised to see it get an R-rating:

"Since it's one of the most vulgar movies I've ever seen, it's hard to offer too many of Superbad's plot points without violating this column's PG-13 rating. Better to give the template and let your imagination wander, but be warned: What you imagine will likely be only a fraction as dirty as what ends up onscreen. The filmmakers must have caught the MPAA screeners in a particularly permissive mood, as I can't otherwise figure out how this film received an R rating. Seriously, it's that dirty.

"Maybe they were won over, like I was, by its underlying sweetness."

And maybe I am just a degenerate pervert, because I really didn't think that Superbad was that dirty at all. Sure the kids had potty-mouths, but no more so that the American Pie guys. Then again, I did run an image a few posts ago of two Decepticons making out, so maybe the movie really is dirty, and I am just too depraved to realize that.

It's always cool to find out what one genre writer thinks about another, so imagine my delight with this week's edition of The Rhino, where Orson Scott Card reveals that he is a fan of Neil Gaiman. Of course, this has to do with the fact that Card was reviewing last week's Stardust, and viewed it in some ways as an improvement over Gaiman's novel (to be fair, Card says the book isn't one of Gaiman's best). That's not to say that Card was blown away by Stardust, he merely found it to be an enjoyable experience.

Card said: "So when I look at the box office figures for the movie, I could not help but think that the numbers were not inappropriate. This was not a transformative, unforgettable fantasy like, say, The Thirteenth Tale or The Name of the Wind or Inda. It was "merely" a really good story that's a pleasure to read. But that's rare enough to find, isn't it?

"And the movie is not a must-see film. It's the kind of love story that will be a deep favorite with a relatively small portion of the movie-going public – but that audience will be fiercely loyal and will keep this movie alive forever on DVD. Nobody's going to lose any money from this film, even if it started slow at the box office."

There has been some discrepancy as to how much of a theatrical flop Stardust is. Box Office Mojo reported that the movie cost about $76 million to produce, while on Monday, IMDB's studio briefing said the movie ran way over-budget and cost almost $250 million. I am guessing that this later figure is an error, because if Stardust did cost $250 million to make, there must be an executive producer or two who wrote themselves a tremendous paycheck. Stardust was not even a $100 million film so far as cast and special effects were concerned. Hopefully IMDB will retract their bogus numbers if they are indeed misinformed.

MEGATRON: "Michael, I was in the movie, and had no idea what was going on!"

Here's a hilarious short cartoon from some team called SuperNews. It focuses on the creative fall-out between the Transformers and Michael Bay after the successful release of Transformers (2007).



Might be wrong, but I think the guys who made this are also responsible for that horrible George Bush cartoon on Comedy Central. Maybe they should just stick to Hollywood news parodies instead.

Interesting look at Superbad

I will get to Glen Baity's review of Superbad in a moment, but first I wanted to point out an interesting write-up that a spy named 'Midol Girl' did for AICN.

Normally, I hold no truck whatsoever with the spy reviews written for AICN, mainly because the 'spies' have a tendency to liars who haven't even seen the film they are reviewing, or worse, 'plants' who work for the studio or filmmakers responsible for the movie in question.

But 'Midol Girl' seems legit, and she doesn't really recommend Superbad much as comment on the way the female characters were portrayed:

Usually I leave the theater after these types of movies feeling the same way I used to feel around all the 17 yr old boys in high school; like I was just a soulless walking pair of jugs and muff. That my sexuality only existed to be the butt of their locker room jokes or a dirty mental snap-shot that they could file away in their sleazy brain rolodexes to use as source material for their next hot date with a sweaty tube sock and a bottle of hand lotion. But, to my surprise, I didn’t feel that way at all with this one.

Even though the girls in Superbad were introduced into the storyline in typical teen comedy fashion as the coveted, unattainable mysteries that the male protagonists are in sexual pursuit of, they were authentically portrayed having diverse personalities, appearances and values. As the story evolved, so did the female characters, and by the end of the film they were no longer simply male fantasies but fully fleshed out characters equal to their male counterparts.

Having seen the film myself, I must agree. Younger female actresses seldom get roles with as much humanity as Superbad's Martha MacIsaac and Emma Stone. Sure, a young actress can hope for a fairly intelligent comedy to come around like Mean Girls, but for the most part, Hollywood resigns them to playing knife-fodder in misogynistic horror films or eye-candy in sex comedies written like they were intended for nine year-olds. What I adored about Superbad is that while it is a teen sex comedy, it was written by adults who have taken the time to thoughtfully consider what the high school experience really was. The young women are objectified by the main characters at first. As the movie progresses, however, the high school lads are thankfully forced to take the objects of their desire seriously. The result is a movie free of the typical glorification of teen sex and drunken party behavior with a refreshing emphasis on the occasional desperation that they both entail.

The guys in Superbad don't want to get laid because of a goofy deal or bet they made with their friends. These guys want to get laid because they are about to graduate from high school, and worry they will be sexually defective if they never had sex before college. This is a fear that a lot of young men have.

A great deal of comedy is derived from pain. The guys who brought us four American Pie movies knew this, but their movies focused on the pain of mass sexual humiliation and accidentally ingesting bodily fluids like urine or sperm. On the other hand, Superbad knows that at times, there is nothing more painful than being alone.

Transformers, Bigger, Longer...and Unnecessary

File this one under 'Why?!' but Coming Soon reports that Transformers (2007) is on its way to IMAX screens on September 21st. To entice viewers who have already seen the soulless giant robots movie on the big screen, viewers might expect the studio would offer viewers a chance to see all or at least part of the film in 3-D a la the IMAX presentations of Superman Returns and Harry Potter 5. And those viewers would be wrong, too.

No, Dreamworks and Paramount decided that the best way to keep the IMAX presentation from being a total rip-off (as opposed to the original rip-off that was the actual movie itself) is to add more scenes. There's no word on whether the added scenes will feature more robotic carnage, but how much do you want to bet we will have to settle for more scenes of Anthony Anderson eating donuts, or even better, that team of soldiers I cared so much about? ((crosses fingers)) Man, I hope we get more scenes with those way awesome soldiers!

I guess you might have now realized by now that I didn't care too much for Transformers. I was working out of town when it came out, so I didn't really get a chance to talk about it on the show.

A friend once told me that no one should be disappointed with a Michael Bay film, but when I had originally heard that Bay was going to direct Transformers, I was excited. I loved all the toys and tv series as a kid, and if any established director seemed to have been working their way towards making a film about talking robots that turn into cars, I thought it was Michael Bay.

Watch any of his films, and you will see an auteur who has absolute contempt for mankind in general. When Bay isn't filming characters as they throw dead fat people out of a car or a pair of buddy cops ogling a female corpse with large breasts like he did in Bad Boy's 2, he's depicting various non-whites with broad rascist strokes like the random appearance of geisha in Pearl Harbor. See, Bay hates humans, because the first love of his life is cars, planes, helicopters, tanks - you name it. So with all of this in mind, when I went to see Transformers I was let down by the fact that the movie actually focused a good deal on human characters. A lot of them. I wouldn't have minded too much if the movie was called, Anthony Anderson: The Movie, or Stock Soldier Characters: The Movie, but for a movie called Transformers, there weren't a whole lot of Transformers, and I for one was a little dissapointed. Plus Transformers had a lot of lame masturbation humor that was not appropriate for a film being marketed to small kids via toys and Lunchable tie-ins. Granted, the scores of human characters were concieved by screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, but they should have known going into this thing that Michael Bay doesn't do humans and written most of them out of the script. What we should have gotten was a movie about a boy and his car - his car than can turn into a giant badass robot who shoots aqua, sphere-shaped energy blast out of his wrists. I mean where did that film go? And to top it all, Bay set up about 96% of all the action in this film with this scatter-shot method that does nothing more for me than reveal a director who has no confidence in his own work. Bay merely shatters the rules of editing because he could - not because he should. The result is disorienting. Other than the Starscream sequence, I really had no idea as to who or what was shooting, punching, or kicking another character or object, nor where they came from in the geography of a scene or where they were going.

In all actuality, Bay's scattershot method is probably the real reason IMAX didn't dare try to convert this movie in 3-D (or maybe they did, and someone in a test audience died of a seizure). In 3-D, the audiences' eyes have to adjust with every unique shot. This is why audiences get a headache when a 3-D movie is projected poorly, as the eyes continuously struggle to adjust. When dealing with a director who feels the need to change the shot every 2 seconds (i.e. Bay), the result in 3-D could cause his audience to have migranes, nausea, vomiting, etc. I guess Dreamworks realized that some audience members already got these symptoms from watching the regular version and didn't think the 3-D conversion was worth the expense.

The only good thing that ever came out of Transformers: The Movie was the following parody. Enjoy:



BONUS!!!!
The Top 5 List of American Theatrical Films to Feature Giant, Transforming Robots:

1)Transformers: The Movie (1986)

2) Hasn't been made yet.

3) Hasn't been made yet.

4) Hasn't been made yet.

5)(TIE)GoBots: War of the Rocklords and Transformers

Podcast of yesturday's program!

Want to hear host Mike Compton school Joe Scott on parapraxis, Joe Scott's opinion of Superbad, or 48HFP winner Dusty Keen's acceptance speech that the festival never gave him the chance to make? Then click HERE to listen to yesterday's episode of The Movie Show.

We also got the scoop on the next Conan and Jurassic Park films, as well as box-office, jokes, and more!

Leaked Dark Knight pics!

A batch of 19 pics hit the net at various movie news sites across the web only to be jerked back down by Warner Brothers only moments later. Fortunately, I downloaded them before they were gone. If there's one advantage to being at the bottom of of the online movie news totem pole, it's that I can post the following pics, and few people beyond the 200 or so weekly readers will give a crap. Enjoy:










(This one's not very new. It appeared in Entertainment Weekly about two months ago.)




(A 'Bat-postor!' Who knew Lee Harvey Oswald was a Batman fan?)












(Ah, the Bat-puter - hopefully it's not as lame as the one on Superfriends.)


(Wait a minute, that's not the Crow!)










Apparently the source for these pics is the demonstration they did at the Wizard World comic book convention in Chicago.

Will they call the sequel Walk Harder

Yahoo! Movies released the trailer for the John C. Riley film, Walk Hard: Click here!

Did you like that? Well for some reason, a longer trailer was released on YouTube on the same day:



While the shorter one gets to the point, I liked how the second one really sets people up for the king of Oscar baiting bio pics that this film is supposed to be a parody of in the first place. Either way, at least we both trailers offer a glimpse of Jack White as the king of rock & roll.

This Week'sTrailer Park. (Play at Home!)

We're going to kick off this week's Trailer Park with the trailer of a film that could go down as my favorite movie of this year. Be Kind, Rewind stars Jack Black and Mos Def as a pair of video store clerks who accidentally erase every VHS in their store when Black becomes magnetized. What's better is that after the movies are erased, rather than purchase new copies, Black and Def get the bright idea to stage crude recreations of their more popular videos. Hilarity ensues as the team embark on lo-fi renditions of such former big budget hits like Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy, The Lion King, and one of my personal favorites, RoboCop. How f*cking cool is that?

Be Kind Rewind


The next film in our line-up is My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary on the life of Marla Olmstead, a 5 year-old art prodigy whose paintings have sold for over $300,000. Controversy erupted, however, when journalists accused Marla's father, a frustrated artist himself, of ghost-painting all or part of his daughter's work. I have to say, judging by the trailer, the paintings Marla did 'paint' look far more impressive the ones she creates on camera. Looks like the father even gets upset with the filmmakers as they demand to film Marla create one of her paintings from beginning to end. I am curious as to how this one will turn out.

My Kid Could Paint That


You can file this next trailer under a category of 'Indie Out the Ass'. Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) plays Lars, a man who is in love with an extremely realistic sex doll - or 'real doll - much to the dismay of his friends and family. Making matters worse, Lars apparently believes that his 'real doll' is a real girl, hence the title. This all sounds great and all, but I really don't believe it. The trailer features scenes of friends, family, and even random members of the community putting up with this absurdity, and while it would be fine if Gosling were an ancillary character in a Adam Sandler comedy, when they play it for real in this trailer, I just don't buy it. Why would they let Gosling's character take what is essentially a sex toy into an elementary school? This is essentially tantamount to a middle school band director using a dildo as a baton in the middle of a concert. If I know anything about elementary school parents, and I do, they would be kicking Lars' head in right when they found out what happened, regardless of how 'real' his sex doll looked.

Lars and the Real Girl


Since it's phenomenal success last year, several studios have been vying for the title of 'This year's Little Miss Sunshine.' Perhaps it is because Sunshine was a low-budget indie comedy that made loads of cash, but if any movie deserves the title, I would wager that it would probably be Dan in Real Life, which features Sunshine'sSteve Carell in dramedy mode once more. Carell plays, you guess it, Dan, a single father and popular advice columnist who is always heckled by his brother Mitch, played by hack comedian Dane Cook. While visiting his family, Dan falls for a girl named Mary (Juliette Binoche), who as fate would have it, is dating Mitch. I hope this story ends happily, because nothing would cheese me off greater than to see Dane Cook walk away with the girl.

Dan in Real Life


Of all the previews on this week's edition of Trailer Park, Right at Your Door is the biggest revelation. I don't know how this one slid under my radar, but Door stars relative unknowns Rory Chochrane and Mary McCormack as a married couple living in L.A. When a dirty bombs erupt all over the city. Chochrane's character is ordered by police and military to barricade himself in his house, and seal all doors and windows with plastic sheeting and duct tape. The only problem is, his wife is trapped outside. Moral complications ensue. This all reminds me of a conversation I had with my wife during the whole avian flu controversy last year. I told her I would ignore the quarantines and be at her side if she caught the almost terminal illness, to which She replied, "That was a stupid idea!" Call me a romantic, I guess. Anyway, I welcome the indie genre films that test human relationships in the middle of unthinkable scenarios, and this one looks like a keeper. Maybe if Right at Your Door is successful, someone will take the initiative to make a film based on The Road.

Right at Your Door

This year's winner of the Greensboro 48-Hour Film Project.

Here's JoBeth, the winner of the Greensboro 48-Hour Film Project:

"JoBeth"

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Anyone who's ever been to a film set knows that making a movie is extremely difficult, and those challenges can only multiply when you have no more than 48 hours to get from script to screen. That's why you can't help but give props to the people who make pretty decent films in this contest. The Keen Collaborative really pulled their stuff together, and while the story was a tad bit weepy and over-dramatic for an eight-minute short, the overall tone of the film as well as the leading performance by Heather Meek were top-notch.

So with that said, it pleases me to announce that the guest on tomorrow's show will be none other than executive producer Dusty Keen. Tune in tomorrow to find out what the champion has to say about the making of this film.

A Grindhouse divided....

A few months ago, I had the impulse to check out Grindhouse for the third time when it played at the local bargain theatre. I didn't do it, and man do I now want to kick myself.

Word has finally trickled down on Amazon.com that Grindhouse - the spectacular double-feature from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez - will officially be both divided and extended on DVD. Here are the covers:





This is a horribly stupid move from The Weinstein Company. Grindhosue would have found its audience on DVD, where people who couldn't stomach a three-hour plus movie in theaters could use the pause button for all the smoke breaks and cell phone calls they needed. The smart thing to do would have been to release the theatrical version of Grindhouse in the fall only to follow it up with the extended two-disc versions of each film around Christmas time.

With the release of Death Proof (on September 18) and Planet Terror (on October 16) as seperate movies, what the Weinsteins did was essentially screw themselves out of roughly 1/3 of their home video profits. What's worse is that these upcoming DVD's don't even feature the hilarious fake trailers from Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, and Edger Wright. What a gip! Also, without having seen these extended versions of the movies, I believe that the 'missing reels,' especially in Planet Terror, were part of the reasons both movies were so good. I'm not too sure if I even care what happens between the scenes where Rose McGowan starts to get it on with Freddy Rodriguez and the gas station/barbecue pit starts to burn.

However, this does make me wonder, should both of these DVD's be the huge successes on home video (that I know they will be), could The Weinstein Company be interested in a boxed set that might include both extended films and the theatrical version with the beloved trailers at a later? Here's hoping....

Death Proof
-Finding Quentin's Gals
-The Guys of Death Proof
-Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike
-Introducing Zoe Bell
-Quentin's Greatest Collaborator: Editor Sally Menke*
-Double Dare trailer
-International Poster Gallery

Planet Terror
-Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Robert Rodriguez
-International trailer
-Deleted Scenes
-Cooking School
-10-Minute Film School
-The Stunts
-The Make-up and Effects
-The Badass Babes
-The Renegade Guys
-The Costumes
-The Production Design

(*Actually, I wouldn't mind learning more about editor Sally Menke.)

Reviews from the 'Boro (Volume 3)

I'm going to kick off this week's edition of Reviews from the 'Boro with Orson Scott Card's two weeks late write-up of The Simpson's Movie. Why? Because of Card's use of the words 'childish pizzle.'

Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself (SPOILERS!):

The writers of The Simpsons Movie get many of their laughs from irreverence or shock. (If you haven't seen the movie, but might, skip the rest of this paragraph.) For instance, there's the sequence where Homer dares his son Bart to skateboard naked to a fast-food joint. Bart takes the dare, but as he skateboards along, his genitals are constantly concealed behind a seemingly infinite array of strategically placed flora, fauna and signage. Until he comes to a tall hedge where the only part of him you can see is his crudely drawn childish pizzle. Offensive? Yes. Funny? I almost cried with laughter.

Because he is an open member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who writes for The Rhino, many Greensboroans peg Card as a stodgy, fuddy-duddy conservative. But anyone who has read his books and articles at great length will tell you this could not be further from the truth. Orson loves a good (and occasionally dirty) joke, and has told a fair share of them in his novels. Matter of fact, there is enough exposed childish pizzles in Ender's Game, that I have to wonder how accurate Warner Brothers will allow Card to be as he adapts his book into a motion picture.

As for Yes!Weekly's Glen Baity, while there were no childish pizzles to report of in The Bourne Ultimatum, he did have this to say:

Whether bounding over rooftops, riding motorcycles through European alleyways, or diving off 10-story buildings, The Bourne Ultimatum is never boring. At less than two hours, it's also a blazing quick ride. In a day and time when even mindless romantic comedies stretch past the 120-minute mark, it's good to see a director who gets in, makes his point and speeds off while you're still interested.

While he wrongly labelled it as the last major franchise film of the warmer months (Rush Hour 3 *cough, cough*), looks like Baity liked the third Bourne film a good deal. I liked it too. Damon's Jason Bourne is fast, and while the tired clichés of the story had almost caught up during this third intallment, I was glad to see both him and the trilogy get away unscathed. Here's hoping that Damon stays true to his word, and does not make another Bourne film again. If we learned nothing else from Star Wars it's that it's best to keep our really good trilogies pure.

In defense of Hot Rod.

Fellow News and Record journalist Joe Killian chimed in on Hot Rod without having actually seen it. In the Culture Shock blog entry dubbed "Lots of weird movie news," he wrote:

SNL digital short genius Andy Samberg (of "Lazy Sunday" and "D*ck In a Box" fame) has made his first film, Hot Rod. And it is apparently just effing awful. Which is disappointing, but somehow not surprising. I like the guy and hope they paid him enough to do it his way next time.

If you click on the words 'just effing awful' you will be directed to an extremely negative reveiw of Hot Rod by USA Today's Claudia Puig. Puig obviously didn't like the film, which is fine, but at least she saw it. Killian has stated on several occasions that his job as a full-time reporter keeps him too busy to go out and see movies. This is fine as well, but I was worried that his unseen review might have been the death knell for anyone who read the post. That's why I wrote the following reply:

I'm fairly sure that Andy Samberg did in fact 'do it his way' with 'HOT ROD.' The film was co-written and directed by his Lonely Island team. Also, I am really sure that the movie is funny as heck - way funnier than the undeserving box-office smash "I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry."

USA Today's Claudia Puig describes "Rod" as a botched "sophomoric" comedy, but what she obviously failed to realize is that the movie was going for the absurd instead of sophomoric. In the real world, a character like Samberg's Rod Kimble wouldn't be able to survive, but "Hot Rod" isn't set in the real world. No, Rod and his friends live inside an 80's movie fantasy, loaded with power metal montages to glory, and people who use "Footloose"-esque 'punch-dancing' as an anger management technique. Also, any reviewer who watched the film, and did not comment on the amazing comedy work of "All the Real Girls" star Danny McBride, simply didn't get it.

As a piece of filmmaking, "Hot Rod" maintains that humble, back-yard movie quality that many people dug in Samberg's SNL shorts. The movie may not have the budget or laugh ratio to go down as the funniest movie of this year (a title which belongs to "Knocked-Up" so far), but its destiny lies in becoming a required college comedy along with the likes of "Super Troopers," "Office Space," and "Happy Gilmore." Mark my word, in five years, one will soon be able to find a copy of "Hot Rod" in nearly every college dorm room in America.

P.S. The "Hot Rod" soundtrack is probably the best $7.99 I have ever spent on iTunes. I especially dig the song "Head Honcho" from the Queens of the Stone Age under the guise of a fake hair metal band named 'Gown.'

IFC's 50 Greatest Sex Scenes (w/ Clips)

You might not want to click on this link if you're at work, but IFC recently dropped their top 50 list of the greatest sex scenes in non-pornographic film history. Some of these scenes lack gratuitous nudity, and others don't.

For me, the 'sexiness' of a sex scene relies heavily on my ability to care about the characters. I know that sounds cliche', but whenever I see a sex scene between two characters I really don't give a damn about, I usually just laugh. Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls has a great example of this during the 'dolphin love' scene between Elizabeth Berkley and Kyle MacLauchlan. Not surprisingly, the movie did not make the list.

Here are some rather shocking (and sometimes undeserving) entries that did, however:

50) Ken Park*
41) High Fidelity
31) Storytelling
30) Me You and Everyone We Know**
14) Team America World Police
10) Young Frankenstein
2) A History of Violence

Here are some entries I agreed with wholly:

47) The Dreamers***
39) The Piano
24) The Cooler
13) Y Tu Mamá También
8) Secretary
3) Muholland Drive****

*Because the producer did not properly secure the soundtrack rights, no one can legally view Larry Clark's Ken Park outside of Korea; if that's the case, shouldn't it be disqualified? I guess I should just be glad that they didn't pick Park's Kids instead.

**While it may have been my favorite movie in 2004, the ))<>(( scene they are referring to in Me You and Everyone We Know did not involve actual or simulated sex in any way.

***Eva Green (Casino Royale) = Hot.

****While I personally hated Muholland Drive as a film, I really enjoyed the sex scene.

An observation.

There are many terrible ways to waste 89 minutes, but re-watching Hot Rod in theaters for the third time last night wasn't one of them.

Matt Damon: Hollywood's Best Value.

Producers take note, the following is the list of actors and actresses from Forbes Magazine who generate the most gross revenue per dollar they are paid:

1) Matt Damon
$29 per dollar paid.
2) Brad Pitt
$24 per dollar paid.
3)[TIE] Vince Vaughn & Johnny Depp
$21 per dollar paid.
4)Jennifer Anniston
$17 per dollar paid.
5)Angelina Jolie**
$15 per dollar paid.
6)Renée Zellweger
$14 per dollar paid.
7) [TIE] Reese Witherspoon, Ben Stiller & Sandra Bullock
$13 per dollar paid.
8) Tom Hanks
$12 per dollar paid.
9)[TIE] Leonardo DiCaprio & Tom Cruise
$11 per dollar paid.
10)[TIE] Will Smith & Denzel Washington
$10 per dollar paid.
11) [TIE] Cameron Diaz & Adam Sandler
$9 per dollar paid.
12) Will Ferrell
$8 per dollar paid.


This is all very interesting, because I would wager that the reason Damon is on top is because he has a knack for picking good scripts as well as projects with talented directors. He may have to pay lip service in a Danny Ocean film from time to time, but no one can deny that the Jason Bourne trilogy was an excellent series of films. The same could be said of no. 2 man Brad Pitt, who like Damon, may choose a 'paycheck' film from time to time (*cough, cough--Troy), but he has picked some well-written projects as well.

Johnny Depp's agent might rejoice that the actor managed to tie for the no. 3 spot, but they might want to hold off before uncorking a bottle of champagne. Of all the actors on this list, Depp is the one whose last few projects (i.e. The Pirates sequels) have cost the most money. The last two Pirates of the Caribbean movies nearly cost half a billion dollars to make -- and that's only the ammount the studio will admit to paying.

Will Ferrell rides low on this list, because, as Forbes points out, "Ferrell's shtick doesn't translate overseas." I'm guessing when someone from, say, France sees a film like Talladega Nights, they are probably thinking one of two different things: 1) This guy is acting like a typical, stupid American, but I'm not sure how that's funny. 2) What the hell is 'NASCAR' racing, and why do so many people give a crap when professional street racing is so much better?


**The list also made mention of the fact that Jolie would be playing a character named 'The Fox' in the Mark Millar comic book adaptation Wanted. Hurm, must investigate futher....

RE: Children of the Hunt article - The Original Draft

Here is the GoTriad! article I wrote after visiting the production of the local indie film/b-movie thriller Children of the Hunt. Changes had to be made, however, as I often have a habit of using the most accurate words to describe the world of filmmaking, rather than the ones which would make the most sense to general readers. That's not to say that the version that was revised by my editor at the News and Record is inferior in any way - it's just that it was merely intended for a different audience than the one who might read this website.

As such, I thought I would post my original, non-layman's version of the article here. Enjoy.


(Red Dawn and The Outsiders' Darren Dalton getting ready to make a 'rousing the troops' speech in Children of the Hunt)

While one might assume that production on an action film would be as thrilling and fast-paced as the end result on the big screen, the truth is that this is simply not the case. Scenes must be re-shot again and again from different angles, and various fight moves like lunges, plunges, kicks and throws are filmed one. Piece. At. A. Time.

In the case of a Matthew B. Moore film, however, the local filmmaker comes very close. If Moore's newest project, Children of the Hunt, has the budget to include professional Hollywood actors Darren Dalton (The Outsiders and Red Dawn) and David Stephens (Punch Drunk Love) as well as a cast and crew numbering well into the fifties.

But with a two-week schedule, the one thing he can't afford is to waste time.


(Actress Crystal Largen)

On the last day of exterior filming, Moore shoots leather-clad actress Chrystal Largen, hoisting an archer's bow into the air as she screams, "We hunt the boar like badasses, holla!" Then less than twenty minutes later, the director rushes to another location in the wooded hills near Sophia, NC, filming a group of actors in purple coveralls (which he later plans to alter via computers effects) as they stalk human prey in the forest.


(Director Matthew B. Moore)

"With an indie, it's always madness, unless you got six weeks to shoot it," says Moore. He adds: "I'm one of those people who cannot stand to wait, because I have a timeline in my head – I know how much time we have, I know how long it takes me to shoot."

Actor Paul Shaw echoes these comments.

Shaw says, "People don't understand – we work 12 hour days, and we would work 14 or sixteen hour days if we had the light, and the crew people go like machines, they just go, go, go, go, go!"


(Actor Paul Shaw)

In the movie, Shaw plays the villainous Travis, head gamekeeper for The Brotherhood of Mars, a sociopathic, Earth-based corporation which allows the wealthy elite to track and kill impoverished Americans forced to live in the woods.

"We got Michael Vick running 54 pit-bulls in his house, we got reality TV trying to look for more and more stuff," says Shaw, "There's not very many steps we have to go to get from where we are now to this."

Beyond the trees at the bottom of the hill, executive producer Adam Ross sits in a lawn chair beside an isolated cabin worthy of Thoreau. This will be the second feature the wiry producer has made on this location. Eating handfuls of miniature chocolate bars, Ross plans how his team will finish this film, as well as their next one, and the one after that.


(Executive Producer Adam Ross)

Ross and company still plan to enter Greensboro's 48-Hour Film Project, despite the fact that it will begin just a few days after filming on Children of the Hunt is supposed to end. Afterwards, he wants to shoot an anthology of short horror movies, a la Tales From the Darkside – in 3-D no less.

But perhaps more important than either of those plans, Ross says it's imperative to get away from the sun and make his next film indoors on an air-conditioned soundstage. Ross jokes with a crew member, "I've got a lot of requests not to do anymore earthy, woods shoots!"

--

Fortunately, I am not done with Children of the Hunt. I had a blast hanging out on the set, and I also got some really good interviews with Dalton and Stevens. Dalton apparently had a good time working with director John Milius on the set of Red Dawn, while Stevens' Punch Drunk Love experience with PTA was not so good. Here in the next few days, I plan to transcribe those interviews for your reading enjoyment.

Stay tuned.


(**All photo credits Thomas Domer.)

Rod is 'Hot' so where's the audience?

Okay, so maybe that title didn't come out quite right, but I just wanted to vent because there's a really funny new comedy in theaters that nobody seems to know about.

The movie? Why that crazy stunt man comedy, Hot Rod, of course.

Rod is the big screen debut of SNL's Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island team, and a film I predict will easily reach Office Space and Super Troopers status in ten years.

Pretty soon, Hot Rod will be a requred DVD purchase for anyone living in a college dorm and the red 'Team Rod' t-shirts shown in the movie will be over-worn by every male independent coffee house worker and pizza-delivery boy in America. And when the Hot Topic crowd catches on to how cool this movie is, look out!

But why wait? Why allow for what will soon be a cult film to languish in theaters, unseen by you? Wouldn't you like to be a member of the elite few who, when they hear someone mention the film, can brag, "Oh yeah, well I saw Hot Rod in theaters!"? The onscreen antics of all-star cast Samberg, Danny McBride (All the Real Girls), Ian McShane (Deadwood), and Will Arnett (Arrested Development) are just as funny now as they will be in ten years, so why not get off your duff and see it in theaters right now?

With Hot Rod it's like the Lonely Island team of Samberg, co-star Jorma Taccone, and director Akiva Schaffer wrote as many random jokes, gags, music cues, and obscure 80's movie references, threw them against a wall and filmed them. A few of the punch-lines don't stick, but many, many more succeed in eliciting a smile, a chuckle, a guffaw, or a flat-out laugh without fail, and this is coming from a person who's seen the movie twice.

It's a shame that Hot Rod is getting trounced by I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a movie that's about as funny as balancing an overdrawn bank account. In it's third weekend at the box-office, Chuck made another $10.5 million than it deserved, with Rod making less than half that amount on its debut. Most distressing is the fact that Hot Rod almost reminds me of a time when Adam Sandler films used to be hilariously absurd (Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, and even Billy Madison). Now that Sandler's hopes of being in a genuinely funny movie again have been dashed along with his hopes of being accepted by audiences in serious films, it makes no sense to ride his nose-diving filmography into the ground and below. I say it's time to jump the Sandler ship for the time being, and give Samberg's Hot Rod a go instead. At least then you will get to laugh when you pay to see a comedy.

Reviews from the 'Boro (Volume 2)

This week, Orson Scott Card from The Rhino Times was too busy talking about why he hates both sports and his new AOL service to review a new film, but Yes! Weekly's Glen Baity managed to peep The Simpson's Movie. Here's a clip of what he said:

At this point, it's safe to say The Simpsons Movie can't be judged by any conventional criteria. Much like the series since the beginning of its second season, the movie exists in a self-referential universe, relying on preexisting familiarity with an exhaustive list of characters: Not just Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart and Lisa, but Mr. Burns, Apu, Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, Milhouse, Ralph Wiggum, Ned Flanders and about 100 other supporting personalities.

All those wide-eyed friends and neighbors converge on the big screen for one of the only event movies this summer that isn't even a little bit disappointing.

(Click the blue text to read the rest of Glen's review.)

Apparently, Glen dug the film a little more than I did. I gave the film a 'neutral' rating on Thursday's show, and called it 'A video rental, at best.' That's not to say that the film was horrible, I just thought people would be better off watching it on home video, or to take Homer's advice, on TV for free.

CAST THIS!:The Watchmen

Last week, Zack Snyder announced the cast for the upcoming movie based on Alan Moore's The Watchmen, and I thought I would chime in on each of the decisions that were made:

1)

Jackie Earle Haley
as

Rorschach

Why not start things off with the earliest - and best - casting decision made thus far. I am glad that the filmmakers made the casting of Rorschach top priority, since he is the narrator and pretty much the main character. Back when the film was in development hell, NYPD Blue's David Caruso was attached to the role. Thank heavens this is no longer the case, because Caruso is too pretty for the role, and even worse, he has forgotten how to act. Anyone who has read The Watchmen knows that Rorschach probably never won too many beauty contests. In many ways, outside of his mask, his appearances are as hard as his stance on justice and right and wrong:

So in casting the pervert from Little Children (or the punk-ass from Bad News Bears) I think Snyder made a solid choice.

2)
Billy Crudup
as

Dr. Manhattan
Again, Snyder and company made another wise decision casting Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan. Apparently Keanu Reeves was a front-runner early on (making the second Alan Moore created character Reeves would have played after John Constantine), but the actor priced himself out of the movie. In several interviews, Snyder has said that the 'story and the property are the stars of the film', so in hiring Crudup as sort of a low-rent Keanu, they actually updraded - if you ask me.

However, not all of Snyder's cast inspire this much hope:

3)
Matthew Goode
as

Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt

-and-

4)
Patrick Wilson
as

The Night Owl

If this project wass a Smallville-esqe prequel series on the CW, I would have no problem with the casting of Matthew Goode and Patrick Wilson. I loved Goode in The Lookout, and after last year's one-two punch of Hard Candy and Little Children, Wilson is shapping up to be one of the best actors of his generation. However, both actors are a little too young to be playing decomissioned super-heroes who have been on the sidelines for more than eight years. Do the math: Goode, who was born in 1978, would have had to hang up his cape in his early twenties, and before that, he would have to have been a super-hero for at least five years to establish such a high profile as Ozymandias - 'The Smartest Man in the World'; and as for Wilson, who was born in 73, the dude simply lacks the years - and the love-handles - needed to play a pudgy super hero with a mid-life crisis. A month ago, Jude Law was a front-runner for Ozymandias with John Cussack being a lock for Night Owl.




Perhaps they, too, priced themselves out of the film, however, both of them would have been worth the money.

This final group of actors have yet to prove themselves one way or the other:

5)
Jeffrey Dean Morgan
as

The Comedian

-and-


Malin Akerman
as

Silk Spectre II/ Sally Jupiter

As far as acting credits go, both actors have limited resumes beyond supporting roles on TV shows and bit parts in low-budget films - so if successful, The Watchmen could be their big break a la Gerard Butler in 300. For their sake I hope so, and I will say that neither performer looks 'wrong' for his or her part. Let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope that both of them can act.

-

I am still not sure how this whole Watchmen project is going to turn out. After the Dawn of the Dead remake and 300, Zack Snyder has proven himself to be quite talented with action films, but The Watchmen is more than just an action story. The story is a classic because of its exploration of what makes someone a hero or a villain. Darren Aronofsky was close to making his own Watchmen film a year ago, before The Fountain tanked, and I think his sharp focus towards thematic unity would have made him the best person for the job. I almost worry, that like all classic forms of literature, The Watchmen would be as un-filmable as The Great Gatsby or The Grapes of Wrath. Guess we'll all find out for sure when the movie comes out next year.

Anyway, here is an interesting short film based on The Watchmen that a college student made with a video camera. It's pretty good, even though the guy playing Night Owl is obese, and the guy playing Rorschach is acting like a cross between Billy Bob Thorton in Slingblade and John Malkovich from Of Mice and Men.