Thursday, May 18, 2006
Bruckheimer + Video Games = Pixelated Explosions?
Explosion/movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer has teamed up with Walt Disney Pictures to acquire an action spec entitled Game Boys. I'm already at a loss for words. Why? I don't know. At least it's not Grandma's Boy.
"The story revolves around two thirtysomething video game junkies recruited by the Department of Homeland Security to lead a geeky army of gamers in a battle against creatures that have come to life from a video game they have mastered."
You sons of bitches.
Will Game Boys go down as a classic of the genre made wholly awesome by films such as War Games and The Wizard? Only time and heavy alcohol consumption will tell.
Source: THR Continue reading Bruckheimer + Video Games = Pixelated Explosions?
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Editorial: That Jump Kick Was Better Than Citizen Kane
When I was finally able to get a hold of Jet Li’s new and probably last martial arts film Fearless, I felt dread wash over me more than anticipation. Jet Li has only had one or two films outside of the Chinese market that was actually decent. Plus, my standards for fight scenes of all kinds are extremely high, and if they don’t meet just the right criteria I get incredibly upset or bored almost immediately. Too many jerky and obvious wires? I get disappointed. Editing looks like they decided to just throw a camera out of an airplane (I’m looking at you Batman Begins)? I get frustrated. Unnecessary and ridiculous CGI? I get angry. The fight lasts longer than the docking scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture? I get bored. Most people seem not to care about any of this when I ask them or point it out. During the opening night of Matrix: Reloaded when I gave an exasperated groan every time there was bad wirework or CGI was roughly implemented, people would stare at me like I was cock-blocking them to a night with Monica Bellucci.
This all isn’t to say that I find fight scenes more important than characters or story. On the contrary, I find that the best fight scenes motivate and reflect those two things. It’s real hard to find that perfect mixture, though, and I don’t really expect it anymore to be honest. Still, when I see Fearless, which has a character (that admittedly doesn’t have much depth to him) defined a lot by his fight scenes, it makes me wonder if they should be as readily ignored as mere ‘spectacle’ like they are now.
One might find this whole thing incredibly anal and overanalyzing. Others might find being meticulous about the fights dim witted and hopeless, especially since most of them have become some sort of staple of pop culture film since The Matrix made the general public discover flashy slow motion and fights with the real actors about 30 years too late. People also see the fights as the empty part, the part that should be considered the fluff of the fluff. Often they’ll be touted as infantile thrills with not much to them. They’re right up there with catch phrases and sport montages on most film goers’ artistic barometers.
I say screw your barometer.
I’ve seen Jackie Chan fights reflect more genuine drama and passion than some academy award winning performances. Jet Li wildly flailing his fists on someone’s face often has more acting to it than some actors do in the role of their life. Clever little indie films with melancholy and angst ridden emotion have nothing on a firm one-inch-punch from Bruce Lee.
Let me first make you realize that I don’t think fights are these hidden masterpieces that should be judged and critiqued like a Picasso painting. In some ways they should be critiqued like some art, but just like any other scene or set piece in a movie, a good fight scene should inherently lend itself to formulate a good film as a whole. In all actuality some of the most successful fight scenes aren’t actually very good pieces of martial arts. I could go into inane and tedious detail about how most of the attacks in the final duel of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace seemingly is aiming nowhere near the actual opponents and instead is safely fixed on the lightsabers. I can point out in Oldboy that a lot of the hits in the hallway fight don’t connect. I could also point out I have a giant stick permanently lodged in my anus. None of it is really worth the mention, because those fights as a whole have something that a lot more should have.
Emotion mixed with pertinence to the character and story with a dash of all around good filmmaking.
It's my opinion that some of the best fight scenes can reflect characters and story almost as good if not better than dialogue or normal scenes. Desperation, anxiousness, anger, resentment, emotions that any actor could strongly portray with a few words and a furrowed brow can just as easily be portrayed in a dynamic fight. It's also my opinion people ignore it if it's there, or, fight scenes that could easily speak for themselves feel obligated to explain its intentions and meanings during it or before it with dialogue. Oddly enough, this is a sort of "dumbing down" of fight scenes probably to the lowest common denominator. There are many, many examples of this. For instance you have Christopher Lee's cheestacular dialogue right before he morphs into CGI Lee and battles with Yoda in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. He feels necessary to inform us with the obvious, kind of making the whole thing sillier than it already seems to be.
That's not true for every movie of course. The exceptions of such fights like Inigo Montoya and Wesley in The Princess Bride or Vader and Luke in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back actually makes the scene better than it would be without a word. The big difference being that the dialogue actually lends itself to the fight and doesn't hamper it. This just further illustrates the point of effective collaboration of artistic elements, making fight scenes not really as inconsequential to the rest of the film as one might think.
Look at the hallway fight in Oldboy, probably one of the greatest examples of the fight scene effectively lending to the narrative and being an impressive piece of filmmaking all in one. Oh Dae-su as a character, up until he found his former residence of capture, never was defined as particularly brutal or resilient. We saw more of an estranged man than a determined one. Of course the teeth torture right before the fight is fairly significant of what the character is willing to do for his past, but the fight scene in the hallway reinforces just how incredibly hell bent Oh Dae-su is. He single handedly battles a little over a dozen men with nothing but a hammer and a knife in his back. In terms of filmmaking, not many people would be able to do that whole scene in one shot. In fact, almost all fight scenes I can recall off hand has to be cut just because of how complicated it can be to shoot it.
Hell, even the brief scene of Oh Dae-su tackling some street punks fresh out of his captivity is exhilarating. You feel such wonder and interest in the character and his relinquishment upon the world that you’re caught up in his reintegration into society. That first brief fight gives a little suggestive quality that his imprisonment wasn't wasted, and that he just might be ready to strike back at whoever did this to him. It's a nice emotional manipulation, just from a few punches, lovely filming, and two or three lines.
Not convinced? There are so many more examples of effective fight scenes that it's really hard to go over all of them. The fight scenes in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy all have the backing of trying to portray and remind us just how incredibly precise and calculating Jason Bourne is in his element, never letting us forget what he actually used to do. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has a moderately well orchestrated duel that is elevated by its music (something that always makes a fight scene better than it appears) but ultimately leads to motivating the best scene of dialogue in the prequel trilogy. The beginning fight in Hero between Donnie Yen and Jet Li actually motivates the later mystery of the plot and establishes the Nameless character, but is at the same time another piece of beautiful filmmaking.
It's possible that I am reaching too far into the depths of these scenes to validate their existence beyond the aesthetic. After all, some of the best fight scenes are nothing but pure, unadulterated entertainment. Most Jackie Chan films like Wheels on Meals, which arguably has one of the best fights of his career, have nothing but comedy and wackiness at the core of its storytelling. Tony Jaa's movies have about as much story as a LARPing session, but every scene he breaks bones or jumps off buildings are some of the most fun I'll ever have watching a film. For Christ sakes, Enter the Dragon has an evil Shaolin monk with a hairy claw for a hand and an actor whose peak point in his career was Black Samurai.
But, just like any film seen by itself, I believe there is a rather strong seperation between the entertaining and the solely artistic. Sure, Jackie Chan fights have a physical artistry to them, but they often don't lend too much to the story, which itself is usually far too lacking to begin with. Just like when you sit down to watch some summer spectacle, more often than not you'll probably be entertained and not much more. This is opposed to something like Oldboy where the fight lends to the film on numerous levels other than a really neat set piece. I honestly don't think anything is wrong with either. However, I do think people should think about some of the fights they see in films before they simply ignore it as the fluff of the fluff with really cool helicopter kicks. Let's just hope that more filmmakers realize the strengths a well coordinated fight scene can bring before they give us another Sam "I LOST MY ARM!!11!" Jackson versus Ian "I EAT Scenery" McDiarmid. Continue reading Editorial: That Jump Kick Was Better Than Citizen Kane
Will Rape Childhood For Movie Deal
InFocus Magazine has just run an interview (which TFL learnt of through still, for some reason, reading IGN.com) with Harold Ramis who, once again, is talking up another sequel to Ghostbusters. This sounds like nothing more than Tom Arnold when he talks about a sequel to True Lies, or David Duchovny hinting at another X-Files movie - waning stars who are trying to get back into the big leagues by touting the biggest properties they were involved in. Still, Sylvester Stallone is making Rocky 6, so why not Ghostbusters 3?
The answer is because it would be rubbish. Ghostbusters is almost a perfect 80's summer movie (though after watching it on tv as a kid, the one thing I remember it for now I've got the DVD is that there's a scene where Dan Ackroyd gets blown by a ghost), but Ghostbusters 2 is still as bad as everyone remembers it. The first was very much of its time, The leads are all now very old and very not funny, except for Bill Murray, who is now officially way too good for this shit.
What's interesting here is the obviously desperate revisionism and corner cutting Ramis is being forced into. Here's Harold talking:
"What Danny had originally conceived was sending us to a special-effects hell, a netherworld full of phenomenal visual environments and boiling pits. But what works so well about the first two is the mundane-ness of it all. So my notion was that hell exists in the same place as our consensus reality, but it's like a film shutter. It's the darkness between the 24 frames. So we create a device to do it, and it's in a warehouse in Brooklyn. When we step out of the chamber, it looks just like New York, but it's hell."
Walking the Statue of Liberty through Manhatten is not mundane and neither is stuffing your movies full of expensive set pieces involving thousands of ghosts and landmarks covered in slime. The beginning of that sentence also seems to imply something worked in the second. For one, I bet this Hell-New York looks suspiciously like Vancouver and for two, in six months time he'll say that Hell-New York will work best if it looks just like his back yard.All that said, although a sequel is a terrible idea, a full on remake is probably quite a good one. It's a rock solid high concept that played off the comic energy of its leads. Find four new comedians (preferably funny, so recent SNL alumni are out) and away you go. Rinse and repeat every ten years or so. Anyone complaining that this would sully the memory of a film about wise-cracking academics fighting naked chicks with lasers could do with buying new t-shirts.
Source: IGN, InFocus Magazine Continue reading Will Rape Childhood For Movie Deal
Fuck Me
The Wall Street Journal (by way of the the excellent Dark Horizons) has recently revealed the actual production budgets for some of Hollwood's largest properties, three of which will be hitting theaters very soon:
Spider-Man 3 - $250-$300m
Superman Returns - $261m
King Kong - $250m
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - approaching $225m
X-Men: The Last Stand - $210m
Fuck me.
Those are big numbers, and much bigger than the studios are officially giving as their budgets. TFL's cultural commentator Katanga was quoted as saying that those numbers are 'fucking obscene' before flipping to the 'goat porn' folder in his 'favourites'.
Plenty of bullshit is spoken about Hollywood, its money and the box office, both by the studios and by us. But people talking bullshit is usually a good sign that there's something interesting happening underneath so let's have a look.
Hollywood is in the business of under-estimating their budgets (Kong was officially given as $207m). Hollywood is also in the business of deliberately over-estimating their costs so that films (like monstrous wodge-grabber Forrest Gump) never officially make a profit and actors with profit sharing deals don't have to be paid.
Hollywood also has to share the box office takings with cinema chains, distributors and A-List stars. Tom Cruise made something like $70m for Mission: Impossible 2, which makes that film's huge success suddenly seem not so golden. The studios - the people that actually stump up the money - get somewhere around 50% of those box office dollars that we all argue about on Mondays. George Lucas stated that Revenge of the Sith needed to take $350m before he got a dollar in profit.
But then American box office receipts are also not the main revenue stream for movies. Foreign takings make up around 50% of total theatrical takings, then there's TV rights, DVD money, toys, product placement sponsorship deals and absoltuely no mafia money. Even something that 'bombed' in the cinema (Like Waterwold, which I like, so fuck you) has a good chance of making its money back in the long run - to the point where there are are regular stories that 'all films make a profit'.
But, then again, Hollywood still only pays attention to that opening weekend in America. If it underperforms (and the bar for underperforming is rising every year. Remember when a £50m opening - for M:I-3 - would have been considered nifty?) on that weekend the film is a flop, heads will roll, and careers will go DTV. That it actually makes a return on the investment seems almost secondary.
So, seriously, WTF?
The first thing to remember is that Hollywood is a business, so any investment, however large, that brings a return on itself is a success. This makes any arguments along the lines of 'How dare they!' sadly irrelevent. This is money and profit is morality. The question is whether they ARE actually getting a return.
The initial reaction to those budgets is no, but the only thing the clusterfuck number-crunching above can tell us poor saps on the outside is that Hollywood has a culture of not telling the truth. The 'show' hasn't entirely left the 'business', and both the money and the glamour are in the big movies. They want the money certainly (so do I, actually), but they also want the prestige and sheer supermodel-blowjob of being at the top of the sexiest industry on Earth.
The studios have shackled themselves to a business model where a few massive films make all their money for them and, as such, are pooling more and more resources into fewer projects. Rather than face a hole in their precious summer release schedule they would rather simply keep pouring money into troubled projects than cheaply abandon them early on.
Equally, with this narrowing in on 'big', stars who can command the biggest audience can command much higher salaries and the definition of being at the top means earning more than the other guy, creating a cycle of inflation. It will take roughly $50m to get the lead players on to the set of Rush Hour 3 before a frame is shot. I wouldn't be surpised if it ended up being filmed in a broom closet.
Compare any movie to Return of the King and you start wondering where the money went. Does Mission: Impossible 3 or Terminator 3 really look like they cost over $150m each? I'm sure Arnie's and Tom's private jets are very, very nice.
X-Men 3 has been rushed into production with a budget of both previous entries combined, just to beat Superman Returns to release, possibly for no other reason than for Tom Rothman (producer of X-Men) to get back at Bryan Singer (the director who abandoned X-Men for Supes).
And, finally, the continuing obsession with the increasingly unimportant opening weekend suggests some fratboy cock-waving exercise rather than the cool-headed decisions of inhuman suits. King Kong and Munich, both considered disappointments at the American box office (remember when $100m was considered a lot of money?), are both cleaning up on DVD.
The top flight of Hollywood seems engaged in a blind, hubristic race to be the biggest, both on and off screen, and it doesn't seem sustainable. The obfuscationary accounting stops those of us on the outside commenting on whether the bottom line is still healthy, and these studios are now all supported by the bottomless pockets of mulitnationals, but True Lies, and all the furore over its measly $100m budget, was barely a decade ago.
It would be a fool who would prophesy a collapse on a level of the Roman Empire or Enron but, pesonally, it would be nice if the market dictated a move towards smaller movies. Better movies would be nice too, though right now I'd just settle for different. See you at X-Men 3?
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Dark Horizons Continue reading Fuck Me
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
"Are you a Mexi-CAN or a Mexi-CAN'T?"
During the course of my daily web routine, I came across two things: Photos from Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel and the trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. Both look great. And both are very Mexican.
What does that mean? I'm not sure exactly. But it seems Mexican cinema (and Latin American cinema in general) has had some sort of radical resurgence this decade. Iñárritu's feature debut Amores Perros was something else... cinema at its most kinetic, gut-wrenching, and heart-felt. And del Toro's The Devil's Backbone was a film so evocative it just brimmed with amazingly eerie imagination and suprising emotion. These were the kinds of films that reminded people that cinema is and will always be the most exciting and visceral of artforms. Next to pornography, of course.Now, what's most interesting is that these two visionary titans will be squaring off in, of all places, France. Yup, the Cannes Film Festival is upon us, and lobbying for the coveted Palme d'Or will be both Iñárritu and del Toro with Babel and Pan's Labyrinth respectively.
Plot outlines of both films to keep you up to speed, courtesy of Wikipedia and IMDb:
Babel - Armed with a Winchester rifle, two Morrocan boys set out to look after their family’s herd of goats. In the silent echoes of the desert, they decide to test the rifle… but the bullet goes farther than they thought it would. In an instant, the lives of four separate groups of strangers on three different continents collide. Caught up in the rising tide of an accident that escalates beyond anyone’s control are a vacationing American couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett), a rebellious deaf Japanese teenager and her father, and a Mexican nanny who, without permission, takes two American children across the border. None of these strangers will ever meet; in spite of the sudden, unlikely connection between them, they will all remain isolated due to their own inability to communicate meaningfully with anyone around them.
Pan's Labyrinth - The story of a young girl that travels with her mother and adoptive father to a rural area up North in Spain, 1944. After Franco´s victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.
Both are considered among the frontrunners, and though I've seen little of Babel aside from its stellar cast (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, the fantastic Gael Garcia Bernal) and the below photos, I have complete faith in Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo "Amores Perros, 21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" Arriaga to deliver something memorable.
As for Pan's Labyrinth... shit... I'll let the trailer speak for itself (though you may not understand it since it's in Spanish). Click here to check it out in unfortunately abysmal video quality.
Babel pics:
Source: Paramount, ClubCultura.com Continue reading "Are you a Mexi-CAN or a Mexi-CAN'T?"
Summer Preview 2006 - Part 3
CarsThe Cast? Owen Wilson, Paul effing Newman, George Carlin, Larry the Oh Jesus Not That Guy, is it a Lasseter movie? Yeah, it has John Ratzenberger.
What's It About? A hotshot race car gets waylaid in a small town and learns that there's more to life than being a hotshot race car.
Will It Suck? It's got a fairly generic plot line, it's about cars and racing them, it's got Larry the fucking Cable Guy, this movie should suck. It really, really should, but here's the real challenge: name a bad Pixar movie. Go ahead, name one. Nothing? Okay, name a mediocre one. Seriously, try. Monsters Inc.? Maybe mediocre by Pixar's standards, but still a great flick. Sorry, you lose, and we win. For about a year, Pixar's name has been the only thing keeping me on this, and until the recent trailer, I was even beginning to lose that faith, but that trailer showed me that this movie is going to have all of that good ol' Pixar magic. Still, the plot isn't anything we haven't seen before, and LARRY THE CABLE GUY is in it.
Oh what the hell am I saying? John Lasseter directed some of the best movies of all time in the last decade, and his team will pull through no matter what. I guarantee it.
A Prairie Home CompanionThe Cast? Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, John C. Reilly, Virginia Madsen
What's It About? It's the last broadcast of the most popular and celebrated radio show in the country. Tons of people (it's an Altman flick, after all) talk, mystery abounds, other things happen in funny ways. It's also probably endearing at the end. Keillor does that.
Will It Suck? You'd be crazy to say yes. Right now, I'm in the last throes of a comedy writing class with Mr. Keillor, and after spending the last few months with him as my teacher, I gotta say, the man is both funny and brilliant. There's no way that this script is anything less than great. He's working with characters that he's developed for years on the radio version of A Prairie Home Companion, and he's working with the greatest ensemble director ever. This is likely to be Robert Altman's last film, he's 81 years old and in not-amazing health, but I wouldn't put it past him to pull a Bergman and keep making movies into his 90s. He once said in an interview, "Retirement? You're talking about death, right?", and if there were one guy to bet on kicking the bucket while behind the lens, it'd be him.
Honestly, there's no way that this film fails. Altman is right there at the top of the list of best working directors, Keillor has been writing and performing successfully for probably two of my lifetimes, and it's got a cast that can't be beat. Kevin Kline is maybe the best actor of his generation, Meryl Streep is maybe the best actress EVER, and when your fourth and up billings are names like Lohan, Lee Jones, Harrelson and Reilly, (with Reilly being the only really great talent there), you know that the project's brimming with skill.
I wish I had more to say about this (I'll ask Keillor on Monday for any info about the film), but it really should be one of the more special pieces of cinema that we get this year.
A Scanner DarklyThe Cast? Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Rory Cochran
What's It About? Dystopian view of the future where people spy on people for the government in order to stop drugs or something. Sorry, never read the book, and the trailer's kind of ambiguous, so you'll have to take my filtered IMDB synopsis/wikipedia research.
Will It Suck? So far, all signs point to no. Richard Linklater makes interesting indie films by default, and good mainstream films when he's itching for a buck. This seems to be a balancing act between his mainstreamedness and his independent style. Obviously bringing the rotoscoping from Waking Life, hopefully leaving the encumbering philosophy lectures from that movi...okay, Waking Life was just one BIG philosophy lecture. I love rotoscoping as a technique. Some people think it's ugly, but I think that the scribbly movement of the lines brings a special kind of life to the screen, which is helpful when you're discussing metaphysics in a coffee shop.
Keanu Reeves is good at finding roles that suit his style, and this is similar enough to his Neo-idiom that he should excel. Robert Downey Jr. is an amazing actor, and Woody Harrelson is also in this movie. The other quality factor to point out here is Philip K. Dick. The man's stories have a long track record of being made into films, and mostly with success. Paycheck aside, he has some great films to his story credit, like Blade Runner and Minority Report, and Charlie "Most Interesting Screenwriter In A Long Time" Kaufman lists him as one of his greatest influences, which makes him worth his weight in gold alone.
What does the rest of the TFL crew have to say?
Andrew Clarke
Cars: Toys, animals and monsters I can get, but anthropomorphising cars is disturbed. Bloody Americans. Will the sequel be Guns?
A Prairie Home Companion: So this has Lindsey Lohan in her 'bulimic crack whore' phase? There.
P.S. Shane is a brown-nosing shill.
A Scanner Darkly: The book is the most human and coherent of Dick's work, but Waking Life is unwatchable arse. I hope it's good and I'm sure it will, at least, be an interesting watch, but Linklater should stop wasting time and get moving on School of Rock 2: Bassist.
Bill Nolen
Cars: I hope that this isn't the point where Pixar's amazing run of animated films ends. I know I'm not interested in the subject matter, but if it has a great story (a good chance), and only minor annoyances from Larry the Cable Truck (very little chance), I'll be pleased.
A Prairie Home Companion: The last Robert Altman movie I saw was Gosford Park, and it wasn't very engaging. I have never seen an Altman movie in a theater, so why start now? Good word-of-mouth will get a rental from me.
A Scanner Darkly: Neo's back, and this time he's pissed! I have no mental relationship with this story or Phillip K. Dick books in general, but I trust Linklater to make this a lot more entertaining than that other animated thing he did. I'll have my ass in a seat for this because I hear the painted Winona Ryder has a nude scene. Jesus, I'm pathetic.
George Merchan
Cars: If this doesn't start receiving some positive buzz (a la M:I-3) than I'm skipping this bitch at the cineplex. Pixar has never really let me down, but cars with personality that don't feature Don Knotts, Dean Jones, and the delicious Julie Sommars are not exactly ringing my bell. There's a somewhat decent cast in there too (Larry the HowCanThisDouchebagBeSoSucessful? Guy excepted)... but still, it just doesn't seem like enough.
A Prairie Home Companion: I've not heard of this until this very moment, so let me check IMDb real quick......... Robert Altman = Old, John C. Reilly = Good, Lindsey Lohan = Suspect, Mathew Modine (Scenes Deleted) = Hahahahahaha!
(Update: After having written the above, I've since caught the trailer and I gotta say that this looks pretty okay. Very funny and very warm. Shane's name-dropping still makes my blood boil, but in the end I think he may be right.)
A Scanner Darkly: Now we're talking. Though Richard Linklater's Waking Life was a nice experiment as far as "storytelling" and rotoscoping was concerned, it was also gay times a million bajillion. That said, Before Sunrise and especially Before Sunset were total masterpieces, and School of Rock surprisingly turned out to be great fun as well. Plus, this is Phillip K. Dick. And there's Winona Ryder to look at. Yeah, I'll buy a ticket.
Carlton Stevens
Cars: This is garnering zero interest from me other than Michael Keaton making his obligatory appearance to remind us that his career is not quite dead yet. I'm definently not going to the theater to see this. Also, if the sequel is Guns I hope to god they get Charlton Heston as an old Winchester rifle and Chow Yun-Fat and John Woo as wacky dual berettas.
A Prairie Home Companion: Unlike George, I prefer to look into the good sides of actors. For instance, if you look at Mathew Modine's IMDb biography, you'll see he's learning fly fishing from Liam Neeson.
I don't see you fly fishing with Liam Neeson.
A Scanner Darkly: I think this is the first promising thing so far on the round up. Keanu Reeves and Woody Harrelson as drug addicts would only be more fun if Dennis Hopper was in the mix. Robert Downey Jr. will probably steal the show and Philip K. Dick as a source for anything is usually a good start. If this is anything remotely like Waking Life they better hand out obligatory dime bags at the door.
Katanga
Cars: I'm not sitting in a theater with a couple hundred NASCAR dads and their progeny.
A Prairie Home Companion: How can you not love Altman? Look at that cast! I'll be there opening weekend.
A Scanner Darkly: Definitely my most anticipated film of the summer. It looks beautiful.
Charlie Brigden
Cars: It's Pixar. Even with the awful teasers, there's no way I'm not seeing this.
A Prairie Home Companion: I dig some of Altman's movies, but I don't see the man as the be-all, end-all of directors. I have no real interest in this.
A Scanner Darkly: Rotoscoping should have died when Bakshi's LOTR farce was released. I love Linklater and Downey, but I can't stand Keanu Reeves. I'm not sure the animation is my cup of tea, but I'll see it because it looks interesting. Continue reading Summer Preview 2006 - Part 3
