Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Weekend Image Depot: 2/10/07
Shooter
U.S. Release: March 16, 2007
Pride
U.S. Release: March 23, 2007
The Astronaut Farmer
U.S. Release: February 23, 2007
Shooting Dogs
U.S. Release: March 9, 2007
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
U.S. Release: May 25, 2007
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Labels: Pirates of the Caribbean, Pride, Shooter, Shooting Dogs, The Astronaut Farmer, The Weekend Image Depot
Continue reading The Weekend Image Depot: 2/10/07Tuesday, February 06, 2007
DVD Review: Eddie Murphy - Delirious
“Ice cream man! Ice cream man!” After 24 years, Delirious is finally available on DVD. Say what you will about Norbit, Eddie Murphy gets mad props as a stand-up comic. Twenty two freakin’ years old in that famous head-to-toe, unzipped to the navel, red leather jumpsuit and gold medallion on a bare (hairless) chest, Eddie Murphy rocks Washington D.C.’s packed Constitution Hall looking like Elvis in the Comeback Tour but not coming back, coming into his own. Known for Saturday Night Live, people didn’t see Eddie as a stand-up in 1983. But he’d been doing comedy since he was 15 years old, doing impressions and telling jokes in local bars in Long Island. No one expected Eddie to give a performance that night that would deliver him the crown passed down from Richard Pryor. Even Richard didn’t see it coming.
Watching Delirious again after all these years, I was transformed listening to the bits that have become such a part of the collective vernacular. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that these people were hearing these classics for the first time ever. “The ice cream man is coming; the ice cream man is coming!” Eddie dances and sings like a child, “You ain’t got no ice cream. You can’t afford it. Cause you are on the welfare. And your father is an alcoholic. ”
I was holding myself laughing at Eddie’s mama throwing her shoe at him like a boomerang. I actually started crying when the Big Footish Aunt Bunnie (goonie goo goo) fell down the stairs. “Oh Lord Jesus Christ help me Lord Jesus please…I’m halfway down…help me Lord Jesus please.” I’ve become so jaded over the years in comedy that I had forgotten what it was like to laugh so hard it literally hurt.
Eddie’s dad gets drunk and starts yelling at everyone at the family barbeque (slurring), “This is my house. I pay the bills in this mother fucker and if you don’t like it you can get the fuck out.” It was like listening to an old song from my youth that transported me back in that exact time and place. It’s like losing your virginity. I’m pretty sure I was wearing white lace fingerless gloves with one big cross earring and tri-colored hair. Everyone knows where they were when they heard Delirious for the first time. Or when Kennedy was shot, I always get those two confused.
When Eddie starts talking about the first Black president dodging bullets during his speeches, at first you think it’s hack. And then you remember, Eddie invented that bit. The same is true for the hysterical Amityville Horror bit:
“Nice house, beautiful neighborhood”.
“Get out!”
“Too bad we can’t stay.”
I’m not saying Eddie Murphy invented black people being afraid of ghosts, but it sure as hell wasn’t hack in 1983. A million comics have ripped off those bits and tons of other Eddie Murphy jokes in the last 24 years. But nobody does it like Eddie.
His impressions of Elvis, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Desi Arnez, and James Brown were spot-on and his love of and talent for singing were a humorous foreshadow to his current accolades for Dreamgirls. His big grin and now-famous laugh serve to make him so charming that his personality alone might be enough. (And might I add, red leather: not unkind to a nice ass.)
Eddie Murphy is one of my biggest influences as a comic. I was 15 years old in 1983 when Delirious came out and I was profoundly affected by it. I was so moved by Eddie’s ability to take family situations, especially unpleasant ones, and spin them into brilliantly funny stories with complex characters. This material is just as funny now as it was then. I’m reminded of what I saw initially all those years ago. When your material is personal and based on real life events that are universal, people connect with you and respond to you in a much deeper way than if you talk “at” them about airplane food and traffic.
The world has changed a lot in 24 years. Watching this performance again, I’m shocked at some of the topics. AIDS? I don’t remember AIDS being around back then. Eddie Murphy was one of the first comics to talk about it. To say that Delirious is politically incorrect is an understatement. The homophobia that starts the DVD has clearly not stood the test of time. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Ed Norton/Ralph Kramden anal sex joke as much as the next fellow. But, I felt uncomfortable listening to all the overt gay bashing and it put me in mind of a little story about a transvestite hooker. I feel like Eddie missed an opportunity in the DVD bonus interview to set it right. He looks back on Delirious with (of all people) Byron Allen and I was really hoping for, well not an apology for all the homophobia really, but a kind of disclaimer about the context of the time period. But, alas, nothing.
Not a lot of extras to speak of. The deleted scenes were funny, but you can understand why they were deleted. The interview with Byron Allen was cool. In the interview, Eddie also talks about his influences. Richard Pryor was his number one inspiration, as is obvious in his work. Like Richard, Eddie combines a personal story-telling style with rich characters and an enthralling persona in real-life colorful language. He calls Richard Pryor’s In Concert “the best stand-up performance ever captured on video.” Eddie said when people come up to him and compliment Delirious, he says, “Watch Richard’s In Concert. I’m the leaves, Richard’s the roots.” He also is a huge fan of Bill Cosby, calling him “prolific” and “brilliant”, as well as George Carlin. I would have liked Byron to ask Eddie about Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, or Martin Lawrence. It seemed an obvious way to go and I wanted to hear Eddie’s take on them and about Richard Pryor’s illness and death.
Byron asks Eddie if he will ever do stand-up again. Eddie said that every now and then he thinks about doing another special and then remembers that in order to do that he’d have to spend 3-4 nights a week in a comedy club for the next two years. Eddie said stand-up is like being on the front lines of a war. Now that he’s a General, he’s not real anxious to go back to the front lines.
Oh well. We’ll always have Delirious. The best ending was after tearing it up like a mofo in a packed theatre in front of thousands of people, 22 year old comic Eddie Murphy walks off stage, camera following, looks at his crew and says, “What club are we going to?” Any club you want, Eddie. Any club you want.
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Labels: DVD Reviews, Eddie Murphy
Continue reading DVD Review: Eddie Murphy - DeliriousDVD Review: Superman - The Movie (Four-Disc Special Edition)
By Nathan Wishart
This is it, ground zero. This is the film that set the template for all other superhero movies to follow and still none have gotten it right like this one did.
Disc 1: Theatrical Cut
Seeing as I never got to see this in its original run in the theatres, I can only imagine what it must’ve been like to sit in the darkness and just experience this for the first time - to see that credit sequence just go whoosh and hear that soon to be iconic theme slowly build - it must’ve been incredible. That sense of grandeur is only partly what makes this film work so well.
In revisiting the film, the most striking thing is how the film completely changes tone at various points but it’s done so smoothly you hardly notice. Once the credit sequence is over, William’s score quickly changes tempo to something vaguely ominous before building itself back up again, it’s my favourite cue in the entire film and we’re quickly thrown into the end of a trial where three men and one woman are summarily proved guilty of insurrection. Jor-El decides their fate and banishes them to the Phantom Zone. Jor-El tries unsuccessfully to convince the council that their world is going to end in 30 days and sends his son to earth instead while everything crumbles around them and their planet eventually explodes. This part of the film is more about the myth making and Christ parallels which are echoed in Jor-El’s final words to his son.
When the ship crashes in Kansas, Martha and Jonathon Kent discover the child inside and adopt him, they name him Clark. This portion of the film is a complete contrast to the beginning; You have wide-open spaces, the sun shines all the time and there’s definite warmth compared to the scenes on Krypton. There are some truly wonderful moments in in this section such as Clark racing the train and his final goodbye to Martha in the field. Clark later moves onto the north pole, and suddenly, we’re back in the cold, sterile territory where his fortress of solitude is created and his heritage revealed to him.
The rest of the movie takes place in New York and the film just completely relaxes. We get our first look at Christopher Reeve and he owns the role. It’s a shame the role is so completely iconic that it would overshadow every other part that Reeve would take. He was a talented actor. Unfortunately, he didn’t help things by agreeing to star in Superman 3 and 4 though. As Superman, I think Reeve actually achieves a lot with the role. It could’ve been so easy to play him as kind of aloof, but he gives Superman a relaxed charm. His date with Lois Lane was played perfectly (except for the ‘Can you read my mind?’ bit where Kidder’s delivery of that dialogue is just embarrassing to listen to). Reeve’s greatest moment as Superman though is the moment where he finds Lois in the submerged car but is too late to save her. Donner gives us various angles of Superman from a distance before Superman finally steps back and let’s out an inhuman scream.
As a kid, I could never watch that scene. His scream just scared the living fuck out of me, but it’s a great moment and adds another layer of humanity to his performance. As Clark Kent, he’s even better. His first day on the job and he’s like a kid just taking everything in, meeting Lois and just instantly falling in love. It just makes Reeve’s overall performance that much greater as he presents us with two completely different characters and he slips back and forth between each one with such ease. I’d forgotten how attractive Kidder looked in this movie and her chemistry with Reeve is undeniable, both in her scenes with Superman and Clark Kent. Like Reeve, she presents us with two different performances, her scenes with Superman have her flustered and acting like a girl with her first crush. With Clark, she’s ballsy and has a take-charge attitude.
We’re also introduced to Superman’s ultimate nemesis Lex Luthor, and Gene Hackman’s performance is almost like a nod to the golden age of Superman comics. From the moment we meet Clark Kent, it’s pretty much like that. Never really played seriously. Gene Hackman is alternately comic relief but he gives it a cynical edge. The real comedy relief comes from Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine who play off Hackman extremely well, especially Ned Beatty. That edge comes to the fore when he finally meets Superman and you realize how much of a bastard he really is despite how charming he may be.
The effects are still great after all these years, the front projection and wires technique still look very cool. Considering the massive action sequences this film had, they still hold up.
There’s also a commentary from producers Pierre Spengler and Ilya Salkind. It’s interesting to hear these two men talk about the same role but with different goals. Pierre dealt with all the business aspects so his viewpoint is more technical. Ilya dealt with the creative aspect and is more engaging as a result. It’s an informative commentary.
So there it is. The theatrical cut is an epic thrilling adventure with the most iconic theme of all time (did I mention it was Iconic?) that has alternately influenced every other superhero movie since.
Disc 2: Expanded 2000 Cut
I'll keep this part short. The scenes that were added as part of the 2000 release don’t add much. You have additional scenes of Jor-El trying to reason with the council about the fate of Krypton, the council planning to arrest Jor-El for insurrection, alternate shots of General Zod, Non and Ursa trapped in the phantom zone, The little girl who sees Clark racing the train is revealed to be Lois Lane and her parents Noel Neill and Kirk Alyn (Who originally starred in early Superman Adventures) Martha Kent calling Clark for breakfast, Clark greeting Jimmy and others in the Daily Planet on his first day, Superman revealing to Jor-El what it felt like to use his powers to help humanity, Clark making a veiled comment about Superman to a passerby on the street after watching the news, Superman running through a gauntlet of machine guns, flamethrowers and ice to get to Lex Luthor, and the Hollywood sign falling and nearly crushing some kids while the earthquake is in progress. It’s interesting to see these scenes added to the film, but I think it would’ve been better to just leave them as extras, which funnily enough, they did on disc 3.
There’s also a commentary by Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz and right from the starting gate these two guys are cracking jokes. It’s great to listen to these two just knock stories back and forth while the film plays. It’s the superior commentary mainly because they mix facts with a fun sense of humor about what went on while making the film.
Also on this disc is an audio only music track, which is awesome, the only annoying thing is that the cues will abruptly fade out when no longer needed. It’s sort of jarring and not at all like listening to a soundtrack where they’re all cued up as long piece, which I realize is the point seeing as it’s the film and not a separate soundtrack on CD.
Disc 3: Extras
The three documentaries on this disc are highly informative. They track this film from when the idea was first thought up by Ilya Salkind, to the script, casting decisions, Guy Hamilton being brought on board, to the inevitable tensions that arose towards the end. It’s all documented here with behind the scenes footage on every vital aspect of the movie. I’m not sure why they added the additional scenes from the 2000 edition. They may as well have just left out the expanded edition and left these scenes as extras or just left the expanded movie and not bothered with the scenes as additional extras. There’s also two scenes from the cutting room floor where Lex asks Otis to feed his ‘babies’, meaning his pet tigers/lions. We never actually see them. Also, a scene where he lowers Miss Teschmacher into the pit where his ‘babies’ are only for Superman to save at the last minute. There are also screen tests for Christopher Reeve with actress Holly Palance and screen tests for the role of Lois Lane. It’s fun to see Anne Archer and Leslie Anne Warren test for the role as well as Stockard Channing. There’s also some additional audio music cues from the film.
Disc 4: Extras
Now for the fun stuff. This disc is packed full of old Superman serials, another making of from the seventies, an hour long Superman film called ‘Superman Vs The Mole Men’ with George Reeves as Superman from the fifties. Best of all though are the nine Superman cartoons from the Fleischer Studios in the forties.
The making of is pretty good. You get to see more behind the scenes footage and it’s hosted by Christopher Reeve.
'Superman Vs The Mole Men' hasn’t aged well at all but it’s still kind of fun to see how they got around the limitations of special effects at the time. You can see the shoulder padding on the Superman suit.
The nine cartoons are terrific fun. You get to see Superman punching robots. PUNCHING ROBOTS. The best one is ‘Billion Dollar Limited’ where Superman tries to stop a bunch of criminals from stealing a load of gold bullion, Just immense fun, and it makes you wish Bryan Singer had seen these before he made Superman Returns.
Overall, it’s a worthy purchase if you’re a completest. If you already have the 2-disc version then this will seem like an unnecessary buy no matter how cool the Fleischer cartoons are. They are very cool, for the record.
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Labels: DVD Reviews, Superman
Continue reading DVD Review: Superman - The Movie (Four-Disc Special Edition)Monday, February 05, 2007
Geek Pin-Up #17: Helena Bonham Carter
I haven't done one of these since Casino Royale came out and I'm feeling lonely, so I thought I would spend some time gushing about a pretty lady. This time round we have a personal favourite of mine: Helena Bonham Carter.
She gets a lot of stick in the gossip press these days for mostly looking like she slept in a bush, and gets equal amounts of stick from geek circles for being engaged to director Tim Burton, who mostly looks like he slept in a bush, but she retains a peculiarly nymph-like (old-fashioned meaning, people) beauty, despite committing the sin of being over 30, and has retained a cussed refusal to play into the fantasy beauty myth that makes the nymphy (new-fashioned meaning) sexuality she can portray wonderfully believable. Who, in the real world, doesn't spend a good part of their week looking like they slept in a bush? All the stick she gets tells us a lot more about the truly bizarre cultural trend of needing our beauties scrubbed clean and looking like they are made out of plastic. Why should wanting to look like you live in the real world seem so perverse?
But enough of feminist cultural studies - I want to talk about Fight Club. Spoilers follow, but come on - if you haven't seen it, piss off now and come back when you have. David Fincher's 1999 classic about men beating each other up is full of anger, cynicism, nihilism, and features flashy attention grabbing performances by nerdy careerist Edward Norton and studly anarchist Brad Pitt. The film is full of noise and fury, full of raging against machines, fathers and Ikea furniture and full of the still-impressive sfx whizzbangery that gets male geeks so inflamed. Yet it is a classic not for these reasons, but because it has a very human heart at the centre of it, and it does not belong to Edward Norton, who's character dominates the running time and even has the voice-over. It belongs to the character of Marla, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
Plenty of young men didn't even get past the twist of Norton and Pitt being the same, mentally divergent, character and went off to form fight clubs of their own, with any brain damage they incurred being probably justified and barely noticeable. On the second viewing, once we know the twist, the film seems to be about Norton's character's (never actually named) arc of self-discovery. The film becomes about a redefinition of manhood in a world where even being a rebel has become co-opted by society.
But on further viewings it becomes clear that it is all about humans simply trying to make genuine connections with others in a very alienating modern world. And the only character who is truly trying to do this through the movie is Marla, Norton's long suffering girlfriend. While all the other characters are flying around their neuroses in testosterone fueled delusions, she is standing the centre of things, open and vulnerable, and getting horribly hurt in the process.
Norton's character is trying to create an identity for himself and, due to it being a fake construct, is a big giant mess and ultimately unsatisfying. All those who join the fight club or Project Mayhem are looking for this same sense of identity - as if it was something external to them, something they could put on like a fashionable coat. They are trying to find a means of controlling the world they are lost in, and of course it turns into a horrifying mess. And there is Marla, in amongst all the male wailing, accepting that the world is a painful, confusing and possibly bad place, but trying to offer up some love to what she thinks is the fellow soul in front of her.
The scenes where Norton utterly fails to see this and pushes her away with vicious words become utterly heartbreaking.
Throughout the entire movie, Marla is the only one who is actually being honest.
The film, importantly, ends with Norton's character having been stripped of all delusion and posturing, accepting that he hasn't got a clue what is going on, and accepting her hand. Yes, this most monolithically male film is actually completely female and it is made possible by the performance of Helena Bonham Carter.
By the way - you may want to watch Seven again, and realise that the central scene is in fact the one in the coffee shop where Gwyneth Paltrow talks to Morgan Freeman about her being pregnant.
Helena, here looking like she slept in a goth bush, plays it cool and darkly glamourous in the first act, and proves that she can keep toe to toe with the big spunky boys, with nominally showy-er parts, she is playing against in terms of sheer screen presence and in an excellent line in crudity. 'I haven't been fucked like this since grade school' is a line I kind of wish someone would say to me one day. But she introduces a more open, emotional side as the film moves on and her relationship with Norton's character develops, without ever falling into whining, sobbing or other other cliched 'female' behaviours. Hollywood's standard formulation of an independent, complex or strong woman is an ugly dyke, a sexless mouse or a dead-eyed hard body with penis-envy. Here is a character who is strong but open to being vulnerable, independent but knowing she both wants and needs the love of another, and much smarter than the men around her. No wonder she is such a difficult character for audiences to get, she's far too close to being real.
The truth is something boring like schedule conflicts, but I like to think the reason Fincher, Pitt and Norton didn't do their commentary for Fight Club at the same time as Helena Bonham Carter is because they were terrified of her.
Now, Helena hasn't fared too well in other geek-related movies. She was in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes and she was in Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein, both of which are appalling. But didn't you think the section in Frankenstein from her murder, through her resurrection as the monster's bride to her suicide was the only emotionally resonant sequence in the film? Didn't you want Mark Wahlberg's astronaut character in Apes to cop off with Helena's monkey character instead of that dull blond human, Estella Warren? Equally as the voice of the corpse in 2005's Corpse Bride, didn't you find yourself reconsidering your position on necrophilia? And Helena did that with only her voice.
Helena you are great, and if you ever get bored of the bad-toothed, one trick pony of a fiance you have in Tim Burton, I'll be hanging around in some bushes near your house.
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Labels: Fight Club, Geek Pin-Up, Helena Bonham Carter
Continue reading Geek Pin-Up #17: Helena Bonham CarterGone In A Flash
Woe is you, superhero fans. Or maybe not, depending on your point of view. In any case, as studios bankroll their latest comic book epics in an attempt to match the success of X-Men, or Spider-Man, or Howard The Duck, the casualty list seems to be growing. Here are the latest pair to fall victim to the "we couldn't agree" curse.
First up is self-proclaimed rabid comic geek David Goyer, best known for killing the Blade franchise, co-writing the dull Batman Begins, and writing The Hoff's lines in 1998's Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Goyer has been booted off his latest project - DC's The Flash - on account of that old chestnut, "WB and myself simply couldn't agree on what would make for a cool Flash film."
Goyer has said that "the script did involve both Barry and Wally as The Flash. I wanted to showcase the legacy aspect of the hero -- as that was something that hadn't been explored yet in film," which sounds interesting. But not as interesting as his replacement at the helm of the film, Shawn Levy, director of Night At The Museum and Cheaper By The Dozen. Yes, it's Tim Story all over again.
Our second casualty comes from the little town of Sunnydale, as we hear that Joss Whedon has departed from the Wonder Woman movie. Speaking on his blog, Whedon said "I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked." He doesn't really say a lot more, apart from mentioning he's working on a flick called Goners and that he never had an actress picked out for the Amazonian Princess.
Guess this means Nathan Fillion will be out of work for a bit longer, at least until White Noise III.
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Labels: David Goyer, Joss Whedon, News, The Flash, Wonder Woman
Continue reading Gone In A Flash
