Worlds of wonder abound in the trailer bin today, including our first real look at Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (looks a bit Munchausen-y…and I hope I can get used to Matt Damon’s accent) and this trippy voyage into Neil Gaiman’s Mirrormask. And, speaking of Gaiman, his and Robert Zemeckis’ forthcoming version of Beowulf has a cast: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson, and Robin Wright Penn.
Tag: Brendan Gleeson
Heaven’s Gate.
Well, I don’t think being feverish at the time helped by any means — still, Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is, well, kinda blah. It’s got its heart in the right place, and I’d say I was mildly diverted by it for the first 75 minutes or so, but after that I was just waiting for it to be over. In terms of recent sword-and-sandal and/or historical siege pics, I’d say it’s better than King Arthur or the woeful Alexander, but probably on a par with Troy or The Alamo.
Put very bluntly, the gist is this: Legolas (Orlando Bloom) is an ornery, grieving blacksmith somewhere in France who, after a visitation from a world-weary crusader, Lord Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson, playing yet another expository mentor/dead-duck), and his hospitaler, Prof. Lupin (David Thewlis), decides to embark to the Holy Land to seek Christ’s forgiveness for the suicide of his wife. Along the way, he makes a Muslim friend in Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and a Christian enemy in Celeborn (Marton Csoskas), and discovers that zealots are generally rather unlikable people on both sides of the religious divide. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Legolas is feted at the court of leper King Tyler Durden (a masked Edward Norton), whereupon he makes more friends (Jeremy Irons, Eva Green) and enemies (Brendan Gleeson, hamming it up like a community-theater Brian Cox), all before an interminably long siege against the forces of Saladin (a charismatic Ghassan Massoud.)
Are all those fanboy comparisons unfair? Well, not after sitting through the last hour, which basically played like Helms Deep and Minas Tirith all over again. Yes, the production values are immaculate and all the (fetishized) weaponry is used in suitably historic fashion, but, really, how many historic sieges can one be expected to sit through in a given couple of years? Frankly, Kingdom of Heaven was more interesting in the early going, when there was more acting amid the fighting.
As for the politics, well…the message of the film — religion good, religious zealots bad — is laudable and well-worth hearing these days, perhaps even brave. But, while confessing a near-total ignorance of medieval history, Kingdom of Heaven sure doesn’t seem very historical in its 21st century forward-mindedness. At one point before the siege, Legolas not only makes the case for religious tolerance but completely dismantles the feudal caste system — I was almost waiting for him to institute the ballot box and universal public education while he was at it.
In short, even though I’m in sympathy with the general pluralist worldview of Kingdom of Heaven, the movie could have definitely done with less anachronistic liberal humanism and more dramatic complexity. (In fact, I can’t think of a single character in the film who displayed more than one dimension.) And, even notwithstanding the history, there just needed to be more characterization and less CGI-battling here. As both an historical epic and a summer popcorn film, Kingdom of Heaven felt only a step or two above Purgatory.
Goblet of Fever.
Hey…this site is in dire need of an update, but right now I seem to have procured a fever out of the blue and don’t feel like doing much other than sleeping. So, for now, here’s the new teaser for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, from where the stills of the other day were procured. Enjoy. Update: Back down from 101 to normal today…my guess is food poisoning of some kind or another.
Rock of Ages.
The new trailer for Ridley Scott’s Crusader-pic Kingdom of Heaven is now online, and while it looks nice enough, I have to concur with the AICN guys: It’s hard to take the movie seriously with the goofy college-metal in the background.
Trailer Park Xmas.
Hello all…I finished up the end-of-term grading yesterday evening, at which point Berkeley and I started settling in to the christmas spirit down here at Murphy Home Base in Norfolk. Here’s hoping everyone out there is having a safe and merry holiday season, and that you get something better from Santa than Dubya’s warmed-over right-wing judges.
Also, if you’re looking for some trailers to tide you over, here’s Leggy & Liam battling freedom-hating infidels in Ridley Scott’s crusader pic Kingdom of Heaven, Russell Crowe trying to out-Seabiscuit Seabiscuit in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, a slew of A-listers vamping and vicing in the Robert Rodriguez version of Frank Miller’s Sin City, MTV Films butchering another needless remake in The Longest Yard, and creepy undead kids claiming yet another victim in Boogeyman. Enjoy, and happy holidays, y’all.(Aragorn pic via Fark.)
The Village Idiot.
Having completed my chores in timely fashion this past Sabbath morn, I decided to undertake a sojourn in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in spite of my apprehension over The Curse of William Hurt and The Mel Gibson Film Which We Do Not Much Enjoy. As you perchance have ascertained, it seems the goodly people of this nonsensical village have experienced some difficulty with the strange and mysterious residents in the nearby woods. Alack, Number Six is nowhere to be found, and Goody Ellen Ripley seems too engaged sweeping and darning at the present time to handle the marauders in her usual efficacious manner. This is highly unfortunate, for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is an exceedingly drab and silly place, whose full terribleness can only adequately be described in spoiler-filled invisitext (Note: invisitext turned off — it’s been 15 years):
Hoo boy…grab your torches and pitchforks, village people, cause we’ve got a really lousy film on our hands. (Ok, Van Helsing and Riddick were worse, but they harbored fewer delusions of grandeur…this film is just a pretentious bore.) As a refresher, I liked Sixth Sense, was intrigued by Unbreakable, and loathed Signs, and this one’s probably just as bad as Mel Gibson’s run-in with the water-and-door-averse aliens. Even though the plot twists in this bad boy can be seen a mile away, they still don’t make any sense. As with Signs, this is a film so lame I can only wrap my mind around it in numbered point form:
1) First off, the whole Elders bit. Is it really possible not to see this coming? What other explanation could there be for those big black cabinets in every house? I understand that these Villagers were not exposed to Scooby Doo, but how strikingly incurious could they be?
2) Along those lines, if you call a shed “The Old Shed That Is Not To Be Used” in any human society, no more than a week would pass before some enterprising youth started skulking around it. And why are the creatures called “Those We Shall Not Speak Of” anyway, when everyone is incessantly speaking about them? Surely some other nomenclature would take off at some point.
3) How come not a single Village soul has ever attempted to beat back the not-so-frightening wicker creatures with a block of wood or a stick of fire or something? Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why the Elders never seem to be around when the creatures come out?
4) What is this clipped faux-nineteenth century argot everybody’s speaking in? It’s embarrassing (although A.O. Scott made an excellent point when he noted that this is how William Hurt sounds all the time. Perhaps this actually makes sense.)
5) After our worst fears about the Scooby Doo Elders have been confirmed, why would Shyamalan think the blind girl’s encounter in the woods would be scary in the slightest? The only real question was whether it was Brendan Gleeson or Adrien Brody in the costume.
6) What vested interest would the government have in protecting this village from fly-overs, poachers, etc.? Nada, zip, zero. We already have Colonial Williamsburg.
7) Whatsmore, I find the political economy of this film somewhat repellent. Is the urge to create a rigid, backward-looking, and authoritarian society — where everyone knows everyone else’s business (except of course, the Big Business), where the only people of color are Red, and where the only trouble around is Adrien Brody the Village Idiot — really as worthy and benign as Shyamalan makes it out to be? These people are nutjobs, but they’re portrayed as humanists. If anything, the end of the film makes it seem as if this noble way of life will and should go on. There’s no real critique made at all of the Elder’s impositions, only of its misuse by Jealous Brody.
8) Speaking of which, village idiot? Blind girl who sees auras? C’mon now. You’re not even trying.
9) I see very well how Shyamalan might have intended this as a Twilight Zone meditation on terrorism, what with fear-mongering and color codes and all that. But, if that’s the case, then the film should not have been constructed as a Sixth Sense thriller rife with plot twists in the last third (particularly when the plot twists are so glaringly obvious). It should have shown its cards up front and then attempted to explore this allegory a little more creatively.
In sum, with Goody Weaver and Mssrs. Brody and Gleeson as residents of this unfortunate village, I had thought my brief stay in these woods might be more relishable. As it is, I am headed for the towns and shall not return.
From Greeks to Goblet.
With Prisoner of Azkhaban right around the corner, casting continues for Mike Newell’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And for Year 4, the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher — Mad-Eye Moody — will be Brendan Gleeson, most recently seen as Menelaus in Troy. I like it.
Freaks and Greeks.
Well, with Wolfgang Petersen, Tyler Durden, Eric Bana, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, and Sean Bean, among others, I had high hopes beforehand that Troy would be the gem of this summer movie season, a film that built on LotR‘s recent success in using solid ensemble acting and state-of-the-art technology to bring classic works of epic literature to the screen as never before. Alas, those hopes have been dashed on the plains of battle like so many CGI Greeks. To be fair, though, Troy may not be one for the ages — in fact, it’s probably only a very small step above the Gladiator movies frequented by Captain Peter Graves in Airplane! — but I’d say it’s still a reasonably entertaining two and a half hours, as summer movies go, and a far cry better than last week’s monstrous Van Helsing, once you lower your expectations suitably.
I only knew the Edith Hamilton cliffnotes-version of the The Iliad coming into Troy (I know, I know, it’s on my summer reading list), so the many changes to the story, such as the fates of Menelaus and Agamemnon, the removal of the Gods, or the addition of the equestrian ending, honestly didn’t weigh on me all that much. Still, I knew enough to find myself waiting for the next shoe to drop through almost every scene of this almost three-hour movie, which I’d say reflects pretty badly on the film here. It’s well-made, to be sure, and it’s got great production values, although even I’m starting to sour on ridiculously-large-CGI-army fighting at this point (I think you hear me knocking, King Arthur.) One would think that a movie based on The Iliad should be at least somewhat enthralling, but I found myself detached and slightly distracted during much of the film. More than anything else, give or take the occasional monologue or well-executed mano a mano, Troy just felt long.
Is it the actors’ fault? No, I don’t think so…more the wooden dialogue. Still, the acting is hit or miss. Brad Pitt tries hard here, but frankly he could make 100 more movies and he’d still always remind me of Tyler Durden now. Similarly, it’s hard not to think of Legolas when Orlando Bloom, mostly convincing as pretty-boy Paris, starts showing off the archery skills again. As Agamemnon, Brian Cox is more hammy and over the top here than he was in The Ring and X2 combined – it’s like he’s channeling Anthony Hopkins in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On the opposing side, Peter O’Toole adds a touch of class as King Priam of Troy, although with his goofy mane, gaunt cheekbones, and still-piercing blue eyes, I spent most of the movie remarking to myself his now-eerie resemblance to Berkeley. And Brendan Gleeson and Sean Bean, Menelaus and Odysseus respectively, don’t have all that much to do (pending the sequel, of course.) As it turns out, the standout performance turns out to be Eric Bana, who, despite having an Aussie accent quite unlike that of his brother Paris, shows much more personality and verve here than he did in The Hulk or Black Hawk Down. (Hector’s still no Chopper, though.)
In sum, Troy is a decent summer movie, I guess…probably more worth seeing than any other studio flick this side of Eternal Sunshine. But, given the quality of the source material and the money being spent here, it really had the potential to be a good deal more than just an intermittently engaging sword-and-sandal flick. That it’s not feels like a letdown, no matter how Troy works as two hours of escapism. So, as Homer himself might’ve put it, “D’oh!”
Purple Village People Eaters.
Evil unseen alien forces threatening rustic Americana…let’s hope they can handle water this time. Yep, it’s the trailer for the new M. Night Shyamalan movie. With Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson, and a strange period vibe to it, I’d normally be quite enthused about The Village. But Signs was so lousy and self-absorbed that the bloom is off the Shyamalan rose, and this looks to me like more of the same. Plus, William Hurt has been phoning it in now for at least a decade, and he usually means the kiss of death for a film these days.
Chasing Helen.
Online today is the new trailer for Troy, and it’s quite something. I generally like Brad Pitt, but right now he’s looking (well, sounding) like the only potential problem here. Still, each and every scene with Brendan Gleeson and Brian Cox should be scenery-chewing fun. And where’s Sean “Odysseus” Bean?