Tag: Cinema

Bourne Again.

As I noted in my blurb on The Bourne Identity a few years ago, “I’d rather see another Bourne than another Bond.” Well, I got my wish, and thankfully The Bourne Supremacy is just as intelligent, fast-paced, gritty, and near-plausible as the first outing. Joan Allen has joined the agency this time around, and Karl “Eomer” Urban has replaced Clive Owen in the role of Eurobad assassin, but otherwise the gang’s all here again: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles (still miscast)…even Chris Cooper.

But, even if you missed Bourne I, if you’ve seen the ads, you know what you’re getting here: chilly European ambience, highly-trained fisticuffs, and Ronin-style car chases. The surprise here is how well everything’s executed — until the last fifteen minutes or so, when Bourne turns into R.E.M.’s The Apologist (the guy who insists on making everyone feel worse to make himself feel better), the film moves at a kinetic, captivating clip. Much credit goes to director Paul Greengrass (who also directed Bloody Sunday, which I’ve been meaning to see for awhile) for making each punch, kick, or crash provoke a shudder or a wince. (It’s nice to see a flick where the injuries actually take a toll on the hero for once…here Bourne hurts his leg two-thirds of the way through the movie and ends up limping the rest of the film.)

In sum, Her Majesty’s Secret Service should really take a gander at Treadstone…’cause while 007 was tooling around Iceland with Halle Berry last iteration, Bourne once again managed to deliver a quality cloak, dagger, and action payload.

Jude’s Burden.

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad…Apparently Jude Law’s been cast in All the King’s Men as Jack Burden (the narrator), with Sean Penn in line for Willie Stark (the Huey Long character.) I generally like Law ok, but to be honest, he ain’t at all what I pictured for Burden, who’s been pretty well broken by life by the time the story starts. Well, we’ll see…hopefully this won’t turn out to be Cold Mountain II.

His Darko Materials.

“I can do anything I want. And so can you.” So, with or without Frank the Bunny, I went to catch Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut Friday afternoon. While still very enjoyable, a lot of the fun of the film (reviewed earlier here) is in not knowing what exactly you’re in for, so the movie admittedly does lose a step after another viewing. And, like the official website, the Director’s Cut has a Midichlorian problem…elements of the film that are better left unexplained are now laid over with pages from Grandma Death’s time travel tome. As a result, some of the more memorable scenes (particularly the “Mad World” montage at the end) suffer. Still, if you haven’t seen DD (or, like me, saw it only on DVD), it’s a genre-bending marvel that’s definitely worth checking out on the big screen. (The film now also includes the deleted scenes from the DVD, such as the excised Watership Down subplot, and several shots of a 2001-esque eyeball, as seen in the trailer.)

The Burglar and the Voyager.

Drop the Kong…it’s looking increasingly likely that Time Warner will beat out Sony in acquiring MGM, meaning that New Line Cinema would finally secure the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. (!) Also in development on the mythical front right now is a version of The Odyssey more family (and Gods) oriented than the recent Troy…No word on if Sean Bean will reprise Odysseus.

Stretching his Chops.

Uh-oh. Ioan Gruffudd remarks on landing Mr. Fantastic of The Fantastic Four, and it sounds like (a) he’s not familiar with the character and (b) he hasn’t read the script. Schweet. Meanwhile, Lancelot’s lord and liege, Clive Owen, talks up his own comic adaptation, Sin City.