Tag: Cinema

Oompa Loompa Doompadee do.

Tim Burton is tapped for the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake. I’m not sure if a remake is really necessary, but, if you’re going to do one, I suppose Burton is the man to helm it. And in other directing news, Darren “Requiem for a Dream” Aronofsky wil be helming Lone Wolf and Cub. Does this mean Batman: Year One is dead?

It’s the Kissoff.


If I’d known we were gonna cast our feelings into words, I’d’ve memorized the Song of Solomon. After far too long a wait, Miller’s Crossing finally arrived on DVD this morning. Lebowski might be funnier, and Fargo might get all the best press, but Miller’s Crossing is still far and away my favorite Coen movie. Nothing more foolish than a man chasin’ his hat…

My Blue Heaven.


First-time writer-director Kerry Conran tries to go the Lucas route and digitize full environments in The World of Tomorrow, a forthcoming film described in Player-speak as “Flash Gordon meets Indiana Jones.” I dunno…hopefully Gwyneth and Jude are better blue-screen actors than Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman.

The Siege of Gondor.


“Great engines crawled across the field; and in the midst was a huge ram,
great as a forest-tree a hundred feet in length, swinging on mighty chains…Grond they named it, in the memory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old.” At long last, some new Return of the King images (via E3) have made it online. Looks like Gandalf the White will have his work cut out for him on the ramparts of Minas Tirith. Update: The official site releases a slew of pics too, including Aragorn in battle regalia and Sam with the light of Earendil.

Matrix 2.0.

So after two viewings of The Matrix: Reloaded, I have to say I liked it quite a bit better than some of the early negativity had suggested (although I’m glad I lowered my expectations.) [BIG SPOILERS TO FOLLOW.] To be sure, the first forty minutes of the film, including everything that takes place in Zion, is almost unwatchable. We’re talking Attack of the Clones bad. What with the ponderous soap opera interludes (especially the Jada Pinkett Smith love triangle, the fresh-faced kid recruit, and Link’s worried homefront wife…please), the big, goofy Bacardi Silver commercial (“Your night just got a lot more interesting”), and the mere sight of Councillor Anthony “Straight to Video” Zerbe strolling around in Federation hand-me-downs (why didn’t they just let Cornel West handle that part?), I could understand why Joey Pants (Cypher) decided to pull a Benedict Arnold in the first film. If I had a choice (which, given half of the lecturing in this film, is an open question, I guess) between wearing my sunglasses at night and styling in the Matrix or being forced to join the Matthew McConaughey memorial drum circle every Friday evening at Zion central, I might just cut a deal with the Man too.

But, right about the time Neo gets a call from the Oracle and reenters the Matrix in Chinatown (right under the hard-to-miss Heineken sign), the film finally starts to find its rhythm. Sure, there’s still a lot of overwrought “check out the big brains on us” grandstanding by the Wachowskis [we get philosophy lessons along the way from both a sleazy French existentialist (the Merovingian) and a perfectionist Freud-like (God)father figure (the Architect)], but if you don’t like a little pop psychology with your kick-ass kung-fu, then why exactly are you in line to see a sequel to The Matrix? Alas, Neo and Trinity still don’t really work as an onscreen couple, but most of the action setpieces are breathtaking (particularly the highway chase and truck fight…in the midst of all the new characters showing up, it’s nice to see the Agents still getting their due.) And as expected, Hugo Weaving is just wicked good fun as Agents Smith…they steal every scene they’re in. Finally, though it took me a second viewing to catch everything that was going on, the final meeting with the Architect made for a nice end-of-film twist that’s more inventive than where I’d originally feared they were going with the storyline (i.e., the “real world” is also part of the Matrix, just like every Freddy Krueger/David Lynch movie you’ve ever seen.) So, despite the egregious first act, I have to say I came out of Reloaded with a smile on my face, and am looking forward to seeing what November’s Revolutions has to offer, starting with this special trailer from the Enter the Matrix game. Hopefully, the third film will see a lot less of As the Zion Turns and a little more of the lovely Monica Bellucci….Silly Neo, don’t you know an upgrade when you see one?

Could you use it in a sentence?

So last Thursday at the Film Forum, I caught Spellbound, the new documentary that follows eight young contestants through the National Spelling Bee. It was gripping in its own way (although some of the tension was dispelled by the fact that I’d improbably seen this particular spelling bee on ESPN during my DC days, and thus knew who ended up winning), but also very, very hard to watch at times. Most of these kids (particularly the girls from Texas and Pennsylvania) had their hearts in the right place, but some of them were at such a socially awkward point in their development that everything they do on screen ends up being cringeworthy. Then, of course, there’s all the blatant stage parenting going on, which runs the gamut from supportive to smothering, if not downright disturbing (For example, one poor kid has 5000 starving Indians weighing on his conscience – if he doesn’t win, they don’t eat.) Perhaps my biggest problem with the documentary is that, though it’s emphatically a crowdpleaser, it also clearly encourages us more often than not to laugh at these people rather than empathize with them. There was just something a bit off-putting about watching a theater of would-be New York sophisticates guffaw at the often clueless-seeming small-town parents and teachers that populate the film. Other than the first contestant’s father, who illegally immigrated to Texas from Mexico to find a better way of life, most of the adults are used solely as comic relief. It might have been more interesting in the end to pare down the number of contestants followed to five or six and then give us a more multi-faceted look at their daily lives. But, like I said, Spellbound is still strangely compelling at times (C-O-M-P…), and might be worth a look if you catch it on IFC one day.