Tag: Fanboy

Magneto, how does he work?


“The best way of describing it is X-Men meets Bond, with a little bit of Thirteen Days thrown in for good measure. It’s set in the ’60s, and I basically molded a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He’s the ultimate spy — imagine Bond, but with superpowers.“

Also backlogged for a week or so: After a not-so-great initial photo leak, Matthew Vaughn of Layer Cake, Stardust, and Kick-Ass talks about what to expect from his X-Men: First Class. “It’s got a lot of teenage angst. The Twilight girls will like it.” Hrm.

Saoirse to the Shire.

“[W]orking with Peter Jackson is like working with a family. So they’ll have a great time. Saoirse’s family will go too, everyone is very close and very loving on those sorts of jobs.” Saoirse Ronan, late of Adaptation and The Lovely Bones and soon of Hanna, is apparently heading to Middle Earth as part of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. (Get well soon, PJ.) Hmm…an elf, perhaps? She has the look.

Beauty and the Beast.


“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Anne Hathaway, who will be a fantastic addition to our ensemble as we complete our story…I am [also] delighted to be working with Tom again and excited to watch him bring to life our new interpretation of one of Batman’s most formidable enemies.“

So, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (still a bad name) has announced its villains: Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane. (Not Hugo Strange, as it turns out — wires must’ve gotten crossed somewhere with Arkham City.)

Hathaway and Hardy…that’s not bad. I still might’ve preferred Marion Cotillard or Olivia Wilde for Selina Kyle, but I’ll give Hathaway the benefit of the doubt. And, while I’m not much excited about Bane as a villain, I’ll concede that I haven’t read the definitive take on the character (which is, apparently, Knightfall), and that he might actually be less of a one-note, musclebound oaf than he’s seemed in Batman and Robin and other venues.

Zoot Shoot Riots.

“Zoot Shooters run through a course they call a ‘caper,’ which is often based on a scene from a famous gangster movie, like ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Miller’s Crossing.’ The winner is the person who shoots with the most accuracy in the shortest time. Penalties are tacked on for hitting the ‘good guys.’“

Also by way of a friend, the WSJ looks into “Zoot Shooters,” or what happens when fanboys and gun enthusiasts cross-pollinate. “There are two schools of thought,’ says Steve Fowler, a longtime cowboy shooter going by the name Bat Masterson, a famous Old West gunfighter. He recently took up Zoot Shooting, under the alias G-Man. ‘One is that [Zoot Shooting] is another costuming game and it’s a lot of fun…The other is, if it ain’t cowboy, it ain’t nothing.‘”

Festival of Lights.

Uh, did anybody see the movie Tron? No. No. No. No! No. No. No. No. Yes…I mean No. I mean Yes! In fact, I have also now seen Joseph Kosinski’s Tron: Legacy, and I gotta say, despite a rather tepid reception from both critics and fans, I actually quite enjoyed myself at this film.

I know, I know: After just feeling lukewarm about a universally praised movie like The King’s Speech, and now saying nice things about this so-so-reviewed film, I may be heading deep into Armond White territory for the past weekend. And, inasmuch as you can evaluate them empirically, Speech is probably a better film. Still, despite its often dopey plotting and the exposition bomb that derails the movie in its middle third, I had a grand time at Tron: Legacy. The film has definite problems, sure, but it looks and sounds great. (Daft Punk are easily the MVPs of this enterprise.) And, basically, it’s as good a movie as we had any right to expect for a sequel to a 28-year-old Disney film involving neon frisbee fights.

The thing about the original Tron, and I’ll probably catch flak in some circles for saying this, is that while it’s an interesting, even ground-breaking movie in its time in both story (it’s The Matrix before the internet) and FX (early, rudimentary CGI), it’s still not a particularly good film. I bought the DVD several years ago and was dismayed to discover that, David Warner’s villainous Dillinger notwithstanding, Tron didn’t really hold up to the warm glow of nostalgia I had suffused it with — The ideas work a lot better than the execution. (When I uncorked it again earlier this week and watched the first half-hour or so, I had basically the same reaction.)

With that in mind, I basically went into Tron: Legacy expecting not much more than a fetching, futuristic two-hour Daft Punk video. And, y’know, that’s basically what I got. Particularly in the first hour or so, when our hero Sam Flynn (Garret Hedlund, bland but passable) finds himself immersed in the 2.0 versions of the original movie’s gladiator games — the discs, lightcycles, and whatnot — Tron: Legacy delivers exactly the neon-lit, 200 bpm, raver-kid spectacle I was looking for from this flick. True, the story is all over the place, even early on. But watching Jeff Bridges goofily channel his inner Obi-Wan, or seeing Rinzler — the Big Bad’s acrobatic, twin-disced #2 — steal every trick out of the Darth Maul-Boba Fett “cool henchman” playbook is a thrill all its own. Sure it’s blatant pandering to the fanboy crowd, but it gets the job done.

This is not to say Tron: Legacy doesn’t have problems. Right about the time Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde first show up, this once-propulsive movie pulls into an expository gas station and stops dead for a good twenty minutes, while Kosinski et al try desperately to prime the story with deeper meaning: Bridges’ Flynn is the Creator of this realm. His first and most important creation, Clu (CGI-Jeff Bridges), has now turned against him. His Son — Son of Flynn! — has just shown up…I think you see where this is going. (The edgiest thing Tron: Legacy does here is to make the new lifeforms in the Tron-world — “Iso’s” — spontaneously generated, a.k.a. an accident of “biochemical jazz.” When you extend the metaphor, that makes humankind also a happy accident rather than divinely inspired…not that anyone but fan-folk are going to dissect the theological implications of this movie anyway.)

So, these are all intriguing ideas, but — as in the original film — they are somewhat hamhandedly introduced, and they all basically boil down to establishing the Maguffins that will get us through the rest of the picture. (“We need to get to the Portal!” “Don’t let Clu get the Disk!”) By the time Michael Sheen shows up soon thereafter as an egregiously over-the-top (apparently by design) nightclub owner, the movie’s recently-coined mythology is already severely confused, and the plot is barely even trying to hang together anymore. Why did Sam need “Zuse” to hop on a solar sail? What powers does Flynn possess in this world again? (To be fair, they were ill-defined in the first film also.) What is Castor on, exactly, and where can I get me some of that? The movie is getting to be a mess at this point, but…hey, look, it’s Daft Punk! And some Matrix-y ass-kicking to a electroglitch bounce!

By the third act, you’ll either have to allow Tron: Legacy its increasing plot absurdities or check out of the ride completely: Why can’t Clu and his Leni Riefenstahl army just jump through the Portal without this all-important Disk? Is that army really big enough to take over the world anyway? (It reminded me of Douglas Adams’ G’Gugvunntt battle fleet, who due to “a terrible miscalculation of scale” ended up getting eaten by a small dog.) And what got into ole Rinzler there? That seemed terribly convenient.

I can’t really defend the movie here — It’s loud and flashy and more than a little derivative of various moments in Star Wars (cf. Lando, the TIE fighter attack, the aforementioned Obi-Wan and Fett.) But, for whatever reason, I was perfectly happy to bask in the production design and score — and Jeff Bridges clearly having fun as a Zen Sensei –and just let the more ridiculous elements of the movie slide.

Did the world really need a sequel to Tron? No, probably not. But this film does decent justice to its goofier-than-remembered progenitor. And even if it doesn’t reach the level of its ambitions, it’s a perfectly entertaining event film that at least gets its 3D-thrill-ride aspects right. So I’d be up for another outing in the Tron-verse, particularly if they find more to do with Bruce Boxleitner and bring back Daft Punk (and, for that matter, the MCP. There has to be some reason Cillian Murphy was waiting in the wings…)

Cackling into the Night.

“‘The idea is to use these fragments of cut scenes and use CGI to have The Joker appear one last time,’ a source explained. ‘Chris wants some continuity between movies and for the franchise to pay tribute to Heath and his portrayal of the Joker.‘”

Take for what it worth, but a New Zealand paper is reporting that Chris Nolan will give Heath Ledger’s Joker one final bow at some point in The Dark Knight Rises. “‘It would only be a fleeting moment in the movie and would only be included with the full consent of Heath’s family,’ the source added.” Perhaps an after-the-final-credits flourish? Update: Or not. “‘That’s all wrong,’ said the writer-director.“

The Clown and the Ringmaster.


“‘I am serious,’ Nielsen replies. ‘And don’t call me Shirley.’ The line was probably his most famous — and a perfect distillation of his career.” First dramatic, then comic actor Leslie Nielsen, 1926-2010. (See also Matt Zoller Seitz’s appreciation.)

“I’d say he was probably the most successful versatile director in Hollywood. He could do just about anything really well, from science fiction to cult thrillers to domestic dramas to westerns to romantic comedies.” To, of course, Star Wars films. Director Irvin Kershner, 1923-2010. (The great Kershner pic above via Quint at AICN.)

Tintin Takes Shape.


“The first part of the film, which is the most mysterious part, certainly owes much to not only film noir but the whole German Brechtian theatre — some of our night scenes and our action scenes are very contrasty. But at the same time the movie is a hell of an adventure.“

In the new Empire Magazine, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson talk The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, and show off the boy reporter’s new Final Fantasy-ish look. (The cover above mirrors a famous drawing of Tintin that I have up in my work-cube.)

In the same story, PJ talks about where he might take Tintin after the Secret of the Unicorn/Red Rackham arc covered in Spielberg’s film. “One of my favourites is The Seven Crystal Balls, so that’s the one I’ve always been thinking of,’ he says. ‘I also really like the Eastern European ones, the Balkan ones like King Ottokar’s Sceptre and The Calculus Affair. I think it’s a terrific setting for a thriller, the weird Balkan politics and the mysterious secret service agents. I think the Moon ones are terrific, but they’d be good for the third or fourth Tintin film, if we get that far. We want to keep his feet on the ground just a little bit longer.” As a Tintin kid, I’m really looking forward to these.

Shirefolk and Parkers.

“James’s charm, warmth and wit are legendary as is his range as an actor in both comedic and dramatic roles. We feel very lucky to be able to welcome him as one of our cast.” Peter Jackson fills out his Dwarf Company with James Nesbitt and Adam Brown as Bofur and Ori respectively. “Adam is a wonderfully expressive actor and has a unique screen presence. I look forward to seeing him bring Ori to life.“

And, elsewhere in fanboy casting news, Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker (and Marc Webb’s Spiderman) may soon have some caretakers in Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Sally Field as Aunt Mary. Compared to Rhys Ifans as The Lizard, that casting seems pretty by-the-book. Still not bad…but do we really have to sit through the origin story again?