So as membership dues for the fanboy nation, I went to go see Len Wiseman’s Underworld last night…woo boy. Kate Beckinsale literally vamping in a tight-fitting leather catsuit — what’s to screw up, right? A lot, apparently. The lack of imagination that went into this flick is embarrassing. Instead of playing with their own founding conceit of vampires vs. werewolves, the movie just happily, stupidly rides along in its faux-Matrix groove. The lycans don’t find any inventive uses for garlic, crosses, or wooden stakes – they just shoot ridiculous amounts of tricked-up ammo at the bloodsuckers, and vice versa. There’s entirely too many laugh-out-loud moments and most of the film makes no sense. Characters keep getting shot with the same weaponry to different effect (Does silver heal, kill, wound, or what?) And then there’s this fellow Shane Brolly — who plays Kraven, nominal head of the vampires until an elder awakens — who may just be the worst actor I’ve ever seen in a major motion picture. (The problem might have been the American accent – I got the sense it wasn’t his.) At any rate, I had grievously low expectations for this flick, and they were not met. To make the obligatory vampire pun, Underworld sucked.
Tag: Kate Beckinsale
Queen of the Damned.
The new trailer for Underworld is now online. I must say, it looks pretty terrible, even if the idea of building a movie around Kate Beckinsale in Matrix leather makes sense in the abstract. I’ll take saucy Brit Beckinsale over stoic Trinity any day of the week.
The Chimp stays in the Picture.
Max of Lots of Co. points the way to this very fun movie production game. I’m proud to say my first film, a revolutionary war drama called Republic of Virtue and starring Harrison Ford and Kate Beckinsale (also featuring Colin Farrell, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, and Maggie Gyllenhaal), went on to make over $100 million. Still, I should have cast the chimp.
Bird of Prey.
Answering the age-old question “What if Anne Rice had written The Matrix?,” the trailer for Underworld is now online. While I’m generally all in favor of Kate Beckinsale in vamp leather, this looks pretty bad.
It’s that time of year.
Return of the King isn’t the only film releasing stills early. Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers have all recently released their 2003 promo packets, which include pics from such forthcoming films as The Matrix: Revolutions and The Coens’ Intolerable Cruelty. At right, we have Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, a vampires vs. werewolves West Side Story update (no singing, though.) Think she’s seen The Matrix (or Alias, for that matter)?