Tag: Tim Robbins

Four, War, and a Bore.

Big-time summer trailers piggybacking off of Sith this week include the final trailer for Fantastic Four (I actually liked the Magic Johnson NBA spot, but this is looking lame again) and a new War of the Worlds trailer, with our first brief look at the invaders. Also, Top Guns Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, and Josh Lucas go up against a renegade Skynet-like fighter in the new trailer for Stealth. Oof, Sam Shepard and Joe Morton must have some bills to pay.

Apes, Aslan, & Aliens.

Courtesy of Coming Soon, Adrien and Naomi brave Skull Island in this new still from PJ’s King Kong, WETA Workshop shows off its Narnia designs in this catalog of sculpture, and Steven Spielberg unleashes the GOP’s worst nightmare — an ornery Tim Robbins brandishing a shotgun — in some recently-released images from War of the Worlds.

Fanboy Cornucopia.

Thanks to ShoWest and otherwise, there’s been quite a bit of fanboy news to come down the pike in the past few days…

  • In the casting department, Parker Posey joined the legion of Superman as “Kitty Koslowski,” one of Lex Luthor’s minions. Hopefully, it’s a better villainess turn than in Blade: Trinity.

  • Not to be outdone by the son of Krypton, a spiffy new Batman Begins poster premieres online.

  • Rounding out the DC trifecta, Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon is signed to write and direct Wonder Woman.

  • On the Marvel end, AICN uncovers the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters’ new additions for X3…this time around will include Beast, Gambit, and a female Angel.

  • In the midst of the press junket for Woody Allen’s Melinda & Melinda, Chloe Sevigny inadvertently lets on that the Black Cat will likely complicate Peter Parker’s life in the next Spiderman.

  • Looking for direction (and cash flow) in the upcoming post-prequel era, George Lucas announces he’ll be re-releasing the OT in Cameron-style 3-D.

  • Ang Lee prepares to go back to the well with a prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I’ll take it over another Hulk.)

  • Among the recent new trailers is our first look at Michael Bay’s The Island, with Ewan MacGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Clarke Duncan. I generally can’t stand Michael Bay films, but it is sci-fi and the cast isn’t bad.

  • The new Hitchhiker’s Guide site goes live, which includes this splendid shot of Arthur and Marvin enjoying (as much possible, given the terrible pain in all his diodes down his left side) an intergalactic sunset.

  • Finally, the very Independence Day-ish full trailer for War of the Worlds is out-and-about, which involves a lot of Tom Cruise running, Dakota Fanning crying, and random things detonating. Is Spielberg trying to out-Bay Bay?

    • Samurai Bat.

    The holiday trailer season continues today, with the first look at Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and, if you’re fast, this early copy of the spiffy new Batman Begins trailer. (If that doesn’t work, there are a number of screencaps here.)

    Lost in Translation.


    Well, for the first twenty-five minutes or so, when Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton were wandering around a picturesque, slightly-futuristic Shanghai, I thought Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46 might turn out to be quite good, perhaps a slightly better version of Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World. After all, some of the cinematography in the early going (Shanghai hotels, Morton under a strobelight) was very impressive, and I liked the way the movie just went for it…immersing you in this world of the future without taking the time to explain all that much.

    But, right about the time this very unlikely couple consummate their evening, the film starts slipping off the rails, and it’s a long way down. For one, the more you hear about this particular future dystopia — the Sphinx corporation, critical travel “papelles”, empathy viruses, Code 46, etc. — the less sense it makes. If people could read minds just by, um, becoming infected with a virus (as Tim Robbins has and does), then why wouldn’t everyone do it? And why would the rest of the characters be so consistently amazed by his ability, if it’s simply off-the-shelf? Similarly, while at first the global NewSpeak, incorporating elements of French, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages into English, seems like a neat idea, it eventually just sounds ridiculous. Si, it’s true…ultimately, every hombre and femme ends up sounding a bit like a dinner-party Hercule Poirot, until you start wondering if it’s possible to get your dinero back.

    But, however weak the premises of this sci-fi vision, the real problem here is in the “love” story. Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton can both be appealing actors elsewhere, but here they seem all wrong for each other. He’s too lanky and she’s too fetal, and together they exude zero chemistry. More problematically [Spoilers to Follow], once the “Code 46” genetic aspect of the story kicks in and the two implausibly venture off to Neo-Dubai, their romance degenerates into some twisted sci-fi rumination on Oedipal complexes that’s at turns head-scratching and rather dull, despite featuring one of the most ghastly and unerotic sex scenes in recent memory. (Trust me, if you thought Meryl Streep pawing Liev Schreiber’s chest hair in The Manchurian Candidate was creepy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.) At any rate, as the last few moments hammered the subtext into the ground and Coldplay started crooning over yet another excessively fond shot of Morton, I had to concede that Code 46, however visually promising at first, turned out to be a bad, bad film. And, given how much fun Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People was, that’s disappointing, n’est-ce-pas?

    Fantastic Story.

    According to Latino Review, Barbershop‘s Tim Story will be directing The Fantastic Four in place of Bring it On‘s Peyton Reed. Interesting…I haven’t seen any of his movies, so I can’t really comment on the pick. Also, current casting rumors have Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing (I like it) and Tim Robbins as Dr. Doom.(Hmmm…he’d make a better Reed Richards.)

    Academy Fight Song.

    And in another campaign news, the Oscar contenders have been announced, with RotK leading the pack:

    Best Picture: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. After three years of waiting, after A Beautiful Mind and Chicago, it’s payback time. Check out the spiffy New Line awards site, featuring some choice RotK clips.

    Best Actor: What on earth is Johnny Depp doing in here? I’m a Depp fan too, but c’mon now. At any rate, I’m definitely rooting for Bill Murray for Lost in Translation, but could see Mystic River‘s Sean Penn picking it up too.

    Best Actress: Haven’t seen it yet, but Charlize Theron in Monster has all the buzz, and it would take a better man than I to challenge the formidable power of best-actress-oscar-buzz.

    Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins, Mystic River. I would’ve liked to see Sean “Samwise” Astin get a nod, but am glad that Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai made it in.

    Best Supporting Actress: Renee Zellweger, Cold Mountain, ho-hum. I’m surprised Mystic River‘s Marcia Gay Harden got a nod here after winning just a few years ago. Spread the love, people.

    Best Director: PJ for RotK. The only real challenge is Sofia Coppola, and she’ll get hers in the Screenplay category.

    Screenplay (Original): A la Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola will win for Lost in Translation.

    Screenplay (Adapted): This will probably be one of the few categories where RotK loses out (The best adaptation of the three was Fellowship, and that really should’ve won two years ago.) American Splendor, perhaps? They’re going to want to give something to City of God.

    Clobbering Time?

    Lots of fanboy speculation on the web today…The Fantastic Four is still looking for a director after losing Peyton (“Bring It On“) Reed, and apparently the short list includes Steven Soderbergh and Sean Astin. According to this Astin Q&A, both could bring George Clooney to the table as Reed Richards, which is great casting. I like Naomi Watts as the Invisible Woman, but she’s going to be busy with PJ’s Kong, and I could see Soderbergh going for one of his regulars, like Mary McCormack. Orlando Bloom as The Human Torch also works, although it could just as easily be Paul Walker or some other pretty-boy. And The Thing…well, I’d expect he’d be CGI, but you’ll need a Ben Grimm. Vin Diesel? Gary Sinise? I always thought the space-ship sequences in Brian DePalma’s otherwise-terrible Mission to Mars would’ve made a great intro to FF, with Tim Robbins (Reed Richards), Connie Nielsen (Sue Richards), Jerry O’Connell (Johnny Storm), and Sinise (Ben Grimm). At any rate, if FF does go to Soderbergh, let’s just hope he doesn’t pull an Ang-Lee.