It is close now, so close.


After months of relative silence, finally some movement on the LOTR tip. Regarding the Two Towers extended edition, some possible scenes with Boromir and Faramir leak out (I’d heard these were filmed, but, this report still reads like wishful thinking.) Also, it appears a WETA statue of Gollum will replace the Argonath in the mega-special edition. As for Return of the King, the rough cut of the film is purportedly four hours and twenty minutes long and staying that way. (Again, this seems like wishful thinking, but given how much ground in TTT still needs to be covered, I’d think ROTK would have to clock in at least four.) Morover, new Sam and Frodo toys reveal a sequence I thought for sure they’d cut, and finally one other random (and possibly dubious) source mentioned this exchange at TORN: The Mistress has had a very interesting chat with a source at Miramax, who says that Cold Mountain will be pushed back to 2004. The official reason will be that “the climate is not right” for a movie whose central character is a deserter. Unofficially, Harvey Weinstein has seen a rough cut of Return of the King (he is an Executive Producer) and says that it is “unstoppable” as a Best Picture winner. Unstoppable…I like the sound of that. Update: More TTT-EE and ROTK spoilers from Movie Insider Magazine, including confirmation of Boromir in TTT, talk of a longer Frodo-Sam Osgiliath fight scene and some ruminations on the Grey Havens. Don’t read this if you haven’t read the books. Update 2: TORN.Net kills the 4hr-20min. rumor, but softens the blow by offering up MAJOR spoilers about Saruman, Sauron, and Grima and a pic of Frodo in the lair of…um, you know.

Prrreciousss…


News of The Two Towers (theatrical version) DVD (due August 26) breaks over at TORN.Net, with all kinds of enticing screen caps and sundry goodies. Apparently, the TTT-EE will show up Nov. 18, giving us a month of geek-out time before ROTK. Update: More information here, including Quicktime shorts of the (very nice) animated menus and the look of the EE packaging (It might look familiar.)

Bad news and Good news.

Harry finds out directly from PJ what’s been holding up the rumored Return of the King trailer. Says M. Jackson, We’re not doing a ROTK trailer for the end of Two Towers like we did last year. The reason is that the TT extended DVD has been so complex this year, it would have taken too many resources away from trying to get that finished. The FOTR extended cut had 35 extra CG shots – the TT extended cut has over 150.” Ah well. The waiting is the hardest part, but at least it sounds like more Ents and more Gollum are in our future.

2K3 (and 2K2 films.)

Happy New Year, y’all…and I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year’s Eve. After a hectic past couple of days (which included spending most of my 28th birthday (12/29) driving up the East Coast in holiday traffic and entertaining some old DC friends for a pre-New Years get-together on the 30th), I decided to spend the evening with Berkeley, DoD, and a 4-pack of Guinness. All in all, I quite enjoyed 2002 (Year in Pics), even if the leadership deficit in Washington often seemed despairingly large this past year. But, at any rate, here’s looking to a peaceful, fun-filled, and productive 2003 the world over.

Of course, as in the past two years, a 2003 post means it’s now time for the 2002 Movie Roundup. (As per usual, movies I haven’t seen yet aren’t listed, which this year include The 25th Hour, About Schmidt, Bowling for Columbine, Bloody Sunday, Catch Me If You Can, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Far From Heaven, Frida, The Hours, Jackass, The Ring, and Chicago.) So without further ado, my

Top 20 Films of the Year:

1. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. No surprise here. Although Fellowship may have delivered a bigger emotional impact, Peter Jackson and co. handled massive expectations with aplomb and deftly translated J.R.R. Tolkien‘s most unwieldy tome (Silmarillion notwithstanding) into the action-epic of the year. (Speaking of action-epics, given that both Braveheart and Gladiator actually won Best Picture, TTT deserves a nomination, if nothing else.) And the creation of Gollum as the first fully-realized digital character in motion picture history not only stands as an award-worthy breakthrough in bridging special effects and acting, but also as another sad reminder of the disrepute to which the other fanboy/girl trilogy has fallen. The bar has been raised…again.

2. In the Bedroom. A hold-over from 2001 that I happened to see in the first weeks of 2002. I can’t remember another film this year that resonated so strongly. While I think last year’s award hoopla erred too far toward the histrionics of Sissy Spacek and away from the nuanced performance of Tom Wilkinson, the moral center of the film, In the Bedroom nevertheless powerfully depicts how ostensibly “good” people eventually find themselves contemplating and acting out evil deeds. Plenty of complex and memorable scenes throughout, such as Wilkinson watching the distracted guests at his son’s funeral, or his pained attempt to forge a connection with Marisa Tomei, a woman he has nothing in common with except loss. A very, very good film that, if anyone has the stomach for a double dose of grief, bookends nicely with Atom Egoyan‘s The Sweet Hereafter.

3. About a Boy. A surprisingly good translation of Nick Hornby‘s third book. A bit fluffy, perhaps, and as I noted here I’m not sure how I feel about some of the underlying premises, but very well done nonetheless. After all, making both Hugh Grant and a precocious young British lad palatable at the same time is no easy task.

4. Secretary. A heart-warming romantic comedy about a boy, a girl, and the spankings that brought them together. Both James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal are great in this pic, although I’m getting kinda sick of Jeremy Davies (his overly mannered performance in Solaris was distracting too.) While critics are falling all over themselves about the admittedly good Y Tu Mama Tambien for its frank look at sex, I found Secretary the better, and sexier, film of the two. (I thought Y Tu Mama Tambien was more explicit than it was erotic, which is a small difference but a difference nonetheless.) A lot of the people I’ve spoken with had trouble with the ending, but I thought that it ended the only way it really could…any other way would’ve given the audience the out they wanted to condemn these people as sideshow freaks. By treating this bizarre couple as just another relationship in a weird wide world, Secretary offers a portrait of two people “just right” for each other that is much more touching than the average, vanilla romantic comedy.

5. Adaptation. Despite what the sidebar says, I sense this one slipping in my mind while Gangs of New York moves up. Nevertheless, Adaptation was an interesting and fun mind twister for the first two acts (worth the price of admission for the nut muffin reward monologue alone, not to mention Meryl Streep‘s stoned dial tone.) Like Secretary, I see how the movie had to end the way it did, but still…I think there’s something to be said for Stephanie Zacharek’s position that, in a year when some very good adaptations were made (2 of the top 3 here, for example), Kaufman’s self-referential, Hollywood-hating story here is a trifle indulgent. But, for now, it holds the five spot.

6. Spiderman. Probably the second-best foray in yet another lousy crop of summer films (after Minority Report), but at first viewing much more fun than Spielberg’s film. Spidey was a great movie for the first hour, but got a bit perfunctory in the second. On the plus side, I don’t think you could have handled the origin story (or J. Jonah Jameson, for that matter) any better, but the Green Goblin still seems grossly misconceived. (Casting Willem DaFoe, who looks just like the Goblin without the mask on, and then fitting him with a static, sterile green faceplate, is just a mistake of monumental proportions.) And I’m still not too big on Kirsten Dunst as MJ – she screams Gwen Stacy at me. But, fanboy issues aside, Sam Raimi‘s movie was still probably the most satisfying summer film this year.

7. Gangs of New York. I find my thoughts dwelling on this one, so much so that I’m probably going to end up seeing it again. Ultimately, I think Gangs is an almost-great but deeply-flawed film. When you see Daniel Day-Lewis, Jim Broadbent, Liam Neeson, John C. Reilly, or the wonderful recreation of Five Points, you get a sense that this could be one for the ages. But then the film just flounders around for too long with no sense of purpose, other than a meager and barely compelling revenge story. Scorsese‘s beautiful tracking shot of Irish immigrants disembarking in NY harbor and promptly entering the Union army (as coffins are unloaded from nearby ships) gives you a sense of how amazing this film could have been. But, most of the time, you’re just wondering how much longer it’s going to take for Amsterdam DiCaprio to get his act together. And the draft riots issues have already been discussed at length here.

8. Solaris. Like GONY, this film feels like a missed opportunity (and like GONY, I would very much like to see the rumored 45-minute-longer cut.) I liked Solaris more than most people I’ve talked to, but in the end it seemed a bit narrowly conceived. It was a very interesting rumination on relationships and memory – you ultimately know and love the stylized people created in your head more than the actual persons in front of you – but after awhile, I felt like shaking George Clooney and saying “Look, I know it’s weird to see your dead wife again and all, but there’s an alien intelligence trying to communicate with you outside the ship.” That sense of wonder that should have accompanied much of the film is lost by the time Clooney arrives on the space station. And like I said before, Jeremy Davies is distracting.

9. Minority Report. This film was probably the best of the summer movies, even if Spiderman was more satisfying. I liked the brooding atmosphere of this film – if anything, Spielberg‘s vision here makes AI look better too. But, sadly, the film completely falls apart at the end. As I said here, I’m of the school that everything that happens after Tom Cruise is placed in Tim Blake Nelson‘s jail is a Brazil-like vision. This view might explain the ending but, if the picture were better, it wouldn’t need explaining.

10. Y Tu Mama Tambien. As noted above, I think this film is getting overrated in many critics’ end-of-year lists, but it was still quite good. Like Secretary, the way sex is handled in the picture makes your realize how cartoonish it’s become in most American films (where, as Ebert notes here, the closest thing one gets to mature handling of sexual themes is in throwaway garbage like American Pie.) And Maribel Verdu makes for a intriguing Mrs. Robinson of sorts. But, to me much of the voice-over throughout, and particularly in the “two years later” final scene, was hamhanded. For example, when our trio is driving through Mexico and pass a car wreck which is then contextualized by our Amelie-esque narrator, I was completely taken out of the picture. Good, but not as good as it’s currently being made out to be.

11. Blade 2: Bloodhunt. A popcorn film that delivered on exactly the level I wanted it to, from iconic Reservoir Dogs-type shots of Blade and the Bloodpack to an Aliens-like “we’re not all going to make it” rampage in the sewers of Prague. There’s no scene in the movie as good as the meatpacking plant vampire rave that kicks off the first film, but that’d be a hard moment to top anyway. Well-done throughout as a bubble-gum, comic book movie.

12. Below. Speaking of popcorn flicks, David Twohy‘s Below got undeservedly buried by Dimension films when, at least for the first hour and a half, it was quite a spooky ghost story in the Twilight Zone tradition. Like Minority Report, it completely fell apart in the end, of course, but I always like to see Bruce Greenwood and Olivia Williams get some work, and Holt McCallany‘s scene in the mirror still gives me the shivers.

13. The Bourne Identity. Another surprise. While the new Bond flick only stayed intriguing for the first thirty minutes or so, this film managed to hold my interest throughout. Matt Damon is believable, Chris Cooper and Brian Cox do excellent character work here, and Franka Potente and Clive Owen help lend the film an authentic European flavor that’s gone completely AWOL over in the Bond series. (Sadly, though, Columbia’s own Julia Stiles seems grossly miscast.) If the first film’s any indication, I’d rather see another Bourne than another Bond.

14. Undercover Brother. For that matter, I’d rather see another Brother than another Bond too. An Austin Powers ripoff, perhaps, but I found it funnier than Goldmember. The scene with Doogie testing Eddie Griffin‘s grasp of whiteness by asking him Friends trivia was a classic in and of itself.

15. Blue Crush. Laugh if you want, but Blue Crush was a surprisingly solid grrl power film, with appealing characters, realistic interactions, and beautiful Hawaii scenery. The 8 Mile for the X-Games set, Blue Crush was a much better film than I had expected, even if some of the CGI surfing effects are pretty lame. Extra points for the Blestenation hip-hop remix of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” which really should have been the summer joint of 2002.

16. Insomnia. Like Minority Report and Below, Christopher Nolan‘s third effort starts well but peters out by the end. I liked it, but didn’t find Al Pacino half as good as everyone made him out to be. As for Robin Williams, he’s good in this, as he was in the rather stilted One Hour Photo, but you don’t get points for simply not being zany. An ok film that falls in the rankings for the insipid ending and for wasting the lovely Maura Tierney.

17. 8 Mile. It’s Rocky for skinny white guys! Flashdance without the welding! Yeah, this film is predictable, but like Curtis Hanson‘s earlier Wonder Boys, it evokes an air of authenticity that carries the picture through its rough spots. I particularly liked the banter between “Rabbit” and his friends, even if some of them, most notably Sol (Omar Miller, the big tubby playa) and DJ Iz (De’Angelo Wilson, the earnest black power guru) seem like direct lifts of Stacy and Sharif from the much-better Menace II Society. And, although he’s pretty good in this film as himself, I still can’t really see Eminem having much of a movie career, even if his name was being bandied about for Bruce Wayne in Batman: Year One.

18. Austin Powers in Goldmember. Goldmember wasn’t bad, either. In fact, I liked it more than the second one and found the character of Goldmember inexplicably funny (must have been the youth in Belgium.) That being said, Mike Myers is still throwing the kitchen sink at you in these films. It’d be a better film if some of the unfunnier stuff was pared down.

19. Amelie. An interesting update on the romantic comedy and assuredly a better Jeunet film than Alien: Resurrection, but in the end it left me a bit cold. Would you really want this doe-eyed French girl interfering in your life the way she so often does? I doubt it. The “new” letter from the long-dead husband seems particularly jarring.

20. Red Dragon. A completely unnecessary film, tantamount to remaking Silence of the Lambs with Ed Norton as Clarisse. That being said, it was much better than Ridley Scott’s bloated, boring Hannibal, and there is plenty of good character work here, particularly from Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Harvey Keitel, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Biggest Disappointments: Road to Perdition, Signs, and, yes, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Most Annoying Phenomenon: My Big Fat Greek Wedding All I can say is, been there, done that.
Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, Gangs of New York. Runner-Up: Tom Wilkinson, In the Bedroom
Best Actress: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Secretary. Runner-up: Maribel Verdu, Y Tu Mama Tambien

Best Supporting Actor: Andy Serkis, LOTR: The Two Towers. Runner-Up: Jim Broadbent, Gangs of New York.
Best Supporting Actress: Meryl Streep, Adaptation. Runner-up: Toni Collette, About a Boy.

And, finally, here’s to 2003, a year which will witness a Hulk, two Matrices, and hopefully the biggest baddest epic of them all, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Gangs of Helms Deep.

Also from Follow Me Here, Salman Rushdie compares gang violence in Two Towers and Gangs of New York to developments in Iraq. Interesting points, but did we see the same Scorsese film? In both the initial and final gangland scenes, there’s hardly any sense of moral ambiguity. To the contrary, as I noted in this post, the Irish (Neeson/DeCaprio) forces are portrayed exclusively as maligned, freedom-loving immigrants, while the Nativist (Day Lewis) gang are portrayed as racist brutes. You’d never get the sense in Scorsese’s film that it was the former group that actually unleashed virulent hatred upon the city’s African-American population in July of 1863. I suspect this reading of Gangs has more to do with the close friendship between Rushdie and “The Band that Built America.” Or perhaps Rushdie saw the longer Scorsese cut of the film, which is rumored to be more nuanced.

So here are the answers to all the riddles…

So, seen TTT yet? After two showings yesterday, I must say I’m delighted and (still) surprised at how wondrous this second chapter turned out. [As with FOTR, I spent the first showing half-reeling from information overload and half-running aggravating fanboy self-diagnostics the whole time. (“Wow! I like it! Do I like it? Do I really like it? I want to really like it. I think I like it. Wow! Hey, that wasn’t in the book! Was it? I’m not sure. Do I like it?“) The second time I could just sit back and enjoy it for the glorious epic it is. Be warned – although TTT is seamlessly integrated with the first movie, it’s not Fellowship. But then again, it really shouldn’t be. Anyway, there is much I love about this second installment, particularly… [The post from now on will feature TTT SPOILERS.]

1) Gollum (“Leave and never come back!“): My biggest concern entering the back-end of the trilogy was that Smeagol would come off cartoony and Jar Jar-ish. He doesn’t…at all. (As one wag put it, the Jar Jar in this film is Gimli.) In fact, I’d say Smeagol’s moonlit and schizophrenic soliloquy stands as the showstopping highlight of a film filled with amazing moments and indelible images. Kudos to Andy Serkis and the WETA gang for what they’ve done here. By the end, I wanted to see more Gollum and less preparation for Helm’s Deep (But to be fair that’s the same problem I have with Tolkien’s book – The events east of the Anduin seem so much more interesting and important due to the presence of the ring.) And, speaking of the eastern theater…

2. Faramir: (“Time for Faramir Captain of Gondor to show his quality.“) The dramatic alteration to Boromir’s bro seems to be the change most bothering the Tolkien fan nation. To be honest, I preferred Faramir this way. In the books, he alway came off to me as an Aragorn clone…in this version, I think he shows more depth, and it keeps the ring interesting. The detour to Osgiliath was jarring at first, but it makes sense…not only in giving Frodo and Sam more to do but also explaining why Sauron might concentrate so heavily on Gondor in ROTK (Y’all know what I mean.) As for Faramir’s change of heart at the end of the film, it seemed a bit too quick to me the first time around, but the second time it made more sense. By then, Faramir has already discovered the ring has (a) possibly killed his brother and (b) driven this creature with “an ill-favored look” thoroughly batty. When he witnesses trance-Frodo trying to give the Ring of Power to a Nazgul rather than trying to wield its vaunted power, I could see how he’d put it all together.

3. Rohan: (“Forth Eorlingas!“) Theoden, Grima, and Eowyn all do very well here, as does the magnificent set design of Edoras. I could look at Grima most of the time and not think Brad Dourif, which is no small achievement (the accent helped.) And Theoden seemed legitimately staggered by the forces arrayed against his kingdom. (“Such reckless hate…how did it come to this?“) I wish they’d kept the scene of Eowyn dispatching some wayward Uruk-Hai in the Glittering Caves, but perhaps it’ll make the extended cut.

4. Gandalf the White: (“I did not brave fire and death to bandy craven words with a witless worm.”) The transition (and dislocation) from grey to white was handled quite well, I thought, and Ian McKellen was superb once again. I’m even more annoyed now with the Academy for passing him over last year in favor of the admittedly good Jim Broadbent (who won for Iris but no doubt got most of his votes for Moulin Rouge), since the Gandalf scenes are too slim here to warrant nomination.

5. Treebeard and the Ents: (“That does not make sense to me. But, you are very small.“) Looked a bit fake, sure. And they fell out of the picture for a good two hours in the middle there. But, the payoff at the end was huge and, as I said before, I’ve never been enough of an Ent fan to feel slighted anyway. And, speaking of ents…

6. Magnificent moments: (“Stupid fat hobbit!“) How ’bout the Ent on fire taking advantage of the flooding Isen? There are so many stand-out scenes in the film that I could never list them all here. I love the wide-angle shot of a flaming ball(rog) descending into the underground sea. The dialogue between the orcs and Uruk-Hai was great fun. (“How ’bout their legs? They don’t need their legs.“) The exorcism of Theoden was a novel take on the healing, and the subsequent mourning of Theodred was well-handled. Arwen at the grave of Elessar was very touching. Much of the battle of Helm’s Deep was not only surprisingly easy to follow but also pure eye candy, from the Olympic-torch-wielding Uruk Hai to Legolas’ dispatching of the mega-siege ladder. Don’t forget the wonderful shot of Frodo confronting the fell beast on the Osgiliath roofs. And, then of course, there’s pretty much everything involving Gollum. Of course, though, they’d take away my fanboy cred if I didn’t have a few…

7. Quibbles: (“So few…Lord Aragorn, where is he?“) I really could have done without the whole Aragorn-falling-off-the-cliff bit, and Brego the Wonder Horse doesn’t help matters. There’s already too many “dead-not dead!” moments in the trilogy (and too many deus ex machinas, while I’m at it), and PJ really shouldn’t have tested the audience’s patience by throwing in one more. Also, while I like seeing what the elves were up to, the Galadriel speech came across like a recap for the plot-impaired. We’ve been watching the movie for two hours now, so if we haven’t figured it out by now…Same goes for the Middle-Earth map brought out right thereafter – It would have been much more useful earlier, I’d think. Other questions…Why is so much footage from the early previews missing? (“Sauron is not yet so mighty that he does not know fear…“) How does Grima just miss the fact that 10,000 Uruk Hai have lined up outside Orthanc? Why isn’t the back of Haldir’s head split open during his death scene? And when the Ents attack, why does Saruman seem like he just lost a contact?

And so on and so on. But I’m nitpicking what I thought was overall a deliciously good second installment in the Tolkien trilogy. And, with the ends of both the Isengard and Cirith Ungol storylines to be packed in with all the multitudinous events of ROTK, I see no way the next one can clock in under 210 minutes. Should be grand!