In the trailer bin, Bill Murray dives into Cousteau for Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (I’m looking forward to the Henry Selick stop-motion stuff, which unfortunately isn’t in this preview), Jude Law gets increasingly overexposed in David Russell’s I Heart Huckabees (Can’t say I think much of this trailer, for some reason, nor of the “existential comedy” billing) and Chris Cooper channels Dubya for John Sayles’s political caper Silver City (Looks solid, but Richard Dreyfuss strikes warning bells…he can get real hammy when doing satire.)
Category: Directors
3.1.
Digital Bits releases the details of a new Matrix trilogy box set. As y’all might remember, I was cautiously positive about Reloaded and really down on Revolutions, but this box set sounds like hella fun. “There will be two audio commentaries for each film – one from philosophers Ken Wilber and Cornel West (who analyze the meanings behind the films), and one from three professional critics who hated all three films (no names given). According to Andy Wachowski, ‘It’s the best idea we’ve ever had. It’s hilarious. They just sit there and rip the s**t out of us for six hours.'”
A Good man, and thorough.
“The Coens turned down requests to be interviewed about the cult of ‘The Big Lebowski,’ which is frankly infuriating: I did not watch my buddies die facedown in the muck to be blown off by too-cool, insular, press-shunning elitists.” Via All About George, David Edelstein checks in on The Dude, in anticipation of this weekend’s Lebowskifest. Edelstein, you are entering a world of pain.
Good heavens!
Trouble is brewing again in Grover’s Mill…With the Munich Olympics project and the third Mission Impossible both hitting snags, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise are now looking to remake The War of the Worlds. I’d wish they’d kept it a period piece, but this should still be more fun than MI:3.
Bring in Da’ Noise, Bring in Da’ Funk.
Two fanboy icons get the Remix treatment…First, Tyler Durden gets all Tekken up in here with Fight Club: The Game. (Hmm, sadly, it looks Ikea-Nesting-Instinct-lame.) Meanwhile, Kirk & co. get their funk on in this strange ad for the Star Trek Original Series DVD. Well, it’s definitely more fun than an Odd-numbered Trek.
Vice City.
Although the swing is nowhere near as severe, Michael Mann’s Collateral also had a bit of a Code 46 problem: Highly promising at first, it ultimately backslides into a much less appealing and much more ham-handed film. Now, Collateral still ends up being a decently enjoyable night at the movies, but the flaws of the final third definitely hurt the overall experience.
All’s well that starts well…the film has a great sense of place, and both Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are very good throughout. (Despite what many of the reviews say, by the way, Cruise has played a villain before…he was Lestat, and he actually turned out to be pretty good.) And there’s some nice supporting work by Before Night Falls‘s Javier Bardem and The Ladykillers‘ Irma Hall. (Mark Ruffalo seemed slightly miscast as the cop, and he may well be approaching the Stiller Threshold for overexposure in 2004, but he was solid enough.) For the first ninety minutes or so, as Max and Vincent discuss their respective philosophies while making their bloody rounds across the City of Angels, the film (much like Heat) feels like a strangely moody and contemplative Grand Theft Auto mission.
But, when Max’s cab stops for two Very Highly Symbolic Coyotes crossing the street, trouble bells started ringing. And sure enough, soon thereafter, Collateral lapses into over-the-top, nonsensical cheese. The eject moment came for me when Tom Cruise, previously unwilling to venture into one nightspot to retain his anonymity, starts firing away haphazardly in a Chinatown disco. (I guess this is the only club in America without video cameras.) And from then on, the movie takes too long to do too little…the last few set pieces unroll sluggishly, and could all have been cut down by several minutes. By the overblown final moments, I’m sorry to say, I had pretty much checked out. All in all, Collateral is definitely worth two hours of air conditioning, but as for its larger pretensions…Mission Failed.
Prince of Gotham, son of Krypton.
The first pics of Ken Watanabe as Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins have been posted on a Japanese site. And, if you prefer your Caped Crusader with a side of Supes, the fan trailer for World’s Finest (by Sandy Collora, the guy who made the somewhat goofy Batman: Dead End short running around awhile back) is now also available. Yeah, the acting’s pretty substandard here, but I have to say, I sorta prefer the Collora cowl to the rubber suit look they’re going with in Chris Nolan’s film.
Gotham Gas Guzzler.
For the Batman completists out there, AICN obtains some digital footage of the Batmobile in action. Looks like it might have a bit of a rollover problem.
The Light Knight.
Dark Horizons obtains a closer look at the new Batman suit and it looks like…well, a rubber suit. But as long as Bats doesn’t spend too much time in this kind of lighting, he should be alright. Update: The teaser is now online, and it matches to a tee the description here. Nice work.
The Light of Earendil.
It is long since we had any hope…until now. At long last, details of the extended Return of the King are officially unveiled by New Line at Comicon: Apparently due out December (Some reports say the 10th, but that’s a Friday), the film will be fifty minutes longer, and the deluxe version will feature this spiffy Minas Tirith model. Now, hopefully the four minutes of Comicon preview footage will make it on to the official site in the next few days. Update: Until then, we’ve got a shaky Kramervision version online (replete with aggravating shrieking fangirls) and a frame-by-frame analysis…booyah. I’m particularly liking Sam seeing the star in Mordor and the Witch King’s cruel boast.