It’s Friday, and at the end of a grim-visaged week, the world needs more trailers. In the bin today, we’ve got a new view of The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel and David Twohy’s follow-up to Pitch Black (sadly, it still looks like a very expensive Sci-Fi Channel original movie), evil Tom Cruise in Michael Mann’s Collateral (The LA gunplay of Heat meets the visual style of The Insider), the first look at The Bourne Supremacy (Identity was a nice surprise, although this one seems very similar), and the teaser for Halle Berry’s embarrassing-looking Catwoman (The early buzz has been awful, and this blah clip won’t change it.)
Category: Directors
Man-Bat Stalks Gotham.
The official Batman Begins site and Entertainment Weekly give us our first look at the new Dark Knight. Hmm…this seems ok. I’d prefer longer ears and less of a hockey-pad feel to his shoulders and knees, but it’s hard to say anything more until we see Bats move around.
Viva the Vegas.
Flush with the success of the Kill Bills, Quentin Tarantino now threatens to make The Vega Brothers (being John Travolta of Pulp Fiction and Michael Madsen of Reservoir Dogs.) Hmm. I was hoping his next project would be something a little more focused and less derivative of his previous work, after all the cool-guy posturing that afflicted Kill Bill.
Terminal B.
A few days after the TV Spot landed, a longer trailer for Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal takes off over at the official site. I think Spielberg’s been on a bit of a roll lately, at least visually, but I fear this might be a product of his schmaltzier instincts. Ah well, we’ll see.
Requiem for Rorschach.
Darren Aronofsky on The Watchmen?! Ooh, that’s a great directing pick. One would think Aronofsky would give Alan Moore’s magnum opus a much more faithful treatment than Hollywood delivered with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or even From Hell. But, given Aronofsky’s track record on Ronin, Batman: Year One, and The Fountain, I’m not going to start holding my breath quite yet.
Making a Killing.
“‘This is the beauty of having two volumes,’ said Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax. ‘Vol. 1 goes out, Vol. 2 goes out, then Vol. 1 Special Edition, Vol. 2 Special Edition, the two-pack, then the Tarantino collection as a boxed set out for Christmas. It’s called multiple bites at the apple. And you multiply this internationally.’ Ah. Only a company as brazen as Miramax would flat-out admit they plan to screw DVD buyers. I wouldn’t have bought the Kill Bills anyway, but if you were thinking about it, it seems best to hold off. (And, yes, this is different from the LotR extended editions, since those were announced in full well before any version of the film went on sale.)
Double Billed.
Well, I’ll say this much for Kill Bill, Vol. 2…it’s a vast improvement over the atrocious Vol. 1. Perhaps because, one kinetic trailer park catfight notwithstanding, Tarantino isn’t trying to be an action director this time around, the second half of this revenge tale hangs together much better than the opening act. There’s actually time devoted to character beats here, which, as QT should know, is ultimately his forte as a writer and director. As such, Michael Madsen and David Carradine in particular get a chance to bring some much-needed complexity to the wafer-thin plot around which these films are constructed.
Still, like its predecessor, Kill Bill Vol. 2 has the whiff of a vanity project. It’s obvious Quentin had the time of his life making these two films, and they definitely seem to work as a love letter to a certain subset of grindhouse and chop-socky film fans (a group which includes David Edelstein, Roger Ebert, and Elvis Mitchell.) But, frankly, I thought a lot of Vol. 2 felt sloppy and derivative. I still don’t see why this project had to be two films, particularly as, once again, there’s so many drawn-out, redundant, or unnecessary episodes on display here. What’s up with the Uma car intro? Bud’s boss? Daryl Hannah’s googlesearch notes? Bill’s ridiculously QT-like riff on Superman? The tremendously stupid pregnancy test faceoff? As I noted about the first half of Kill Bill, Jackie Brown moves languidly, but with purpose. For much of these KB flicks, which often feel more like some sub-Tarantino outing (Killing Zoe, for example) than they do Jackie or Pulp Fiction, I was just bored.
Ultimately, there’s a difference between paying fleeting homage to some film influence and constructing a four and a half hour movie that just moves lazily from homage to homage. The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, some Wu-Tang flick, Oh, look, The Vanishing. I’m sure that I recognized less than 10% of the movies Tarantino was referencing here, and I’m sure that probably invalidates my opinion of the film in many people’s eyes. And, if QT wants to show off his film-geek cred so blatantly and the film-geeks eat it up like candy, who am I to complain? Still, I very much hope that Tarantino had to get this orgy of excess out of his system, and that he’ll now settle down and focus his considerable talents a little more narrowly, instead of jumping all over the map as he does here.
Gates of Eden.
Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Stanley Tucci hang around The Terminal in this trailer for Steven Spielberg’s latest flick. Hard to tell how this one came out from here…I suspect Hanks’s accent might end up being a bit Balki-esque by the end.
Chow Yun Samus.
John Woo on Metroid? Now there’s a film that really never needs to see the light of day. What’s next? Tony Scott’s Excitebike? Oliver Stone’s Kid Icarus?
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.)