Face of the Goblin

This is something I've just stumbled upon, and I think it's pretty cool. Original make-up test for the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. I actually wish they would have gone this direction. I was never too much of a fan of the version they used, but what's past is past. As it is, it's just nice to be able to have the chance to see this, finally.



I also kind of like hearing Raimi giving direction from the sidelines.

Later!

Here's My Thing...

As I'm typing this I'm listening to the absolutely stunning score to John Carpenter's The Thing by Ennio Morricone. I was familiar with the music from the film previous to this, but only as a backdrop or an audio only track on the DVD. I had never sat down and just listened to it before tonight. Honestly, I'm a few tracks in and I can say, with some authority, that this is one of the best scores I've heard in a very long time. And all the more interesting for the fact that it feels like I'm hearing it for the very first time.

I guess, in some ways, I am hearing it for the first time. I've read that Morricone's score was not used in its entirety in the film, with Carpenter favouring only a few of the pieces, and subbing in some of his own work where he felt necessary. The soundtrack, features 10 tracks which comprise all of the music Morricone created for the film and none of the additional pieces by Carpenter.

What surprises me the most about this music is how orchestral it feels/sounds, which I'm sure sounds kind of dumb to say. Most of my memories from the film, however, are of the tracks "Humanity (Parts 1 & 2)" and a few other tracks which I'm not 100% sure are from the film or the DVD menus. Anyway, the "Humanity" pieces are very much in the tradition of Carpenter's style. It's very simple, rhythmic, and provides the background to a haunting, repeating, melody played with synthesizers. So, hearing the full breadth and scope of the music here is both jarring and tremendously cool.

The temptation to grab the DVD and pop it in is overwhelming, but I promised myself I would go watch the 'prequel' film on Friday and then watch the Carpenter version to see how well they line up. I've heard that they reverse engineered a lot of the '82 version in regards to the Norwegian team's involvement at the beginning of the movie, so maybe it would be rewarding to have all those little cues fresh in my head. Like when they explain how the axe got in the wall, for example.

Ah, well. All things to consider while I sit here listening and patiently await the October 14th release date for the new movie.

Cheers!

mike

You're Surrounded!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I have a couple on deck in my head but I've been avoiding sitting in front of the computer and just getting them down. Until such events occur, I give you a seminar on surround sound for you cineastes, tech geeks or audiophiles.

Watch live streaming video from dolbylabs at livestream.com

Yeah, it's a couple hours. Yeah, it's all about sound in movies. I know. But if I find it interesting, someone else out there must also be intrigued, n'est ce pas?

Au revoir!

mike

Whatcha Watchin'?

I'm so glad you asked!

I've actually had the rare opportunity to watch a few movies of late and thought I would post about them here.

First up, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Our local Cineplex theatre is participating in the whole Potter Passport thing where you buy a pass to all 7 Potter movies for $25 and you get to see them all, once a week, leading up to the premiere of the last movie. SO, this week it was HP3.

Honestly, I can't say enough good things about Azkaban. Not being an avowed fan of the novels (or films, for that matter) I think it carries a bit of weight to say that this is, perhaps, the best of the series. Something about the first two movies was just too...happy American hocus pocus with kids, you know? Smiling faces, sucky sweet music, overly warm lighting and a really traditional shooting style. With Azkaban, the studio brought on Mexican director, Alfonso Cuarón. I once read a comment that the first two films were perfectly serviceable but it wasn't until the third that they truly got it right and I think Cuarón had a lot to do with making that happen.

Right from the opening credits, you know this movie is going to be a bit different. The look of it is so much more moody and English than anything Columbus committed to film. The fog, the dampness, the aged exterior of Hogwarts, all of these things gave a new character to the series that, if memory serves, was never really recaptured in later installments of the series. The performances by the actors was a distinct improvement (although that may have more to do with age and experience than anything else) and little touches, like the irising in and out between scenes, just made this story so much more interesting to watch.

Lastly, I knew that John Williams did not do the scores for all of the movies, was certain that he did the first two, and assumed he did themes for the third but that Patrick Doyle (who did the next one) did most of the music. It sounded so different from the previous movies but just enough like Williams to make me think he still had some part in it. Well, I was surprised to find out that Williams was, indeed, sole composer on Azkaban and that he was clearly getting very specific direction on the first two movies because what we heard in the third was much closer to the kinds of music he was playing with in the new Star Wars movies, using more percussion and relying less on overt themes.

Some fans have criticized the movie as going too far off the page, but I've also heard the argument that it's the closest to the source material, so I guess it's who you ask. Me, I think it was pretty inspired, really.

---

The next movie I watched was Primer, a little indie movie that cost $7000 and made a splash at Sundance. A friend asked if I had seen it and I told him that I had always wanted to, ever since John Rogers mentioned on his blog that he thought the movie was amazing. He told me that was pretty much true and that I should check it out, so I went home and did just that.

What a treat this movie was. No budget sci-fi with a high concept, no special effects and a plot that will give your brain a charlie horse. To talk about it too much would probably take me into spoiler territory so I'll just say, if you dig movies like Pi or The Man From Earth, this is really worth checking out. And it's, like, 77 minutes, so it's not even a time drain for you busy people.

---

Last on the list for today will be Michael Clayton, a 2007 movie written and directed by Tony Gilroy and starring George Clooney. You've probably heard of it because it was nominated for a handful of Oscars. I remember when it was out and wanting to see it, just never getting around to going to the theatre and watching it. Writers I love kept blogging and tweeting about it expounding its many virtues, some even called it the best movie of that year. I'm not sure what sparked my interest in it last week, to be honest, but I'm so glad I put it in my DVD player and watched it one Monday morning. It was fantastic! A brilliant character piece and a legal thriller rolled into one. Sydney Pollack, Tilda Swinton, and Tom Wilkinson all delivered great performances, and Gilroy did a good job of balancing the action and keeping things flowing and interesting. It's not a flashy movie, but I can find little or no flaw with it and so it gets my highest recommendation.

That's it for this time. There are actually a few more flicks I wanted to talk about but I'll maybe get to those in another post. Until then...

Cheers!

mike

Director's Meme Who's Who #4

Returning to my Directors thoughts, I tackle #4 on my list of filmmakers who changed the way I look at movies:

Darren Aronofsky

I came to Aronofsky in a weird, roundabout kind of way. It was actually through the efforts of Ed Flynn, the artist of the then virtually unknown Pi: The Book of Ants graphic novel (and, oddly enough, the guy who gave me my first paid writing gig), that I got to know Darren's work. Ed sent me a random e-mail asking if I would be interested in interviewing him to promote the book and I was, at that time, happy to talk to anyone in the industry. He sent me a free preview of the book and a Pi pin (both of which I still have) and I was intrigued enough by the concept and our conversation that I sought out the film, managing to convince a co-worker to go see it with me at a local art house theatre.

The movie was great. On the cheap, high in concept and full of great ideas and a catchy industrial score by Clint Mansell. This was really good stuff. Science, math, faith, ants...I was hooked on this Aronofsky guy. I was eager and excited to see what he would come up with next and it goes without saying that Requiem for a Dream was brilliant and emotionally exhausting. Most stories have the structure where things get dark for your characters but through perseverance and other factors, they rise above their troubles and conquer their problems. Not here. In Requiem things just keep getting worse until they hit rock bottom. And then they keep going down some more. In fact, when we leave all the characters, there is still depths that they will likely sink to and you feel, as a viewer, pretty drained after the experience. The performances by Jared Leto, Jennifer Connely, Marlon Wayans and Ellen Burstyn were top shelf, and the 'hip-hop' editing of the movie was stylish and interesting.

Then there is The Fountain which is as beautiful and engaging as it is impenetrable. Aronofsky, again, shows us how good these actors we've seen before can be when given the right direction and material. He once again examines love, faith and gives us scenes that are so heartbreaking it's honestly difficult to watch.

I'm not going to go into his other films because, honestly, I have yet to see The Wrestler or Black Swan, but they are on the list. I have the former and will pick up the latter when time and finances permit. Until then, though, I will close off this little love letter to Darren by saying that he has proven time and again to be one of the medium's most provocative and visually engaging filmmakers. He never shies away from difficult material and is able to think outside the box, something he has been doing since those very early days in New York, trying to make a small movie about God and math and publish his tie-in graphic novel.

I think most of that was gushing but I'm pretty sure I got my point across.

Cheers!

mike

Directors Meme Who's Who #3

Continuing my Directors thoughts, I tackle #3 on my list:

Steven Spielberg

Although my relationship with Spielberg in later years has been rocky, I still look back on those early films with wonder and pure nostalgic joy. Movies like E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Jaws are staples of most of my top ten lists, and two of them generally come up on my top 5 whenever I'm pressed to make one. He was a great storyteller who was not only proficient with doing large effects movies, but also smaller character pieces. Every time one of his movies opened, it was an event. Even if it stunk at the box-office, we'd still line up to see what was next out the gate, and movies like Hook and 1941 still hold a place for me despite being on most people's cinematic shit lists.

The latter half of Spielberg's career has, for me, been an exercise in self-indulgence, back-patting and self-congratulation. I find Minority Report and A.I. almost unwatchable, The Terminal and Catch Me If You Can alright diversions if only it wasn't for Tom Hanks and, while I have yet to see Munich, War of the Worlds is the only thing that he has made that I have cared for since Amistad, and that's with Tom Cruise in it, of all people.

I also blame most of the problems with the fourth Indy on Spielberg after reading various accounts of the making of the film.

So, there's good and there's bad, but in the end, he was a filmmaker who shaped how I viewed and responded to movies in my more impressionable years.

mike

Confessions of a Media Junkie

That's the title that's milling about in my head at the moment. I still haven't done a search on it online to see if someone else is using it, so it may change, but I've been giving some consideration to writing a column, of sorts, here or on another blog (one that I'd create seperate to this one). In it I would do something similar to what Nick Hornby does with his Believer columns, "Stuff I've Been Reading", but instead of books (or exclusively books) I would cover DVDs and Blu-Rays. I'm always buying new discs and do not always watch them immediately after doing so. In fact, they often sit on my shelf for a very, very long time before I even take them out of their wrappers. I do the same with books and comics. The only things I get into right away is music.

So, that might be coming on the horizon. We'll see how things go.

mike

Great Gatsby to be Remade by Luhrmann

Gatsby is one of my favourite books, Fitzgerald in my top 3 writers, and Luhrmann, Maguire and DiCaprio nowhere near my top ten directors or actors, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the 3D aspect of it, so I will be going into this new adaptation with great trepidation. The A&E version that came out a few years ago was pretty decent and still stands as my go-to version if I feel like watching the show. I really enjoyed Nick Caraway being played by the not-yet-an-Apatow-standard Paul Rudd, and Mira Sorvino had a decent turn at Daisy but I wasn't really sold on the remainder of the cast so I still have that not-quite-right feeling about it whenever I watch it.

I honestly have every faith that Luhrmann will be able to catch the look of the period, and Leo might actually make a decent Gatsby, but what I think will ultimately save this newest version for me is the casting of Carey Mulligan as Daisy. I adored her in An Education and she was a delight on Doctor Who. She's the only reason I'm planning on watching the LaBeouf-laden Wall Street 2 and think I would follow her to any show or movie. If she was in the new Transformers movie I'd probably go see that, too.

Anyway, here's the link to the story if you want to check it out.

Later!

mike

Directors Meme Who's Who #2

Continuing my Directors thoughts, I tackle #2 on my list:

David Fincher

I've loved the guy's stuff since Alien 3 and he's made very few missteps along the way. His music videos are generally exceptional and the guy worked for ILM on return of the Jedi. He gets some cool points for that right there. In fact, because of his experience behind the camera he is highly skilled in front of the camera. He can do light and shoot and design effects like Cameron are known for because he's done the job before, although he does seem like less of an asshole while doing it. He is one of the finest American directors out there with a subtle yet unmistakable visual style. He has an ability to draw out fantastic performances from his actors and chooses occasionally odd, but always compelling, subject matter.

He's also developing The Goon for animation, so watch for that to hopefully happen in the future.

mike

Directors Meme Who's Who #1

I mentioned last time that I would do a brief thing on each director I put into my 15 Director list, so I'm back to do a little blurb on each of them. I'll do them in order of appearance and I won't necessarily do more than one at a time, mostly because I'm lazy but also to give me a moment to reflect on the why before committing it to the ol' blog. Also, the order of the list is totally random. To start with:

Ridley Scott

I don't remember the first Scott film I saw but I think it was Blade Runner, and I'm thinking that because I was a huge Harrison Ford fan for years. I also wasn't allowed to watch Alien for the longest time because it was supposed to be horrifying, so I stayed away from that movie until I got wise. I don't think I need to tell anyone what I got from Blade Runner and how it changed the way I looked at movies. Everything from the story to the visual style just made such an impression. All the smoke and neon and retro-future design was intoxicating even for a young 11 or 12 year-old who probably didn't understand what about this stuff was blowing his mind. I remember loving Black Rain and still remember Andy Garcia's death scene in that one. 1492 had some issues but even in a period piece Scott managed to pull off that neon/sodium light glow using natural light sources. His movies were visually dense and more commercial and accessible than Gilliam or Lynch to a young cinema enthusiast. I think Scott made me think a little more about what I was looking at and why, and created in me an expectation for the filmmakers I would follow throughout my days.

Cheers!

mike

15 Directors Meme

This is a meme I picked up from the website Secure Immaturity and thought I would play along.

List off the first 15 directors that come to your head that have shaped the way you look at movies. You know, the ones that will always stick with you. Don’t take too long to think about it.

These are mine:

Ridley Scott
David Fincher
Steven Spielberg
Darren Aronofsky
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Wim Wenders
Orson Welles
Andrew Niccol
Steven Soderbergh
Edgar Wright
Cameron Crowe
Sam Raimi
Terry Gilliam
Luc Besson
Christopher Nolan

I'd also like to give Jonathan Glazer an honourable mention. He just missed the cut.

If I get a moment I'll come back in and 'talk' briefly about each director and how they changed the way I look at films. I also look forward to seeing what anybody else might come up with.

Cheers!

Mike

Summing Up Saw

I often get funny looks from friends and family when I say that I genuinely enjoyed the first Saw film and appreciated the twist and cast in the second. Because of my overall distaste for 'torture porn', which seems to be the preference of horror fans of today, I went into each Saw film expecting it to be my last. I made a decision that each time I sat down to watch one of these things, if it tweaked me the wrong way, I was done with the series. And so, the third entry would be my last foray into the house that Leigh Wannell and James Wan built. By that point the whole idea seemed to get subverted by the sheer pleasure of showing people tortured and ripped to pieces in the most sadistic ways possible. The morality that Jigsaw seemed to be enforcing was no longer a concern to the new writers and directors.

I never expected to be posting on the Saw movies, especially so long after I've seen and given up on them, but this blog post on Secure Immaturity conjured up some residual feelings on the subject when the writer echoed my feelings on the franchise with this comment:

The Jigsaw Killer kind of has a point in the first film and maybe at the end of two but. . .by Saw VI the dude is just a pure sadist and we, as an audience, have to admit we have a little sadism in us to enjoy something so sick. I only like the third Saw because of this fact: it pushes my buttons and brings me to the line where I say ‘okay, enough is enough’.

Granted, he liked Saw III, but it's still nice to see that I'm not alone in my feelings.

Now, I will say that I'm mildly curious (and I stress mildly) to see the last installment because of Sean Patrick Flannery's involvement, but after seeing Boondock Saints II, I think even the fanboy pull I once had for SPF's stuff won't get me over the hump for this one.

Later!

mike

Mobile Databasing

I downloaded a new app for my iPhone which is a database for my DVDs and BDs that I can take around with me. It's not a really important thing to have on me at all times, but I am asked often enough about my movies (a collection that is 1500+ unique titles strong) when I'm not at home that I thought it might be nice to have something like that available at my fingertips. I also kind of loved the fact that I can use my camera to scan each and every one of my movies and it automatically adds them to the database. So far, I've only run into a few that have stumped IMDB and those are easy enough to add manually. I was kicking around, relaxing and listening to some Fringe commentary and scanned, like, 100 discs into the database in the time it took to finish one episode. Not too shabby.

A lot of other stuff was done today, but for whatever reason the database app is the one thing standing out to me right now, so that's what you get on the blog.

Later!

mike

Kudos To Red Hood

I gotta give credit where credit is due here, and the bulk of the success of Batman: Under the Red Hood lies in Judd Winick's screenplay which he adapted from his own work on the Batman comic books (I think it was in Batman but it could have been Detective, I don't know). I mean, sure, the show looks good, and has some good action sequences, and decent art direction, and great sound design, and pretty good music, and the cast is not bad, but I honestly think it's the pacing and structure of the story that really makes this thing work better than most of the D2DVD Warner/DC animations to date. Everything from Superman: Doomsday to Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths suffer in one way or another and never truly feel like a fully fleshed out and complete story. Every one of them, with the exception of Green Lantern: First Flight and Batman: Gotham Knight because of its anthological nature (is that even a word), feel compressed, rushed, and squeezed into their limited running times.

Despite my previous misgivings, I have to concede that Under the Red Hood was an entertaining experience and had many good moments in it. The only weak points it really has stem from some lame CGI and my own lukewarm reaction to the Red Hood storyline when I first read it a while ago.

Anyway, disjointed and rushed though they may be, those are my thoughts on the movie and I'm moving on to work on some other stuff. I just wanted to sound off while this was fresh in my mind.

Take care!

mike

Under the Hood

Not looking too forward to this although I cannot deny some curiosity:



Probably a renter rather than a purchase. Haven't really embraced any of the DC Animated films since Wonder Woman, which wasn't all that strong. Actually, Green Lantern: First Flight was pretty good, now that I think about it, but I haven't bought any of them since WW.

Anyway, time will tell. Released on July 27th, if I'm not mistaken.

Later!

mike

To Airbend, or Not to Airbend?

I was planning to go to The Last Airbender this week (being a huge fan of the animated series) but the reviews are kind of scaring me off. I look at the Tomatometer and it has a 9% fresh rating right now. That's terrible. Still, the last X-Files movie had a 12% and I loved it to bits, so maybe TLA isn't that bad. But then I hear the fans responses, and Ebert's review which was painfully scathing in its dislike of the film (Ebert, btw, loved the last X-Files movie) and I have to wonder. The Avatar community is also pretty heated in its hate for the film. I don't know if it's just expectations that were too high or what but it's enough to keep me away, possibly until it hits the discount theatre or the kids push us to take them.

Every time I try and overcome a negative with this movie I always manage to find something to make me pull back and away, again. Maybe that's enough reason to stay away.

mike

ILM on CNET discussing the future of special effects in film and television. It's a 30 minute clip but I enjoyed it so...



Later!

mike

"If you have a problem, if no one else can help..."

I'm honestly not sure what to think.



mike

Will the Disappointments Never Cease?

One of my most enjoyable moviegoing experiences this year involved going to Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell with a couple of friends at a second run theatre here in town. I figured I would enjoy the movie but had no idea just how much. Like almost all the critical reviews, I felt that Raimi had put together one of the best horror movies in the last ten years and effortlessly recaptured the low-budget scare-fest that introduced him to cinema goers across the world.

Today marked the release of Drag Me To Hell on DVD and Blu-Ray and, like a good little soldier, I went out and bought my copy (in Hi-Def since having a PS3 now means I have no excuse not to). On my lunch break, no less. I wanted to be able to grab my copy, get it home and not have to stop anywhere between the end of work and sliding that puppy into my PlayStation.

Browsing through the disc I discovered that, with the exception of some production diaries, there are no meaty features to speak of. No commentary (which I was pretty sure would be there), no sizable documentaries, just 30-odd minutes behind-the-scenes clips showing how they created the nose-bleed scene or the maggot scene. I should probably check if they're branching, now that I think about it, because that might make them a little more entertaining. But, the point is, this is a 50GB disc and that's all you have to offer?

Argh!

On the plus side, the video is flawless and the audio is source audio, so I don't regret the Blu-Ray purchase in the slightest. I'm especially looking forward to the movie night some friends and I are putting on where we'll watch it on a 52" plasma screen with the sound pumping out the roaring soundtrack. I just wish that there was a bit more in the extra features department to satisfy the features whore in me.

Anyway, watch the movie if you haven't, check out the DVD if you can.

Until next time...

mike

Who You Gonna Call?

First the game, now this. I'm in freakin' heaven these days!



I'll have some comments on the aforementioned game in the near(?) future as I am 3/4 of the way through as of this writing, and it's just too cool to not rave about it in a post sometime soon.

Until then, enjoy!

mike