Posts Tagged ‘film’

Many of you will know that I am an unashamed Batman fan, and always have been. I was quite happy – eager, even, that my eldest son (who’s 10) should come to see it with me. For me, it’s the same thing as the Dads who drag their children of two years or so to see Nohope United every Saturday when the poor buggers have no idea what’s going on. I at least waited until I thought was mentally mature enough to get something out of the experience.

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Store men

In an effort to be absolutely bang up-to-date here on Picturenose, I thought it would be a good idea to review a movie I managed to miss for a good 14 years. I don’t think it necessarily matters, though. You could see it for the first time tomorrow and it would be certain to entertain you in some way. While certain topics are hardly current (the quite delicious discussion of The Return of the Jedi (1983) for example), the dialogue really is the selling point for this ultra-low budget affair, which cost only around $54,000 to produce.

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Center does not hold

Former enfant terrible Oliver Stone would appear to have re-embraced the American Way but World Trade Center (2006), while graced with powerful performances and a life-affirming core narrative, suffers from biased perspectives and a sluggish middle section.

Accusations of mean-spiritedness may follow – after all, Oliver Stone’s film is based on one of the very few stories of hope to come out of 9/11, that horrifying day seven years ago, when two New York Port Authority police officers were trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center. But the remarkable story of Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and rookie Will Jimen (Michael Peña), who were two of only 20 people eventually pulled alive from the wreckage, has been blurred by Stone’s apparent desire to apologise for the anti-US tone of his previous work, such as Salvador (1986) and JFK (1991).

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Today’s news starts with something I found quite surprising. In this Associated Press piece on backstage.com, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in the upcoming The Dark Knight (2008) is compared (favourably) to one Mr J Nicholson’s turn in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). They even go so far as to suggest he may even be nominated posthumously for an Oscar for his efforts. Regular readers will know what a huge fan of the new Batman I am – but I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to be that good a performance. True, he was shaping up to be a very fine actor indeed and his death was a loss to cinema – but a comic-book creation? I think that’d be a first (unless of course you, the reader, know different).

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All bets are on

Having recently watched and enjoyed 28 Weeks Later (2007) – which far outstripped 28 Days Later (2002) in my humble opinion – I got to wondering just why I like the sequel better than the original. I realized pretty soon that it was the mood of the film, alongside some pretty tight camera work. Looking at the credits, I saw the director was one Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, someone I have to admit I’d never heard of. This is not surprising as he’s only made something like four movies. I can’t vouch for the other two, but from what I’ve seen he certainly deserves a lot more work.

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A remake to go ape over

Some films should be left alone. Cinematic history is littered with masterpieces whose reputations are unfairly tarnished by the clunkers repackaged for a later generation, remade with little or no regard for the original’s integrity, vision and soul.

The 1976 John Guillermin-updated remake of Merian C. Cooper’s 1933 classic King Kong was a perfect example of such misguided monkey business, proving that colour, big stars, bigger bangs and Dino De Laurentiis as producer can add up to something you’d rather not step in.

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It’s been quite a decade or two for Philip K. Dick – it’s a pity he’s not still around to enjoy all the success his books have had when given the Hollywood treatment. I was a bit of a sci-fi fan in my youth, and always had a soft spot for Dick’s work. Admittedly, I spent an awful lot of time re-reading parts of his books that just didn’t make any sense, but I persevered and am very glad I did. Of course, our Phil has had many of his books or short stories turned into films – Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006) and some little-known cult hit called Blade Runner (1982). It is with great pleasure I learn that production will soon begin on UBIK, possibly my favourite (and certainly one of the strangest) of Dick’s stories. I’m really not sure how they’ll shoehorn the outrageous concepts onto celluloid, but I’m certainly looking forward to the finished product. You can read the press release here.

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Magic circle

Don’t you just love movies that play games? Joseph L Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972) obviously springs to mind, as does the more recent Memento (2002), directed by the same wunderkind, Christopher Nolan, who here takes us on a playful but dark journey into the disappearances and deception of turn-of-the-20th century magicians.

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Wholly terrifying

In terms of that cold heart-thump, the scare that’s so sought after by strange people such as myself but so rarely found, David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) is probably as good as it got during the past decade or so, at least in the US, while Fabrice du Welz’s Belgian horror show, Calvaire (2004) kept up the European end.

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Hard on Baz’s Bard

It is with great interest that I learned the Australian soap actor-turned director Baz Luhrmann has a new film coming up this year. It’s called Australia, and the early reports indicate it might be good. (Unfortunately, it wasn’t, not really – James). That’s a relief, because since Strictly Ballroom (1992), his movies have been – how can I put this – nauseating, over-produced crap.

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