Many well-known actors have characterized their profession as being no more than a sophisticated level of child-like make-believe. Whether or not such an assessment is valid, it might help explain why actors such as Robert Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine (amongst others) are still holding strong in their respective careers to this day. Take Robert Duvall for example: this legendary actor has been acting in movies for nearly 50 years, and has given us timeless performances in such diverse classics as M*A*S*H, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Network, and Apocalypse Now. Turning 80-years-old on January 5th, Robert Duvall shows no signs of slowing down. This Friday, July 30th, the comedy/drama Get Low will have a limited release in theatres throughout the United States. In the film, Duvall plays the lead role of a real-life hermit from the 1930s named Felix Bush. Even though it is a low-budget independent movie, Get Low promises to be well-worth viewing, if only to witness a near-80-year-old man flex his acting chops as well as any up-and-coming actor of today.
When a movie is talked about, whether casually or academically, rarely will its music be discussed. Unless the music is as memorable as that of Star Wars or Indiana Jones, film music is usually placed on the back burner of things to appreciate in mainstream movies. That is why the experience I had last night was such a memorable one:
I was arriving home from a friend’s place late last night and, given that today is garbage day, took my garbage out to the curb. Nothing out of the ordinary with that of course - such occurrences happen on a weekly basis - except for one faint sound coming from the direction of my neighbour’s home. I knew it sounded like music, so I decided to take a few steps closer hoping I would recognize it. Upon doing so, I became pleasantly surprised: my neighbour was listening to the music written for the movie Inception. How did I know it wasn’t some pirated or bootlegged version of the movie that is still in theatres? Well, because I waited just a bit longer in order to find out just that. Soon enough, I realized there were no other signs of movie life coming from my neighbour’s home: no explosions, no dialogue, and no other sound effects but music itself. All I could hear were the vibrant sounds of composer Hans Zimmer’s great score to a masterful movie. As I walked back towards my house, I smiled in recognition that once again film music had reached the mainstream.
Approximately 600 movies are released in theaters in North America each year. Of these 600 movies, 599 are invariably about vampires. It's impossible to know for sure, but Let Me In will probably be #372.
Despite the familiarity of the subject matter, the below trailer is actually kind of creepy. It's based on the novel Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was previously adapted into an acclaimed Swedish film in 2008 (the title has evidently been simplified for North American audiences). The director is Matt Reeves, who (thankfully) seems to have misplaced the camcorder that he used to shoot Cloverfield. Also, the two leads are Kodi Smit-McPhee (excellent as the boy in The Road) and Chloë Moretz (excellent as Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass), so this has a fairly good shot at not being terrible.
In a summer full of comedic duds, the upcoming release of The Extra Man could not have come soon enough. In what looks to be his funniest performance in years, Kevin Kline plays the role of Henry Harrison, an old gigolo of a man who decides to rent out and share his apartment with a young man named Louis Ives (Paul Dano). The Extra Man looks to be sharply written by its directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman (American Splendour, The Nanny Diaries) and novelist Jonathan Ames (who wrote the novel the movie’s based upon); with a script seemingly full of one-line zingers, the movie is bound to contain a few duds for jokes, but at least the writers and cast members seemingly tried to create something fresh in a summer full of factorized comedies. In the film’s trailer, two lines in particular helped sell me a future ticket at my local movie theatre: “The women I like best are the Hasidic women…they really get it!” and “There’s a dwarf in that picture!” ; (rebuttal) “It’s a child, Henry.” With a supporting cast including the likes of John C. Reilly, The Extra Man looks like a promising contender for being one of the funniest movies of the year. Such promises will be either fulfilled or negated in theatres across North America this coming Friday, July 30th.
Could it be possible? Could a renaissance man actually exist? According to the upcoming release of Charlie St. Cloud, the answer is patently clear: of course it can! The name of this ‘renaissance man’ just happens to be the movie’s titular character, a.k.a. Zac Efron. Charlie is a handsome, athletic young man with a heart of gold, who, in his spare time, likes to sailboat and play catch with his younger brother. He is a man unafraid to wear his heart on his sleeve (after losing his younger brother in a tragic car accident, he is human enough to react in an appropriate manner), but this is, after all, a Zac Efron fantasy movie. Despite continuing pitching lessons with his dead brother, Charlie finds himself lucky enough to have a beautiful 20-something-year-old woman enter his life and help him come back to reality (perhaps she and Charlie and his brother could be a trio together of pitcher, catcher, and batter!). In a Zac Efron movie, anything is possible; yet clearly, in a Zac Efron movie trailer, everything is revealed. Charlie St. Cloud will be released in theatres this coming Friday, July 30th.
*News alert*: a new photo still from Saw VII has just been released! Even though this seventh (that’s right: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, seventh) part of this tiresome horror movie franchise will not be released until October 29th, it is never too early to get excited about over-the-top cinematic saw massacres. (After all, department stores across North America will be coming out with their Halloween candy in little over a month’s time; when it comes to the Western world, everything arrives in excess). Okay, back to Saw VII: wait a minute…there’s another Saw movie coming out??! I swear I had asked this very same question when the 4th, 5th, and 6th parts came out! Wasn’t this ‘sextology’ overwrought to begin with? Don’t get me wrong, the first Saw was a fresh twist on a dying-out genre (‘dying-out’ in terms of originality and artfulness of course); through its raw understanding of the nature of horror and terror, it deserves a rightful place in the evolution of cinematic horror. It is because of Saw’s magnified sense of horror movie realism that the excuse for making a sequel, if not a complete trilogy, was given due justice. After Saw III however, the franchise should have been put to rest; instead, we are now left with an overblown seven-part series of ‘chainsaw’ flicks that in turn has transformed its fresh start into a Friday the 13th-like mockery.
Sadly enough, it looks like we might have another strikeout for Will Ferrell, who arguably hasn’t made a genuinely funny movie since Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006). The trailer for Will Ferrell’s latest movie The Other Guys makes it look as flat and unfunny as its title is uninspiring. Adding the subtlety-impaired actors that are Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for action-comedy effect only reeks of a hackneyed attempt to appeal to the masses. If it’s true that movie trailers these days reveal far too much information (in the case of comedies, too many of the film’s best punch lines are revealed), then there’s a good chance that The Other Guys will be one sad punch line at the box-office. The Other Guys will be released in theatres on August 6th, 2010.
It’s been far too long since Luke Wilson has been part of a great movie; in fact, we would have to go as far back as 2003, with the release of Old School, for us to find a memorable Luke Wilson role. With the upcoming release of Middle Men - a comedy based on the true story of the man who helped advance the idea of internet shopping (porno and all) to the stature it has today - let’s hope Wilson can at least begin the revitalizing process of his film career. Middle Men arrives in theatres nearly two months ahead of this year’s other internet-themed movie, The Social Network. As with the latter film, based on the real-life story of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, Middle Men will likely profit well from two demographic groups: teenagers who have more or less grownup on the internet, and young adults in their mid-to-late twenties/early thirties who not only use the internet on a daily basis, but provide a uniquely nostalgic perspective of having been raised before, during, and after its creation. That being said,Middle Men's trailer presents itself as being a touch on the derivative side, as it seems to evoke the comedic touches of many like-comedies from the 90s and ‘noughties’ (2000s). At the very least however, it should work as a nice comparative piece to The Social Network. Middle Men will be released in theatres on August 6th, 2010.
One of the advantages of making a movie with an extremely complicated, labyrinthine plot is that people will need to see it more than once in order to figure out what it's about. They may also want to talk about it afterward, thus piquing the curiosity of eavesdroppers who generally don't go to the movies. That's evidently what happened with Christopher Nolan's Inception, which finished well ahead of the significantly less complicated, more audience-friendly Salt (which also had the advantage of being nearly an hour shorter).
Not unlike a spinning top that wobbles slightly but doesn't fall over, Inception's box-office intake fell only 31% from last week ($43.5M compared to $62M). In an age where most blockbusters drop off 70%, that's fairly remarkable -- especially for a 2D movie not aimed at children.
Warner Bros. has just released six photoshop creations character posters for Sucker Punch, the upcoming film that director Zach Snyder (300, Watchmen) has billed as "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns". Set in the 1950's, the film is about Baby Doll, a young woman who is institutionalized by her wicked stepfather. Along with 5 fellow patients, she creates an alternate reality as a coping strategy, and the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur.
Judging by the pictures, their fantasy world obviously doesn't involve hospital-issue clothing:
