E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVESBy Christopher Stipp
February 6, 2004
STALE, FLAT AND WITH NO HEAD
I was all set to regale the splendor that was the Super Bowl and the trailers they put on display. For quite some time I was plotting and planning a Super Bowl edition of this column just to make room for all the additions. While some of you used your TiVo remotes like a furious thirteen-year-old trying to determine that yes, see, right there, it was Janet’s breast in full bloom, I was using mine to confirm that I had been ripped off this year. There were no new spots for SPIDER-MAN 2, nothing that might give a glimpse into I, ROBOT, (which you all should check out solely for its faux Web site. A marketing campaign not unlike A.I.), not even so much as a pity nugget showcasing THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.
Of all the offerings this time around, though, only HILDALGO looked a fresh face among the tattered trailers that I, and the public, had already seen before. Out of seven trailers that ran during the game, Disney was responsible for four of them. Four. Where was my senseless violence, my crazily edited suite of unrelated scenes of an action flick? Where were the campaigns obviously designed to completely lie to me about what movies I should see this summer? Nowhere to be found, that’s where. It was the first time I used the word aghast to describe how I felt.
But, I am not going to let it get me down. I’m not going to turn my ire against anyone who should have known better and ponied up the cash to whore their summer blockbusters.
I’ll let you do it.
Were any of you disappointed by the fare that was given or were you happy with the warm plate of mediocrity that was served up? Were there any trailers you were expecting to see and had your hopes dashed by the cold reality of a talking donkey? Well, the donkey was a little funny, though, to be fair.
On an unrelated tip, I’d like your suggestions for trailers. Do I seem to be following a pattern of which trailers get some action? Would you like more artistic stuff? Foreign flicks? Is everything floating here on a nice Xanax cushion of delight? I may not use your idea, and may even ridicule you publicly for your obvious lack of taste in cinema, but you are the ones who read this thing. I know what I like, as you can see by this week’s varied selections, but I always enjoy hearing from you. And, as a compliment to everyone who has taken the time to scribble something out to me, kudos to most of you who seem to have an exemplarily grasp of the English language. It’s always refreshing to read a letter and not have to be Indiana Jones to decipher its meaning.
With that, let’s kick this week into nitrous overdrive and then give praise for this week’s clip of the week, DOGVILLE. It’s an odd choice, yes, but wholly deserved if you understand why I chose it. So, grab some truck stop speed and get reading.
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Howard, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody, Judy Greer, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Pitt
Release: July 30, 2004
Synopsis: Set in rural Pennsylvania in 1897, this is the story of the small village of Covington, with only a population of 60, surrounded by woods inhabited by a race of “mythical creatures,” and the romance that blossoms between Kitty(Greer), the daughter of the town’s leader(Hurt), and Lucius (Phoenix), a young man. However the village becomes threatened when Lucius questions the policy of keeping Covington’s citizens completely confined to the village.
View Trailer:
• Small (QuickTime)
• Various (Windows Media, RealOne)
Progonosis: Positive. There is something about M. Knight’s oeuvre of films that some people just don’t like.
Whether it’s because they allowed Bruce Willis to keep making films in Hollywood or because M. Knight’s took the thriller genre and gave it some new life, there are those that flippantly disregard his work as manipulative, slow, derivative, predictable, or that they downright “suck ass.†It would be mistake to make those assert those views, however.
M. Knight knows how to craft good film. I genuinely realize, and can say without feeling like a complete ‘tard, that I didn’t see the endings coming for either THE SIXTH SENSE, SIGNS, or, the comic book film in disguise, UNBREAKABLE. The risks he takes and the people he uses to help him create a mood, whether visually or sonically, have all done him a great service.
With the trailer here for THE VILLAGE, M. Knight is up to what he does best: creating an unbelievably odd situation, throwing unwitting, humanistic individuals at it, and see what becomes of it all. The shots that are shown here have weight. By that I mean there is a deliberate establishment of place and pace. It’s slow to reveal what’s happening here, but it’s doing what it is supposed to do. However, all that you get to see for any good deal of time in this thing is Joaquin.
I really wasn’t a fan of Joaquin when he first started to make films. He has that really really odd lip thing going on, looks like a Rumplemintz shot away from ending his own life and carries a very odd vibe about his person. With SIGNS, however, he was a genuinely empathetic brother to Mel Gibson and made me believe he has some talent. He was almost playing the same character in every film he was in, but SIGNS changed that rose colored view permanently for me.
With this trailer M. Night relegates Joaquin to the last literal seconds of this thing and that confounds me. With a supporting cast that boasts a couple of winners for those little, golden eunuch awards there is nary a frame of film to prove that Brody, Weaver or Hurt even exist in THE VILLAGE. Obviously, their absence was no accident, but with a few people already, publicly, giving the screenplay bad word of mouth, most commenting on its predictability, it is indeed a strange and curious thing to wonder what will coming next.
Director: Nick Hamm
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert De Niro
Release: April 30, 2004
Synopsis: After their young son, Adam (Bright), is killed in an accident, a couple (Kinnear, Romijn-Stamos) approach an expert (De Niro) in stem cell research about bringing him back to life through an experimental and illegal cloning and regeneration process. When Adam comes back to them, however, he’s…different.
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Progonosis: Sa-Weet. This has elements of DAMIEN, THE EXORCIST, PROBLEM CHILD, and WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S written all over this mutha.
Here’s the set up: Greggie Kinnear tapped that fine wife lady of his, Rebecca Romijn, and squeezed out a fresh and jolly ankle biter. Well, after the thing could walk on his own, they let him roam in the mean streets of the city. Of course, whenever you see a little boy walking by himself in a movie he will be kidnapped, crushed or allegedly picked up by a member of Michael Jackson’s entourage. Funnily enough, he’s hit by a car flying off a ramp of dirt which seems cinematically, if not oddly, well-placed for a direct hit. (I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t show that a la CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH). Well, after the accident they’re all bummin’ that they suck as parental figures and in walks Robert De Niro, a geneticist, who claims he can recreate their little boy right down to the pubes he didn’t yet have. They, of course, dost protest too little, say “what the hell†and do it anyway. Not literally, unfortunately, as Rebecca is impregnated with the fertilized genetic freak and, yea, it is good. That is until, da da dum, the boy starts to have wicked nightmares and starts to get freakier than a Girls Gone Wild lesbo cut scene. The Jeff Spicolli in all of us should say at this point, “Awesome. Totally awesome.â€
In all seriousness, now, Robet De Niro needed to do something like this since his disgraceful “attempt†to once again channel his comedic shtick in ANALYZE THAT. He’s simply great at dramatic roles, when the writing doesn’t completely suck, and he shows those same flickers of hope he had when he did really well in, well, um, RONIN back in 1998. I am not even going to publicly state he needed a hit because Hollywood will allow him to work on whatever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants from now until he dies. Even then I am sure they will make something where it requires someone to be billed as Corpse #1.
Something else worth noting here is Greg Kinnear. He could easily be looked over by everyone else in America as that “dude who played a homo†in AS GOOD AS IT GETS, but man oozes a lo-fi energy that has brought most all of the other films he has done to a better level. From the wonderful AUTO FOCUS to NURSE BETTY this man is a quiet killer. Yes, I am excluding those hunks of bird crap SABRINA and DEAR GOD from the list as I believe it should be against the Geneva Convention to show those to anyone who isn’t allowed to immediately leave a room when it plays.
Rebecca Romjin is supa fine and that’s all you need really need to know about her.
This trailer presents all its major actors front and center, good, presents the storyline quickly, good, sets up the dramatic action, good, and doesn’t give away the effin’ ending, even better. Hopefully the fact that Nick Hamm hasn’t really directed anything this big should mean a thing, nor that the writer of this bad boy is being credited as being the powered pen who is bringing DIE HARD 4 to our silver screen. Sigh. MEETING THE FOCKERS starts filming this year, right?
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Colin Farrell, Shirley Henderson, Kelly Macdonald, Colm Meaney, Cillian Murphy
Release: March 19, 2004
Synopsis: INTERMISSION is an urban love story about people adrift and their convoluted journeys in the search for some kind of love. When the desperately insecure and emotionally inarticulate John (Murphy) breaks up with Deirdre (Macdonald) to ‘give her a little test’ his plan backfires leaving her broken-hearted and him alone and miserable. Through chance and coincidence, their break-up triggers a roller coaster ride of interweaving escapades in the lives of everyone around them. Intermission presents a slice of life, the passage between breaking up and making up, exploring how our lives intersect, and the power we all possess to affect the lives of those around us.
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• Various (Windows Media, RealOne)
Progonosis: Positive. I’m Irish.
I love most things about Ireland: soda bread, claddagh rings, Dublin, Irish accents on freckled lasses, watching twelve year-olds staggering around city streets drunk after watching their team win a World Cup match in South Korea at ten in the fookin’ morning, and Guinness.
Colin Farrell is not something about Ireland I care much about.
I’ll go the distance with every Colin playa hata that reads this and will bag on his every career misstep, state the fact that he has been given plum roles to choose from and pisses most opportunities away like last night’s drunken bender, or pick on him because most believe he’ll be forgotten in ten years. It would be easy to do that. Saying he looks fairly amusing as a goon on a mission towards self-destruction and violent behavior is difficult because of the stigma around Colin, but it’s well deserved
INTERMISSION, however, looks like it may be a better pill to swallow. Starring folks from across the pond who have starred in 28 DAYS LATER, TRAINSPOTTING, 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, WONDERLAND, GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING and with Colm Meaney, a man who has kept himself busy with some sort of notable project nearly every single year since the early 90’s, this looks like the kind of import that you can get exited over while waiting, impatiently, for Weinstein and the rest of Miramax to get off their dead hands and asses and put out the most triumphant HERO and wicked looking SHALOLIN SOCCER sometime before the end of the decade. There I go digressing and using run-on sentences again.
There are multiple storylines crisscrossing in this trailer, if you can keep up with the brogue that’s being warbled out at an alarming clip, but it all “feels†very inviting even with Farrell at the film’s center. There’s a dash of romance, male-to-male fisticuffs, lots of running away from the coppers, a girl being made fun of for her thick man-stache, and a comedic snippet at the end showcasing the old car-on-a-fulcrum-leaning-over-a-ledge bit that’s always a crowd pleaser to those silly Europeans.
On both sides of the Atlantic there are comedies made that are worthy to be released onto an unwitting foreign populace and do well wherever they play, east or west. Sometimes we only get the best of what’s being produced and, while that can be annoying to some of us who would like a greater idea of what else is out there, small films like this look like the kind of fare that should be actively sought out. Even if it does have Colin Farrell in it.
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Stephen Dillane, Hugh Dancy, Ioan Gruffudd, Stellan Skarsgaard, Ray Winstone, Valeria Cavalli, Charlie Creed-Miles, Joel Edgerton, Sean Gilder, Pat Kinevane, Ivano Marescotti, Mads Mikkelsen, Til Schweiger, Ray Stevenson, Ken Stott
Release: July 7, 2004
Synopsis: As the Roman Empire crumbles (circa 450 A.D.), the British Isles are thrown into a loose anarchy as errant knights are entrenched in years of territorial battle. Then, one king emerges to unite them, Arthur, with his concept of a Round Table of united knights.
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• Small (QuickTime)
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Progonosis: Pray For Goodness. When you see the words “From Jerry Bruckheimer…†it can do one of two things:
1. You run screaming from the theater, decry that bastard’s notion of what he and buddies Michael Bay or McG consider film, clutch your two-disc collector’s editions of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and CITIZAN KANE close to your body and try to rock yourself to sleep while reciting a small prayer wishing Jerry to be infected by dust mites and hope that they eat away at his black soul.
2. Realize the films he produces are really only a crapshoot, has helped to bring some benchmark action movies into our lives (not to mention the infectious Amazing Race on TV) and that all one can do is hope for the best with the cast that’s given the material.
Johnny Depp proved to be the killer app that shoved PRIATES OF THE CARRIBEAN into the fiscal stratosphere. That film could have drifted into a box office disaster maelstrom and capsized without so much as a peep if Johnny hadn’t channeled the spirit (c’mon now, we all know Keith should have been dead decades ago) of Keith Richards. There wasn’t so much play given to Kiera Knightly or Orlando Bloom, the other “more bankable†stars of the film, but Depp’s character had that certain something that took a mediocre plot, hell, it based on an amusement ride at Disney and made a great summer movie. However, as a side note, if they ever think to adapt It’s a Small World I have no problems sabotaging or publicly firebombing all attempts at production.
The trailer here for KING ARTHUR looks like it could be a spectacular addition to the summer season. The landscapes that are on display in the opening sequence are breathtakingly lush and I guess, from what director Antoine Fuqua knew about life circa 400 A.D., pretty friggin’ smoky. Crap, I mean it is everywhere in this thing. Simmer down, would you, with the fog machine. Aside from that there is an annoying scroll of words that follow every word from the announcer chatting this thing up. Are they trying to rake in some dollars from the deaf set? Believe me when I say this thing is not starting off on the right foot.
Next, we get introduced to Clive Owen who should be doing a lot more projects in this country and it’s great to see him in this role. If you haven’t seen CROUPIER or his subdued performance in GOSFORD PARK then I couldn’t begin to explain why he owns your attention. Kiera gets some time as a lady enamored with Clive’s machismo reputation and that is when the action begins to steamroll (always a fan of fire arrows. They just look cool.) as we’re all reminded that Antoine “the badass who brought your white ass to experience TRAINING DAY†Fuqua directing this film.
After that, there is a peek at Merlin the wizard, who really looks like he should be playing Moses with the pose he’s aping, and then there’s more fire in the form of balls and miscellaneous crap they could find to ignite. I do declare that this movie is going to be a hit with every fan of Whitesnake’s video catalog.
When a trailer goes into what I think of as its schizophrenic video clipping, really fast montages of unrelated but quick moving sequences behind thick drum and bass beats, it’s where you can literally add up scenes that might be interesting and there are a lot of them here. From Kiera getting wicked with a bow and arrow to Clive wielding a mega sword that will most likely harm a lad or two, this trailer appears to do everything a movie like this should. Whether or not the entire film will be any good or be able to sustain itself beyond its style on display here is yet to be determined. That Whitesnake contingent, though, should bring in, at least, a couple hundred dollars.
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany, Blair Brown, James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Davies, Ben Gazzara, Chloë Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgård
Release: April 2, 2004
Synopsis: The beautiful fugitive, Grace (Nicole Kidman), arrives in the isolated township of Dogville on the run from a team of gangsters. With some encouragement from Tom (Paul Bettany), the self-appointed town spokesman, the little community agrees to hide her and in return, Grace agrees to work for them. However, when a search sets in, the people of Dogville demand a better deal in exchange for the risk of harboring poor Grace and she learns the hard way that in this town, goodness is relative. But Grace has a secret and it is a dangerous one.
View Trailer:
• Small (QuickTime)
• Various (Windows Media, RealOne, QuickTime)
Progonosis: Sublimely Positive. I like Lars von Trier.
I was first introduced to the man by his work on BREAKING THE WAVES by way of video and then on the big screen by DANCER IN THE DARK. The latter film, regardless of your feelings toward Bjork, and I really didn’t have a good one, is a wonderful symphonic ballet of song, movement and passionate storytelling. With that being said, and based on the trailer, I want to see what he can do with Nicole Kidman in DOGVILLE. She is capable of coming through in the clutch and looks great in the hands of the man who has been absent from the screen since 2000.
I’ve liked Nicole Kidman, I think, longer than I have most any other actress in Hollywood. I say I think because I’m not sure who else I would’ve liked more as an eight year-old, it was a full year before GHOSTBUSTERS, after seeing BMX BANDITS.
To some of you saying “huh?†I have no explanation. To those in the know and who have seen this tour de force of Huffy bikes, crazy crooks, Australian accents, and a water slide (yum…water slide), you need no more insight on the topic. I think that movie can be credited as to why I’ve never forgotten her name when I’ve heard it. Ever. I was blown away by bits and pieces of her abilities in TO DIE FOR, THE HOURS, MOULIN ROUGE!, and even THE OTHERS.
When this trailer opens, with von Trier’s signature video camera work in full effect, you get a whole lot of Kidman’s face.
It’s everywhere.
It can all be forgiven as this trailer is a delicate presentation of the story, characters, the conflict, and its ability to hide where the film’s going to go next. What is slightly distracting, but I guess necessary for a film of this diminutive size, is the scroll of how every critic found this movie to be, in summation, a wet dream the likes of which you only wish you yourself could have had as a boy of thirteen. The critical “buzz†will help to get the movie played in some theaters that might not have otherwise carried it. In the trailer, as well, you get to see a sliver of Lauren Baccall, James Caan and Paul (hope for moderately ugly men everywhere to score their own Jennifer Connelly) Bettany. Lars von Trier is an accomplished director whether you think it is European hype or that it’s a need for artsy fartsy folk to be enamored with someone who can hold a camera. He hasn’t failed yet at creating wonderful visual stories, but there is always the possibility the Kidman charm could lose it luster. The eight year-old in me doesn’t think so, but then again I am biased.
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