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This is going to be different than an “I told you so” but looking at what I had to say about THE INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL trailer I can say with a bitty bit of confidence that no matter what you think of my solipsistic, ape-like ability to hammer this column out every single week there is a little bit of truth that I am able to eek out of these trailers which can, unfortunately, be quite revealing to me about why I have reservations about some of the most anticipated films.
I damn near feel like one of those carnival barkers on Saturday mornings in between many a sports show admonishing you to call call call right now to get my free pick of the week. My ability to write about this crap certainly has been pleasurable every single week (sometimes) but it’s never fun to be disappointed at what most people would consider to be the messiah in celluloid shape.
What seems to be the problem many critics are now having with JONES seems to be the very thing which is bright as any halogen spotlight in that trailer. This isn’t a review of the film but when I had the chance to be a part of the Sunday preview this week I just passed at the opportunity in lieu of hanging with 2 dozen mutant children at a birthday party; I didn’t have any inside information about the film but after these trailers and television spots I thought I pretty much knew what to expect.
After reading the reviews that have slowly been oozing their way across the Intertubes I can’t say that I’m kicking myself for making the choice that I did. Certainly, all the hubbub regarding what in fact the crystal skull was and all the bullshit Cease and Desist letters that many sites were using as reasons for taking down images readily available (for anyone who needs a quick legal lesson on Cease and Desist letters for film sites here it is: They are calls/e-mails from studio representatives which provide access to these sites and they are done so as to preserve the movie slave’s free flow of information, to ensure their junket invite still arrives on time, that they’re still allowed to participate in set visits, etc…Just imagine what it would be like if the drama club were actually cool, that this was still high school and that the drama club was the one thing everyone wanted to be in.) and all the hoopla about a movie, if you looked at it close enough, wasn’t that thrilling.
I guess it smarts in a way that this movie has fallen short of unreachable expectations, no one likes to see Harrison Ford ambling around like a grandfather in a role known for lots of physicality, but the fact is that he’s getting up there in age, we’ve all grown up (some of us) and anyone who can look at this franchise with the same awe and wonder as many of us do to the first three films (and, really, let’s all face facts regarding the 3rd installment) and just leave it at that? No, because that would be admitting that there is something inherently wrong about the character but these do not have to be mutually exclusive movies. You can have a clunker in there and still retain that Soul Glo of the trilogy but I think, and I am writing this on Monday night as many of the critics are unleashing their reviews, you will see a lot of that nostalgia permeate the very same reviews which should stand alone; you can’t really tie this 4th installment to the other three as it would be just as unfair to besmirch the good name of STAR WARS just because PHANTOM MENACE was a piece of dog shit.
That’s just me, though, and I realize many of you are already sold on what is the next messiah on celluloid. If you could do me an honest favor, bookmark this rant and come back to me next year when you’ve had a chance to really soak in the film and let me know if I’m wrong? I would like nothing more than than to say this 4th part is just as worthy to stand next to the 3rd, not just as a good action movie, we all know Spielberg can crap those out on a whim, but a movie that still genuinely embodies that sense of mid-century adventure when serials and mindless derring-do was the thing that made movies fun.
Somehow I think that bit will be lost in all the marketing.
Director: Christopher Zalla
Cast: Armando Hernandez, Jorge Adrian Espindola, Jesus Ochoa, Paola Mendoza
Release: May 16, 2008
Synopsis: Winner of the Best Film at the Sundance Film Festival (under its former title Padre Nuestro), SANGRE DE MI SANGRE is an exhilarating and provocative thriller from newcomer Christopher Zalla exposing the dark side of the American dream. A young Mexican immigrant, Pedro (Jorge Adrian Espindola), journeys to New York City in search of the successful father he’s never met only to have his belongings and identity stolen by a conniving thief, Juan (Armando Hernandez). As Pedro is left alone and unable to communicate in a country foreign to him, Juan cons his way into the home of Pedro’s father, Diego (Jesus Ochoa), finding a man just as flawed as he is. While Juan attempts to reinvent himself, Pedro’s only hope lies with a mysteriously complex prostitute, Magda (Paola Mendoza), as he frantically searches for his identity back.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Positive. Arizona is a funky kind of place to live.
When you’re here, it feels like any other dustbowl that gets to 120 in the July without even trying, it looks like any other cramped and forced suburbia where the homes are all made out of stucco and are no more than 10 feet apart and it has a way of looking desperate and isolated when you fly in here and see that we’re literally one big mass surrounded by an unforgiving desert of nothingness.
Plus, we’re pretty much a lightning rod for immigration reform.
You’ve got some yahoos on one side saying that all illegals should be tossed back to Mexico, you’ve got others who say that English as a Second Language programs should be a part of the state funded curriculum and you even have lots of people debating the merits of whether illegals should be allowed to partake of government programs. On a daily basis this debate rages on in the news but all I want to know is whether the Cubs won another game. That said, though, this movie looks absolutely amazing with regard to getting down to the dangers of what happens when Mexicans want to try and make a go at life here in America, illegally, and run into the kind of drophouse scenarios that happen on a routine basis.
When we open on this trailer we thankfully have a voice over that’s not intrusive as it is helpful to explain what we have: simply, one Mexican meets another on their way to a better life in America. Simple, cut and dry.
What’s more is that the story gets thrilling and even exciting for me when the voice over lets us know that this is a tale of one kid who is genuinely looking for his father in New York while the other guy plans to take advantage of this and beat him to it, and exploit the situation to his favor. I damn near get my jollies when we see that the bad guy beat the other to the punch and we’re instantly tossed to the Sundance, Winner, Best Film logo. Brilliant. It’s perfectly placed, it comes at just the right time and you are unable to do anything else but watch further to find out what is going to happen next.
What follows, the guy supping at this other kid’s father like a leech by taking money and comfort from this unsuspecting dude who thinks this is his son, is delicately followed by positive reviews from the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and others. In this trailer it just helps to keep the visibility and credibility of what it’s trying to sell you. And, as you see the kid who really is the guy’s father hot on the tail of the weasel who is bilking him, the tension is wonderfully understated but wholly present.
The subsequent cut scenes that follow when the OG child finds out another has been sleeping in his bed and eating his porridge run rings around any thriller that I have had the misfortune to try to be sold on this year; I’m really concerned about who is going to beat who to the literal punch by the time all is revealed at the end. I’m just as ready to fork over my cash at the end of this trailer as anyone else should be to find out how this all plays out.
Director: Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass
Cast: Steve Zissis, Ross Partridge, Greta Gerwig, Elise Muller
Release: June 13, 2008
Synopsis: While the Duplass Brothers were shooting their last feature film The Puffy Chair, a crew member raised the question “what’s the scariest thing you can think of?” Someone immediately said “a guy with a bag on his head staring into your window.” Some agreed, but some thought it was downright ridiculous and, if anything, funny (but definitely not scary). Thus, BAGHEAD was born, an attempt to take the absurdly low-concept idea of a “guy with a bag on his head” and make a funny, truthful, endearing film that, maybe, just maybe, was a little bit scary, too.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Positive. Brilliant.
I swear, you do enough of these trailer reviews and you start to wonder whether it is possible to be original and fresh with regard to making you feel connected to a film and energize you to open your mind to what’s on the screen. I’m here to say that it is possible and that this trailer deserves a few viewings in order to see how good this thing is built from the ground up.
First, you have a plucky musical score behind the opening sequence. It sets the mood perfectly as we open on a car rolling down an empty and hollow road. As well, we’re entertained to the entire plot of the movie. We hear why these people are where they are, why it’s important to keep tuned in and why this makes a good movie. Hell, we get it all of this within the first 10 seconds.
This is the first reason why this trailer is great.
Second, boom, we’re hit with the Official Sundance logo. Perfect, perfect, perfect. I realize no one of great importance reads this column but I am thankful to the silent stars that someone gets the notion that you need to put these accolades in the front, not to bury it in the middle or end when I’ve made up my mind to forget your film. This just helps to solidify the pedigree of the movie and it works even better, as this trailer does, when we’re smacked with the idea that the movie these four people are going to make in the woods comes about due to a dream. Or is it?
This is the second reason why this trailer is great.
As we entrench ourselves into the unique and very original premise of this film there is a sense of interest I don’t usually get out of my trailers. I actually found myself glued to what was coming next. The baghead premise is one that is both funny and scary when you feel like something’s not going to turn out right. When one of the four members of the film shoot for the weekend express a desire to have his part written as the romantic interest of one of the ladies in the group you can already feel the double tension building.
The quotes, the many many quotes, genuinely help to ballast the reputation of this film’s thesis that it’s a film worth watching in its entirety. The tension then continues to build between the guys for the affections of the ladies and then the grizzly idea that this baghead is indeed a psychopathic element that is actually happening. It’s funny, to be sure, when one of the ladies meets with a baghead (Is he/she real? Is someone really going to die?) only to admit at the breakfast table when no one fesses up to them being it that the baghead, then, has seen her naked. It’s funny/scary at the same time.
The ending’s quick cuts, normally a bane of every shitty and shoddy trailer which employs them, actually increases the uneasy sense that this movie is more than just about 4 people wanting to make a movie; it seems like a bizarre combination to have but this really does seem like a tasty Twix and Oreo combo with a hearty glass of milk.
Yum.
BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* (2008)
Director: Christopher Bell
Cast: Hulk Hogan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone
Release: May 30, 2008
Synopsis: In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. We reward speed, size and above all else: winning – at sport, at business and at war. Metaphorically we are a nation on steroids. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? From the producers of Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 comes a new film that unflinchingly explores our win-at-all-cost culture through the lens of a personal journey. Blending comedy and pathos, BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* is a collision of pop culture, animated sequences and first-person narrative, with a diverse cast including US Congressmen, professional athletes, medical experts and everyday gym rats. At its heart, this is the story of director Christopher Bell and his two brothers, who grew up idolizing muscular giants like Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and who went on to become members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream. When you discover that your heroes have all broken the rules, do you follow the rules, or do you follow your heroes?
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Positive. Goddamn!
I’d like to consider myself worldly enough in assuming that I’ve seen almost anything and everything. I realize the occasional off-beat news story about some high school PE teacher having her way with a female student is the one off exception to that rule, however, a trailer like this that repulses me from the get go deserves the distinction of WTF Of The Week.
When we meet Valentino, a meathead of the very highest order, rank and distinction, he is perhaps the one thing that could have drew me in to seeing INDIANA JONES the very first week of release. Since he isn’t, and he’s in this documentary, you can bet my jones is finding out how a freak like this guy literally was able to make his bicep bigger than the vertical circumference of his head. If you’re not impressed by this guy’s addiction to steroid use you need to lay off those fetish porn sites.
Valentino’s further introduction, made quite personal by his real honest interview where he’s the first to admit that his freakish appearance does not impress the ladies, anchors this documentary in a space where it’s less sensational than it is an examination into what might be at the forefront for the culture of physical power we’ve seemed to engender here in America.
I will say from an aesthetic point of view this trailer goes further than the MTV, True Life-ization, surface investigation into what makes steroids such an attractive alternative to these men who think that their idols such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan were physical templates they needed to live up to, literally, and they incorporate war imagery in a way that makes me pause for a moment. I don’t quite know how initially the two square but as the narrative unfurls a little further we see that this is an American culture we’re talking about, one where you need to be able and strike fast and hard. Without steroids, it seems to imply, there couldn’t have been a triumphant Rocky, a liberating Rambo or even a defeat of Andre the Giant.
It’s about at this point when we get “From the Producers Of BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE and FAHRENHEIT 9/11 that I have drank the Kool-Aid for this thesis; not that I’m any believer in the totality of either production, mind you. There were more than enough issues and factual misrepresentations and leaps of logic we all could back a Mack truck into but the way in which the information in those two films were presented at least had a nice gloss to it.
I’m even jolted back to sympathy when we get a voice over from one of three brothers who are profiled in this movie. When he comments that, as a bodybuilder, he was affected by the revelations that Hogan and his other heroes were absolutely taking things into their bodies to enhance their physical appearance that normal weight lifting simply could not do you are brought down to a genuine tale of conflict. And, when he says that two of his brothers currently do take steroids to enhance their physicality you can’t help but be affected by it.
As well, one of the things that bring this message home is perhaps one of the most point blank, reflexive questions: In order to provide for your family and in order to keep your job would you take steroids? I know for some of you who don’t have either this is a moot question but just softening your focus on this question and thinking of someone else other than yourself kind of brings this debate to one of personal responsibility and the What If questions that easily makes this trailer poignant if nothing else.
The hideous visage of a “woman” who is so obviously afflicted with small nuts and a dude’s voice is enough for any person to go clean, the hilarious steroid fueled cow is a sight that almost trumps Valentino’s bizarre in all its bizarre physicality and one air force pilot’s assertion that in sports you should play fair and, in war, you shouldn’t play fair at all. Again, it’s a flashy sound bite that made COLUMBINE and 9/11 such documentary darlings.
And, when, one guys talks about how people cheat to get ahead and they flash images of nutritional supplements and politicians, the video image of George Bush is enough to induce a few laughs.
Comments: 7 Comments
7 Responses to “Trailer Park: Why Your Indiana Jones Isn’t As Good As Mine”Leave a Reply |
May 26th, 2008 at 1:02 am
I agree with your comments on Indy4…im afraid Im going to have to eat a good chunk of my words about spielberg (not lucas though, the movie had his shitty stink all over it) for letting it happen. It doesnt taint the first 3 movies, hell it takes place 20 years apart…still…I will eat my words gladly…I suck Steve’s cock a little too soon.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
And here’s the other problem with trying to divest yourself between Lucas and Spielberg’s hands on this movie: it is a bona fide box office hit. You can’t argue with 101 million dollars and I know real well that the name of the game in show business is actually turning things into profits for your shareholders.
So, I kind of feel defeated in a way knowing it was number one this weekend and trying to convince people that this wasn’t the movie it should have been; it was just the movie that’s going to make a ton of dough.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I completely agree with you. Although, to make it clear, I didn’t HATE it. I thought it was “ok” when it should have been great, but with box office like that it really makes you wonder if the older bitter fans of the original three are wrong for thinking in terms of quality, character integrity, and storytelling and not in terms of cold hard cash. That movie is what audiences today want apparently.
I just feel like my heroes are dieing, and my other heroes are killing them…and it’s all being done with thunderous applause (aka HUGE BOX OFFICE!!!). Are there any directors to be trusted anymore? I want to say perhaps Scorsese…but I’m afraid once I rely on him he will make GOODFELLAS 2: BEACH PARTY DANCE FEVER or someshit. I just wish Lucas would make up some new franchises instead of squirting his infected piss over his old ones.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
its strange that with the incredible amount of freedom some of these directors have they cant quite get a good movie like they used to. Its not that Spielberg is incapable of the task, but lately all our 80s heros are diying off in big budget proyects when they should be triying to pull a Kubrick retirement plan. Guess it didnt really worked for good ol stanley either, his last 2 movies were good… yet not great, yet he retired with dignity and to this day is the very first autheur director many geeks get to know before starting their rantings on the internet.
Guess no one will become a geek after watching indiana jones 4, munich, the terminal or war of the worlds.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:49 am
To build on what BLEH said, I can’t understand, still, why the concentration of what should be decades worth of film talent can put out something on par that could have been done at the hands of Stephen Sommers (not to take anything away from him because he obviously has found a niche that studios respond to) or any number of other summer movie directors. It’s befuddling.
I’m still confused by the end product. Whether it’s good/bad is really not at issue; it’s the technical execution that I’m finding is really one reason it’s disappointing fns.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:32 am
movies arn’t great but there is a lot to get from the outfits and costumes like the one in indiana jones if you want to purchase then http://www.easterntoys.com
May 31st, 2008 at 2:46 am
I mentioned before that SS and GL had less than a handful of great films. Unfortunately the media over the years has created such a ballyhoo over them that they have eclipsed some mature directors who deserved just as much recognition if not more. Case in point; Sydney Pollack who recently passed. Look at his impressive list and if you have not seen them shame on you. Tootsie, Three Days of the Condor, Jeremiah Johnson, Out of Africa, They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, This Property is Condemned, Castle Keep, The Scalphunters, and yes even The Way We Were. Pollack brought respect to the craft while delivering respectable box office returns. SS and GL have cornered the toy market. In Hollywood’s terms – a buck’s a buck.