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You know, I really didn’t have a problem with Ang Lee’s HULK.
The amount of hatred and stink put upon that movie is, I think, undeserved. Eric Bana was a solid Bill Bixby stand-in and he carried the role with all the right amount of emo and anger. It was also the role that really solidified my interest in Josh Lucas as a professional actor. And, Jennifer Connelly? You can’t really say anything against that lady. Hell, even Sam Elliot’s mustache made an appearance.
I can understand where there are a lot of issues with the film. It’s a little heavy on the exposition, you can get tangled up in the relationship subplot between father and son, there were those fucking awful Hulk dogs and there just isn’t a whole lot of the Hulk to “Ooo” and “Ahh” at. That said, though, it was a great film. All the woulda, shoulda, couldas with how to deal with setting the character up in the most effective manner possible doesn’t come close to respecting the tension that’s genuinely built up as Bana progresses closer to inhabiting the green monster’s rage. I will say that even the CGI Hulk wasn’t completely unbelievable. There was a good mix of effects and physics that really lent weight to the actual presence of a person who turned into this freak of nature.
I wish Ang could have had a second swing with Hulk Part Two but this latest entry into the franchise that would not die only looks to me like it’s still wrapped up in the problems of beginning a movie like this without giving some time to exposition of how Hulk comes to be. Now, I will go on record, and I have with my distaste for the pathetic trailer, as saying I’ll give this reboot a chance. A lot of this film’s success will actually depend, I would assert, on how long Leterrier keeps audiences at bay before giving them a peek at what this Hulk looks like. The people want their bread and circuses and they want more destruction, more violence and at this point not a lot of people care whether Ed Norton gets a credit for his involvement. Like a paraphrased Ferris Bueller would say, who cares if Norton gets a say in the final cut, he could be a fascist anarchist for all I care, it still won’t change the fact that this needs to be an absolutely balls out loud and thunderous movie. As evidenced by the popularity of World War Hulk comic the mythos of this guy is all about serious damage and destruction. Pensive reflection on the nature of peace and war means fuck all when it comes to summer tent poles. I’ve already got the Hulk movie I wanted. Ang Lee did a smash up job for me with his entry. I’m just looking out for all you bellyachers who wanted a true damage fest.
At the end of the day, at really the end of Sunday night, what’s going to matter is whether this film can pander to the 13-35 year-old dudes who want to seriously see Hulk smash. Norton can make the extra special Director’s Actor’s Cut if he wants as long as it means this movie gets it right for everyone who felt jilted by what they were given years ago. The only problem here is that you have a really bad teaser trailer with Avalanche and Hulk looking like they’re going at it on a street specially made for them by set designers who wanted the streets to look shabby sheik, and with just the right amount of cars, and a studio who thought it best to not really release anything special leading up to the release of the picture. Any corporation who wants to play GODZILLA like games with the public nowadays with concealing their final product runs the risk of having a public finding other options for their cash and very well waiting until they can take it all in on DVD come a few months from now.
Here’s to hoping Hulk isn’t the only green flowing for Universal Pictures. And if, you’re feeling like having a good larf, here’s an Aussie who has an opinion on Ed Norton’s INCREDIBLE HULK…or just Ed Norton in particular.
Aaaaand, for those keeping score at home, director Maria Zenovich’s ROMAN POLANSKI: WANTED AND DESIRED, a documentary that has come not come under critical pressure but legal pressure to change her film’s assertions about Convicted Pervert / Child Molester Roman Polanski’s treatment by the U.S. court system. The LA Times reported that:
The documentary, which had already been screened at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals, originally asserted that a local judge had offered the director a deal whereby he could return to the United States with no jail time if he allowed the legal proceedings to be televised. In 1977 to wide media fanfare, Polanski was charged with a host of sexual crimes for his involvement with a 13-year-old girl. He was subsequently convicted of unlawful intercourse with a minor, but fled the country in 1978 before final sentencing.
Allan Parachini, public information officer for the court, said that the offer alluded to in Marina Zenovich’s documentary “never occurred.”
He added that the “fabricated reference” to the televised hearing had “the potential to . . . enormously” injure the reputation of judge Larry Paul Fidler and that court officials had been pressuring Zenovich and HBO to correct the film for about a week.
The documentary’s amended version, which premiered Monday on HBO, stated that the judge insisted Polanski would serve no more jail time as long as the hearing were held “in public, on the record, and in court.”
However, the documentary added, given the possibility that it could be televised, Polanski declined.
I’d like to keep stating, for the record, since there doesn’t seem to be much interest on many other film sites in covering a story about a filmmaker who has had to CHANGE their narrative, FORCED to edit their own work, about a ChoMo who deserves nothing but our ire and scorn for as long as he avoids coming back into the U.S.A. to serve his time for doing a crime.
The guy is a Class A scourge on society and, again, anyone who wants to defend this weasel’s work as somehow redemptive or that you should just put all this aside as you look at his films in recent years are just delusional. If this guy dabbled in the plumbing arts or was a high school science teacher this conversation would have a much stronger tenor, people would be out for his head, and I’m nothing but positive about the response I would get from the prison population if asked the question: Would you turn a blind eye to a man who’s been convicted of unlawful intercourse with a minor and fled the country before he faced his sentence because he’s able to put a picture on a big screen?
I’m sure I know the answer to that question.
Director: Larry Charles
Cast: Bill Maher
Release: October 3, 2008
Synopsis: RELIGULOUS follows Bill Maher as he travels around the globe interviewing people about God and religion. Known for his astute analytical skills, irreverent wit and commitment to never pulling a punch, Maher brings his characteristic honesty to an unusual spiritual journey.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Negative. If you need a good laugh, and I know a lot of us do, just do yourself a juvenile favor and punch in “preacher†on YouTube’s front page. Even go for a “preacher†and “curse†combo. This is the kind of thing that can start holy wars. As for finding out that televangelist Robert Tilton has filed a removal request to YouTube for all the farting videos? That’s enough for me to think the Lord needs to smite that man for a few different reasons.
As for this trailer? Well, it’s got no bite. (It doesn’t help Maher is incessantly smarmy to boot…)
I don’t know really what to make of this trailer at the beginning. I think it wants you to smack both of your hands to your head with a big ol’ “o†face to go along with it but it seems like it’s trying way too hard to be provocative, to attract some kind of attention or response. To wit: Maher’s confessionary beginning, I think, is supposed to be thrilling in a way. “Forgive me father…it’s been 40 years since my last confession.†Ok, I can give him that it’s a little interesting for him to say but to lead off a documentary on religion? The one thing that just lets me know this trailer starts on a couple of missteps is the first man-on-the-street interview where Maher lets some woman know he’s doing a documentary on religion. The woman’s strained “Oh boy†is a sublime message, like some child looking for attention, “Look at how controversial we’re gonna be! Even these common folk are scared! Whoo-hoo!â€
The second scene in this series where Maher is talking to some Jesus look-alike about the logical fallacy in God not already doing away with the devil if he’s so powerful and hey-soos just retorting back that he will, eventually.
This trailer seems like a serious dissertation and examination on religion and more like a wonky laugh fest at the expense of others. Yes, it absolutely will be more than this but this is not how you’re selling me on the idea that the film is some kind of hot potato. So far, it feels like a segment on Jay Leno.
Showing George W. Bush talking about how his foreign policy directives are based on his own flying spaghetti monster’s ideals that people everywhere need to be free isn’t as damning or effective as I think they think it is. Further, the short interview where Maher is talking to a US senator about how some religious public servants want to color their decisions based on their beliefs has about as much bite as a grandmother without her dentures.
And, what I really take issue with is some lazy trailer makers who think that popping in “Crazy†as a musical bed is appropriate. It’s one of those obvious songs you would expect some 1st year podcaster to put in their show as they discuss mental illness; it’s just requires no creativity.
The one moment I wish led off the trailer is some bumpkin who tells Maher, and who know what’s being discussed, that anyone who wants to start disputing his God has a problem. The moments that come next are riveting because this is what should be at the heart of the documentary; the ways in which, ironically, people have killed one another in the name of their deity just puts everything front and center. Not the laugh, laugh, ha, ha bullshit.
The appearance of Robert Tilton, though, was a smooth move.
And, just as I think this movie has something to quip about, Maher comes back and interviews some gay Muslims and it’s painful for him to try and turn that into a joke. This whole trailer is filled with bad jokes and instead of being emboldened that this is a film that will challenge ideas it just seems to move along, whimpering.
Director: Clark Gregg
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Brad William Henke and Kelly Macdonald
Release: August 26, 2008
Synopsis: Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida (Huston), in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save†him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny (Henke) and his mother’s beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Macdonald), to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.
View Trailer:
* Large (QuickTime)
Prognosis: Positive. I like being able to find new musical tracks to put on my iPod.
The opening beats for Chuck Palahniuk’s latest novel turned film adaptation are good enough to download and they’re perfectly selected in trying to provide a sense of the material on the screen. How else do you try and set up a film where sex addiction and a knack for swindling the rich for a meal? You begin in a strip club.
In a land ruled by man-whores like Matthew McConaughey and your Shia LaBeouf teen idols, Sam Rockwell is that kind of actor where you know you’re getting something special. There’s a certain charm that isn’t pasted over with debonair good looks or a pearl white smile; he has the kind of tractor beam quality usually reserved for serial killers in how they’re able to lure young women into their lairs.
What’s remarkable in how things begin is that we’re just plopped right in the middle of Rockwell’s strip club experience and as he’s noticing the mole on a young dancers thigh. It’s so bizarre and amusing at the same time that wondering whether he’s really interested in disseminating actual information about melanoma is a bit moot.
Insert a little Mile High Club moment, add in Rockwell’s thoughts on saints and sinners with a morally awkward shot of Jesus on the cross and then close in on Rockwell in some kind of self-help group with a pair of panties in his hand.
Still, I haven’t a clue as to what the film is supposed to be about.
The information about this coming from the writer of FIGHT CLUB and that this film was a Sundance pick is tastefully and done quite effectively; it’s unobtrusive and actually enhances the film’s pedigree. Then, the juicy parts come.
We’re welcomed into Sam Rockwell’s career as a historical reenactor. The information is so quickly tossed out there that it almost gets lost in the other part of the story of how Rockwell is dealing with a mother who doesn’t know who he is at any given time; it’s amusing when he asks who his mother thinks he is that day.
Strategically, the quotes from Entertainment Weekly, Slash Film help to contextualize the little bit of additional plot as Sam tries to bed the very doctor who is helping his mother. He’s obviously obsessed with his own carnal desires and the flashes of cut scenes don’t confuse as much as they tantalize. It’s bizarre and, as Rockwell takes a walker to a set of lockers, I’m dumbfounded as to what the hell is going on.
“What would Jesus not do?â€
And, I have to give it up to the trailer makers here, as we near the end of this thing and we get that Sam is, and knows, he is messed up we get a follow-up from the stripper at the beginning of this thing which is just too good not to think was brilliantly done. The portrait of Rockwell as a devious and deceptive pathetic human being is couched in that devilish charm. This is a movie that needs to be seen and the trailer couldn’t have done it better.
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