FRED Entertainment

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I still can’t get over Danny Glover’s mumble-mouthed performance in THE SHOOTER.

I mean, really, didn’t anyone feel like the Miracle Ear lady when they leaned over to their significant other in asking, “What the hell did he just say?” It really did seem like Danny poured a whole Val-U pack of rainbow Skittles into his mouth just prior to shooting any scene he was in.

And no one is saying, or reporting, on what has to be the worst case of annunciation ever captured on screen; for all I know, SHOOTER was actually some kind of training film for those afflicted with fricative or glottal issues in their throat. From the near spittle that was just yearning to be let loose on the faces Danny was aimed at to the saliva you were just hoping he would swallow, like he was keeping it in his mouth for as long as he could as a bet, there is no denying that this linguistic problem came and went without so much as a peep from anyone else.

It’s also not like I have an issue with those who have to try a little harder with getting their words out properly and clearly. I still am a big fan of Ed Begley Jr’s work as Stan Sitwell on Arrested Development and who would argue with the tonal delight in listening to Wallace Shawn in THE PRINCESS BRIDE as he debates a debate, or as his turn as a goofy dinosaur in TOY STORY, but, really, when you have to compare Sergeant Murtaugh to that chick wearing braces in 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN right before she goes down on Steve Carell there’s a problem.

Someone should have waited until Glover was finished with his Invisalign treatment. I really appreciated Marky Mark’s turn as G.I. Joe action hero like everyone else but, really, if I can have one wish for the DVD it would be for Danny’s lines to be accompanied with subtitles.

SUNSHINE (2007)

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh
Release: September 14, 2007
Synopsis: Fifty years from now, the sun is dying, and mankind is dying with it. Our last hope: a spaceship and a crew of eight men and women. They carry a device which will breathe new life into the star. But deep into their voyage, out of radio contact with Earth, their mission is starting to unravel. There is an accident, a fatal mistake, and a distress beacon from a spaceship that disappeared seven years earlier. Soon the crew is fighting not only for their lives, but their sanity.

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Prognosis: Positive. You just cannot go awry when you use that signature Clint Mansell ditty.

I wasn’t so sure of what to expect out of Cillian Murphy when I saw his deflated member, the junk just exposed to the elements like an abandoned outhouse, in 28 DAYS LATER but the kid displayed the kind of range you need in a zombie movie, a skill that did not go unnoticed to Christopher Nolan who thought he would be perfect as the Scarecrow in BATMAN BEGINS. The guy is a silent killer on the screen. Even Chris Evans, who could have easily vaporized in the ether of teenage fare, a la Freddie Prinze Jr., but who is battling against his type; it’s impressive. Even I wasn’t that impressed with his early work but if there was one thing you could take away from THE FANTASTIC FOUR was how well he played off what he was given. That’s what’s so bold about the choice in minimizing everyone’s presence in this trailer.

It’s not so much odd as it is a pleasant change from what should have been the obvious way to market this movie right out of the gate. I assume as we get closer we will see a return to form, we’ll get more exposition and a more focused demographic pitch, but this is a curious example of what can be possible when you lean on the soundtrack to help out what’s on the screen.

We get a static shot of the sun, this orb of burning yellow gas the only thing we have to focus on, and, behind this, Cillian’s voiceover that just lays out everything about this movie. Everything. He states his name, how many people are going to help reignite the sun (with no regard to explaining to you how this all came to be), what his mission is and all the while we watch ourselves get closer and closer to the sun. There’s something innately intimate in all of this.

The spaceship they’re riding in is spectacularly rendered against the sun’s majestic presence on the screen. I can’t speak for anyone else but it seems imposing, claustrophobic almost, when you’re given some silence to soak in the premise of what these people are about to do.

And that’s when the music kicks in.

Boyle’s credit for helming TRAINSPOTTING and 28 DAYS LATER is well warranted here and it’s diminutive font and script isn’t imposing or pushy.

Flash to the crew who are plotting their course along with some strange stop-motion, bullet time, clips that tease just enough without being too confusing. Again, the sun’s largess is visually communicated very well to the point that when shit goes south, it’s ability to the one of the most heinous villains without so much as having a personality is what stays with you. Boyle had to create absolute destruction but also had to make the experience relevant to those of us watching it. When paint is bubbling, people are drowning, when fireballs are shooting off, and Clint’s score is reaching its zenith, you can’t help but be completely stoked in at least being curious to know what the hell is happening to these people. Yeah, and the person slamming their body against what looks like an airlock, Evans crying like a puss and the people sliding down a vertical cube?

Absolutely Riveting. And not one word spoken in between Cillian’s voice over.

RATATOUILLE (2007)

Director: Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava
Release: June 29, 2007
Synopsis: In the new animated-adventure, RATATOUILLE, a rat named Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef despite his family’s wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When fate places Remy in the sewers of Paris, he finds himself ideally situated beneath a restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. Despite the apparent dangers of being an unlikely – and certainly unwanted – visitor in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant, Remy’s passion for cooking soon sets into motion a hilarious and exciting rat race that turns the culinary world of Paris upside down.

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Prognosis: Negative. Anyone who puts CARS in their top three Pixar films of all time is either a liar or works as the Attorney General for President Bush. Take your pick.

The movie suffered from not only some pacing problems but the content itself was a little divergent, I would posit, from what kids could grasp onto and infuse with their own experiences. TOY STORY, MONSTERS INC., THE INCREDIBLES, all of these kid-relatable, garnered so much market share because it really embraced a wide spectrum. CARS not only boosted their look from an old cartoon that ran decades ago but the story wasn’t as kid friendly as Pixar’s other forays into animation. And that’s why HAPPY FEET sadly thrashed its ass at the Academy Awards.

With RATATOUILLE, though, I am a little torn because there are some of the same kind of non-kid elements that may have some resonance with adults but, as the trailer opens, when you have Parisian accordions playing, the Eiffel Tower clearly on display, and some wag wheeling out the cheese cart, and explaining various varieties of fromage, I’m not sure you’re hooking the kids who need to show up in order to make this a mega hit.

It’s damn near a third of the way into this thing before you get some of the slapstickiness kids gravitate toward like teen boys do to boobs. A third of the way is simply unacceptable if anyone at Pixar with half a working knowledge of children’s attention spans is behind this trailer.

But, for argument’s sake, let’s assume that this was someone’s grand design. That the first third is for adults and that the other two are really the ones that are going to hook the kids; everyone loves Tom and Jerry, right? And who the hell wouldn’t mind seeing Mickey get his in a restaurant?

Well, it really doesn’t get better.

You get the rat trying to steal away with the cheese and then we transition to a freeze-frame. Patton Oswalt announces his position as the titular rodent and when we come out of the moment we’re in the sewer getting a feel for what seems to be the pitch that greenlit this production.

Apart from the stark realization that we’re not being whisked to a different place in our collective mind’s eyes, it feels like an extended sidekick edition of King of Queens, I can’t say where the brilliance is or what’s the big fucking deal. First of all, Patton doesn’t fit. I like his work as a comedian but it’s jarring to witness. Secondly, you’ve got a rat talking about eating food. There’s no hook to be seen, no obvious angle that has been taken. Thirdly, when you look at this trailer you can’t help but feel an impending sense that if you are of the belief that there are no more original ideas in the world this just cements the idea.

There is one good thing, though, that comes out of the trailer that I feel deserves a mention:

Patton’s brother, friend, acquaintance, whoever, and gets a moment to talk. The bit about being able to suppress one’s gag reflex if you’re eating garbage and that a whole new world of food possibilities opens up as a result? Funny. About the only thing that was in this preview.

NEXT (2007)

Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann, Tory Kittles, Peter Falk
Release: April 27, 2007
Synopsis: Las Vegas showroom magician Cris Johnson has a secret which is a gift and a curse which torments him: he can see a few minutes into the future. Sick of the examinations he underwent as a child and the interest of the government and medical establishment in his power, he lies low under an assumed name in Vegas, performing cheap tricks and living off small-time gambling “winnings.” But when a terrorist group threatens to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles, government agent Callie Ferris must use all her wiles to capture Cris and convince him to help her stop the cataclysm.

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Prognosis: Negative. This is just bad; there isn’t any other way to describe it, I do apologize.

If I could put it another way it’s like seeing someone try their hardest in the Special Olympics knowing full well that no matter how much effort they’re putting into running the 50 meter dash in less than five minutes there just isn’t anything in their biological potential that could take on a true athlete”¦or a 3^rd grader.

Nic Cage is that Special Olympian.

He so much wants to be an action star but that bean pole frame of his and that hairline, which is threatening to recede like an Ethiopian lake to the back of his skull, is going to prevent him from being perceived as an action hero. I could be slightly remiss in dismissing the man’s competency, and the opening sequences, cribbing from CLOCKWORK ORANGE and the nuclear “˜asplosion sequence from T-2, kind of give me the inflated hope that will quickly be popped like a pinpricked, swollen testicle sack.

Julianne Moore slides in to ask what evil portent Nic is able to see, I guess he has some ability to foresee the future, whoa, but Nic musters his best Action Hero ® voice in saying some bullshit about, “Blah, blah, blah, you can’t stop my hotness, blah, blah, blah.” I don’t know, you don’t know, no one does, about what’s happening in these first few moments. It’s disjointed.

In what has to be the most unoriginal plot in the history of fast-paced thrillers we’re treated to a long, lame, lackluster and limp sequence in which we’re explained to, again, like we’re 2^nd graders on a field trip to the Hostess factory to see how bread is made, that Nic is able to see into the future but, gasp!, he can manipulate the present.

Fast forward to a rather uninspired directorial moment between Nic and his newest hotness, Jessica Biel, wherein we hear, again, about the man’s powers to portend what’s on the horizon around him only, shed a tear, he can’t see the future with his lady friend. I guess this is where we’re supposed to feel sorry for him but, oddly, I don’t. In fact, my attention is drawn to the dude in the wheelchair, in one flashback, or flash-forward, who suddenly explodes into a million pieces with the bomb squad on hand to witness it.

From here we get some transition to tell us that this movie is being written by the same guy who penned MINORITY REPORT; from the look of things I would say that he wrote this while his skull was attached to a paint shaker because I can’t see anything that would tell me this was the same person.

We also get Nic playing the part of Multiple Man from X-3 and this is just an excuse, really, to say that you all need to look at that hairpiece he’s rockin’ because it is a few strands away from being a full-on mullet.

Ooo! You need to pay attention to when a sniper takes a shot at Nic and he ends up dodging the bullet and when he artfully gets on a knee to prevent himself from getting crushed by a car. You would have thought he went to the Keanu Reeves MATRIX School for Proper Bullet and Shrapnel Avoidance. It’s close to being the funniest thing I’ve seen yet this year.

This movie looks bad from any angle. And even I don’t need to pull a Ms. Cleo to look into the future to see what’s on the horizon for this film.

28 WEEKS LATER (2007)

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, Imogen Poots, Idris Elba, Mackintosh Muggleton
Release: May 11, 2007
Synopsis: Six months after the rage virus has annihilated the British Isles, the US Army declares that the war against infection has been won, and that the reconstruction of the country can begin. In the first wave of returning refugees, a family is reunited — but one of them unwittingly carries a terrible secret. The virus is not yet dead, and this time, it is more dangerous than ever.

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Prognosis: Positive. One of my very first writing gigs was for William Rainey Harper College.

It was a school newspaper and there wasn’t much I could do in the way of major features but I did have the chance to interview horror extraordinaire and lecturer David J. Skal about some of the ways horror films have evolved. One insight he had about the 50’s and 60’s is that the advent of the big headed alien in many genre pictures were really a function and a response to the ever increasing amount of information that people were experiencing; the physical reflected the zeitgeist. You can see these tropes playing themselves out especially well in George Romero’s work DAWN OF THE DEAD, the physicality of the indoor mall representing a larger theme of Americana and where consumerism was heading or it’s updated simulacrum DAWN OF THE DEAD where the zombies have a quickened pace. The latter really had people’s panties in a twist and I would argue that the notion of the fast moving zombie is really a reflection of how quick and instantaneous things have gotten over the past couple decades.

This is why 28 WEEKS LATER looks to rock your face off until it drips off the bone.

Now that we’ve got this argument out of the way the rest should be easy to swallow and why this trailer builds up so smoothly and satisfyingly.

The music’s perfect, no question; it’s tense, you can’t help but to feel uneasy as it plays out. The wide scenes evoke an uneasy peace even as you see trainloads of people pouring back into the city that was the basis for Cillian Murphy’s dong-bearing hell hole. The sniper’s view doesn’t help much but it’s wonderfully played for what it’s worth. The absence of Voiceover Guy is what keeps this from heading into awfulness.

A factoid that one of the re-populators, Andy, is the youngest settler seems odd if wasn’t revealed on purpose. The shot of burning bodies, the wholesale sterilization of people in HAZMAT outfits and the jiggling camera works real well here for reasons that other trailers that do this fail to evoke anything: you know something wicked this way comes.

The chunky guitar playing in the background, evoking something on the scale of a Nine Inch Nails instrumental, as Robert Carlyle, the toughest midget this side of Tom Cruise, is an excellent choice as a father who is dealing with taking care of his son in a wasteland of death, just sets up what’s coming like a coach putting a leather orb on a tee-ball stand for a 300lb home run hitter.

“Execute Code Red”

Now, I’m a fan of 1985’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, huge fan, and I appreciate the idea of its ending where modernity met zombie eradication: nuke “˜em. Here, though, it looks like things are going to get wicked violent with para-military folks going up against fast moving targets with zero prejudice.

The air horn going off, the music working its way into a crescendo, the pandemonium of a group of people who know exactly what’s coming, their immanent demise, and a nameless guy who puts out the order to “kill everyone.” Pandemonium reigns supreme and there is hardly any dependence on showing the zombies in any kind of glory; it’s all about the victims and it’s damn effective.

The napalm-like strike through the city, Carlyle running as fast as he can in what appears to be a greener than green meadow, and would be quite peaceful if he wasn’t being chased by violent corpses bent on chewing his flesh,

I’m already there and ready.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

It’s like we can’t be trusted.

I was going to hold my tongue about all this until you made your way down below and beheld the sight of Venom and Co. swinging face first into your lives in the latest SPIDER-MAN 3 trailer. However, I just couldn’t shake the drifting thought about why Sony has sought fit to release this “International” trailer with oodles of the very thing you know every geek and his imaginary girlfriend who lives in Canada wants to see: Venom.

I make mention of it below in the column but, really, when you see this version of the trailer it seems like the whole storyline has shifted focus. It’s rare to see such a departure in what is accentuated and what is not, Uncle Ben’s murderer, The Sandman, barely even rates a mention in the international trailer whereas, in the domestic one, Ben’s killer is afforded the weight of the entire feature with nary a mention of that tough man in black.

Surely this isn’t a GODZILLA issue; the tease that everyone wants but are denied until opening day to behold the craptacular behemoth that would sink its way back into the ocean with nary a whimper. The studio has released not only the transformation of Topher Grace into the destructive black beast but you get a look at the moves he has in mid-air and even a vampire-like smile, jagged canines and all, that is really a sight to behold. It was enough for me to even pause the damn trailer and wonder at the top shelf make-up job they did to get Grace moved over from pretty boy to downright creepy.

And, really, the crux of the issue is that this version of the trailer isn’t Sony’s latest entry into what American kids are getting amped up to see as they watch their twenty or so minutes of Coming Attractions before their Spring features. You’ve got to be a nerd like me and actually visit a site that is based in the UK and only then can you see this thing. The international audiences are rolling into this version with a plethora of dangers that the American trailer barely scratched. For the record, and in fairness in reporting, neither trailer deals with how Gwen Stacy factors into the mix. She will in a great way but there isn’t anything to really go off of. However, the international trailer tosses in a heaping helping of the many directions that this film is going to but why is the average American, at this stage of the game, only being led to believe that this is a film that deals with a black suit that gives Spider-Man new powers, the struggle he is going to have with Harry and the fight he’s going to have with Sandman by film’s end? (My honest opinion is that Haden Church is going to serve a near perfunctory role if this film is going to be juggling no less than seven major plot points but he may not. Perhaps he and Venom are going to be a super bad tag team with Harry eventually siding with Peter in a battle royale the likes of which have never been seen before! Probably not.)

As well, the wrong answer of “Maybe the studio just wasn’t quite ready with the effects to be put into the domestic trailer prior to its release” isn’t even accurate if any geek worth his table salt saw the workprint of the trailer where Venom was actually excised from its final cut. Hell, even that may have been deliberate but it doesn’t change the fact that limeys and everyone else in the not-so-free world is getting a pimp looking trailer while we’re left with Sand city and a partial air battle between Harry and Peter.

Back in black never looked so damn good.

MAGICIANS (2007)

Director: Andrew O’Connor
Cast: Robert Webb, David Mitchell, Juliet Stevenson, Peter Capaldi
Release: May 18, 2007 (UK…Damn Limeys)
Synopsis: From the team behind the hit UK TV series Peep Show comes this high concept comedy film about a magic double act who fall out when one is involved in an accident with a guillotine. The story follows the rivalry between the magician’s years later as they enter a major magic competition.

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Prognosis: Positive. Loved it.

After enduring the debate of what was better, THE ILLUSIONIST or THE PRESTIGE (It was PRESTIGE, by the way, in case you really would like to know), I knew the world could handle just one more movie dealing in the black arts. Too bad for me, though, that I would have to jaunt over to merry old England in order to be able and see it.

It’s moments like this that I wish some money grubbing exec-u-tard would come up with a way to capitalize on global distribution of films; I’m available for such a position if anyone cares to create the position for me. At the moment, though, all I can do is appreciate the marketing campaign for this film that looks and feels like a splendid time at the talkies.

“In the world”¦”

I would usually turn tail as soon as these words are spoken as, come on, am I really to believe that some dime store magicians really have a lock on the global art of making coins disappear before my eyes? No, but I erred on the side on irony as we make our way through the entertaining lives of two guys who are supposed to be partners, which makes their getting along at the beginning all the more foreboding for what’s to come, only to howl when these men committed the truest rendering of The Marie Antoinette as they lopped off their female assistant’s melon”¦accidentally.

We simply blaze through the rest of the exposition, the only real gripe I have is that we whip at an unbelievable pace through it all, when we come to where the crux of the action will take place: a magic-off, as it were.

These guys suck and it’s their pathetic natures that make this film appear so appealing; if you were to do a movie starring Gob, the hapless magician of Arrested Development, it would be far and away a fun film if only because you have a guy who believes he’s great when, in fact, it’s only his tenuous grasp on this notion that keeps him from packing it all in. And you get that with this trailer. As one dude comes up with a trick to be buried up to his neck in sand, assistants who are quite unstable, having the occasional reminder that your partner was the one who pulled the rope that beheaded your previous assistant and an old fart that has a trick where he makes lit cigarettes disappear by extinguishing them using his tongue.

“Shot my wand?”

“Kiss my ass.”

Using Electric Six’s “Gay Bar” as the frenetic musical backdrop for what these two protagonists are going through as they battle one another for supremacy on a scale that only they would care about is pitch perfect. The world doesn’t care, but these guys have the kind of heart that can be amusing, like Gob desperately trying to make a coin trick work. The comment that one of them makes to a woman who agrees to be his assistant when she says that lighting can’t strike twice and counters with, “Well, technically, it can”¦”

This is the kind of film I’d like to see when those in the UK get a chance to do so as well.

IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS (2007)

Director: James Longley
Release: Coming Soon In Limited Release
Synopsis: Iraq in Fragments illuminates post-war Iraq in three acts, building a picture of a country pulled in different directions by religion and ethnicity. Filmed in verité style with no scripted narration, the film explores the lives of ordinary Iraqis to illustrate and give background to larger trends in Iraqi society.

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Prognosis: Positive. Before we delve into this trailer, do me a favor and just give a passing glance at this news story right here: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2922669

I’ll wait.

Now, keeping in mind that our same armed forces are preventing the wholesale detailing of what’s going on over in Iraq, check to see how many newspaper bureaus in America are keeping representatives over there on a 24/7 schedule, along with the reports from fellow journalists over there about what free speech means to guys in APCs with machine guns, and you get a pretty good starting point about how much you think you know of what’s going on within the boundaries of that volatile nation.

“The future of Iraq will be in three pieces”¦”

Talk about having Kurt Russell take a chair and sit on your windpipe to get your attention (Any TANGO AND CASH fans in the house?), this trailer opens with chaos only to compose itself ever briefly where we get a real weathered looking man giving us his opinion about where his country is going from where it is today.

We linger just long enough to see the awards this film garnered from the Sundance Film Festival, to say nothing of its Academy Award nomination, providing an excellent pivot point to establish its credibility with an audience.

What makes this trailer at least “feel” different from all the other trailers that have dealt with this Godforsaken war, lest you believe God is genuinely helping us in this effort at which point I’ll pray for YOUR soul, is that we’re not given a lot of explosive action to latch onto. Instead, and this is almost as terrifying, the tense string arrangement that plays underneath men and children going about their daily lives, an Iraqi policeman directing traffic in the open (I’m on edge as I think a bomb is going to go off at any moment) and an unseen man looks like he’s talking about resisting the very same occupiers that are just there to do their jobs and get home to their families.

It’s riveting.

“The movie is a quiet revelation.”

Yes. That’s exactly the kind of vibe this movie puts out. We seem to be following a young boy around the streets of some city, some place, but we also get views of people cheering in the streets with their flags held high, there seems to be some kind of meeting which no doubt concerns their future in Iraq, some masked men start beating one of their own and, by the end, you have zero idea why you’ve been as captivated as you have been.

Not a shot gets fired, not one bomb goes off, not one voiceover tells me why I should go spend my money on this movie. The visuals stand alone and it’s within these non-narrated pictures that I am able to just concentrate that these Iraqis are all just people, trying to do a job and make it home to their families.

DISTURBIA (2007)

Director: D.J. Caruso
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer, Carrie-Anne Moss
Release: April 13, 2007
Synopsis: After his father’s death, Kale (Shia LaBeouf) becomes sullen, withdrawn, and troubled – so much so that he finds himself under a court-ordered sentence of house arrest. His mother, Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss), works night and day to support herself and her son, only to be met with indifference and lethargy. The walls of his house begin to close in on Kale. He becomes a voyeur as his interests turn outside the windows of his suburban home towards those of his neighbors, one of which Kale begins to suspect is a serial killer. But, are his suspicions merely the product of cabin fever and his overactive imagination?

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Prognosis: Negative. I know I’ve made much of my “respek knuckles” admiration for Even Stevens.

This happy-happy feeling carries over to this trailer as I see that Shia Labeouf is not only making excellent strides to wiggle free of his child star image but with a movie like this you can’t help but at least feel that he’s at least not going to be seen at the local Midas dealership, installing mufflers singing, “Truuust the Miiidas touch.”

That said, however, I can go on and on about how many movies this flick is cribbing from in one way or another. From AMERICAN BEAUTY, GIRL NEXT DOOR, FRIGHT NIGHT, MEN AT WORK and REAR WINDOW there seems be a menudo soup-like dropping of all these things to make a full-length movie. I’m not so sure it works.

From the outset we get the clue that Shia did something to be placed on house arrest; it’s a pretty nice arrest, as well, because the suburban street he lives on seems awfully detached from any other suburban street I’ve ever lived on. This, I take it, is the point to making the absurd come to life, we’re in the land of make-believe.

“All Kale has is the window”¦”

So, Shia, pimpin’ out his ankle bracelet with a totally rad stickers, a skull and flames (Oooh!), decides to entertain himself by lecherously peeping into the lives of his neighbors. By the way, want to know when you’re living in the land of Not Real? You have a svelte honey sunbathing next door and another thin cutie who takes off her clothes in from of open windows. The closest thing I’ve come to that is a view into a house where my Midwest neighbors, who I think didn’t believe in the notion of moderation and exercise, motored down heaps of food every night. I didn’t even want there to be an open window anywhere near my field of vision.

But, Shia hit the lottery with all the cheatin’ and whorin’ on his block, and when he gets spied on by someone he was trying to watch the girl obviously sees no problem with coming on over, by herself, and taking part in the life of a human viewfinder. And, yeah, she’s good looking too.

So, fast forward through all this crap that the girl actually strikes up a relationship with this pervert, again, why couldn’t I have lived on this block, and we come up to a murder. See, when you’re a voyeur you are bound to look upon something that is usually reserved for dark rooms in basements and kill zones that comprise of crawl spaces in the attic. No, this shit goes down for the whole block to see in rather bright fluorescent lighting.

We then speed things up by Shia playing the part of Chicken Little, no one believing him (Oh noes!) about what he’s spied with his eyes, and motor right into everyone becoming a potential next victim for this guy who then takes out Shia’s buddy and lady friend.

Not even the quick clips at the end can make up for what appears to be a very crap story. I can’t even swallow the premise, much less wrap my head around what I am supposed to believe happens when a serial killer lives across the street and no one believes a witness who’s seen everything go down.

SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007)

Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Dylan Baker, Elizabeth Banks
Release: May 4, 2007
Synopsis: A lot of shi# goes down and that’s all you really need to know. Maybe we’ll even find out what happens to all that black and white webbing that’s stuck to the sides of buildings.
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Prognosis: Positive. This is an interesting case study of how domestic and international audiences are treated differently. It’s a wonder why this business is so bass ackwards and seeing this just makes one wonder why we’re not given the goods that every other market around the world where English isn’t even the primary language. It’s not about xenophobia, it’s about geeky jollies and our domestic denial of it from the studio.

The opening sequence is extended here where we’re actually allowed to linger a bit and get emotionally attached to Mary Jane and Peter; yeah it’s fake but, I’ll tell you what, that few moments between this pair makes all the difference. The love between these two is wonderfully established and it serves Gwen Stacy’s presence as a real threat later on. The domestic trailer simply glosses over all this pivotal pairing.

Um yeah, and when Peter confides in Aunt May that he’s going to ask Mary Jane to marry him we get a deeper sense of context for the ring that she gives him and he later loses in the air battle between him and Harry. The American trailer just shows us the ring wistfully as if were any other piece of jewelry. It’s not a coincidence that the moment we see the ring now it has more weight. Double kudos for the scene, silence, scene, silence editing for the moments of action between the two of them. Quite effective.

And the air battle! Those little green orbs that are to kill Peter and his quick comedic quip? In seconds we’re in the thick of what’s at stake for both of these men. Domestic trailer? Had all the power of a squirrel fart.

The symbiote’s liquid take-over of Spider-Man’s suit is much better represented here, certainly is a lot more fun watch as it makes its way all over his body, as even the moments where Peter questions its origins, with Dr. Connors’ summation of the black goo, that it amplifies aggression and that it likes Peter, is shockingly sharp and informative and puts to shame the trailer that I thought was the Alpha Beta of trailers just months ago.

The moment where the trailer REALLY kicks up to an 11 is where Peter stares into a mirror only to be met with the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sinister visage of a howling Venom. It’s angry, it’s vicious and only gets better when he finally tries to get rid of the thing on his body. As Topher Grace not only realizes that Parker is the dark colored Spidey and a drip of Vengance Personified starts to engulf our real favorite actor to come out of That 70’s Show it is the full-blown display of Venom’s rage that gets my Godzilla bucking vote of Best Reveal for 2007. It’s phenomenally evocative and much better than the Sandman storyline in the domestic trailer that now feels awfully secondary to this threat. Oh, and Topher’s “Hey, Parker” as he briefly reveals his humanity, his vampire-colored eyes and teeth, body builder physique and all? Just sweet icing.

There’s more at stake here and even MJ’s admission about what it’s going to take to keep them together as a couple just humanizes this comic book movie even further. It’s the grounding of the most far-flung characters that has ever been stuffed into one picture (you got Sandman, Harry’s Goblin incarnation, Peter’s struggle with the black suit AND Venom) that should make this movie the one sequel to SPIDER-MAN 2 that could actually surpass the legend of the previous entries.

As to why this isn’t the trailer that we Americans are getting in order to get ready for what’s coming and why, as a studio, you would hold back on what you’re giving the domestic market is beyond my ken. I’m damn near insulted at what we were given weeks ago compared to this.

Regardless, THIS is the trailer that’s getting me in the mood to revisit my 5 year-old inner child.