The other day I took in a triple feature consisting of the following very different films: Shane Meadows’ Somers Town; the political farce In the Loop; and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Two things each of these films did share are they all come from the UK (the last is a co-production at least) and they all were more naturally funny than Funny People, which I watched the next day.
I’m not sure if it’s my inherent Anglophilia that causes me to appreciate the humor of Jim Broadbent in a fantasy blockbuster more than Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler in the latest from the reigning king of American comedy, but I did realize that I should probably be watching more British cinema, much of which is humorous whether labeled comedy or not, and less Hollywood comedies, most of which tend to be overwritten and forced nowadays.
This isn’t to say I’m going to turn all blueblood snob and ignore the domestic stuff. I still enjoyed Funny People for the bittersweet tale(s) that it is, and I’ll continue loving Keaton more than Chaplin and the Marx Brothers more than any comedy group that has or will ever come out of Great Britain. However, I am looking to expand on my so-far limited familiarity with British comedy, which barely extends further than the must-see bunch listed below. So please leave a comment with any other recommendations you have for myself and anyone else interested. …Read more
I’m all for appropriate trailer positioning, but the debut last night of a teaser for something called Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief may have gone a little overboard. Actually, I change my mind: a lot overboard. The movie, based on Rick Riordan’s fantasy novels, is about a 12-year-old boy who finds out he’s part Greek god. Sounds a bit like the story of an 11-year-old boy who finds out he’s a wizard. But in case that’s not enough to be marketable to Harry Potter fans, the first trailer for Percy Jackson notes that the movie is directed by Chris Columbus, who kicked off the Potter films by helming both Sorcerer’s Stoneand Chamber of Secrets. What else could Fox 2000 do to exploit the other franchise? Hmm, how about a logo that looks exactly like the one from Sorcerer’s Stone?
Certainly such a teaser should be positioned in front of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince right? Well, actually, I think it could hurt the upcoming potential franchise starter, which doesn’t hit theaters til next February. Potter fans aren’t dumb and they’re sure to see that their beloved character is being completely ripped off and exploited. And with a record-breaking midnight box office for Half-Blood Prince last night, this teaser probably struck a bad chord with millions of moviegoers. As observed by Alex Billington of First Showing during one screening, the New Moontrailer obviously garnered huge cheers while Percy Jackson was met with “confused silence.” Meanwhile, the movie doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of attention online save for negative postings by film bloggers who agree that it’s a blatant Potter wannabe.
Check out some of those negative reactions after the jump: …Read more
We’re so amazed by the stellar reviews of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (if not for Manohla Dargis, Rex Reed and Wesley Morris the top critic score on Rotten Tomatoes would be 100%), that we wondered if it’s the best-received sixth installment of a series ever. And from what we can tell, until some late-come party crashers show up to ruin things, it appears to be nearly true.
Of course, it’s not like there was much competition from past franchises. By the sixth movie most film series are cheap, tired and nearly void of remaining followers. However, there have been a few worthwhile Part 6s, enough to show us that it’s sometimes acceptable for Hollywood to keep going with a film property (even without the excuse and benefit of a popular long-running book series). …Read more
It’s been a long time since I paid attention to any promotional materials related to a Harry Potter movie. After awhile, it had seemed the movies all look the same, at least in trailers, posters and other marketing tools. And since I stopped caring about both the books and the movies after Goblet of Fire(though Order of the Phoenixhas admittedly been floating around the bottom of my Netflix queue since it was released to DVD), there really was no reason for me to bother with ads for whatever installment Warner Bros. is currently attempting to ram down my movie-blogging throat.
However, due to my job of keeping abreast of all that’s super-hot in the world of film (according to film blogs, at least), I was obligated to watch the latest trailer for this summer’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And I have to admit that it makes the new movie look incredibly epic. I feel like even if I had never seen a Harry Potter movie before, I’d still go see this, whether I went back and acquainted myself with the predecessors or not. Even more than exciting me with its percussion-heavy music and its promise of kissing scenes (aka “mild sensuality”), the trailer really impressed me with its turn-face on the usual trailer-pause technique, in which the cliche “It has begun” is replaced with “It’s over.”
After the jump, read what other bloggers are saying about this new spot: …Read more
Never mind all those Oscar predictions posts out there. If you really want to make some money in the office pool, look no further than a random blog created specifically to leak the winners of this year’s Academy Awards. Think it’s a hoax? I guess we just won’t know until Sunday, will we? And by then you’ll be out hundreds of dollars because you didn’t bet on The Readerfor Best Adapted Screenplay.
Okay, so who cares if it’s real or not, particularly in this predictable a year, anyway? The real betting should be on who the telecast producers have wrangled to be those “top secret” presenters. Oh wait, it seems the big names, those that obviously should be revealed in order to attract their audiences, have also come out.
Ah, but what are they saying about either leak on the interweb, you ask? As usual, check out the quotes/links after the jump.
As we crack open fresh calendars for a new year, we’re treated to a predictable rash of blog posts: 2009 technology predictions. I’ve read a number of these, and prognostications about Microsoft buying Yahoo make me want to light my laptop on fire just to cure the boredom. As an anecdote to lame, ‘what’s the next Twitter?’-style tech prediction lists, I’ve decided to make a list 2009 tech predictions entirely inspired by movies.
2008 was the year in which widely available real-world gadgets were just as good as what James Bond had. Sure, Daniel Craig kicked some ass in Quantum of Solace, but his only real piece of tech was a phone with a camera and GPS! (Hope you got a good texting plan with that, James.) I predict this trend will continue in 2009. We’ll see even more real-world gadgets that used to be the sole domain of Hollywood special effects gurus. Sure, some of these technologies will require minor miracles to become a reality in the coming year, but others are closer than you think.
Strength-Enhancing Exoskeleton Armor
In Iron Man, Tony Stark creates a crude, internally-powered suit of armor to escape his terrorist captors. Once he’s safely at home in his billion-dollar laboratory, he hones the suit into a golden ass-kicking machine, and becomes Iron Man. This story isn’t that far from the truth. Rather than a single billionaire playboy, teams of research scientists are developing robotic suits that significantly increase the wearer’s strength. And the end goal is goal is the same: beating the hell out of terrorists. Almost five years ago, UC Berkley researchers announced a DARPA-funded project called BLEEX, the Berkley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (pictured at left). If you’re thinking that giant backpack is full of the machinery that runs the thing, you’re wrong. That’s the 70 lbs. pack the wearer can hardly feel, thanks to his robot legs. Assuming secret military technology is always ahead of publicized military technology, and considering that the BLEEX is five years old, I think it’s safe to say that in 2009 President Obama will personally don an Iron Man suit and kill Osama bin Laden.
Today in various bits of internet ephemera that sort of sound like Onion headlines:
Rick Rey, producer of the popular vlog EPIC-FU, is going to watch Rambo 3and live-Twitter the experience. “This is a landmark Twitter experiment and I may lose many followers - a risk I’m willing to take,” he bravely notes at the Facebook page for the “event,” which goes down on Tuesday night. You can follow the action here, or play along aIong at home! “If following the action isn’t enough, you can simultaneously Twitter your own Rambo 3 experience at exactly 9:00PM PST. I’m pretty sure it’s in stock at every Blockbuster worldwide.”
Nikki Finke takes a look at “how the pushback of Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince to 2009 has had such a profound effect on this coming holiday’s North American release schedule.” Conclusion? “When moviegoers think Christmas, they think Nazis…”
Related (we think): Vulture’s extremely scientific research proves that 2008’s fall movie season is marginally more likelt to induce clinical depression than 2007’s.
But why did the studio suddenly push back its major fall tent pole? Especially after receiving such favorable buzz surrounding its recently unveiled teaser trailer? Warner’s official statement seemed little more than a “just because” stance. So, ever the skeptic and speculator, I’ve compiled this list of more likely excuses:
10. Equus - My first thought after hearing the news was that Harry Potter’s penis was the cause. And I guess I think like Roger Friedman, who is claiming it’s the truth. Of course, unlike Friedman, I don’t really believe there’s any relation between the date change and the fact that Radcliffe will still be appearing nude on Broadway through the fall movie season (Equus runs from September 25 to February 8). If anything, I think it’d help the release of Half-Blood — what vacationing family in NYC wouldn’t want to make it a double feature over Thanksgiving weekend? First watch your kid march in the Macy’s parade, then head over to the Broadhurst Theatre to see Potter’s wand, and finish up the day with a movie screening at the Ziegfeld. OK, so families are apparently more interested in the Billy Elliotmusical. And according to a quote in the new EW, Potter fans might be able to hold out for a nude Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2.
Editor’s Note: The “official” AOL release of the trailer is not embeddable, and the MTV player isn’t working for us, so we’ve embedded a lesser quality version above with the first couple of shots missing. Watch the trailer full quality here.
After watching the new teaser for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I personally had no comment. Having stopped reading the series somewhere in the center of the previous book, I didn’t feel I had any authority on the matter. The only thing I thought while watching the clip was that it seemed more like one of those annoying prequels that comes after a series to humanize that series’ villain with an origin story (y’know, like the Star Warsprequels and Young Hott Hannibal(wait, that’s not what it was titled?). And until I read an interesting trailer analysis on MTV Movies Blog this morning, I thought that couldn’t actually be the case.
Actually, MTV’s look at the teaser began last night with a frame by frame analysis, in which Shawn Adler reveals his expert knowledge of J.K. Rowling’s text by pointing out the myriad ways that David Yates’ film is different from the book, from a previously reported added-in scene to little changes within adapted sequences. My favorite observation:
0:43: Our first glimpse at young Tom Riddle, the boy wizard who would grow up to be Voldemort. Surprisingly, I’m more interested here in Dumbledore, who is costumed differently than in the novel, where he was described as wearing “flamboyantly plum velvet.”
No, I don’t yet have any footage from the new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But at least you didn’t get Rick Roll’d, like I unfortunately did while optimistically searching for a leaked copy (actually getting Rick Roll’d at your lonely home office isn’t too bad. In fact, I got up and danced. Because I can).
What I do have for you instead, while you wait for the trailer to premiere on AOL tonight at 9pm EST, is a new clip related to Harry Potter, courtesy of MTV Movies Blog. It’s a Street Team news report on the HP Alliance’s Wizard Rock the Vote movement (aka Wrock the Vote), which helps Harry Potter fans register to vote.
Though I first buzzed about an Academy Award nomination for Heath Ledger in The Dark Knightmore than a month before his death, I now want to take it all back. I feel all the talk of Ledger’s posthumous Oscar chances will cloud my mind when I finally do see it, and it will probably also cloud the Academy’s judgment, too. Six months from now, when the nominations are announced on January 22 (coincidentally the one-year anniversary of Ledger’s death), if Ledger is not recognized for his role as The Joker, there will surely be an uproar — actually, Hollywood might just up and self-implode.
I’m not the only one annoyed by all the Oscar buzz. Terry Gilliam, who directed Ledger in The Brothers Grimmand the upcoming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, is calling “bullshit” on the whole thing, particularly against Warner Bros., which Gilliam accuses of exploiting Ledger’s death and chance of a posthumous Oscar for publicity purposes. Considering most Oscar campaigns for live actors are really just part of movie marketing, he has a good point.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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I’m all for appropriate trailer positioning, but the debut last night of a teaser for something called Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief may have gone a little overboard. Actually, I change my mind: a lot overboard. The movie, based on Rick Riordan’s fantasy novels, is about a 12-year-old boy who finds out he’s part Greek god. Sounds a bit like the story of an 11-year-old boy who finds out he’s a wizard. But in case that’s not enough to be marketable to Harry Potter fans, the first trailer for Percy Jackson notes that the movie is directed by Chris Columbus, who kicked off the Potter films by helming both Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets. What else could Fox 2000 do to exploit the other franchise? Hmm, how about a logo that looks exactly like the one from Sorcerer’s Stone?
It’s been a long time since I paid attention to any promotional materials related to a Harry Potter movie. After awhile, it had seemed the movies all look the same, at least in trailers, posters and other marketing tools. And since I stopped caring about both the books and the movies after 
Never mind all those Oscar predictions posts out there. If you really want to make some money in the office pool, look no further than 
In 
Today in various bits of internet ephemera that sort of sound like Onion headlines:
