Are you tired of all the false rumors of celebrity deaths (today it was Rick Astley)? And are you tired of all the jokes that Michael Jackson is really still alive somewhere, hanging out with Tupac, JFK and Elvis? So are we, but we thought we’d take both the obnoxious death hoax trend and the idea that MJ faked it so he could live in peace and out of debt as inspiration for something more worthwhile: a discussion of favorite false deaths in movies.
The device is quite popular, especially in thrillers and horror flicks, and it can be employed as a plot starter or in a twist ending. James Bondhas done it, as has Sherlock Holmes. Whether someone fakes his/her own death or is simply mistaken for dead, the actual deed or the ultimate reveal can end up terrific cinema. In fact, it was very difficult for us to narrow our favorites down to ten. It’s a shame we had to leave out memorable scenes from Heathers, Hero and many other movies. Certainly you’ll disagree with some of our exclusions, too, so feel free to name them in the comments section.
Just beware; there may be SPOILERS after the jump: …Read more
Don’t you just hate when the movies make you care about a bigot? Sure, racists are technically humans, but that doesn’t mean we need to sympathize with them, right? No matter how great the film, it should be very difficult to accept the softening of intolerant people.
Yet the lovable racist is not uncommon in cinema. In fact, out in theaters right now are two films dealing with this type of character. The Reader presents a cold Concentration Camp guard (Kate Winslet) for whom we’re meant to shed a tear, and Gran Torino focuses on a War Veteran stereotype (Clint Eastwood) who may evoke from the audience as much amusement as disgust.
Maybe it’s like picking a scab, watching these kinds of movies. Some great films, such as Downfall, may only welcome an understanding of someone so heinous as Adolph Hitler, but other films have allowed us to totally enjoy racist protagonists of lesser offense. Check out the following examples to see some of the many intolerant heroes we’ve easily tolerated. …Read more
Will this year’s presidential election be determined by which candidate is more hip? Barack Obama is younger, listens to Jay-Z and Kanye West and is something of a trendy choice among college students. McCain, on the other hand, is older and (now) less athletic but is still considered to be hip in a cool grandpa kind of way. Like the grandpa who has exciting war stories to share. Have you seen the video footage of him jumping from an explosion during the USS Forrestal fire? That’s pretty cool.
So, the outcome of the race may depend on what the majority of Americans think is cool. Charisma or Muscle. It reminds me of an election for high school class president. Who is more popular, the preppy basketball player or the more jockish captain of the wrestling team?
But do we really want a cool president? Let’s take a look at some of the coolest fictional presidents from the movies and decide if it’s truly a good idea to base our vote on which candidate we’d prefer to hang with.
The Dark Knight is hands down the best Batman movie yet, but has Christopher Nolan painted himself into a corner by using up the only viable Batman villains? Most of the Batman villains left are either too campy (the Penguin, the Ventriloquist), depend too much on flexible comic book logic (Clayface, Killer Croc), or are just watered-down versions of the Joker (the Riddler, the Mad Hatter).
Tim Burton’s Batman featured The Joker (Jack Nicholson) for good reason. The Clown Prince of Crime, always Batman’s most threatening foe, represents (among many things) an unwillingness to take human life seriously. In that moral void his vibrant personality explodes like a fireworks display of mania, menace, and eccentricity. The Joker is the calling card of chaos and evil at its sexiest. Batman isn’t the reason we watch Batman over and over again, the Joker is. Of course Michael Keaton brings gravitas to Batman, but let’s face it–as sweet as Batman is, he’s just not good company. Ever notice how passengers in the Batmobile feel like they’re at the end of a bad date? …Read more
Hancockis expected to make around $100 million this weekend, simply because Will Smith + July 4th = boatloads of money, regardless of negative buzz.
SAG still doesn’t have a contract, but nobody seems to be particularly concerned. According to Variety, “There’s a ubiquitous sense among studio and network execs, talent reps and multihyphenates that SAG does not have the bedrock of support among its members to call for a work stoppage.” Meanwhile, Tom Hanks is supporting a ratification of the AFTRA deal, which would almost certainly nix any possibility of a SAG strike, whilst Jack Nicholson wants his compatriots to hold out for a better deal.
Sacha Baron Cohen will play Sherlock Holmes opposite Will Ferrell’s Watson in an as-yet untitled comedy based on the detective stories. But they’ll have stiff competition from a competing Sherlock film being developed by the week’s most famous male maybe-divorcee, Guy Ritchie…right? [crickets]
Apparently there is a new trailer for The Dark Knightpremiering online tonight. But I’m not so good at playing those viral marketing games, plus I’m a relatively patient guy, so I’ll just wait until it hits YouTube and watch it tomorrow.
In the meantime, while you wait for the secret time that the trailer goes live (I hear 5:30 PM PST), here’s a video submitted to College Humor that compares the previous trailer for The Dark Knight with that of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman.
Over the weekend, a video called Jack and Hill appeared on YouTube. The clip strung together clips from Jack Nicholson films (including A Few Good Men, Five Easy Pieces and Tim Burton’s Batman) with white-on-black title cards summarizing Hillary Clinton’s qualifications to be president. Though first thought to be the work of the Clinton campaign, the Politico reported on Sunday that it was the brainchild of a number of Hollywood figures, including Rob Reiner and Nicholson himself, who produced it independently of the Clinton camp.
In the film blog world, the general consensus was that however Jack and Hill was produced, as a campaign video, it was pretty bad. “Just utterly pathetic,” was how Michael Newman put it in a comment on Chuck Tryon’s blog, and FILMMAKER editor Scott Macaulay sighed, “This election is getting too bizarre.” Beyond the obvious ideological problem that the clip has Hillary being endorse by various Nicholson villains, there’s something exceedingly lazy about the way it’s been put together. None of the characters repeat, and there’s barely a connection between their pullquotes and the titles on screen. It seems as though the idea was to stack one clip on top of the next in the hopes that, out of context, they’d play as a series of punchlines. Instead, as Tryon notes, anyone who can bring the context of the excerpted films with them to the viewing experience will be unable to refrain from doing so, and at that point, the whole thing backfires: ultimately, this is a clip in which the implication is that Hillary Clinton is going to make life better for the axe wielding psycho of The Shining, whilst restoring the Joker’s trust in the political system.
But of course, there’s already a reaction clip, one which, in particular, puts scenes from that Kubrick film to good use.
As if that IMAX preview of The Dark Knightweren’t enough, here’s the actual trailer for the Batman Beginssequel. It’s a perfect companion to the preview, because it’s all about The Joker. This time, though, we get to see more of Heath Ledger, without the rubber mask he wears for the bank heist. I guess there are a few shots in there of Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, but really who could pay him notice? I think Maggie Gyllenhaal (replacing Katie Holmes) has more interesting screen time here (poor Ennis — first he has to deal with the death of Jack and now Jack’s angry sister is trying to beat him up).
Ledger’s interpretation of The Joker is said to be inspired by Sid Vicious (I wonder if his TDK co-star Gary Oldman had anything to say about that), but I don’t see much of that punk attitude, really. I’m actually seeing a combination of Charles Nelson Reilly and Tommy Lee Jones. And somehow, it’s absolutely perfect. Certainly I don’t want to say it’s any better or worse than Jack Nicholson — heck, I don’t even like to dismiss Cesar Romero’s take on the villain — so I’ll just go with the easy response and say … it’s just different.
UPDATE: Sorry kids, the party’s over. As of 4:27 pm, this video “is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.” If you find it elsewhere online, let me know.
I doubt it’ll stay up through the day (you probably have about three hours before the work day begins in L.A. and someone at either WB or YouTube figures it out), but a camcorder bootleg of the Joker-centric Dark Knight prequel/preview/possible first six minutes of the movie that has been tacked on to IMAX screenings of I Am Legend is currently on YouTube. I meant to go see if for myself this weekend, but thanks to a snowstorm and general end-of-year madness, that just didn’t happen. As far as the bootleg goes, between the muffled sound and the dutch-angled, lap-eye view, I’ll have to watch it a couple of times through to fully get what’s going on, but doesn’t it sort of seem like one of the Joker’s doomed cronies is doing a Jack Nicholson impression? And if so–spoiler alert–then maybe the point of this preview is not, as Christopher Nolan previously stated, to tell the story of “The Rise of the Joker,” but to literally kill off our impression of the Joker as based on Nicholson’s performance in Tim Burton’s Batman?
I’m probably wrong. I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it.
MTV has posted a fantastic interview with Jack Nicholson, in which he talks in depth about Chinatown, its sequel, The Two Jakes, and a planned third film that was to complete the trilogy, but, because of the poor reception to Jakes, never got made. An excerpt:
We always planned on making three films. We wanted it all to be tied into elemental things. Chinatown is obviously water. The Two Jakes is fire and energy. And the third film was meant to be about Gittes’ divorce and relate to air.
MTV: Was the third film in the Chinatown trilogy ever scripted?
Nicholson: No. I would imagine Robert [Towne] has some kind of outline. I can tell you it was meant to be set in 1968 when no-fault divorce went into effect in California. The title was to be Gittes vs. Gittes. It was to be about Gittes’ divorce. The secrecy of Meg Tilly’s character was somehow to involve the most private person in California, Howard Hughes. That is where the air element would have come into the picture.
Nicholson goes on to say that he “certainly would consider” making Gittes vs. Gittes if Paramount and Towne were to show interest. That and much more here. The interview’s a two-parter, which I usually find annoying, but Part One was good enough that I’ll happily be back for Part Two tomorrow.
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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Hancock
MTV has posted 
