We’re starting to hear some positive buzz about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Apparently it doesn’t rape or ruin your childhood; rather, it may make you feel like a kid again. This is what a toy/cartoon adaptation should do, we guess, but we still wish they’d made a Reagan-era-style war movie instead of a CG-heavy action blockbuster with too much comic relief. Because even when we were little we knew the property was a young person’s version of the conservative, Cold War-informed military pictures of the 1980s. And if Rambo could get his own Saturday morning animated series, why couldn’t we get a hard-R-rated G.I. Joe after all these years?
We know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re disappointed. See, while others might feel GIJTROC has ruined their childhood by being too unfaithful to the action figures and show, we feel it’s ruined our childhood because it isn’t the movie we dreamed of. So that’s how the following list of films was selected. Instead of going for all the obvious remakes and video game adaptations (we’ve never cared about games), we’re focusing on movies that really turned our beloved films, comics and cartoons of our youth into something we’re now almost embarrassed to ever admit we enjoyed. …Read more
It’s been more than 100 years since the Philadelphia Quakers changed their name to the Philadelphia Philadelphians, which was thankfully shortened to “Phillies” very quickly, probably by printers who were afraid of using up all of their ‘P’s in the printing press. Since being founded in 1883, they’ve been one of the most tenacious teams in baseball, winning six pennants, and the World Series in 1980. In fact, in all of American sports (not just baseball), the Phillies are the team that’s been in one city with one name for the longest time. They’re one game away from another World Series win tonight, despite being the Major League team with the most losses in history. We celebrate their scrappiness with a list of quintessential Philadelphia movies. Check them out after the break.
Johnny Depp has officially confirmed he’ll be returning as Captain Jack in a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean installment. Additionally, at a special Disney event, in which the studio showcased it’s slate for exhibitors, Depp confirmed his role as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s 3-D performance capture Alice in Wonderland and announced that he’ll play Tonto in Disney/Bruckheimer’s The Lone Ranger. Hopefully he’ll still have some room for more mature roles throughout his commitment to the Mouse House.
Other announcements at the Disney event included the moving up of Cars 2 from 2012 to 2011, at which time “Cars Land” will open in part of Disney’s California Adventure amusement park. Also, Nic Cage is on board for National Treasure 3 and Oprah Winfrey is voicing the mother of “the first black Disney princess” in The Princess and the Frog.
More returning franchises: Warner Bros. has officially announced the I Am Legend prequel, which will detail the “last days of humanity” section that you wished had just been in the first film.
I’m beginning to think Guillermo Del Toro has cloned himself. In additon to having literally a million film projects on his slate, he’s also found time to co-write a trilogy of vampire novels for HarperCollins.
At least Del Toro’s not also signed on to write and direct the remake of Tomas Alfredson’s new Swedish vampire pic Let the Right One In for returning horror producers Hammer Films. That would be Cloverfield’s Matt Reeves. By the way, Hollywood: can we take a break from the bloodsuckers soon? Vampires are starting to seem more over-employed than superheroes.
Oh, and finally, speaking of overdoing things, Steven Spielberg will possibly direct another movie about a boy and his alien friend. This one will be based on the 1968 sci-fi novel Chocky and sounds more Drop Dead Fred than E.T.
Sometimes I really wish David Bordwell’s blog permitted comments. Mostly it’s better that it doesn’t, but the man’s last post has made me want to discuss the art of movie titles for a whole week now. And it didn’t help that coinciding in time with Bordwell’s post was another one of those sidebars in Entertainment Weeklypointing out some new movies with misleading titles. Yes, Lakeview Terrace does sound like a period romance, as do many other badly titled films (Elizabethtown and Wicker Parkcome to mind). This weekend also sees two new movies employing the method of borrowing song titles, which are typically not appropriate (Ghost Town seems more like a horror western hybrid, while My Best Friend’s Girl actually fits its plot).
Well, fortunately for me (and hopefully you), I can bring the discussion over to SpoutBlog, though not quite as in depth as Bordwell. I’ll be more than happy to have a conversation in the comments section regarding the more general topic of movie titling, but for now I’ll kick things off with a list of what I find to be the most interesting movie titles of the past decade. It’s been a time when studios and filmmakers have been very loose with ill-fitting and overlong titles, as well as some that are too plainly literal (Snakes on a Plane), but the following selections have the benefit of featuring clever, well-chosen and more meaningful monikers.
I was one of the many who enjoyed Morgan Spurlock’s debut feature documentary, Super Size Me, but mostly only because it came at the tail end of an anti-fast-food kick for me that began with Eric Schlosser’s 2001 book Fast Food Nation. By the time Spurlock showed up on the big screen with his silly McDonalds-only diet/experiment, I had already given up fast food two years prior, had lost 65 lbs. over the course of a summer (only partially as a result of not eating fast food, of course) and wasn’t exactly in need of convincing. But I was in the mood for some comedy, and Spurlock entertained as needed. Did he deserve the Oscar nomination? Not at all.
This time around he’s even less of a pioneer. In fact, I think the Where is Osama Bin Laden? jokes were already dated when Super Size Me hit theaters. This isn’t to say that I think the search for the terrorist should be over, nor that I think we should shrug off the topic of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda just because it’s been more than 6 years since 9/11. I just don’t see how a feature-length documentary, which from watching the trailer appears to consist of nothing more than Spurlock annoying people with his query, can keep the issue funny enough throughout its whole running time. Actually, thanks to the trailer I now have doubts that Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? is even funny for a minute of the film’s length. Of course, it received mixed reactions from Sundance last month, where KarinaKevin reviewed it somewhat favorably, so perhaps my doubts aren’t completely justifiable. Maybe this is just a failed trailer. Or maybe, judging by the little (also dated) joke on The Da Vinci Code(or is it on National Treasure?), this trailer is simply aimed at a broader audience with a broader (and simpler) sense of humor.
As of yet, The Weinstein Co. has not set a U.S. release date for the film.
“My colleagues, students, and wife think I’m nuts to like National Treasure,” admits master film historian David Bordwell. He then launches into an extremely compelling defense of why the Jerry Bruckheimer franchise is “more informative about American history than Fahrenheit 9/11. More brain-teasing, and far more enjoyable, than I’m Not There,” and, perhaps most crucially, evidence that Bruckheimer is “the most astute producer now working in Hollywood.”
Of course, I enjoy the dig at I’m Not There, but the whole post is worth a read, if only for the novelty of watching an academic explain why a “dumb” Hollywood movie is a lot smarter than knee-jerk critical cynicism would lead us to believe.
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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“My colleagues, students, and wife think I’m nuts to like National Treasure,” admits master film historian David Bordwell. He then launches into 
