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| Saturday, December 24, 2005 01:17 AM |
| This is me not blogging |
 by Fëanor |
- The latest news from Frank Miller's world is pretty exciting - he's currently working on a film adaptation of his graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae, 300; he's finishing the script for Sin City 2; he's hoping there will ultimately be five Sin City films; and he may even write a brand new Sin City graphic novel. Rock. I just hope he has enough energy and time to actually do all that stuff.
- Ah, the ten worst films of the year, courtesy Cinematical. I have seen only one of them, and it's War of the Worlds. I know Heather will be pleased to know that it made this list, but frankly, I don't think it belongs here. Yes, WotW has many flaws - mostly of logic, believability, and realism - but it does so much right - the effects are so incredible, the story so gripping, the acting so excellent, and so many individual scenes are so fantastic - that I don't see how you can possibly place it alongside such obvious wastes of film as Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Still, this is a fun list.
- On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of punk rocker D. Boon's death, David Rees (author of Get Your War On and various other comics) takes a look back at the man and his band, The Minutemen, and decides that not only did they rock, they were the rockingest rocking things to ever rock ever. He perhaps overstates his case a bit, but it's still a moving tribute to a great musician.
- Luc Besson's new movie, Angel A, which I posted a puzzling trailer for a while back (which was mainly puzzling in that it was in a language I don't know), has been released in France, and the early word is that it's quite good. Who knows when we will see it over here, if ever, but my curiosity level has risen somewhat.
- Peter Jackson's putting together a special edition re-release DVD of his mostly over-looked, but very fun, movie The Frighteners. He's hoping that if sales are good, he might get a chance to do a sequel, perhaps with Michael J. Fox "involved somehow." Cinematical seems less than thrilled by this prospect, but I really enjoyed The Frighteners (especially Jeffrey Combs's fantastic, over-the-top performance as the creepy FBI agent), and I'd love to see a follow-up. The chances of this working out would have been much better right after the LotR trilogy, when Jackson was flying high and could do no wrong as far as the studios were concerned, but now that Kong isn't performing as well as everyone had hoped, I'd say the outlook is grim. Still, like Jackson says, if the DVD sales are good...well, anything's possible.
- A couple of college guys running around in suits is one thing...but a real honest-to-God live-action Pac-Man movie?! Have they seriously gone crazy over there in Hollywood? How could this possibly work?
Okay, now that I've thought about it, I can imagine a story set in the distant future about a character given super-human powers by a mysterious artifact (I don't think the pellet thing will fly) which he uses to fight back against the ghosts that haunt and oppress him and his people. But still...
- In the past twenty-four hours or so, I've seen two wildly different films, both of which I enjoyed - Syriana and Godzilla: Final Wars. Although they both entertained me, they did so at totally different levels, and I have to admit, Syriana is the better film. In fact, looking back over the films I've seen that came out this year, I have to say, it's easily the best one (it's only serious competition being Jarmusch's Broken Flowers). It's got beautiful cinematography; fantastic acting from an incredibly talented cast; an excellent screenplay of great wisdom, emotion, depth, and wit; and...well, pretty much everything else you could want in a movie. You will feel pretty filthy by the time you walk out, though; almost every character in the movie is incredibly corrupt (speaking of which, listen for the great speech about corruption about three quarters of the way through the movie). Nevertheless, an amazing film that I highly recommend.
Godzilla: Final Wars, however, is really for Godzilla fans only. Kitamura manages to work in his regular "duel to the death between highly evolved super-beings" plotline, but most of the rest of the movie is basically a walk through monster memory lane. Hey, look, it's Anguiras! And wow, is that King Ghidorah? And so forth. The movie also rips off The Matrix six ways from Sunday. But it's a ton of fun with plenty of great action, and it's not nearly as embarrassing as a lot of the other Godzilla films.
- Btw, if you didn't know about it already, you can currently download from the iTunes Music Store - for free! - both that fun SNL clip everybody's been linking to lately (including me), and a sneak preview of the next season of "Battlestar Galactica." You better believe both videos are on my iPod right now.
- Although I've been trying for some years now, I still have yet to see the original The Hills Have Eyes. It's now looking like the remake will be out before I manage it. You can watch the creepy trailer for it here (via The Movie Blog; they also link to the trailer for another scary movie remake - When a Stranger Calls - but that I have zero interest in). This trailer reminds me strongly of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which (as my faithful readers and friends will remember) I really dislike for some reason, so I don't know how interested I am in it. I still want to see the original, though. It's just one of those cult favorites I feel like I should have under my belt.
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Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
