I just read that the final Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Hollow Medley, will actually be split into two films, making a total of eight:
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” will hit theaters in November 2010, followed by “Part II” in May 2011, a decision that is being met around the world with fans’ cheers but also plenty of cynical smirks. The publishing industry is learning to live without new “Potter” releases, but Hollywood just pulled off a trick that will keep its profitable hero on his broom into the next decade.
Can I get a kerching? Sure, that last book is pretty thick, but book five is actually longer, so I’m confident in chalking this one up to the studio’s desire for an extra $300 million.
The films have gotten better (the childrens’ acting is no longer atrocious). The movies have become entertaining if unremarkable fantasy romps. I do, however, object to the tedious structure that each films follow. It goes something like:
Harry is miserable in London.
Harry has madcap adventures on the way to school.
Harry cheats death, battles nefarious forces and struggles to maintain a B average over the course of the school year.
Harry bids everybody farewell for another summer of misery.
Revise the Story Arc
After seeing the third movie, I decided that the studios should have reached higher.
The movies didn’t have to map exactly to the books. The producers could have taken Harry’s entire story arc and divided it up in a different, more exciting way. There could have been five movies, or nine or twelve. This would have freed screenplay writers from the bonds of the novels’ formal structure. The result probably would have been a far more diverse set of movies.
The natural comparison here is how The Empire Strikes Back is a considerably darker film (thanks largely to its plot) than the other two (well, five) Star Wars movies. The same goes for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Of course, such a move would have come with considerable risk, and might have alienated the films’ core audience. And studios are famous for being risk-averse.
Here’s an idea for a massive fan project. Re-edit the eight movies so that they start and end in different spots. Move some scenes around so that you end with a richer, more diverse set of movies.
I don’t follow the movie industry that closely, but I do tend to pay attention to major film festival buzz. The films that get talked about at Cannes, Sundance et al tend to be the films I want to see.
However, I’ve recently noticed a minor frustration with this process. I’ll read about a film getting positive reviews at a festival, and then try to find its trailer online. Often, I can’t. I remember this was the case with Teeth at Sundance last year. This year I have the same complaint about the new Neil Young tour documentary, CSNY Déjà Vu. It debuted at this year’s Sundance, I read an interview with Neil in Rolling Stone but can’t check out the trailer.
This is one of those rare times when I really want to look at an ad for a product, and I can’t. To use some marketingese, I’m ready to begin a relationship with this movie, but I can’t. More importantly, I’d be happy to post it to this website, favourite it on YouTube and so forth, but I can’t.
I assume there are some baroque politics around distribution deals and marketing control that prevents the trailer from debuting when the movie does, but it’s pretty silly. Movie marketers may think they’re creating desire by delaying the trailer, but I find I just forget about these movies. A trailer would, I think, help me remember. I can certainly picture moments from the Teeth trailer which I watched when it eventually came out).
Yesterday I saw I am Legend. It’s a decent film, and (having recently read The World Without Us) I loved the shots of a post-plague, abandoned Manhattan.
It’s basically a zombie movie. One thing I noticed was that a year with very little film and television watching has re-sensitized somewhat to horror. I was more nervous and tense than I usually would be watching this film. I would, however, attribute some of that tension to Will Smith’s excellent performance.
Once you see them, the Legend zombies pale in comparison to, say, 28 Days Later. They’re pasty, hairless and mostly CGI. They looked like distant, uh, noseful cousins of He Who Shall Not Be, Under Any Circumstances, Named.
You know, Lord Heathcliff Montgomery Voldemort (to apply his rarely-used family name). And both Voldemort and the zombies bear a resemblance to that other Lord, the Prince of Darkness, in The Passion of the Christ (who, to many people’s surprise, was played by a woman):
Like scary, dirty water and big-eyed pale children, is this a movie trend? Can you think of other movies where people are pasty and hairless?
Last night I had the privilege to watch Brad Bird’s latest triumph, Ratatouille. It’s probably the best American animated film I’ve ever seen, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any human. It scored a 96% on Metacritic and a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Here are a few choice quotes from some of my favourite critics:
Roger Ebert: This is clearly one of the best of the year’s films. Every time an animated film is successful, you have to read all over again about how animation isn’t “just for children” but “for the whole family,” and “even for adults going on their own.” No kidding!
New York Magazine: Brad Bird wrote and directed Ratatouille and tops his previous work. Since his work includes The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, this puts him somewhere between Chuck Jones and Michelangelo. He uses dimensionality the way Spielberg does: His characters seize the foreground, making you sit up like a rat catching a whiff of cheese—maybe Parmigiano-Reggiano shaved lightly over truffle-scented … sorry.
David Denby: They create each movie afresh, and some of their productions, especially this one and “The Incredibles,” both written and directed by Brad Bird, have reached heights of invention, speed, and wit not seen in animation since the work done by Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. in the nineteen-forties. In “Ratatouille,” the level of moment-by-moment craftsmanship is a wonder. Keeping the space clear and coherent may seem an odd thing to praise in an animated film, but one of the marvellous things about “Ratatouille” is how well we come to understand the geography of the kitchen in which much of the movie takes place.
It’s just movie craftsmanship at its finest. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favour and rent it.
Because it features beautiful versions of MIT geeks counting cards, the theatrical trailer for “21″ is currently getting Dugg. Here it is:
It bears a striking resemblance to a half-decent Canadian film called “The Last Casino”. Here’s the plot summary from IMDB:
One deadbeat teacher discovers that three of his students are great math wizzes and decides to teach them how to count cards and make lots of money. As they learn how to play the casinos, things get tricky when the debt owing teacher informs them that their front man wants restitution for loses (of supposed $500,000 Canadian) in about a weeks time. The three students decide to hit all the major casinos in Ontario and Quebec until discovered.
Sound familiar? I couldn’t find a trailer online, but here’s a clip from early in the film:
Much like “Munich” and “Sword of Gideon”, it always bums me out a little when big budget movies replicate the stories of smaller and independent films. Most viewers never know that the apparent original work they’re watching is, in fact, highly derivative. And it’s a safer bet for the artists involved in the remake, because the creators of the original made many of their mistakes for them.
Mad About Movies links to a Times Online piece outlining the ‘13 most terrifying movie scenes ever’. That’s a bit of a misnomer, because they often don’t reference specific scenes. Still, it’s an enjoyable list. I followed a link and enjoyed the Jurassic Park trailer:
Note how Spielberg never shows a full shot of a dinosaur in nearly three minutes of trailer. My favourite moment in that film is the ‘reveal’, as we watch Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern react to seeing the dinosaurs for the first time. Man, I had such a crush on Ms. Dern growing up.
I can’t imagine that would happen in 2007. I never found Jurassic Park particularly scary–thrilling, yes, but not scary in the Blair Witch sense. On the other hand, they’ve failed to include Aliens on the list, which is nearly as scary as the original.
I quite like Q host Jian Ghomeshi, but he was definitely fighting above his weight. Greenaway lectured him on a number of topics, including the ‘death of cinema’. I agreed with much of what Greenaway said, so I transcribed a few bits (only transcribe opinions you concur with, I always say):
Cinema now, with the laptop generation, Generation X, is really to do with an interactive, multimedia world and cinema can’t be that. Cinema cannot be democratic–it cannot create multiple endings. You can’t interface with it in any satisfactory way.
So, I think if we’re going to excite imaginations with the potentiality of this grand audio-visual experience, we’re going to find new ways of doing it. I would argue that the ‘Casablanca’ syndrome–that cut-and-dry bedtime story for adults–is really finished. It doesn’t really have a place anymore.
That’s not to say the screen is going to disappear. I have a mobile phone in my pocket, and I suspect you have too. And it has a screen.
And here’s another good bit:
We’re now all lateral thinkers, and certainly we are encyclopedists. We are browsers, we are laptop users. So we have to refashion this media to be relevant to contemporary imaginations.
I’m fond of saying that, before too long, going to the cinema will join the ballet and the opera as dated, niche entertainments that appeal to a few. Mr. Greenaway just said it better.
This is making the rounds about the web, but in case you haven’t seen it, it’s a list entitled Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. There’s no original commentary–just plot summaries from other sites. That’s a bit lame, but it’s neat to see all these movies in one place, as dystopian worlds are a favourite setting of mine.
Here are a few less popular films from the list which I enjoyed and are worth mentioning:
Equilibrium - It’s not a very good film, but it has its charms. Plus, I’m a fan of Christian Bale–I think he’s a little under-appreciated.
District 13 - A French film, and only remarkable because of its excellent fight and chase scenes.
Dark City - A head-wrecking, visionary film that mixes a beef stew of influences into something new and deeply weird. Plus, I could watch Jennifer Connelly watch paint dry.
The City of Lost Children - I don’t remember much about this movie, but I do remember being impressed.
Code 46 - This is a wonderful film that hardly anybody saw. Do yourself a favour and rent it. The leads–Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins. I wrote a review when I saw it in the theatre.
I think the fan-boy (and fan-girl) factor has pushed V for Vendetta and Serenity too far up this list. And I’m not even sure if the latter qualifies–where’s Star Wars, then?. They’re both good movies, but they certainly don’t merit their placings at #23 and #15 respectively.
I started this entry assuming I’d be able to find trailers for both films, but I couldn’t find one for Redacted. That’s surprising, given that it’s receiving plenty of media attention. So here’s a trailer for In the Valley of Elah, and an interview with Brian De Palma in Italian with some footage from Redacted:
I’m looking forward to In the Valley of Elah, as it’s written and directed by Paul Haggis, who recently racked up writing credits for Crash (which he also directed), Million Dollar Baby and Casino Royale. He’s Canadian, and about 15 years ago he created Due South, for which I have a fondness.
