Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Blog Saga: New Link

Movies Kick Ass deconstructs yet another photoshop casualty (i.e. movie poster), this one for NINE . My thoughts on that film will hopefully be up later today... time is a tough taskmaster.
Cinema Styles looks forward to Luise Rainer's 100th birthday in January. We should all be celebrating! Especially since she'll (god willing) still be alive for it. She was Oscar's very first two-time acting winner... beating Spencer Tracy to the title by one year.
Topless Robot Batman's TV villains who should make the leap to the screen
Scanners (sarcastically) hates on ambiguous movie endings
Empire keeps track of Thor's ever expanding cast list so you don't have to. The only person this chart is missing (as far as I know) is Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist)
In Contention looks at the Adapted Screenplay Oscar race
Noh Way
expresses photographic love for director/muse duos beyond Pedro & Penélope

Sexiest Men Alive?
popbytes is on the Brad Pitt beard watch. Did it cost Brad the title of...
People's "Sexiest Men Alive". It's not just Johnny Depp. Roughly every famous person shows up. Though...
Go Fug Yourself has a laugh about the Glee photoshoot therein
My New Plaid Pants, uninfluenced by mainstream rags, remembers his love for Jean Claude Van Damme [nsfw]

Twi-Hard
Bright Lights After Dark "tortured longing is the new coke" Erich's inner 13 year old makes a case for The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Erik Lundegaard gleans box office meaning: stop ignoring girls
Variety director Chris Weisz blames New Line for the way The Golden Compass (2007) turned out. You know, I liked that movie more than most but it was but 1/20th of what it could have been given how excellent the book is. But I'm not sure you can take this in a black & white way, blame wise. Why would they interfere so much there but not on The Lord of the Rings? Would they have interfered with Peter Jackson if he weren't such a goddamn visionary? I just think this is probably a gray area unless Weisz has suddenly shown new cinematic mastery with New Moon. And well...
Antagony and Ecstasy thinks it's "boring as fuck-all". And wouldn't that indicate some degree of problems with Weisz' powers behind the camera?

...and no, I have no real plans to see New Moon. Unless it falls into my lap, I shan't ever know if it improves upon the original (which wouldn't be a significant hurdle). Time and money are both precious commodity this time of year. I have so many movies left to see in such a short time frame before awards are passed out. So I'm not going to pay hard earned $ to be bored (and support Mormon causes financially) if I don't have to for Oscar write up purposes. I'm guessing I don't have to worry about this movie securing nominations. If I'm wrong I promise to stare at Kristen Stewart and her dead eyes (shouldn't she be playing the vampire?) for 2.5 hours and issue my mea culpas.
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12 comments:

J.L said...

Please watch "Everlasting Moments" before your filmbitch award. It's such a great movie.

Andrew K. said...

That does seem annoying about Weisz though. The Golden Compass was actually one of me seven favourite films of 2007 but regardless of what went on is he seriously going to blame the studio? Very crass of him, as far as I'm concerned. And then to follow it up with Twilight...is that what he wanted it to be...?

Colin Low said...

I won't be the one to proclaim Weitz as some unacknowledged visionary, but let's be more tempered in our response here. The more precise charge he leveled against New Line was that the studio took the film away from him and cut out 30 minutes (via JA), likely to avoid contentions over the anti-organized-religion aspect of the material. Which is something that shouldn't ever happen to a director, even a non-visionary, and that we should be protesting as well.

FrenchGirl said...

i saw "twilight 2":i slept well(really)! LOL my little nephew was ashamed on me LOL

i believe i won't see the next Twilight

NATHANIEL R said...

Colin... i thought i was being tempered (as opposed to other sites playing the "let's blame the studio!" bit. Did they forget that New Line gave us LORD OF THE RINGS and actually let it be the visionary thing that Peter Jackson wanted it to be?

But i get what you're saying and chopping 30 minutes of a movie is horrible (particularly because they cut at the end where it becomes so moving) and the movie was obviously neutered to appeal to the Christians (who were still angry about it. Note to everyone: do not try to kowtow to the Christian right. It won't matter to them. Their minds are almost always made up ahead of time about everything)

Julian Stark said...

You said you would never know if New Moon was better than Twilight. Well, it's worse... WAAAY worse

Better acting (save for Lautner... he was awful), terrible story, better action visuals, and some straight out of 1983 CGI wolves

I recommend that when you come within 100 miles of this film that you run as fast as you can, go home, and lock your doors.

Seriously. It's THAT bad.

Liz said...

Its ironic that they screened the preview for Pattinson's new movie with Emile de revin and Chris Cooper in front of new moon - Pattinson showed more range there in two-and minutes than the whole of his screen time in New Moon and Twilight put together!

Anonymous said...

Lautner is really fucking hot! BUT, a big but, he is in WAY over his head. Everytime I try to watch him, he's trying to be intelligent and it just fails miserably. He wanted to talk about the "characters" and "relationships" of new Moon. Just embrace your sex symbol status now before some other hotter guys bury your fame. His acting.....wow, even from clips, this movie has terrible, cheesy (can I say shitty?) dialogue and his wooden way of saying the lines make it even worse. You guys should see how Craig Ferguson rants about this movie yesterday..LOL

rubi-kun said...

There's a simple reason why Jackson did what he wanted while Weitz was screwed over: with Jackson, there was no precedent. New Line didn't know what they were doing and had no expectations of it being the phenomenon it turned out to be. Once LOTR turned into a huge hit, however, they wanted to mold TGC into that mold, even though it didn't really fit and thus they had to sever off a lot of it to create what the studio thought (wrongly) would be another phenomenon.

I would really do anything to see the directors' cut of TGC. It doubt it'd rival LOTR but what does? The acting and the art design of the movie were perfect, what remained of the script was decent, it was mostly bad editing where it disappointed. It might be hyperbole to compare it to this, but supposedly there was a really bad 2-hour cut of The Godfather that the studio requested before realizing the version we got was the only one that worked (the studios were a bit wiser in those days).

Glenn said...

It's really disappointing to see so many smart movie people on blogs and Twitter and the like going to see New Moon when they have no belief they will like a single second of it. And then there are movies like Julia which was showing for one weekend only and only one other person I know went to see it.

NATHANIEL R said...

Glenn... it's like what i say about the "blockbuster loop" -- you can be totaly crappy with people expecting you to be so and make way more money than any good film if there's ever a tipping point where people feel that they need to see you to be part of the pop culture.

just wish pop culture had higher standards. or at least not such regressive ones. i shudder to think about how this will help mormonism in the long run if more women grow up wanting men to control them. it's dreamier that way!

Chris Na Taraja said...

They are selling that hunky wearwolf boy real hard, but sadly it's not enough for me to see Twinklight, or Nearly Nude Moon, or whatever they are calling it.