From Hollywood to the pits of Sheffield, everyone is absolutely shitting themselves this morning at the news that Mike Leigh, director of British melo-drama’s Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake, is set to remake James Cameron’s Avatar.
Only now leaving cinema’s, Avatar smashed every conceivable box office record with game-changing special effects and a cast of Hollywood big hitters, but Mike sees potential in a low-budget re-telling.
Despite being born three years before Robert Pattinson, buried deep within my genetic coding, laying dormant until 2005 when I slept through the lion share of Harry Potter 4, is a hatred to rival any other. Having said that, I was determined to approach Remember Mewith an objective stance and give R-Pats an opportunity to prove me wrong. After all, director Allen Coulter is the HBO stalwart responsible for various episodes of Nurse Jackie, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City and most importantly The Sopranos. Sadly Coulter’s feature follow up to Hollywoodland is the cinematic equivalent of being punched in the crotch only to find out that you’ve already been castrated. Although it’s not as painful as you might first expect, the real issues are is in fact greater than you initially imagined.
Jim Carrey is so versatile it’s unreal. Although hugely successful, he’s always been a bit under appreciated when it comes to his talent. Of course by under appreciated, I mean he’s never been nominated for a ‘big one’. After two Golden Globes (‘Man on the Moon’ and ‘The Truman Show’), Carrey started to undertake challenging roles on a more regular basis. His performance in ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ was a wonderful shock to the system for every Carrey fan, but alas there was still no Oscar nomination. In fact, I’d be interested to know if any actor has been nominated for more Globes without receiving an Academy Award nomination. Astonishing for a performer of his caliber. History aside, if they snub him this year after allowing Sandra Bullock to beat Meryl Streep then my faith in that particular voting body will be well and truly shaken.
Considering that Johnny Cash’s autobiography Cash by Johnny Cash and How To Effectively Steal Funny Lines From Nick Hornby are the only two books I’ve ever read, it’s hard for me to say whether or not Charlie Dickens was a champion of expectations great.
Personally I say balls to them. Low expectations, that’s what you need. In all parts of life low expectations will help avoid massive disappointment, none more so than when checking out the latest version of Clash Of The Titans.
Continuing our Kick-Ass week over here on www.thisfilmison.com, we got resident comic book lover/geek/obsessive (delete where applicable) Rob Lawton to start thinking about ‘superheroes’ without anysuper powers. Wandering into the light after a lab full of highly dangerous chemicals exploded all around him, here’s his results.
Thinking of non-super superheroes makes you wonder what classifies a ‘superhero’ exactly. I would say a definition of a superhero is a character possessing “extraordinary or superhuman powers” and dedicated to protecting the public. However, Google’s web definition page gets it a bit wrong saying “A superhero is a character in a cartoon or film who has special powers and fights against evil… Superheroes like Batman and Superman.” Find out why that’s wrong after the jump.
If, like me, you spent your formative years crawling up and down your horizontal living room floor as if it was a vertical wall situated somewhere along the New York skyline then this is no doubt a subject about which you will have spent substantial hours pondering. If on the other hand you are only now discovering the somewhat delusional feelings of inadequacy that come with reading too many comic books then this article could be viewed as a type of careers advice.
The term Superhero tends to be banded around fairly liberally but it is actually, upon closer inspection, an all encompassing moniker which is often used indiscriminately to identify do-gooders of all shapes and sizes. In honour of Kick-Ass and its misguided protagonist, Dave Lizewski I will now chart five sure fire ways to garner some moral superiority of your own.
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Even the most infrequent cinema-goer cannot have failed to notice the spate of comic book adaptations that have taken over our screens over the past few years. Where once you had just Superman and Batman, a whole cannon of comic book heroes have made the transition from page to film reel over the last decade, the likes of Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Men of X, Spider and Iron, not to mention reboots of the afore-mentioned Superman and Batman.
Now, almost all comic book adaptations follow a set formula – namely, ordinary Joe/Peter/Bruce acquires/inherits superhero powers, faces an almost equally super-powered nemesis, deals with his inner demons, vanquishes said Nemesis and then returns the situation neatly to where it had begun to await the next adventure. Even the much-vaunted “The Dark Knight”, whilst exploring some more shadowed aspects of being a superhero, adheres to this formula.
I saw Kick Ass last night (it was pretty damn awesome) and seeing how hard as nails a tween superhero girl is, and then looking at other women in superhero movies, I couldn’t help but think that these women are often there for reasons of attractiveness and to act as bait for the villains in these films; do we really need to see the damsel in distress still tied to the train tracks?
Unfortunately if these movies are to be believed, and we at thisfilmison always believe in movies, then the answer is yes.
He looks like the long lost, curly haired, American brother of Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood combined. He has the “Geek Chic” factor and comic book nerdiness that both Peter Parker and (the lesser known) Chuck AKA Charles Carmichael possess. No one has heard of him…until he dons the green scuba diving suit and becomes a superhero, and as the tagline says he can’t fly, but he could kick your ass.
In case you haven’t guessed I’m talking about the super hero movie Kick Ass, but even though I have put this film under this category don’t think that this is a run of the mill, nobody-geek-to-tough-good-guy film, there’s so much more to it than that! SO much more!
The cinematic year has become a predictable beast. Follow me for a second. January and February kick off with the remnants of the epics (Titanic/LOTR/Avatar) coupled with the ‘worthier’ choices of the awards ceremonies. Hitting the end of April right through to September is ‘Blockbuster disappointment season’ as we glide from week to week saying, “This looks really good!” before decrying our childhoods collectively raped. October and November sees ‘Indie heaven’ with offerings from Sundance, Cannes and the like finally hitting British shores, before the inevitable epic hoves into view in December again.
So what’s been left out? That’s it, March and April. As history decrees it so it must be true. For the average film-fan all you can do in these months is clutch your cock and wait for the summer. Yet every now and again a film pops along in these months that you can’t label, you can’t easily categorise.
The only thing you can say with any certainty is that this film Kick’s Fucking Ass.