Casting. The Desperate Frontier. This is the phase of pre-production currently faced by J.J. Abrams and the other creatives behind Paramount’s Star Trek reboot. Their hopefully-no-longer -than-one-month mission: to assemble an attractive group of twenty/thirtysomethings who a) remind us of our favorite original Trek characters without b) coming off as banally handsome facsimiles. To achieve … Continue reading
There ought to be a law: once you’ve won two Best Director Oscars (or once you’ve called action on a movie as front-to-back brilliant as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), there will always be an industry average budget available for your next film – so long as it’s not a three-hour Alexander the Great … Continue reading
Though I think Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is much more relevant to the state of the world today in terms of story and theme, I’ll gladly take a Fahrenheit 451 written and directed by Frank Darabont. I read Darabont’s adaptation several years ago (when Mel Gibson was set to star), and felt it was … Continue reading
I’m all for cute, conflated credits that brand particular aesthetics like "The Coen Brothers" or "ZAZ", but what in the hell have the horrendously untalented Cormac and Marianne Wibberley done to deserve the official, WGA-approved appellation, "The Wibberleys"? Unless it’s intended as a Mr. Yuck warning to more attentive filmgoers, this is nothing more than … Continue reading
Brought to you by Slusho, the fictitious product you’d like to bore into J.J. Abrams’s head Regarding Henry-style. Farewell to Beauty "In [L’Avventura] Antonioni stands quite apart from the Italian neorealists. He does not try to show life "as it is" but as he sees it. In the sense that his films are intensely personal … Continue reading
What with the raging success of the License to Wed uterus poster (and I think I’m serious about that; no one had that movie breaking $40 million), it looks like New Line has decided to turn Billy Bob Thornton into a cock. Or have they? I mean, what to do with the legs protruding from … Continue reading
The first, cut-for-Cannes preview we saw for James Gray’s crime flick, We Own the Night, seemed to be lifting heavily from the campaign for The Departed; the addition of the New York City skyline graphics in this final theatrical trailer clinches it. They might as well have dropped "Gimme Shelter" in there while they were … Continue reading
If The Bourne Ultimatum were to slow down, the viewer would suddenly realize how many coincidences and leaps of logic are required to keep the story moving forward and check right the fuck out – which is to say it’s no different than such classic hard-chargers as North by Northwest or Raiders of the Lost … Continue reading
Name your favorite Simpsons episode, and there’s a good chance Rich Moore directed it. "Cape Feare", "A Streetcar Called Marge", "Flaming Moe’s", "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie", Marge vs. the Monorail"… all of these were overseen by Moore. After several seasons with The Simpsons and a stint on The Critic, Moore became the supervising director … Continue reading
Now that several years’ worth of bad press related to the very bad behavior of its athletes and coaches has reached a flashpoint with Michael Vick’s federal indictment on dogfighting charges, the NFL will turn once again to that paragon of professional virtue, Vince Lombardi, in order to clean up its inherently nasty image (I … Continue reading