"He loves playing in the jungle."

I'm too tired right now to actually digest the insta-controversy over the blatantly-spoiled cameos, but hey, I thought it was awesome. The thing that bugged me the most: not enough Dolph. I'll be there either way, obviously.

Young Scarface

The sister is my favorite:


Scarface School Play - Watch more Funny Videos

So much fun! Where/how/who put this together?

Knight and Day trailer 2

Still interested:

"Next time, we don't date the girl with..."

Still not 100% on this one... a full trailer might clear that up, but I'm still excited. If you want to make a movie like a video game, don't actually make it like a video game, but just make it awesome, a la Kill Bill, Vol. 1. That's really my main concern at this point. We'll see how it progresses.

Oh, and the boyfriend-villains better be fucking awesome. If they are all half-assed, I will officially be disappointed.

Killer

EMBED-Rolled-Up Magazine Self Defense - Watch more free videos
Source: Dangerous Minds

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-CHERRYBOMB!

Just a quick note: The Runaways is easily the best release of 2010 so far. It's an old school, wholesome, professional, well-done, 100% throwback of a rock 'n roll biopic. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Seriously, they don't.

Dakota actually carries the film, K-Stew nails Jett, Michael Shannon is pitch-perfect and a hoot to boot...man, everybody just did what they were supposed to do and in the end, came out with one helluva product.

If you scan the negative reviews, you can see the passive-aggressiveness seeping through: Conventional? Of course. Cliched? It's rock 'n roll. Predictable? DURRRRRRRRRRR... And anyone who says the story isn't worth telling should go find a new career. Fuck's sake.

I hate to rely on Rotten Tomatoes, but let's face it, these days, they're just that rotten! I'll take conventionality any day over remakes, reboots, sequels, adaptations, reboot sequels, reboot reboots, reboot sequel spin-offs...what have you.

My favorite blurb, from Andrew O'Hehir: "Sometimes mind-blowing power isn't available, and a rollercoaster ride of stardom and depravity will just have to do."

Rock 'n roll.


*** out of ****

Review: Shinjuku Incident

 

Pan-Asian? How 'bout Chan-Asian: bringing 'em all together...to fight.

Shinjuku Incident could go down as something of an incident itself. The pan-Asian ensemble crime thriller, headed by international superstar Jackie Chan, is the actor's first real dive into 'gritty' material (New Police Story withstanding). It's also something of a paradox, as Chan (at this point in his career) seemingly has no place in such a film but even then—as it is—Shinjuku Incident would not work any other way.

Chan plays Steelhead (could there ever be a better name?), an everyman Chinese farmer washed ashore in Japan during the wave of illegal immigration in the '90s. Searching for a former fling, he holes up with old friends and neighbors and fellow aliens in Tokyo's Shinjuku district (hence the title). Going from shit-job to shit-job, to run-ins with the police and Yakuza, Steelhead finally gives into a life of crime... In other words, Chan's persona finally gives into the darker side of things. He quickly becomes an effectual leader, his no-bull approach bringing steady, modest prosperity. This further complicates things, however, as he is deeper-ensnared within the Yakuza: nasty scraps with the Taiwanese and even a fellow Chinese. Between the Yakuza, his girlfriend(s), and the causalities of gang war, the only thing that keeps him sane is an ongoing relationship with a detective (Naoto Takenaka), a man of stand-up, old-school honor.

And old-school really is the name of the game with Shinjuku, as writer-director Derek Yee and co. make genre mistakes that are near-inexcusable by today's standards. Crime naiveté, if you will. That said, these missteps are more of the 'unintentional laugh' variety than a frustrating one and ultimately don't detract from the material. Why? Because, after all, it is a Jackie Chan movie, and our humble, oftentimes naive hero makes these bumps in the road seem natural. Maybe an unfair gimme, but a gimme nonetheless. Plus, all the familiar faces are there, giving it that homey, pre-USA Jackie-Chan-movie feel. They may be a little past their prime (Police Story was twenty-five years ago...twenty-five! No more raw intensity, no more wonderfully-choreographed action sequences, etc.), but they still know how to get the job done. Entertainment-wise, at least.

Dramatic acting is not necessarily Jackie's strong suit...he looks confused half the time, more so that he's in the movie to begin with. The long, convoluted story loses weight (and a little blood) with each new twist, and kind of falls flat at some indeterminable time. The filmmaking doesn't help, either; whip-pans are fun, but it's not enough to be called engaging, sorry. The score's inconsistent, if not all out random. And speaking of randomness—random acts of violence—I don't know what's more distressing, the brutality or the sporadicness of it. Seeing Jackie Chan shoot someone in the face was enough for me.

The lost-in-translation ending shows what Shinjuku Incident is all about: the cinematic gathering, albeit a clunky one, of the Asian continent. Showing that Chan, his Americanization and political associations aside, can still bring it all home. Pan-Asian? Nah, this is Chan-Asian.


*** out of ****

~ Patrick Fryberger

Quantum of Date

Choose your weapon

Can somebody say "DAMN!"

Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

Predators trailer

The full trailer is a little stagey/trying too hard, but that doesn't mean I'm not excited. Alice Braga is on her way to one-upping Michelle Rodriguez. Okay, maybe not one-upping, but at least achieving her rank. In other words, Alice Braga = HOT.

Predators Movie Trailer - Trailer

Everybody looks cool! I can't deny it. Yes, even Topher!

Source: IGN

"Vengeance, is the mission."

Trailer for The Mechanic remake. Well cast (Statham, Foster, and Sutherland), looks somewhat gritty, pretty good, might see it.



Source: Quiet Earth

Finally

Something from the Rodriguez summer double-bill of Predators and Machete... This looks like a lot of fun. Now he should do one for Machete.



Source: Hollywood Elsewhere

Morning After

Still Up in the Air...the Academy proves once again to be completely out of touch.

I'll get it right to it: my biggest reaction, without question, was the undeserved spanking of Jason Reitman's Up in the Air. I've never really liked the guy, either, but you can't take away the fact that he made what I would say was the second best film of the year. We all knew District 9 was going to get skunked, but Up in the Air? Jesus. Jason Reitman, you got fucking gipped... I feel for you and your team.

Jeff Wells sums up the situation--blogosphere reactions and all--pretty nicely here. Check it out.

My second most prominent reaction? Simple: the show was terrible. Unfunny, disjointed/clunky, with a mediocrity of nominees stinking to high heaven... Just ugly all around. How could you go wrong with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin? You can't, you just can't, but after last night, apparently anything is possible. I walked out around the dance routine.. in fact, I walked out a few times earlier than that. Whatever pressure I felt to watch the show was quickly dissolved.

Other, dime-a-dozen reactions:

--TEH SANDRA! Totally was shamelessly on the Bullocks bandwagon. Okay, maybe there was tinsy-weensy bit of shame, but that's it.
--Harry Potter should've won cinematography, seriously... Bruno Delbonnel raised the series to new heights, seriously.

--Speeches were pretty good/I was impressed, but of course, balance was restored to the force when the already infamous Kanyegate Pt. 2 happened, God, what a mess.

--The 'actors' generally had nice things to say about the 'actresses,' though Whitaker seemed a little out of place.
--The mashups, the dedications, even the little video blurbs... DID SOMEONE NOT HIRE A FUCKING EDITOR? This was embarrassingly bad, I'm sorry. No excuses--with all the YouTube-grade talent out there, they could've found somebody who knew what the bloody hell they were doing. Just embarrassing.
--Ben Stiller = hilarious.

--The Hurt Locker, original writing? WHAT ABOUT THE WHOLE, YOU KNOW, CONTROVERSY GOING ON? Please...at least they could've given it to A Serious Man... In general, it seems that the Academy was over-generous before it truly goes down in history as a BOMB. What a joke.

--Doesn't that really say it all? What a joke? Don't we say that every year?



Get a writer, get a whiff of culture, go back to the editing room.

What a joke.

Review: Brooklyn's Finest

Say whaa? Wesley Snipes is back?

If this is Brooklyn's Finest, then the rest of the burroughs are in trouble. Overlong, intense, and woozy, its watchability is earned on pure potential, with a letdown that's constantly in the works/woodwork. In sum, forgivable badness shall not be forgiven. I.A. should've been all over this shit.

THREE TALES, loosely interwoven if not connected by default: Suicidal, whiskey-in-the-morning, prostitute-lovin' beat cop (Richard Gere), meets can't-pay-the-bills, sporadically murderous, poor-excuse-for-an-Italian cop (Hawke), meets undercover-too-long, wants to get out, conflicted by multiple loyalities to-be detective who happens to live in a Manhattan penthouse (Cheadle). If you're clichéd out by this point, then you should just get out. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. When the going gets rough, well... Admittedly, it's kind of neat how we 'ooze' between the trio, but "oozing" could just as well be interpreted as "clunky" with a complete lack of narrative transition on all levels. Flat-tire, ca-lump, ca-lump, ca-lump, but driving really fast. You can practically hear it in that relentlessly-stock score.

A tale of casting: Ethan Hawke, miscast, Richard Gere, miscast, Don Cheadle, typecast, Wesley Snipes, finally cast, director Antoine Fuqua, under-cast, writer Michael C. Martin, not cast. Elsewhere, Ellen Barkin chews up scenery like she'd been starved of it (more or less true). In fact, she may have gone ahead and eaten Lili Taylor's seeing that her fellow veteran actress gets just about none. Vincent D'Onofrio's opening cameo wouldn't have been spoiled if he didn't get shot in the face...whoops, spoiler. And that homeless guy from The Road just can't escape being that homeless guy from The Road. I'm sorry, Michael K. Williams, I really am.

If there's one thing to take away from Brooklyn, it's got to be the valiant return of Wesley Snipes. The part is wonderfully tailor-made: after an eight-year prison sentence, humbled and everyman drug-dealer "Caz" (full name Cassanova, no joke) wants to get out altogether—still street-smart through—giving a great little speech about ethnicity-specific modes of torture. He's just great. So cool.

Somewhere, at some point, there's some mentioning of the word "Tact." The irony of this goes without saying... tactful, perhaps? Great moments are tied down by the block of melodrama that is Martin's amateur-hour script... Literally, imagine for a moment Brooklyn's Finest as a piece of spandex, and then drop a concrete block in the middle of it... naturally, being spandex, it's not going to break, but it's going to bend, alright, ooh, it's gonna get real bent out of shape. I don't care who you cast, or who you have shoot it...Brooklyn's Finest already shot themselves, and it's a damn shame they did.

*1/2 out of ****

~ Patrick Fryberger

How could I not post this?

Jeez:



Source: Just about everywhere