Oscar Bait or Tragic Mistake?

Cameron Diaz and Still Creepy Penelope Cruz in The Counselor

Director Ridley Scott has made some of Turn of the Century's best films, including Alien; Blade Runner; Thelma and Louise and Gladiator. His most recent 'non-prequel' (which was totally a prequel) to Alien, Prometheus, had some issues, but was entertaining as hell (yes, Charlize should have run off to the side - we get it).  

Scott's latest thriller The Counselor - about a lawyer (Michael Fassbender) involved with some rather unsavory drug dealers - is currently listed as 'In Post-Production' on IMDb, with a scheduled release date of October 25th. Fassbender co-stars with Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz (it's like she has a puppet mouth, or something... she just skeves me out... ugh!... )* and Cameron Diaz in a role some people are already supposedly whispering rumors that she just may give the performance of her career, which could lead to the possibility of an Academy Award... (Yes, I am fully aware that this is a dreadful run-on sentence with a superfluous parenthetical, thank you very much fellow Grammar Nazis).

Really? The girl from The Mask and There's Something About Mary? The foul-mouthed, pot-smoking, money-scamming Bad Teacher (a movie I only just saw - and sort-of enjoyed - on cable one night in Chicago last month). I saw a teaser for this movie when Dear D and I went to see The Conjuring last month and Diaz was in it, but had nothing to really say. A new trailer has surfaced (via) and we see quite a bit more of her character and I must admit, I am intrigued. With a script from novelist Cormac McCarthy (The Road; No Country for Old Men), The Counselor has all the pedigrees and earmarks that catch the Academy members' attentions. What do you think?

Let the campaigning begin!

More, anon.

Prospero

*Don't start with me. Just because I'm gay does NOT meant I don't know how to appreciate a beautiful woman when I see one. I also know that I am in the minority when it comes to my opinion of Ms Cruz's physiognomy. It's all well and good until she opens that slash in her jaw... Seriously. It's like female Spanish Guy Smiley in the flesh! Bllllllllllluuuuurrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhh!

5 For; 5 Against: "World War Z"

Mireille Enos and Brad Pitt in World War Z

I'm back! After 5 1/2 days in Chicago (part business/part pleasure), I'm home and back online. I had a great time with co-workers and friends (met up with a High School friend and her husband who just happened to be vacationing there at the same time) and got to explore Hyde Park, a part of Chicago with which I was previously unfamiliar and apparently the home of the Obama family. I also got to visit the Shedd Aquarium and wade in the waters of Lake Michigan (the first time I've ever had my feet in a lake!) where I got to see not only many hot, mostly naked gay guys but got a look at the building where Bob Newhart lived with Suzanne Pleshette in the 70's. I ate lots of great food (Astoundingly delicious Pineapple Curry Shrimp at Chant; amazing -- and huge! -- Apple Pie at Clarke's and super yummy Rigatoni Bolognese at Pizza Capri). I also got to spend time with two terrific Chicagoans, at least one of whom managed to get me very drunk (at Scot's Bar) without taking advantage of me (though there were at least two other patrons I would have happily taken advantage of -- TMI?). Anyway...

And since July in Chicago is almost as intensely hot and humid as July in the Delaware Valley, I took yesterday afternoon to visit the new Harper Theatre in an effort to escape yesterday's oppressive heat (though I've found it much hotter, here at home).  There were several movies I wanted to see playing at the Harper, but I'd already promised to see a couple of them with other friends, so I settled on a movie I hadn't originally planned on seeing at all: World War Z. And since it's been out for a while and I'm still pretty exhausted from my trip (I need a vacation from my vacation), here's my "Jeep Guy" 5 For/Five Against:

Five For:

5. The movie takes little (if any) time getting started, though it should be obvious to any Philadelphian that Prague is a poor substitute for the real Philly.

4. There are some rather amazing SFX, including some very creepy zombies.

3. Director Marc Forster knows how to deliver an exciting action sequence.

2. Marco Beltrami's score is almost as perfect as his other works.

1. The truly international cast works well together, delivering some excellent performances despite the film's overtly silly premise.

Five Against:

5. World War Z is not a zombie movie. It feels more like an infection movie, much like Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. 

4. Brad Pitt (like many former Hollywood Hotties) is not aging well, and it shows (though that may well have been the director's intention).

3. Swarming zombies. Like the Marabunta ants in The Naked Jungle, the zombies in World War Z climb on top of one another to reach their prey, suggesting a previously unseen (and nonsensical) hive mentality presented in any other zombie movie ever made.

2. Matthew Fox is completely wasted in a role which could have played by any other day-player. 

1. This movie has little, if anything, to do with the novel on which it is based. Max Brooks' novel (which bored Uncle P to death) had no true through-narrative. Each chapter detailed the experience of a specific person in a different part of the world as told to a UN investigator after the events described. While the screenplay (by three writers, including "Lost" writer Damon Lindelof) attempts to draw the disparate elements together, it ultimately fails to thrill, scare or cause the audience to care about the non-ending.

I'm hardly surprised that I didn't actually like this movie, though I gave the benefit of the doubt. Eschewing the gore that is traditional to the genre (almost every zombie kill is made off-screen) and concentrating instead on the search for a cure, World War Z fails as a Zombie movie while almost succeeding as an Action Thriller. And while the truly International cast mostly proves themselves up to the task, we are left wondering exactly what the task was.

** (Two Out of Four Stars).



More, anon.
Prospero

The Jury's Still Out

Brad Pitt in World War Z

I won't be posting Friday or Saturday because I'll be in L.A. on a business trip (as well as meeting up with my cousin; having drinks with an old college buddy and seeing Cirque du Soleil's "Iris") and will have limited Internet access through my phone. I'll be Tweeting (@Caliban761) and posting on Facebook, though. But none of that really has anything to do with tonight's post.

The first trailer for World War Z, director Marc Forster's (A Quantum of Silence; Monster's Ball) adaptation of Max Brooks' novel. I must admit, I wasn't really a fan of Brooks' novel. Modeled after Studs Terkel's "The Good War" (a book of interviews with people who lived through World War II), "World War Z" had no real narrative structure but is simply a series of interviews by a U.N. employee of people from around the world who were there when the zombie apocalypse went down. In the book, the plague begins in China, where the government does everything it can to suppress information. As the outbreak takes over the world, it is soon clear that humanity is on the brink of extinction. Personally, I found the novel rather boring. Without any clear protagonists to care about, the book failed to hold my interest more than halfway through. Even viewed as a series of short stories, the stories themselves were fairly repetitive and not all that exciting, relying on facts and figures rather than dramatic narrative.

With a script by "Lost" writer  Damon Lindelof and The Kingdom's Matthew Michael Carnahan. World War Z  is the first real big-budget zombie movie out of Hollywood. Most zombie movies (even 2009's Zombieland) until now have been small, independent films with mostly unknown casts directed by 'outsider' directors. World War Z, starring Brad Pitt; Eric West ("Smash"); Matthew Fox ("Lost;" "Party of Five"); David Morse (The Green Mile) and Marielle Enos (the U.S.version of "The Killing") has a big budget and even bigger expectations. I hope Lindelof and Carnahan have found  a way to overcome the problems inherent in Brooks' account of the 10 year-long zombie war.

The movie is also fanning the debate over "slow" vs. "fast" zombies, since the release of this trailer. While Brooks never really specifies in the book, my friend Peter and I agree that the "fast" zombies in the trailer look like swarming ants, much like the 'Marabunta' in 1954's The Naked Jungle (a rather interesting film I recommend, if you've never seen it. You can see the whole move here, though it occasionally shows up on TCM or AMC). 

Of course, I'll hold final judgment until I've actually seen World War Z, which is scheduled for release on June 21, 2013. But reports of reshoots and rewrites (never a good sign) and shooting scenes set in Philadelphia in Glasgow and Prague, have me skeptical. You can be sure I'll be seeing and reviewing it, though.

More, anon.
Prospero

Gorgeous George

When I reviewed Up In the Air back in 2009, I likened George Clooney to a modern-day Cary Grant. He's devilishly handsome, very smart, very hip and very talented. He's already won the Golden Globe this year for Best Actor in a Film Drama for The Descendants and is likely to be nominated for an Oscar for the same role. An infamous practical joker and lifelong bachelor, Clooney at 50 is sexier and hotter than ever. 

A known straight ally in the fight for LGBT equality, Clooney was recently asked his thoughts on Mitt Romney's anti-gay stance. My sweet friend Stephen in Portland posted George's response today over at Post Apocalyptic Bohemian:

“Well, I’m not much concerned until there’s an actual nominee… but I think it’s the wrong side of history. I think everyone sort of understands it might be the last leg of the civil rights movement. I do believe that. So I think that at some point, It’s certainly not the wedge issue it was in 2004, so that’s a good sign. So those are important things to me.”

Sigh... Like his good friend (and often the target of his practical jokes) Brad Pitt, who has said he won't marry Angelina Jolie until all U.S. citizens have the right to marry the person they love, Clooney gets it. As do all intelligent and moral straight people. They know that there is no such thing as the so-called "gay agenda." They also know that gay people aren't out to recruit their children; destroy the fabric of society; put an end to traditional families or traditional marriage. They are smart enough to recognize that LGBTQ people are in fact, born the way we are and that we all share the same fundamental rights and that among them is the right to marry the person we love. 

Here's the thing: How can someone like Newt Gingrich, who has been married three times and carried on an extramarital affair of his own while leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for doing the same, have the audacity to cite morality and the sanctity of marriage as part of his virulently anti-gay Presidential platform? At least the idiot Rick Santorum, despite being wrong about everything he thinks he knows about gay people, has only been married once and cites his strict Catholic upbringing as the basis for his homophobia. And yes, like Gorgeous George, I believe history will prove both of these men (along with people like Maggie Gallagher, Bryan Brown, Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins) very, very wrong. 

And while I know George is straight, I will continue to lust after him, along with millions of gay men and straight women all over the world who know they will probably never get within ten feet of him, let alone actually have him for themselves. But mostly, I will admire him for telling the truth about the bullies who want to continue to oppress the single most hated minority on the planet. Thank you, George. You just keep on giving me more and more reasons to love you. And I don't mean in a gay way (though actually, I kind of do).

More, anon.

Prospero

Can't Watch Again

I've been holding onto this post for a while now. Way back in May. AV Club did a piece on films that were too painful to watch more than once, though each of the participants admitted to having watched the films they were discussing more than one time.

For Uncle P, there is only one movie too painful and disturbing to watch a second time and that's David Fincher's 1995 serial killer horror/drama Se7en. 

Set in a crumbling, unnamed city where it rains all the time, Se7en concerns a serial killer named John Doe (Kevin Spacey) who is using the biblical Seven Deadly Sins as the basis for his crimes. Detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) are on the case. Mills is the rookie, partnered with the near-to-retirement Somerset, who eventually befriends Mills' wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow).

As the case progresses and the two come closer to finding John Doe, the murders become more and gruesome. Five sins in, Doe turns himself over to the detectives, only to lead them to the scene of his last two murders which represent Pride and Wrath.I won't go into details here. If you seen the film, you know what I'm talking about. If not, see it and then try to erase its images from your brain...

From the opening credits of this movie, I found myself watching someone else's nightmare, something I'd only ever experienced before when I first saw Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece Apocalypse Now. Fincher creates a mood unlike anything I'd ever seen and I left the theatre literally shaken by what I'd seen.

I own a copy of Se7en on DVD, though I don't believe I've ever opened the shrink wrap on it. And while I recently caught the last heavily-edited half-hour on basic cable, I don't think I could make through a full viewing again. Se7en features some amazing performances from it's A-List cast, but the images and themes of the movie make it the only brilliant film I have never been able to fully sit through twice.

What brilliant movie (if any) has so disturbed you that you could never watch again?

More, anon.
Prospero

Brad Pitt, Gay Marriage, Rom-Coms and Horror

If the title didn't get your attention, then I know the picture did.

Lots to talk about tonight, so let's get started, shall we? First (via) comes a video clip from Brad's recent appearance on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher." Now Pitt and Jolie may be pure products of the publicity machine and maybe even more than a bit of the fuel for Society's sad and bizarre (though if nothing else, consistent) obsession with celebrity. Granted, both of them are are fine actors. Ms. Jolie has even won and Academy Award for her performance in Girl, Interrupted (something I'm sure makes Winona Rider want to go out and steal from Bergdorf's). Pitt can be alternately hilarious (Kalifornia; Burn After Reading); devastatingly gorgeous (Interview with the Vampire; Thelma and Louise) or just plain crazy (12 Monkeys; Fight Club).

But here's the thing: Pitt honestly wants to use his celebrity to not just further his own agenda, but to speak out for the disenfranchised. His continuing work in New Orleans after Katrina and his stance on LGBT rights and Marriage Equality, as well the sense to know that the legalization and taxation of marijuana would go a long way towards solving much of the economic problems America's struggling to overcome make him one of the sanest voices out there. So, with this single appearance on the nation's highest-rated Premium Cable channel, Brad Pitt becomes my first ever Man of the Week. Enjoy:

P.S. - The next Man of the Week will get his own post, but I'm sure Brad doesn't mind sharing his.

Okay - now that that's out of the way, let's talk about upcoming movies, shall we? So, those of you know me and/or read me regularly, know that I am a Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Action guy who can also appreciate a fine indie comedy or off-the-wall arthouse mindf**k flick. However I rarely, if ever, find myself wanting to see, let alone endorsing a Chick Flick. Especially when said Chick Flick is a Rom-Com, unarguably the worst kind of Chick Flick to be found in your local cineplex. That having been said, (via) comes the trailer for When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell; Josh Duhamel (sorry, guys and gals, I just don't get him. Fine bod and face, spoiled by a GIGANTIC B.F. Skinner forehead); Will Arnett(!); Danny Devito; Angelica Huston(!!); Jon Heder; Lee Pace and Don Johnson. Talk about a diverse and talented cast! But that doesn't mean a thing if the script and direction suck. Screenwriter David Diamond makes his directorial debut and I have to be honest, the trailer made me laugh out loud more than once. Enjoy:

Speaking of Horror and Sci-Fi, here's the trailer for Whiteout, starring Kate Beckinsale. I must admit, I'm not fan of her films. Most of them are pretty terrible; the Underworld films are simply dreadful and Van Helsing is just unwatchable, though I will say that I liked Vacancy, though I suspect that has more to do with Luke Wilson more than anything. And doesn't it more than just remind you a little of a certain John Carpenter classic? I'll let you decide:

Finally, this teaser trailer (via) for the indie horror flick Bitter Feast, which apparently does to Food Critics what the Vincent Price classic Theatre of Blood did to Theatre Critics, though much, much nastier. Here's to the secret (or maybe not-so-secret) foodie in all of us:

Tasty, no?

More, anon.

Prospero