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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

ON THE LOT premieres on Fox tonight

On The Lot, the new reality show from Mark Burnett (Survivor and a few other programs) and Steven Spielberg (some movie guy) premieres on Fox tonight at 9 p.m. EST, right after American Idol. This is that "American Idol for filmmakers" show, where aspiring filmmakers have to make one movie a week and in Idol fashion, they get judged by a celebrity panel of judges before going to the American public to be voted on. The last one standing at the end of the summer gets a $1 million contract to work at DreamWorks.

Here are the 50 semi-finalists that came out of a field of over 12,000 entrants. I will not be one of those on the show tonight, although my entry Schrodinger's Bedroom seems to have been enjoyed by quite a lot of people (it had over ten thousand views before a website snafu required it to be re-uploaded, you can also watch it here on YouTube). Even so, I'm going to be watching this with a lot of interest over this coming summer. And who knows: I might already have an idea or two for an entry for next year's show :-)

Monday, May 21, 2007

THE GOLDEN COMPASS trailer arrives

I have no idea what this is supposed to be. It looks like The Chronicles of Narnia meets The Dark Tower meets the Bolshevik Revolution. Maybe someone can explain it and tell me if it's something worth keeping an eye on. In the meantime mash down here to watch The Golden Compass trailer in Quicktime.

Keanu Reeves as Dr. Manhattan?!?

In an exclusive report that is sure to drop jaws all over the place, Ain't It Cool News is claiming to be the first outlet with news about casting for the upcoming Watchmen movie adaptation (I keep tellin' yas, it's not gonna work as a 2-3 hour movie). According to the story, Jude Law is probably gonna be playing Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias... which isn't something I was expecting to hear, but I could see that working.

Oh yeah, and Keanu Reeves as Dr. Manhattan.

Ummmmm... saywhu...??

If you've never read Watchmen, the image on the right is what Dr. Manhattan looks like. So if you can imagine Keanu Reeves as a bald, blue, naked, God-like being...

...which I can't...

On the other hand, I think Reeves did an outstanding job handling the material of the Matrix movies, and Watchmen is on that same level of "thinking man's" entertainment that those films were. Reeves as Dr. Manhattan might make a lot more people stand up and take notice at this project... if it can manage to stay faithful to the book (which is gonna be hard, but after seeing 300 I think that if anyone can pull the impossible off with Watchmen, it'll be Zack Snyder).

And now that I think of it, Reeves seems like an excellent choice to play Jon Osterman, before he becomes Manhattan (read the book if you want to know what happens that turns him nigh-omnipotent). But this is still gonna have to be handled delicately: we should not have people pointing at the screen and laughing at bald blue naked Keanu Reeves, right?

Now, anyone wanna take a stab at who is gonna play Rorschach?

Carter was the most ineffective, but Bush IS the worst ever

You've probably heard already about former U.S. President Jimmy Carter calling George W. Bush "the worst in history".

Y'know, Carter really was the most inept and ineffective president America has had in the past 50 years. His entire presidency could well be summed-up by the word "malaise".

But even more than Carter, the worst was easily Lyndon B. Johnson: a man who's damage to this country has still yet to be fully calculated. Where Johnson trumped Carter was having the most corrupt presidency up 'til his time. Say what you will of Carter: I've never thought that he did have anything but the best of intentions at heart, however much he bungled those intentions. Barry Goldwater was right: Carter should have kept his head down once he was out of office, and he would have gone down in the history books as one of the better ones. Too bad Carter didn't listen. But there was never anything redeemable about Lyndon Johnson's term: the man bloated government and firmly put the military-industrial complex in a position to exploit the taxpayers to its hearts content... to say nothing of the quagmire that was Vietnam.

That's how I've long seen it: Lyndon Johnson as the worst in American history, followed by Carter... who I was reluctant to peg as a bad one but I really had no choice.

Then along comes George W. Bush.

I don't know if America will ever recover from the damage that this very evil man has inflicted upon her. Carter and Johnson (and Clinton for that matter) combined could not have been as detrimental to this country as Bush II has been.

Let's look at the accomplishments of The Great Decider...

- Biggest growth of government in American history

- Most spending in American history

- Almost thirty-five hundred American soldiers and other service personnel and countless thousands of civilians dead in the most meaningless, ill-conceived conflict the United States has ever engaged in (this figure only counts those mortally wounded in Iraq, not those who were injured and died elsewhere)

- The PATRIOT Act

- Destruction of Habeas Corpus

- Nominating Harriet Miers for Supreme Court

- No Child Left Behind

- Cutting pay and supplies to American military personnel

- Rampant cronyism that puts the Ulysses Grant administration to shame

- Most secretive administration in American history (EVERYTHING can be made a "classified top secret" on Bush's watch)

- Active suppression of dissidents and others who disagree with him

- "Free-speech zones"

- "No-bid" contracts given to companies like Halliburton... which clearly constitute a "conflict of interest" considering their connections to Vice President Cheney and others

- Presided over loss of most American jobs since the Great Depression

- The New Freedoms Initiative, which mandates mental health screening and possible medication - against parents wishes - for every schoolchild in America (I say again: I will shoot the bastard that tries to medicate my child against my will)

- Lying about the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq... and still trying to cover up that lie

- Domestic spying on Americans without warrants

- F***ING-UP THE BORDERS BY ALLOWING MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS TO STAMPEDE INTO AMERICA

- "Signing statements" intended to circumvent Congress and the Constitution

- The Department of Homeland Security (that one sounded Nazi from the start)

- Giving communist China a greater foothold on the American economy than ever before (and now we're paying for it: see the recent mess with poisoned pet food)

I decided to end there, if for no other reason than because I would be up all night adding to this list and still wouldn't have anything nearly a comprehensive a list as it could be.

George W. Bush is the worst President in American history... and no thin veneer of feigned Christianity is going to make it any better.

Yes, by all means let's condemn Carter for meandering mess he spun America into during his four years in office. But if we are going to be fair about it, we'd darn well better be able to face up to the fact that the current president has been far, far worse.

I never thought I'd live to see the day that somebody would outdo Carter and Johnson... and even Clinton. But, there ya go. Heck, I've heard from too many people that compared to George W. Bush, Bill Clinton was a saint. Go figure...

What kind of Star Wars fan are you?

There's a great article at NorthJersey.com about Star Wars fans and the many varieties that they come in. I think it's safe to say that I'm strongly Charismatic:
These are the folks for whom it's not enough to watch "Star Wars" -- they need to live it. So they make costumes, dress up as Lucas characters and join worldwide groups like the 501st Legion (they impersonate most "Star Wars" bad guys) and the Rebel Legion (the good guys).
Let's see: I've made a Star Wars fan film, based my first political ad on Star Wars, have a movie-quality Jedi costume and I'm a member of the Rebel Legion... yup, when it comes to the religion of Star Wars I'm definitely of the speaking-in-tongues variety :-)

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Review of SHREK THE THIRD

Shrek the Third made me so drowsy with boredom that I had to take a long nap when I got home. And it still dulls my mind to think about it.

This movie is so lousy that I'm not even going to waste the time to give it a full review, like I usually do whenever writing about a movie here. I don't want to spend another moment of my life meditating upon it. But, I feel like there's a moral obligation to warn you, Constant Reader, about it... so for sake of that alone I'm going to give you my bare minimum thoughts about it.

The first third of the movie isn't pretty bad. There were some rather funny bits to it, even. But it's not long into Shrek's search for Arthur that this movie becomes tedious and lame and completely inert of the wit that made Shrek and Shrek 2 so good. Whatever magic made the first two movies work, is not here.

Something that I couldn't help noticing: the theater was packed with young children. Shrek the Third was too boring for them too. Whereas the first two Shrek movies I saw kids glued to their seats, this time most of them were fidgeting and antsy and obviously not interested. Rarely did they laugh. The grown-ups certainly didn't laugh much.

I am discerning a pattern here: a movie becomes a huge blockbuster, which demands a sequel. And the producers of the original still have some creative juice to tap into. At that point the motive is all about building on what was established in the first. Then the sequel makes even more money. And then it's no longer about the spirit of the film. The producers make the transition from artists to artisans... and mass-media artisans at that. That's why with rare exception, the third movie in a film series usually sucks to no end: because there's no more interest in making it about the movie.

I remember about two years ago hearing that DreamWorks had plans to make a third and fourth installment to the Shrek series. They should stop now. I know that Shrek the Third will undoubtedly make at least $200 million at the box office, but even so: it should be unconscionable to press forward with another entry.

I really don't like having to say this about Shrek the Third. The first two movies were so wonderful, especially the first (there's a really funny story about when we saw that one in the theater that I might share here if anyone asks for it). I was hoping for so much more with this third movie. But I hate to say this: I was more disappointed with Shrek the Third than I was with X-Men: The Last Stand last year. And that's saying something.

That's all I'm going to say about Shrek the Third. I didn't like it one bit. It definitely won't get any space on my DVD shelf. I never want to see it again. At least not until we have children of our own and they beg to watch it and then I'll have to sit through it with them.

They'll probably hate it too.

Is this Ledger's Joker from THE DARK KNIGHT?

About 36 hours ago on Friday night I posted about some of the developments that came out this past week about The Dark Knight: next year's sequel to 2005's Batman Begins. One of the things I posted was that great "Harvey Dent for District Attorney" graphic. And I closed out the post by saying "Now if only a really good picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker could turn up somewhere..."

I had no idea this was coming. Honest, folks. It was a crazy coincidence...

...'cuz this past day or so the publicity gang for The Dark Knight has been doing something very, very crafty. Yesterday another website turned up at ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. When that page loaded, this is what you got:

And after a few seconds, that graphic started "peeling away" pixel by pixel, like so:

The page has fill-in forms where you enter your e-mail address and have to also manually enter-in a code that's on the screen. I did that, and received this e-mail from ""tragicpast@ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com" a few moments later:

I always say, you never know what a man is truly made of until you peel the skin off his face one piece at a time. Here is your chance to help:
http://www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com/submitpixel_flash.aspx?
uid=f5b45fc9470a45bd8152dcf37822fdb5

X=1
Y=445


If you follow the link you get to the "peeled-away" graphic, but this one shows you which pixel it was that I'm responsible for uncovering (it so happens that it's right on the left-hand edge). That's how it's been going since yesterday: everyone has been using their e-mail addresses to remove one pixel from the picture, slowly revealing whatever lies beneath one individual dot at a time.

It hasn't been completely uncovered yet, but Moriarty at Ain't It Cool News has apparently come into possession of the complete image, or a good simulacrum of it anyway. What's it look like? Here it is:

So... is this really Heath Ledger as how he'll look like as the Joker in The Dark Knight?

If it is... man, I'm really split on this. It's totally not like anything I was expecting. I didn't think it would be like Jack Nicholson's Joker from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. "Less prosthetics" was my belief, but still the traditional Joker "smile" for the most part. What I was most expecting was for Ledger's Joker to look like Conrad Veidt's appearance in 1928's The Man Who Laughs (right), which was the biggest thing that influenced Bob Kane's original design for the Joker. Look at that pic on the right, and tell me that wouldn't work for a modern audience in a serious film treatment of Batman. That certainly looks realistic enough. Heck, it looks no more out-of-place in a real-life setting than Phil Spector's hair usually has during his murder trial lately.

So that's what I was subconsciously thinking we would see. And not a lesioned clone of the Crow.

But then I remember that when the first pics of Willem DaFoe's Green Goblin came out during Spider-Man's production, and I thought that there was no way that would fly either. And then the actual movie comes out and I totally bought into that Green Goblin, and it made me realize that if they had gone with the traditional comic book look for Goblin then it wouldn't have been as convincing. And that comic books and movies really are two quite different mediums to tell the same story: a wise artist is going to have to take that into account. And then I remember the very, very first appearance of the Joker in Batman #1 in 1940:

Looks pretty darned close. It's enough to make me hold off judgment from completely dissing it at this point. I do kinda like it... it's just not "Joker" like I've always been used to. Which I think is going to be the problem for most people.

But if they give him shocking dark green hair and yellow teeth and a purple-enough suit... along with a homicidal sense of humor... then I'll accept this Joker wholeheartedly. The 'tude is everything!