Month: December 2010

Water For Elephants

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“I’m-sure-it’s-profound-in-context title?” Check. “Old-man-recalls-golden-age-of-bygone-cultural-relic” plot structure? Check. Young man of promise fleeing for “real world” in quirky/semi-seedy profession? Check. Love triangle with broken-blossom and possessive husband? Check. Best actor in ensemble playing the bad guy? Check. “Based on the acclaimed novel?” Check. This is what people mean when they say Oscar Bait is it’s own genre.

Question for people who read the book: Is the lead guy mute and/or non-speaking? Or are they avoiding Pattinson’s (up to this point, anyway) famously-wooden delivery by simply not showing him talking hardly AT ALL in the movie he STARS IN.

Y’know what’s kind-of funny? If Waltz wasn’t in the trailer, it would totally look like the hero was fighting over the girl with the horse.

Berlin man CURED of HIV

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hat-tip: Gizmodo

You may wish to take note of your immediate surroundings, as this may end up being one of those “where were you when _____?” dates. Doctors in Germany have, evidently, cured a man of HIV.

The technique? In brief, they obliterated his entire immune system with chemotherapy, they replaced it with a new one using stem cells from a donor who had been born with nigh-total immunity to HIV. It’s a radical procedure, which most patients don’t survive, but this guy did.

I was in my house, editing a video, incidentally.

Tree of Life trailer

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A NEW Terrence Mallick movie?? But it hasn’t even been a decade yet! Man, he’s really pickin’ up the pace…

Story supposedly concerns dual narratives; one spanning the life of a typical American family, the other spanning the life of Earth – as in, the planet. Yeah. So, “The Fountain” but grounded in early-60s Suburbia. He’s supposed to have ordered up a bunch of FX sequences involving Dinosaurs… wonder why they aren’t in the trailer? Don’t tease me, Mallick…

Favreau off "Iron Man 3"

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Yeah, I know I’m late. Busy time of year.

Anyway, as everyone already knows by now, Jon Favreau has bowed-out of directing “Iron Man 3.”

Certainly not great news, but hardly surprising – both sides were very upfront about not getting along during the production of the sequel (re: Marvel Films insisting on the plot being reworked in order to stress Avengers/Thor/Cap continuity connections) – and probably the best thing for most involved: Favreau already has two big actioners on his plate with “Cowboys & Aliens” and Disney’s big tentpole “The Magic Kingdom” (think “Night at The Museum,” but in DisneyLand); while Marvel will hardly find itself short of less-expensive action directors looking to take a swing at it.

What it DOES highlight is the now-apparent fact that Marvel has decided to run their movie studio more-or-less the same way you run a comic book company; i.e. the policy seems to be: “These are OUR characters. You (directors, writers, actors, etc) can play around with them to an extent – but at the end of the day we have an editorial plan about continuity and where they need to end up.”

On the one hand, you can see how that’d be stifling to some filmmakers. On the other hand… maybe it’s the best way to handle project(s) like this, especially given the “fandom first” approach Marvel keeps taking on these things. They seem more interested in getting movie versions of the comics onscreen, as opposed to having their material serving as “outlines” for filmmakers to make new entities out of, basically. I mean… imagine if someone from, say, Hasbro had been able to veto Michael Bay in the planning stages for “Transformers?”

THOR. Trailer. Watch.

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It’s mostly the footage from Comic-Con with the more spoilery stuff taken out and VASTLY improved FX and color-correction, but I’m definitely feelin’ it:

The absolute best thing of it, as far as I’m concerned, is that Mjolnir (the hammer) comes off both very plausible and very badass as a weapon – it can’t be easy to make what’s basically a “boomerang hammer” work in live-action, but Brannagh etc seem to be pulling it off. I’m psyched to see how it plays to a theater.

Well played, Marvel. Now bring on Cap!

It’s Hammer Time (sorry…)

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The expectation is that the first trailer for “Thor” will be in front of “Tron: Legacy” next week, but Marvel has already let the first teaser poster out of the bag.
The big question hovering over “Thor” has been how, exactly, they plan on selling the most bizzarely-premised superhero yet put to film (in brief: The Viking God of Thunder comes to Earth, takes up crimefighting, makes friends with Iron Man and Captain America) to a mainstream audience that generally hasn’t heard of him. Whereas Hulk and Captain America are already familiar (or recognizable, at least) and Iron Man is fairly self-explanatory (“Oh, he’s got armor. I get it.”), Thor is Lee/Kirby nerd-weirdness personified: “Wouldn’t it be awesome if creatures from Norse Mythology showed up here and now and started busting stuff up?” is an instant-win pitch… to the audience that’s already going to see this. How do you get everyone else excited? The answer appears to be: gradually.

The start black background says “whatever this is, it’s serious.” The high-contrast black and white says “hey, weren’t Sin City and 300 awesome!?” The eye-line direction from the head (beard, Jesus-hair) and armored-arm says “LOTR, Braveheart, Gladiator, 300 again” ending in the hammer that says “wait… he has a HAMMER? That’s… new.” And then the color-popped red cape says “Superman? Oh! It’s a superhero… with armor and a hammer? So… Super-Gladiator?” The hope, one assumes, is for people to be mildly intrigued enough to go “Ooooh, that’s what that was!” when they see the trailer not long afterwards.