The Boston Online Film Critics Association, of which I am a member, now has their very own YouTube Channel. Bookmark it now, because fun stuff will be incoming.
"Planes"
Here’s all you need to know about Disney’s “Cars” spinoff, “Planes.” Pixar – which had no problem signing it’s name to both of the wholly-disposable “Cars” movies, is letting Disney take sole credit for this one.Dane Cook stars as a cropduster who dreams of competing in an airplane race against an elite gathering of broad ethnic stereotypes.
Ma vie en rose
Huh. Well, this will be interesting.
The Hub, which is still looking for an original kids’ series that people will watch other than “Friendship is Magic,” thinks it’s found a winner in an Australian animated series called “Shezow.” I hadn’t heard of it until the (week old) trailer for it’s U.S. premier started making the rounds, but the premise is interesting: The (magical) mantle of a female superhero with decidedly female-gendered accoutremants (sparkly miniskirted costume, Barbie-esque pink car, etc) is accidentally passed to a teenaged boy.
Okay, so it’s kind of a single-joke premise parody wise re: male superhero uniforms are considered “unisex” but heroines’ are not, but I’ve seen a lot more made from a lot less. I don’t recall ever hearing if anybody freaked out about this in it’s native Australia, but as you’ll expect the usual gang of idiots is already apoplectic about what they see as another assault on children by The Gay Agenda.
Even without their “help,” of course, if the series catches at all that it’ll be roped into the debate(s) surrounding LGBTQ children is inevitable; though it’s hard for me to get a read on what those communities will/do actually think of this: The premise appears mostly played for laughs, i.e. Shezow is alternately thrilled with his powers but annoyed/embarassed at the form(s) they take (I haven’t tracked down an episode, but I’m assuming that, by the law of teen heroes’ powers usually being learning-opportunities, the hero has some sort of overcoming-his-own-assumptions-about-girls’-abilities character-arc going on?), and I’m not 100% clear as to whether the transformation (his “By the power of GraySkull!” is “You go girl!”) makes him biologically female or just puts the costume/hair/makeup on; but my sense is that any kid-targeted series that – even humorously – says “dressing outside gender-roles is cool/acceptable” has to be a step in the right direction, yes?
Well, we’ll see. “Shezow” makes it’s U.S. debut Saturday, June 1st.
Big Picture: "Dumping Irony"
Controversial "Blue" Scores Big At Cannes
And we now have our customary first big Awards Season Frontrunner (for awhile anyway) as the voting concludes at the Cannes Film Festival. The jury – this year headed by none other than Steven Spielberg – awarded the Palm d’Or (top prize) to “Blue Is The Warmest Color” (aka “La vie de Adele Parts 1 &2”); a French romantic drama that was already one of the most buzzed-about and controversial entries in this year’s festival.
Based on a French graphic novel (apparently unavailable in the U.S.), the story follows a young woman’s (Adele Exarchopoulos) awakening to an intense attraction to another woman in her teens and into early adulthood over the course of a lengthy relationship with said woman (Lea Seydoux,) whose blue-dyed hair is the source of the title. The film runs an impressive 3 hours, the majority of which is simply conversational scenes between the two women and a small supporting cast.
However, the element that had the festival talking early were sex scenes described as “frank” – which is arthouse-movie speak for “actual fucking” – one of which allegedly goes for a full ten unbroken minutes (Cannes audiences are being reported to have applauded the – literal – climax of said scene as though a monument had just exploded in a Roland Emmerich movie.) There are already questions as to whether or not the film will require major editing to be viewable in certain countries, and a skeptical backlash painting the film as being over-praised by lesbian-fetishizing male critics and jurors (the director is a man, Tunisian-born Abdellatif Kechiche.) Meanwhile, it’s victory will almost certainly become a talking point in it’s native France; which just legalized gay marriage in the face of major opposition from conservative and religious organizations: The nutcase who shot himself in Notre Dame Cathedral last week did so in protest of legalization.
In any case, the film is now slated for an October release in France followed by a year-end rollout in the United States in anticipation of Oscar nominations.
The Hard Stuff
Below, the trailer for this year’s movie the “endurance cinephile” in your life (the guy who prides himself on having “made it through” notoriously heavy/violent/controversial works) will be going on about this year: “The Act of Killing.” The good news? It indeed looks/sounds kind of amazing.
The premise? In Indonesia, the government that operated the country’s notorious Death Squad killings of communists and suspected communists that are said to have numbered at least 1,000,000 is still effectively running the show, and while the vestiges of a modernizing nation are all present the perpetrators of this genocide have gone largely unpunished – rather, many live as lionized national celebrities. In “Act,” filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer documents the life of a (mostly) unrepentant death squad leader named Anwar Congo, now a grandfather, who claims to have personally killed 1,000 men himself.
The hook? Oppenheimer asks (and provides the resources) for Congo and his surviving co-killers to make a movie about their death-squad exploits. Not a documentary or a historical-recreation, mind you, but a narrative version of the events from their point of view. As it turns out, Congo’s particular outfit were gangsters specializing in movie-piracy before they were conscripted to help with the slaughter… and they’re big movie buffs. So not only does their version feature death squad killings (with them directing the amateur actors playing the victims and killers) recreated by the guys who did them with low-budget special-effects makeup and gore, it also ends up featuring “arty” setpieces, elaborate costumes, fantasy-sequences and (apparently) a musical number.
Yes. A documentary about mass-murderers directing, staging and acting-in a lavish, “visionary” movie about their own mass-murders. Holy. Shit.
Does The "Carrie" Remake Now Have The Stupidest Marketing Campaign Ever?
Pop Quiz, hotshot.
You’ve got a horror movie to sell. It’s a remake of one of the genre’s modern-day classics, a film that damn near everyone has either seen or at least is familiar with the plot and iconic moments thereof. One of the small handful of genuine horror (as opposed to “suspense” or “thriller”) entries alongside “Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby” to be recognized as great, important films even outside their often-disregarded genre. Based on a book by easily the most famous living author of horror or anything else on the planet.
What’s more, said book (and original film) are absolutely loaded with button-pushing themes and imagery about evergreen Important Subjects like female sexuality, bullying, child-abuse and religious extremism.Your cast? Headlined by Julianne Moore, one of the most lauded actresses in the business, and superstar child actress Chloe Grace Moritz on the cusp of her “I intend to still be doing this as an adult!” step into the teen stardom maelstrom. Your director? Kimberly Pierce, best known for the critical and awards darling “Boys Don’t Cry.”
So! Given all that, how would you choose to market this film, which, by all accounts and evidence, is primed to be a serious, perhaps even noteworthy work?
Well, if you answered “Unfunny reference to a tired, ancient Internet Meme,” you might have a future working for MGM/ScreenGems, which has unveiled the below-pictured, head-slappingly stupid “motion poster” for the remake of “Carrie.”
http://ec2-75-101-134-239.compute-1.amazonaws.com/carrie-on/image.php?width=400&locale=en_GB
“Keep Calm And CARRIE On.” Because the prom, and because there’s a crown on that old British WWII poster that was hanging up next to “The Kiss” on every other college dorm wall a decade ago.
I’d love to know what the logic was in deciding that making your own movie into a joke was the best way to sell this; though I suspect it’s something like the resident overpaid Social Media Strategist opining that it would be good for them if Tumblr got on a “Carrie on” viral kick and deciding to start it themselves. Self-meme-ing famously failed to make “Snakes On A Plane” happen at the boxoffice, but at least that was always going to be a throwaway movie. I can’t really see deciding that this was the way to go for something that was previously being pitched as a serious film.
Shazbot!
We cannot stop Robin Williams, we can only contain Robin Williams.
Below, the extended trailer for CBS’s fall sitcom offering “The Crazy Ones,” which appears to compress the entirety of it’s pilot episode into five minutes. The premise? Somebody though “Y’know, people seem to love ‘Mad Men,’ but maybe they’d love it more as a wacky-father/serious-daughter workplace comedy with Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar:”
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 