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The Weekly Rant – August 12, 2007

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 23:15:42 +0000

Ok, ok… it’s been a while. No excuses, I’ll just give you the scoop on this week’s topics:

- Marvel’s Thor is moving forward.

- A remake of Enter the Dragon, that isn’t, really.

- Here comes another giant robot movie: Voltron.

- My thoughts on Stardust, which opened this weekend.

You can download this week’s podcast directly by clicking here.

Or you can listen to this week’s podcast by clicking here:

Review: Stardust

Vic Holtreman — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:00:01 +0000

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: The “Pirates” crowd will probably love Stardust, but if you’re expecting something like the just about perfect The Princess Bride you’ll be disappointed.

Stardust tries to be a newer version of The Princess Bride, and while exceeding that film by far in special effects, it lacks almost any of it’s charm or humor. That’s really too bad because both the very beginning and the very end of the movie are pretty good. Unfortunately what’s in between – while pretty to look at, left me feeling quite empty. I understand that this story is based on both graphic and text-only novels by Neil Gaiman. I’ve never read either and for all I know they may be excellent but any excellence was left between the pages of those books.

At the start of the film we learn of a mystical land outside the borders of a town called Wall in England. For hundreds of years a gap in this wall has been guarded, allowing no one to pass through to this unknown land. Now right off the bat I was scratching my head… the wall is only about six feet high and there’s an old man whose spent his life guarding a six foot wide gap in the wall. If the wall has been around for hundreds of years and it’s that important to not go beyond it, why isn’t it taller? And a gap in the wall for all that time? Couldn’t someone have fixed it?

Anyway, we meet a young man who has the spark in his eyes of a fellow who wants to seek adventure. He makes it past the guard and discovers a town a bit beyond the wall full of wondrous things. There he meets a young woman who it turns out is a princess enslaved by a witch who can only attain freedom once the witch dies. They have a brief tryst and 9 months later a baby shows up at his door.

The film then jumps to 18 years later and we meet the young man’s son Tristan (Charlie Cox). Tristan is infatuated with who we can only assume to be the prettiest girl in the village of Wall, and he is desperate to win her affection. Unfortunately her boyfriend is a guy who is a pompous and well-off fellow who can handle a sword, while Tristan works in the local shop and doesn’t have much skill or style. She’s really beyond his reach, as much by her station as by her own choice, and there lies the first problem with this movie: Our first reaction to the eventual hero of the story is that he’s a schmuck.

Tristan is beside himself trying to come up with ways to win her heart, and finally promises to bring her back the remains of a shooting star they see one night. The catch is that he has to bring it back within one week, since her beau is going to propose to her then. Instead of telling her to pound sand, off he goes, eventually finding that the star come to earth is the beautiful Yvaine (Claire Danes). Yvaine is in danger from not only the three most powerful witches in the land (including the still gorgeous at 49 Michelle Pfieffer) but the princes of the kingdom who must retrieve a jewel from her in order to become king.

At first Tristan and Yvaine do not hit it off at all, but it’s a foregone conclusion that they will fall in love by the end of the story. Their journey to Wall is quite an adventure, complete with encounters with Lamia, the witch who wants to cut out Yvaine’s heart to regain her and her sisters’ youth, being chased by the princes and a trip on a flying pirate ship run by Captain Shakespeare (no I’m not making that up). The captain of the ship is played by Robert Deniro, and if you ever plan on seeing any of his older films where he plays his typical tough guy self, you’d better rent those before you see him in Stardust.

Sure, the special effects are dazzling but there were instances where it was so obviously CGI that I was really surprised. When one of the peasants is turned from a man into a woman and the camera focused on his chest turning into breasts, I could swear I’d seen better transition effects in TV commercials. There was a lot of eye candy as far as cool stuff on the screen, but once again, a lot of it seemed to look like it was out of a video game trailer.

Then we have the two lead characters, Tristan and Yvaine – for most of the film they were completely bland. No spark, no engaging personality. I found myself wishing that the movie had continued with the young man who played Tristan’s father at a young age (Ben Barnes) and the princess (Kate Magowan) instead of these two. Finally, towards the very end of the film the character of Charlie Cox as Tristan gets interesting and a bit of charisma, but it took far too long. And as for Claire Danes? She just didn’t do anything for me as an ethereal character fallen from the sky. Sure, she’s pretty and her lines were written to give her more depth than the girl Tristan was infatuated with, but for the most part she didn’t come across much better.

It wasn’t awful, but for most of it I didn’t care how it would end. Having said that, the film does redeem itself somewhat towards the last 15 minutes or so, but it’s certainly not great all the way through.

Go buy yourself a copy of The Princess Bride instead. You’ll thank me in the end.

July 26th Comic-Con Report:

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:24:48 +0000

This post will be continually updated.

At the Paramount panel:

Hot Rod

The three leads from Hot Rod introduced a clip from the film. It was a hysterical parody of a classic scene from Footloose taken way over the top. I have to admit it was pretty damned funny.

Stardust

Neil Gaiman was there to introduce a clip from the upcoming film. It was quite an extended clip showing Michelle Pfeiffer as the Witch turning two goats into men in order to help her staff an inn that she also creates in the clip to trap the young woman (Claire Danes) who is quite literally the star of the movie.

The effects were quite elaborate with everything being created from magic flames. It’s kind of hard coming into a scene like this without much context… one thing that I thought was kind of wierd, was that when the witch turned the goats into men, she decided to turn one of them into a young woman. Although this goat was a man for all of 30 seconds, it/he became amazingly fascinated with the female physique.

In regards to a Sandman movie, Neil stated that he’s rather see no movie made at all than a poor one.

Beowulf

He and Roger Avery then discussed Beowulf briefly. It was disclosed that it will be in 3D and I had no idea (unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the event yesterday where they showed 20 minutes of the film). They discussed how difficult it had been to turn the classic story into a coherent film.

As far as casting, far before production of the film was anywhere near to even happening, Neil said that they sat in a bar and discussed their fantasy cast for a movie, and in the end every single person they wanted ended up in the movie.

It will be the widest 3D release of a movie ever done, and will be viewable in 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D.

They did premiere a 2D version of the trailer on the big screen. The only phrase I can think of to describe the trailer is absolutely gorgeous.

Cloverfield

They showed the trailer again, which was great on a big screen with killer audio. J.J. Abrams said that he wanted a monster movie, a REAL monster movie – something to be our version of Godzilla (but NOT Godzilla). He did NOT give the title, but premiered a poster which showed the Statue of Liberty missing it’s head. That’s all for Cloverfield folks!

The Spiderwick Chronicles

This one is basically about fairies and goblins. All the different types of fairies that exist, including the not so nice ones. Big time special effects guy Phil Tippet was there to introduce some info on how they created the characters including your basic goblins, bull-goblins (which look like a freaking ugly frog/angler fish standing on two legs). The goal was to create creatures that look biologically real more than like fantasy creatures.

Iron Man

Jon Favreau did a very cute video presentation promising that is was early animation footage – it was footage of the old Iron Man cartoon from the 60’s. He ended up appearing in person. He then went ahead and showed some footage and all I can say is HOLY CRAP!

Click here for a full description of the Iron Man movie clip from the Comic-Con.

Indiana Jones

Steven Spielberg was onscreen live from the set, and he promised that this movie was for the fans. Harrison Ford was also there talking about being happy to be “back in the sweaty dirty clothes.”

Shia Lebouf and Ray Winston were there as well, wearing their costumes and sitting in director’s chairs and to finish things off, Karen Allen walked in, reprising her role as Marion.

Spielberg reiterated how this one is totally for the fans, and that he thinks about how the fans will like what he’s doing on every single scene he shoots.

Star Trek

Wriiters, producers and director J.J. Abrams were on hand to talk about the film. Abrams said that when he wrote a draft of the script he was really jealous of whoever would end up directing the film.

Casting: Despite rumours to the contrary Abrams said that they are trying desperately to fit William Shatner into the film. He just said they want to do it right on not just squeeze him into the movie.

Zachary Quinto of Heroes has been announced as the actor to play Spock in the film, although they’re still looking for someone to cast as Kirk. I think Quinto will make a FANTASTIC Spock.

They also confirmed that Leonard Nimoy will be reprising his role as Spock in the film. Nimoy is at the panel and he stated that it “was logical” for Quinto to play Spock and that he thought the script is wonderful and fabulous. I don’t take his opinion lightly as he directed a couple of the best Trek films to date.