Archive for June, 2007
24 items.
Jun18
REVIEW- FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER
June 18th, 2007 |
(5 votes, average: 6.80 out of 10)
“Well, it’s not as bad as the first one.”
That may sound like faint praise, but it’s literally the best compliment anyone can pay to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
Despite a strong box office performance, after the original Fantastic Four movie from 2005 left such a bad taste in the mouth of fans and critics alike, expectations were low for the sequel. Of course then they had to come out with an excellent trailer to get our hopes up and seeing The Silver Surfer in action got the geek nation whipped up in a frenzy.
Oh, how they toy with our emotions.
For the most part, the film lives up to the hype. Finally able to set aside the clumsy exposition requirements of the first film, director Tim Story drops us square into the middle of the everyday life of our heroes. Each of them have settled into the roles of super-powered protectors, but not as media figures. As Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba) prepare to walk down the aisle for the fourth time, the media instrusion makes it easy to see why there have been so many postponements.
This time, however, the interruption occurs at a more… cosmic scale – The Silver Surfer.
While most of the good moments with the Surfer were used up in that trailer that cause all of our attention, his exciting chase with The Human Torch (Chris Evans) sets the rest of the movie into motion. The Surfer is flying all over the world, causing weather disruptions and undertaking massive terraforming to prepare Earth for the consumption of his “master” – the devourer of worlds, Galactus. It then becomes the peroggitive of The Fantastic Four and a particularly abrasive Army General (Andre Braugher) to catch up to The Surfer and neutralize him.
Everything The Surfer does is poetry in motion and a joy to watch on screen. Credit there can be given to Peter Jackson’s WETA Workshop in New Zealand and motion-capture performer Doug Jones. You don’t know Doug Jones, but you’re probably familiar with his work as the amphibian Abe Sapien in 2004’s Hellboy and most recently as the gruesome Pale Man and the titular Faun in last year’s Pan’s Labyrinth. His stoic, elegant performance as The Surfer speaks volumes although Jones himself does not. Laurence Fishburne provides his voice.
It’s when the Surfer is not on the screen that the movie begins to lose focus. Much of the movie is spent on The Invisible’s Woman insecurities surrounding her marriage and the ability to lead a normal life. The Human Torch is also the center of a sub-plot where he attempts to grow out of his showboating ways and become more of a team player. Meanwhile, Michael Chiklis as The Thing is almost completely left out. Useful only, it would seem, for crashing through walls or lifting heavy things.
While it probably isn’t easy to give equal time to each of the characters problems or focus on their fantastic powers, what does make it into the movie feels less like actual character development and more like details screenwriters Don Payne and Mark Frost tossed in to keep the movie from being a string of globe-trotting action pieces. But if they wanted to add something significant to the movie, they could have completely dumped Julian McMahon returning as Dr. Doom and shown us more of The Surfer and the sacrifice he made before becoming the herald of Galactus. As it is in the movie, his origin is delt with in a few line exchanges and they show us nothing. Doom’s presence in the movie felt like tacked on just to keep continuity with the first movie. They could have had him sit this one this one out and been totally fine.
A lot of movies this summer have been tagged for being too long. Rise of the SIlver Surfer is actually a movie that probably could have benefitted from another 20 minutes. Briskly burning through it’s 90 minute running time, I sometimes felt that I was watching the movie on fast forward. Or, perhaps, like I was just being shown storyboards brought to life. Director Tim Story’s history as a commercial and music video director is transparent on screen. His style lends itself well to our sound-bite culture. The action sequences are punctuated well with visuals that would work great for a trailer as a promotional photo, but rarely does it add up to anything substantial.
Equally medicore are the performances. While Jones does well with The Surfer and Evans captures the hubris of The Human Torch, both Andre Braugher and Jessica Alba are entirely over the top, Ioan Gruffudd far to flat and the film’s greatest acting resource – Michael Chiklis – is completely wasted.
What the movie does right, it does spectacularly. But it’s faults are equally spectacular. This makes the movie more balanced than it’s predecessor and more enjoyable, but, ultimately, not as satisfying a ride as it could have been.
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I need to put this out there before it slips my mind, but for those of you who are fans of The Triple Feature talkcast, we will NOT be broadcasting tonight.
Gordon is out of town, which Joe and I knew in advance. But what I had totally forgotten is that Cami and I are going to see John Mayer and Ben Folds in concert tonight (the whitest concert u know!), so I won’t be home to host the show. I doubt Joe wants to do it all by his lonesome.
If you haven’t had an opportunity to listen to The Triple Feature, this week might be a good opportunity to indoctrinate yourself. Just go to our show listing over at Talkshoe and download one of our recent episodes. I actually just got an e-mail from someone last week who said that he was listening to our discussion about Spider-Man 3 in episode 20 and that the conversation holds up really well. He felt a lot of the points we made were still relevant. So that’s nice to know!
Anyway, check us out and we’ll be back next week with an all new show!
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Check out this picture I took with my cell phone (man, I love technology).
It’s this giant display at my local theater for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, mannequins? I’m just trying to figure out how they shipped the damn thing. Must have cost a pretty penny.
At any rate, I thought it was unique enough to share. Does your local theater have anything like this? Just curious.
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Oh, sure. They changed the names of the characters, the location and updated it for the modern day – But don’t delude yourself, screenwriter Steve Oedekerk. Evan Almighty is outright theft of The Book of Genesis and you will incur the wrath of The Almighty!
You don’t think the Good Lord will garnish wages? You just try Him, buster!
Okay, so maybe not. But you have to think at some point it crossed the mind of some shyster to file a lawsuit on behalf of God. Certainly more ridiculous things have been done in His name…
Evan Almighty comes out this weekend and I’m torn because I’m a big Steve Carell fan. I love The Office – watch it ever week – and I think he hit it out of the park with The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
However, Evan Almighty has the earmarks of such an obvious money grab, I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to see it. In fact, I’m worried that it might burn up a little of the good will Carell has earned with his previous roles and cameos.
The movie has two strikes against it, in my mind. First, that it’s director is Tom Shadyac. He made a great first impression with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But I think most sensible people can see that his direction had little to do with the movie’s success. Unless, of course, you count pointing the camera at Jim Carrey and letting him do whatever the hell he wants some kind of intuative genius.
Since then, Shadyac has made a string of family-friendly, generally broad comedies that fail to inspire. He had another successful follow up with The Nutty Professor. But again, he skates by on the strength of his lead performer in Eddie Murphy. Liar, Liar was a modest hit. and Patch Adams was almost universally despised.
To me, Shadyac is one of those guys who happens to be in the right place at the right time and hitches his wagon to whatever comedy star is big. He’s doing it again with Steve Carell and the whole thing stinks of a hack job to me.
The second strike against the film are reports of it’s bloated $250 million budget – the largest ever for a comedy.
That’s a big red flag for me. Throwing money at an action movie or a science fiction epic is fine. The results typically show up on screen in the form of larger explosions or more ships in a space battle. But NEVER has comedy been made more funny by being given a larger budget. It speaks to gross mismanagement. Or worse, that the film doesn’t have it’s head on it’s shoulders.
I understand that there is probably a lot of effects work going into making the ark look real and it’s a big boat. So a big boat would cost more. I’m also sure it was a headache to get a bunch of animals to do what you want them to on screen and that took a lot of time to shoot. Time costs money. I get that.
But so what? If I can see a movie like Knocked Up – which cost $30 million to make – and laugh my ass off for, let’s say, 90 minutes, is it plausible to assume that a film that cost over eight time more money to make will result in me laughing eight times as hard?
That’s a screwed up measuring stick. I know. But I think it’s indicative of what’s wrong with the big budget Hollywood movies. If you can make more with less, why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t always have to be about spectacle. Even if your story is Biblical in proportion.
On the plus side, the production made a concentrated effort to reduce the impact of it’s carbon footprint by going green on many aspects of assembling the film. In an effort to “walk the walk” of the film’s themes of social and environmental responsibility, materials used in the film were donated to Habitat For Humanity, the cast used two-sided scripts to reduce the amount of paper consumed, Shadyac gave bicycles as gifts to reduce car usage and the production planted trees near the site in Crozet, Virgina where the movie was filmed as a thank you to the community.
Since it typically costs more money to do the responsible thing, it’s possible this is where most of Evan Almighty’s $250 million budget went. If that’s the case, than I’m a little more hopeful. But it doesn’t hold water when you get down to business. At the end of the day, does the movie entertain? No amount of money for special effects or environmental initiatives are going to offset that. These are all issues anciliary to the point of this kind of entertainment and it’s not a good sign that Almighty is getting more press for this than for the quality of it’s script or the ability of it’s performers.
I guess it’s wait and see.
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This is just a random bit of news. Take it for what you will.
On Monday, Cami and I went to see Ben Folds and John Mayer in concert. After Ben’s set, while they were setting the stage for Mayer, Cami and I were sitting and talking. Out of nowhere she says, “I think you should do Theater Hopper two times a week.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. “Why?” I asked. “Because I think it’s killing you to only do it once a week,” she said.
As you recall, I reduced the number of strips to once a week in order to spend more time with Cami and Henry. I’m still updating three times a week, having replaced the comics with movie and DVD reviews on Mondays that some of you really love (and some of you really hate) and random sketches on Friday (which almost everyone is indifferent to).
Now since things with Henry are kind of settling down and because I pretty much only work on the comic after he’s asleep, Cami has given me this “permission slip” of sorts to increase production on the site.
The problem is, I’m not sure what to do with it.
Cami suggested that I update with two comics a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think that’s a bad idea. I’ve gotten you guys into the habit of coming to the site every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for almost 5 years. It would be pretty jarring to switch to Tuesday/Thursday.
So, the obvious solution to me is to continue doing reviews on Mondays (tossing in sketches when I don’t have a review) and doing the comics on Wednesday and Friday.
I don’t know when this would begin, but I’m mulling my options and hopefully it will happen soon. I do feel a little rusty, though, so it’s intimidating. When you’re updating three times a week, you don’t have time to think about what you’re doing. You gotta be quick with the funny! But since I went to one comic a week, I could be a little lazy with how I scheduled my time. I need to draft a new schedule and figure out how things will work in the New World Order.
Anyway, I guess I just wanted to tease at a possible change in the future and I was curious as to your response. If you have anything you want to share, go ahead and leave it in the comments!
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Jun22
I have to be honest with you. I had no idea what I was going to do for a sketch today. Evan Almighty failed to inspire and the only other quasi-high profile movie this week is 1408 – which seems to be on NO ONE’S radar screens.
So, I came up with this!
He’s the movie ninja and, as you can see, instead of throwing shuriken, he throws movie reels. DANGEROUS! It was an idea I had for a shirt that I would probably polish up if was actually going to produce it. As things stand, I’m still waiting for Movie Law #948 to come back from the printer. So we’ll see how that one sells before I introduce a new design.
By the way, you can still place an order for Movie Law #948. The pre-order is complete, but it gave me a sense of what the demand will be. So I should have enough in all sizes.
Actually, I have another idea in mind to produce before this one. But if you think it might fly, tell me what you think of the movie ninja in the comments below!
I don’t really have a lot of movie stuff to talk about today, so I thought I would tip you off to a great contest surrounding the DVD release of the movie 300 on July 31. I know that’s a ways off for the DVD, but I wanted to give everyone first crack at the contest.
Visit the website http://www.JoinThe300.com and enter for a chance to win a trip to the San Diego Comic Con to compete for a chance to visit the set of 300’s director Zach Snyder’s next big project – Watchmen!
If you’re a comic book nerd like I am, this is a big deal. So toss your hat into the ring. Even if you don’t win the grand prize, there are other giveaways including signed mini-posters, iPod shuffles and 300 copies of the DVD.
I’m working right now on getting a review copy of 300 so I can tell you guys all about the special features of the two-disc collectors edition. If there was a movie ripe for extra content, 300 would be it. This will probably be the biggest DVD release of the summer, so I’m really looking forward to it.
That about does it for me. But check back later in the day. I want to share with you some artwork I’ve created for my good friends over at Juice – where Theater Hopper is run in regional syndication each week. It’s art for a coloring contest! That doesn’t happen every day! I’m really proud of how it turned out and I want to share it with you.
Stay tuned for more!
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I posted the first blog last night, so when I said “come back later in the day,” I think I was running on a different timetable. Either that, or I’m just impatient. Or, potentially fearful that I will forget to update the site with the art I promised you.
So here it is. Here’s the artwork I did for a recent local coloring contest!
I probably have to explain what this is about.
Y’see, my editor over at Juice – a weekly publication created by writers of The Des Moines Register and aimed at the 20-something set – asked me if I would be interested in producing some artwork for a coloring contest they were running called “Summer Fun in Des Moines.” I jumped at the chance. I would have done it just to have something to do. But it didn’t hurt that they were paying me extra for it.
I was stuck for ideas for the longest time, though. See, even though it’s a coloring contest, IT’S NOT FOR KIDS! So I had to think of something appropriately “adult” without crossing the line into anything vulgar. I asked my editor for suggestions and he said, “People socializing. You know, drinking.” This is not an unreasonable request for Juice. They often go around to all the social events in the city and take pictures of people out having a good time. Then they post them on their web site.
I felt a little funny about drawing cartoons of people drinking, but I think what I came up with is open to interpretation. I really like how the girl turned out in this one. I tried something different with how I draw eyes and it worked. I also went a little more cartoony for the man’s jaw line. You see that kind of style a lot now, but it’s hard to get my brain to tell my hand to do that. So I thought that was a minor accomplishment.
The land marks in the background are the Simon Estes Amphitheater and the state Capitol. The Simon Estes Amphitheater is basically this metal arch over a concrete pavilion next to the Des Moines River where they have a lot of concert performances in the summer. Simon Estes is an opera singer and probably the most cultured celebrity we have, so they trot him out for all kinds of stuff.
The Capitol building is, well, a Capitol building. But I think it’s an amazing piece of architecture. I’ve been to a few other state capitals and they don’t inspire anything in me like this building does. The domes are gold leaf!
Anyway, that’s probably more Iowa history than you care about. I just wanted to show you guys some artwork I was proud of. Hope you liked it!
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I have to let everyone know right off the bat that the following content is not mine, but stolen from this post over at BestWeekEver.tv and I think it’s brilliant. It’s an excellent bit of satire poking fun at the ridiculousness of the AFI Top 100 list and the utter stupidity of their recently revised list.
Read and enjoy!
Citizen Kane Has Not Magically Become Terrible In The Last Nine Years
This week, The American Film Institute announced its updated list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time, and while “Citizen Kane held down the top spot, I was surprised to see how many 40 and 50 year old movies are a lot greater now than they were in 1998. Here are some of the notable leaps from the 1998 List to the 2007 List and my explanations for how they happened:
“Raging Bull – 1998: #24, 2007: #4
2007 Oscar wins for “The Departed made critics go back and take a look at spunky, talented kid named “Marty Scorcese.
“The Searchers – 1998: #96, 2007: #12
Overwhelming gayness of “Brokeback Mountain has critics longing for the days of the John Wayne western, when gay sex was merely implied.
“The Godfather – 1998: #3, 2007: #2
(passing up “Casablanca)Critics were so happy the ending didn’t just go to silent black, they were able to disregard existence of both World War II and love.
“The Jazz Singer – 1998: #90, 2007: Not in Top 100
America is still just as racist as it was in 1998, we’re just not voting racistly anymore.
“The General – 1998: Not in Top 100, 2007: #18
Massive success of recent crappy sequels have made people realize they’d much rather pay to see Buster Keaton run around on top of a train and fall a lot.
“On The Waterfront – 1998: #8, 2007: #19
Critics agree that it’s becoming exponentially harder each year to not imagine that every time Marlon Brando speaks, he’s asking for butter.
“Vertigo – 1998: #61, 2007: #9
Grammy voters’ neverending U2 orgy somehow spills over to AFI list; Bob Dylan’s most recent album also named #85 greatest film ever made.
“Schindler’s List – 1998: #9, 2007: #8
Historians have discovered that the Holocaust was, in fact, about 1% more horrible than originally believed.
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Jun25
For the first time in a few weeks, I don’t have a movie review to share with you guys on a Monday. For some of you this is probably a welcome relief. For others, maybe somewhat jarring.
Movies weren’t in the cards for Cami and I this weekend. Henry came down with his first illness – an eye and ear infection – and we had a couple of rough nights. He’s been to his doctor and he’s on antibiotics now. When I left the house, he was all smiles and bouncing like crazy in his bouncy seat. So, it’s all good.
Of course, even if Henry were well, I doubt we would have made any plans. Evan Almighty was number one at the box office this weekend, but it’s $30 million take in the fact of it’s $250 million budget pretty much categorizes it as a bomb. Surprisingly, 1408 took a huge chunk out of it’s potential take by grabbing $20 million on it’s own. So I guess I was wrong in my assessment last week that the film was on no one’s radar.
On Wednesday, Live Free or Die Hard comes out and that’s what today’s sketch is in honor of. More specifically, me as a generic action hero. I have some strong opinions about LFoDH, but I think I’ll reserve them for Wednesday. As I alluded to last week, I might start upping production of the comic to twice a week with one comic on Wednesday and the other on Friday. I think I’m going to kick that off this week. So, you have that to look forward to!
Come back later today for an announcement regarding tonight’s Triple Feature talkcast and news about a brand new contest you can participate in!
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I just wanted to remind everyone to check out The Triple Feature talkcast tonight at 9:00 PM CST over at TalkShoe.
Last week, we took the night off. Gordon has been busy looking for an apartment and Cami and I went to the Ben Folds / John Mayer concert. Since Joe was all by his lonesome, we decided to scrap it.
This week we’re back and ready to kick ass. Topics of discussion will include Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 1408 and Evan Almighty. Be there and toss in your two cents by either participating in the live chat room or calling in and speaking to the three of us in real-time!
Another reason to tune in to tonight’s broadcast is because we’re running in conjunction with the release of the film Evening on June 29. If you haven’t heard of it, the cast is insane – Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep, and Glenn Close all star in it.
As part of the contest, we’ll be giving away a make up bag, a cook book and two posters. If you’re interested, just listen to tonight’s broadcast for the first half of a two-part phrase. Come back to Theater Hopper on Wednesday for the second half of the phrase. When you have the complete phrase, e-mail it along with your name, age and mailing address to theaterhopper@hotmail.com. The winner will be chosen at random!
For a synopsis of the film along with links to the trailer and video clips, please click here And don’t forget to listen to The Triple Feature tonight at 9:00 PM CST at TalkShoe.com!
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