Writer guy Bob Westal was literally born in Hollywood and has commented on the worlds of movies, popular culture, politics, and food ever since. His interest in cocktails is more recent, but he made up for lost time with hundreds of “Drink of the Week” blog posts for Bullz-Eye. In addition to writing and editing, Bob also talks a lot.
An anime mash-up movie moment with a John Schneider/TV “Dukes of Hazzard” back-beat.
Remember, drivers are anime professionals. Do not attempt this in the non-ink-generated world.
If you haven’t seen “The Castle of Cagliostro,” directed by Hiyao Miyazaki, this is your reminder, even if there’s a 99% chance you have no clue what I’m talking about. (Steven Spielberg does.) And who is that nastily dressed young man? It’s Monkey Punch’s Lupin III.
I’ll be writing a little bit more about the unwisely dropped direct-to-DVD festival hit, “Trick ‘r Treat,” after I return from the con. That particularly includes what I gleaned from a trio of round robin interview things with writer-director Michael Dougherty and co-stars Lauren Lee Smith (“CSI”) and Brian Cox, definitely one of the toppermost of the poppermost, acting wise. Including Mr. Cox, all very personable folks, which never hurts in show bidness.
My reaction to the film was muted by my own tiredness, but I do think there is something there. Dougherty, a co-writer on the last couple of Bryan Singer superhero projects, has an outstanding eye for creepy beauty and he certainly brings human values and humor to his horror. However, the muddy acoustics of the hall drowned out much of the dialogue for me, and the impossibility of obtaining coffee at the convention center in the evening dulled out much of my brain. (Why, oh why, Mrs. Fields, have you abandoned me this year?) The audience reaction was, as far as I could tell, divided between wild enthusiasm and muted nitpicking. More to come.
And now, a few other more high-profile movie related con related matters live from my horrifyingly small shoe box hotel room. Also, I wonder how long I can hold out without ever setting foot in the dreaded Hall H.
Reissued by Criterion to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, this documentary from journalist-turned-filmmaker Al Reinert is comprised of truly remarkable, extremely high-quality footage from NASA’s own vaults. Featuring all 24 of the Apollo program astronauts who went to the moon, the film impressionistically leaps back and forth in time, covering both the mundane day to day preparations for the various trips by both astronauts and mission control personnel and moving forward to the ecstatic reveries brought on by traveling through space and ultimately reaching the moon. Since the only narration is provided by comments from the astronauts themselves and much of the footage has a fly-on-the-wall feeling to it, “For All Mankind” feels very much like a vérité documentary. The effect can be prettymind-blowing at times, as we realize that we are watching science fiction become living history, and with a visual clarity that the millions who watched the original Apollo landings on their television sets never imagined was even possible.
Still, for an 80-minute documentary, “For All Mankind” plays a bit long. First-time director Reinert does a solid job here of assembling the footage, but the film’s impressionistic structure makes it feel a bit more arty and, yes, spacey than it really needs to be. Also, with all due respect to the great musical innovator, musician/composer/producer Brian Eno, his atmospheric score, while often beautiful, at times lends an air of unwelcome pretension to certain scenes. Still, no space enthusiast is going to want to go through life without perpetual access to this remarkable film and some reliably awesome DVD extras from the folks at Criterion.
A slightly rushed Comic-Con box office preview….
This week sees the release of three movies with a certain degree of box office potential, middling-to-awful reviews, and little hope of outdoing the projected $31 million-floor for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” The most likely runner-up, says THR‘s Carl DiOrio, is “The Ugly Truth,” which got a facially challenged 08% “fresh” rating from Rotten Tomatoes. DiOrio says the tracking augers about $20 million worth for the R-rated comedy featuring beefcake Gerard Butler and beauty Katherine Heigl.
Also hitting theaters is the 3-D CGI animated “G-Force,” a critically derided action-comedy focusing on what Jason Zingale terms “the goldfish of the rodent world.” This one, of course, has the benefit of family appeal, and 3-D doesn’t seem to be hurting movies these days. Variety is calling $20-30 million, and I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see either a photo finish or a minor upset here with “The Ugly Truth.”
“Orphan” has aroused some minor controversy and outright disdain with its horror variation on the old “Bad Seed” storyline, but apparently its tracking (whatever that is, I’m still trying to figure) isn’t showing all that strongly. Ironically. This is actually by far the best reviewed of the three new releases, with a not-even-close-to-steller 50% “fresh” RT rating. Everything is relative.
Finally, a couple of smaller films are continuing to gradually grow wider as they show some promise of breaking through. Kathryn Bigelow’s highly acclaimed and buzz-heavy “The Hurt Locker” continues to roll on to what I’m guessing is a more than possible “Best Picture” nomination given the doubled number of slots this year. “(500) Days of Summer” is already experiencing what may be the start of a small critical backlash, which is seemingly inevitable with successful indie comedies. Given the track record of “Juno,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” etc., this is probably a good sign, commercially speaking.
This morning started out movie-ish, as I arrived just a couple of minutes late for the annual “Master of the Web” panel devoted to online geek film blogging and reportage, this year featuring such occasional or frequent guest stars here as Devin Faraci of CHUD fame and ex-Moriarity Drew McWeeney, now of HitFix. After answering many of the usual questions — no, they don’t allow advertising to influence reviews, if you’re want to start a career writing about movies, expect years of hard unpaid labor, to be followed by severely under-paid harder labor, etc — the movie stars arrived.
Brandon Routh and Sam Huntington, pals in real life, will be reprising their winning hero/sidekick act from “Superman Returns” with a darker but comedic, action/supernatural edge in the upcoming “Dead of Night.” An adaptation of the “Dylan Dog” comics series from Italy’s Tiziano Sclavi. After some semi-rough clips from the upcoming film, Routh and Huntington were accompanied onto the very crowded podium by lovely co-star Anita Briem (“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “The Tudors”), who had to put up with a question about a supposed liaison with Megan Fox. (I couldn’t find any links to back this one up. My apologies to pervs and gossip hounds alike.)
© 2026 Premium Hollywood
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑