Author: Bob Westal (Page 235 of 265)

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.

Harry Potter and the more family-friendly rating

July 8, 2009 /

Early ticket sales are outpacing “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” which naturally warms my Michael Bay-unfriendly heart, but that’s not the only news for the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

A day or two back, Pamela McClintock of Variety wrote an article detailing the possible box office up- and downsides of the milder PG MPAA rating the upcoming Harry Potter film, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” will have in comparison to the stronger PG-13 rating of the previous film. (Shorter version: parents may be more likely to encourage to allow kids to see it, but teens may prefer the allure of mild cinematic transgression promised by the PG-13.)

This PG-rating seems like another example of the arbitrary nature of the ratings. (It’s actually worse than that, but that’s another blog post.) Of course, I haven’t seen the new Potter film — and I’m not half way through reading the book yet — but by the very nature of the series, with the characters maturing and a war of wizards raging, the new film should, if anything, be at least slightly more violent and sexually charged than the prior film.

Even with most of us lucky enough to lead lives more or less without violence, real life is NC-17 from a fairly young age. For most of us, daily life is full of cursing, scatology (assuming we’re reasonably regular), sex and/or thoughts of sex. It’s not implying any scandal whatsoever to say that a sufficiently frank documentary about the making of a Harry Potter film could get an quick R-rating simply for language. Thanks to Ricky Gervais and company, we already have an idea of what such a documentary might be like.

External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News, TV Comedies

Unclean! Unclean!

July 7, 2009 /

As if the whole Michael Jackson thing wasn’t already starting to make me feel vaguely icky in a Robert Altmanesque kind of a way, we have something that takes the Hollywood squirm factor to a possible new height. Via a particularly lively “Today in Film Bloggery” post by Christopher Campbell comes word of a New York Post report that Michael Bay is supposed to have admitted to have had “Transformers” star Megan Fox audition — or perhaps “audition”– by allowing him to tape her washing his Ferrari. (What, he couldn’t afford the handwash on Santa Monica and La Brea?)

Now, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical here, but I was already getting a good hate on the noxious and apparently proud-to-be-dickish director from stories like this. And, even before that, based on his work and press interviews, I steadfastly refuse to believe Bay’s claim (reportedly refuted by DNA testing, which Bay disputes) that he is the illegitimate son of director John Frankenheimer. The director of the best political thriller ever made, 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate,” as well as numerous other films including “The Train” and “Ronin,” Frankenheimer was mightily skilled at combining character and thought with brilliantly coherent action sequences that could actually be understood. He was a model of integrity as a filmmaker and, as far as I can tell, as a man. Could Bay really have lost the genetic lottery so badly?

On a related note, Christopher Campbell’s previous film blog round-up deals with the controversy set-up by the trailer for Megan Fox’s next film, a horror comedy written by screenwriter Diablo Cody of “Juno” fame, one of the more celebrated and despised scribes to come around the film world in some time. The red band trailer below (a sexually specific F word, a bit of light gore, plenty of innuendo and plenty of Ms. Fox being much more sexy and interesting than I’ve seen here elsewhere) should give you some idea of what the shouting is about. All I know for sure is that I’ll think it’s a classic compared to “Transformers.”

Action Movies, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, Gossip, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movies, News

“Ben” — a Michael Jackson movie moment

July 7, 2009 /

There’s no point in ignoring the posthumous Michael Jackson mania sweeping Movietown today. So, here’s a  creepily sentimental movie moment with a lot of poignant subtext which also happens to feature the late singer’s first solo hit. “Ben” was a sequel to the earlier “Willard” which was remade in 2003. I’ve seen neither film, but they were horror flicks featuring nasty but (I guess) lovable killer rats. It looks like the first film tried to combine “Psycho” and “The Birds,” but “Ben” appears to be going for something more like “Rattie Come Home.”

The song, by Walter Scharf and Don Black, was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe, and there’s no denying the awe-inspiring vocal abilities of the eleven or twelve-year old Jackson. He sells the song with delicacy and emotion, and it saves the final scene below. However, it probably helped with the Top 40 success of the song that most listeners had no idea it was about a rat.

Embedding has been disabled, but YouTube also has a powerful video of Jackson performing the song on the Oscars in 1973.

Horror Movies, Movies, News

Monday Night Quickies

July 6, 2009 /

Not that kind of quicky. I’m referring to brief links to stuff around the interwebs, tonight with a geeky edge.

* The “actuals” are in on the weekend box office race. The “Transformers” sequel won by a wafer thin half a million smackers, dang it.

* I’m not sure how this started, but my pattern on the “Harry Potter” franchise has been to read the books just before the films come out. To avoid spoilers for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (I’m on page 139 and the story’s barely begun), I’m not reading any reviews right now. Thanks to the miracle of Rotten Tomatoes I can nevertheless say that the reviews for the film thereof are looking quite good thus far. That’s a good thing because director David Yates is finishing out the series, which seems to be wrapping up much better than it started. The choice of Yates, a specialist in TV miniseries, to wrap up the films makes a lot of sense, especially since that’s essentially what the Potter movies are — the most expensive miniseries ever made.

Continue reading »

Action Movies, Actors, Horror Movies, Movies, News, Reviews, Sci-Fi Movies

Remembering McNamara and “The Fog of War”

July 6, 2009 /

I ordinarily wouldn’t be writing here about the death of a highly controversial former Secretary of Defense, no matter how crucial his role in history. However, the death of Robert S. McNamara is very much worth a brief post even in a mostly lighthearted entertainment blog because of his involvement in one of Errol Morris’s best documentarys, 2004’s “The Fog of War.” Here’s a clip that might be a bit of a bummer for a Monday after a holiday weekend, but it raises more important questions in four minutes than I could write in a month of really serious posts.

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In a really creepy bit of timing, The House Next Door has just posted a lengthy (I’ve only read about half, so far) but I’d say very worthwhile consideration of documentarian Morris’s entire film career by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard, including an appropriately skeptical consideration of McNamara’s attempts at self-rehabilitation in this film. You can also see if I was one of those critics Ed and Jason mention who took him at face value in my review from late 2003.

Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News

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