I would very much like to believe in an afterlife. I fear, however, that for me the evidence is simply not there. I’d go into it further, but I don’t want to bum you and myself out. That’s why I find even the scariest ghost story or after-life derived thriller an inherently reassuring experience in some sense. If any extant writer and director pair could persuade me for a couple of hours to forget my disagreements and just go with the supernatural flow, Clint Eastwood and the increasingly busy Peter Morgan (“Frost/Nixon,” “The Damned United”) would seem to have a decent shot at it.
Not that it really matters to me for a movie like this, but I have seen more believable and/or impressive effects. Otherwise, well, I’m not sure what to think from this trailer which looks rather trite, but I’ve come to export more from Eastwood and Morgan. I hope I get it.
It’s Saturday, so who feels like working? Certainly not the Dude, for whom every day is Saturday. Still, meeting up with the far more industrious Morpheus could change a guy’s point of view. Or not.
“The Matrix”/”The Big Lebowski” mash-up via HuffPo
And they get pretty good reviews. The newest international fave from Japan’s insanely prolific Takashi Miike looks plenty bloody but still a lot less extreme and a lot more classical than the ultra-gorefests that made his reputation as an action and horror director. In fact, it’s more in the vein of a traditional samurai flick and is actually a remake of a 1963 film. It already screened at Venice and will be playing next week in Toronto, which has introduced more than a few great Asian action fests to North America.
This trailer isn’t subtitled, but trust me, it’s worth watching.
Regular readers won’t be surprised to see that I’ve assiduously avoided Miike’s notorious “Audition” and “Ichii the Killer” but did see, and very much enjoyed his insane but actually rather restrained musical horror-comedy, “The Happiness of the Katakuris.” I think this might be my second Miike.
It’s oh so tempting to slack off with more trailers and videos, but a few items too interesting to ignore…
* Regular readers, both of you, may remember a number of interview pieces here and elsewhere by me dealing with a film called “Middle Men.” Well, my interview with the film’s producer and presumed model for the lead character, Christopher Mallick, has become a lot more interesting over the last few days. It has drawn some unusually strong comments from netizens, and not for no reason. The Wrap’s Johnnie L. Roberts sums up how funds deposited by Mallick’s current company, ePassporte, have been effectively frozen — leaving some people truly in the lurch — and also that this isn’t the first arguably suspicious crisis that Mallick has weathered.
I will say that if you have over $240,000 pre-loaded on a card which I gather is mainly for use on porn sites these days (not online poker as I once assumed) — I’m no one to judge on this matter, but I think you’ve got a bit of a problem.
* A much more positive story, especially for hardcore movie fans, is Roger Ebert’s announcement that he is returning the format he and Gene Siskel perfected back to its original PBS home, with a few interesting new twists including the presence of the one of the universe’s more photogenic of cinephile bloggers, Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun, alongside headliners Christy Lemire and Elvis Mitchell, Omar Moore and Ebert himself. Nikki Finke, via TV Deadliner Nellie Andreeva, provides the turd in the punchbowl. (Please, Mr. Mitchell — don’t give Ms. Finke the pleasure of a “Toldja!” here.)
* Speaking of the amazing Mr. Ebert, be sure to check out his TIFF swag.
* Alamo Drafthouse will be getting into the film distribution game with a bang in more senses than one with their release of the ingenious, ultra-dark British comedy, “Four Lions,” which really does do for terrorism what “In the Loop” did for needless wars. A parking snafu created by the organizers of the Los Angeles Film Festival caused me to be 20 minutes later for the screening but, even so, I can’t imagine that the film will be anything less than one of the year’s best, even if its premise scares many away.
In the short annals of sports-oriented musicals there’s “Damn Yankees” and…well, there must be one I’m forgetting. Anyhow, now, at last there’s another and its about hockey and it’s from Canada and of course it’ll be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival which opened last night.
Here’s the trailer.
I’m not saying that the rather literally titled “Score: A Hockey Musical” looks particularly good — it doesn’t to my eye — but sometimes something is just so bold in conception that attention must be paid.
