I swear I’m done with Batman talk after this, but I know there’s an insider screening of “The Dark Knight” happening tonight on the Warner lot. If any sort of “review” pops up somewhere, it’s going to be from someone who gets checks signed by studio brass. That said, I’m anticipating a report from a trustworthy acquaintance and my fingers are SO crossed.
Author: Kristopher Tapley
-
Spike Lee = the Jesse Jackson of film?
Roger Simon seems to think so:Why would Lee pick this fight?
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be more obvious. Like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, time has been passing Spike Lee by. His worldview comes from another era and he has never really sought to revise it, to open his eyes. Proof of that is that for more than a decade Spike has barely made a film any of us can remember. Compare that to Eastwood, who, although some twenty-seven years Lee’s senior, is at the top of his career, having scored big in 2003-2004 with Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.
No wonder Spike’s jealous. So what does he do? He reaches back to an era when he was more successful. He plays the old identity/race card. Now we could all laugh and say this is just another case of an (prematurely) aging artist grasping for attention, but these times are more complex than that. We don’t know which way we are going – toward a post-racial future or back to a racist past.
His argument is interesting because it is equal parts over-simplified and shrewd. The Lee/Eastwood dispute has been talked to death…and again…and again, but the overriding feeling I had following the initial Cannes fracas was sadness — sadness that Lee has shown yet again that he is unable to prove his (at times justified) contradictory opinions without the stench of clichéd rhetoric and steadily outdated reason.
-
Rachel Dawes believes in Harvey Dent
You’ll have to forgive me, folks. I’m on one of those obssessive “Dark Knight” kicks today. Back to normal soon, I assure you.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D15iHxCvjBs
By the way, this site has an exhaustive analysis of the news bits, viral marketing and studio promotion of the film that reads like a full blown discourse revealing major secrets throughout…and with nothing in the way of “inside” information. I like the way Michael Moran put it in his link here at The Times: The film ruined for your pleasure.
There are also some sweet new banner images that hit a little over a week ago, but I’m only seeing for the first time today for some reason.
Also, “Batman Begins” and “Dark Knight” production designer Nathan Crowley is apparently behind the set designs of a superhero costume exhibit that has been at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York. Very cool. Meanwhile, the milk people are up to it once again with “Dark Knight” marketing.
And I want this motorcycle. Bad.
Alright…I think I got it out of my system. I think.
-
‘Hulk’ pan
From someone in this building, who saw a completely different film than I did:
The greatest sin for a comic-book movie adaptation such as The Incredible Hulk is for it to be average. But this is more of a disheartened plod down the path of least resistance than the building-pummelling riot of ideas that it needed to be.
Ide sings the praises of Ang Lee’s film at the top, so you get the idea immediately that she wasn’t going to be on board for this one.
-
‘Dark Knight’ soundtrack listing
1. Why So Serious? 09:14
2. I’m Not A Hero 06:34
3. Harvey Two-Face 06:16
4. Aggressive Expansion 04:35
5. Always A Catch 01:39
6. Blood On My Hands 02:16
7. A Little Push 02:42
8. Like A Dog Chasing Cars 05:02
9. I Am The Batman 01:59
10. And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad 02:28
11. Agent Of Chaos 06:55
12. Introduce A Little Anarchy 03:42
13. Watch The World Burn 03:47
14. A Dark Knight 16:15By the way, Warners is releasing this thing on vinyl (!). It’ll actually be landing in four configurations, one of them being a collector’s edition with exclusive artwork post-release.
-
Will there be any other format worth watching this thing in?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6bCIMccbwQ
-
Stone on ‘Polanski’
Sasha Stone recently caught up with the doc “Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” which I believed bowed on HBO this week (I miss TV). She takes the middle road in assessing the film’s Oscar potential as follows:I found the movie convincing, breathtaking at times and above all, sad. The Academy might like it since it is a sympathetic portrayal of the hell celebrities must live in day in and day out. On the other hand, the Oscar voters who “see every documentary” aren’t likely the kind who have a swarm of photogs following them everywhere.
Touché. Check out the rest here.
-
Extreme ‘Happening’ division
It has an issue or two, granted, but it doesn’t deserve a major thrashing. It’s too refined, too expertly fused.
All I’m saying is that it’s a odd feeling watching a career end before your very eyes.
-
Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino’ set for a 2008 bow, but…
…didn’t we already know this? Variety’s Pamela McClintock is claiming it as an exclusive, but the film has been on our contenders charts for at least a month now. And Guy Lodge was talking about “Gran Torino” and “Changeling” looking “to keep [Eastwood’s] profile high in 2008” just last week.
-
‘Hulk’ reviews coming in…
UPDATE (10:05 a.m.): Jeff Wells is going out of his way to find the so-so reactions to the film. I anticipated them sooner or later. He’s also going out of his way to toss me under a bus, but he likes the theatrics so he can have at it.Wells is spotlighting some shifty sources, though. Mostly net mavens, with an off-the-mark-as-alwys HFPA member thrown in to boot.
EARLIER: Reviews and reactions to the second Marvel Studios project of the year, “The Incredible Hulk,” are beginning to pour in. The film premiered in Los Angeles Sunday and had screenings in New York and London last night. The bulk of L.A. critics will be getting looks tonight and tomorrow.
Assessments are generally positive in the early stages. You can read my review here. But this is where the crowd is leaning (with more sure to pile on later this evening):
Mark Monahan (Daily Telegraph):
Besides keeping things moving with a mission, Leterrier reveals a strong eye for an exciting set-piece, as at home with a foot-chase through the Brazilian slums as in the brutal climactic battle between the two uber-beings. (In the latter, the potent sense of at-the-ringside immediacy largely – if not entirely – compensates for the CGI shortcomings).
(More after the jump)
-
REVIEW: “The Incredible Hulk” (***1/2)
When Ang Lee set out to direct the first feature film adaptation of Marvel’s Incredible Hulk property five years ago, some things were…different.Lee was coming off of the major awards success of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which led audiences – many of them skeptics – to ponder what he might be able to accomplish with the psychology of another action-oriented effort.
However, Marvel had its hands tied. Unlike Detective Comics properties, which fall under Time Warner ownership and therefore receive continual distribution out of Warner Bros. Pictures, Marvel was still at the whims of studio discretion, its properties scattered to the winds despite having the consistency of an Ari Arad behind the scenes.
Nothing could be said less of Lee as a filmmaker when the finished, disastrous product was unveiled. He took a gamble and hit craps…hard. And he bought back in two years later, bouncing back with a Best Director Oscar to show for it. But Marvel was left with a serious consideration that had likely lingered for many years: how to get a developmental handle on a catalogue of material that was bursting at the seams with cinematic potential.
The difference now is Marvel Studios, which saw its first production “Iron Man” held on high by critics and audiences alike just one month ago. It was a home run for an unexplored property on the big screen, but could it be duplicated? And via a franchise that wasn’t nearly far enough removed from it’s immediate past to be considered stale by any means?
Apparently so. Because Louis Leterrier’s “The Incredible Hulk” is not only likely to be the biggest, most exhausting (in all the good ways) film-going experience you’ll have this year, but it also holds the second turtle dove of a young studio’s seizure of what promises to be one of the greatest cinematic roll outs the genre has, or perhaps will ever see.
-
Neck and neck
After last week’s poll on Oscarless directors, it became clear pretty fast that two giants were way ahead of the pack: Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. The closest pretender to the throne of snubbed helmers was Robert Altman, but it was a VERY distant third.
So this week it seemed only fair to suss out where everyone stands on these two alone, without the other 14 names in the mix. So have at it in the new poll.
-
In Berlin
Sorry for the down time on my part. It’s been go, go, go since I landed in Berlin Friday. It’s back to London tomorrow morning, so I should be back on track.But to toss out a few random thoughts:
1) Clinton’s “I’m finally getting out of the way” speech contained all the right words, but damn if she didn’t seem completely incapable of shielding the fact that she was swallowing some tough medicine.
2) Berlin is one of the most agreeable cities I think I’ve been to in my life, and I can’t seem to place my finger on why. Despite the frequent bout of communication breakdown, I could easily see myself living here.
3) I’ve been watching “Syriana” on my laptop when I can get a moment, a few minutes here, few minutes there. It’s the first time I’ve revisited the film since its 2005 release, and I have to say it is aging well in the face of the changing times. I never felt it to be an out-of-the-park effort, but it remains one of the more ambitious projects of the decade and, in its own way, a solid portrait from a dedicated filmmaker.
