As many of you know, after the release of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hollows, J.K. Rowling decided to make some changes to her wizarding universe. Namely, that Dumbledore was gay. Now, its not that I have a problem with having a gay character in a book, its that it was done for no reason whatsoever. It doesn’t change anything that our hero(es) did or give the material a new interpretation. So why bother?
Four months after Guillermo Del Toro officially signed on to direct “The Hobbit” and its sequel, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens have officially agreed to collaborate on the productions. The films are set to be filmed back to back and New Line president Toby Emmerich made the announcement that said production would begin in late 2009, with releases of 2011 and 2012.
Rating:
There was once a time when hack filmmaker Stephen Sommers could’ve churned out a fun popcorn flick. Before he became notorious for ruining Universal’s imminent plans to reboot their most famous movie monsters in 2004, he was making passable children’s films like The Jungle Book and fun action-horror hybrids like Deep Rising and, to a lesser extent, The Mummy. Sure, some people scoff at the latter but I think once you get over the fact that its essentially an Errol Flynn adventure and not a horror film like the original, its a decent time waster.
It’s sequel saw the beginning of the Sommers we’ve all come to so notoriously despise, in that it was just a big, unnecessary and poorly conceived mess, filled with really awful CGI (seriously, whoever put the ending sequences together at ILM should never be allowed near another computer again). Perhaps most insulting about the entire film though was the reincarnation angle. Not because it was extremely stupid (it was) or made the movie feel like more of a jumble of ill-conceived ideas than it already was (it did). No, no… it was because that idea laid down the foundation and became a crucial part of the exposition for one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life: the one and only Van Helsing, a film that truly is the epitome of everything that is wrong with cinema in our modern day and age.
So, imagine the wonderful sense of satisfaction I felt when it was announced that Sommers was not returning for the third film in the Mummy franchise (Instead, he opted to go the route of George Lucas and rape my childhood with what I’m sure will be one of the most unsatisfying action films of the decade, G.I. Joe). Instead, someone at Universal thought it would be a great idea to bring in the director of The Fast And The Furious and Stealth, Rob Cohen, who hasn’t directed a good movie since Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and leave Sommers as a producer. And in theory, I thought having anyone except ol’ Stephen behind the camera could’ve been a step up.
No longer content with just teasing people in an IMAX theatre, Warner Brothers has finally released the actual trailer for Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince online before its reported theatrical premiere, which is reportedly this Friday, where it will be attached to prints of The Mummy 3.
A first for the series, the trailer actually neglects Harry and Co. big time, instead opting to showcase the origins of Tom Riddle aka Lord Voldemort. For those who have not read The Half-Blood Prince, it truly is Dumbledore and Voldemort’s story and I personally found it to be very different from the rest of the books, in that it is almost completely exposition, where the others are a good mixture of plot and backstory. While most male fans will erupt in hostility over the lack of Emma Watson in the trailer, I’m glad they chose to ignore them in the trailer and not try to fool viewers, as they are not in the forefront for most of the story. Hopefully, The Half-Blood Prince will be a better effort than David Yates’ last entry in the series, the extremely disappointing Order of the Pheonix, and make good on its promise for a dark and dreary Potter adventure.
Rating:
After creeping me out with the dead-eyed characters of Polar Express, Robert Zemeckis takes another stab at a film populated entirely by CGI. This time, he tackles the Old English epic poem, Beowulf. While the film does contain fair amount of the source material, writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary made some changes to get it to the big screen. Paramount released the Blu-Ray today, so let’s check out the trailer and then after the jump, check out my review of Beowulf.
He’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Despite word from Warner Brothers earlier this week about not having a trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, they never said anything about a teaser. Many of you will be split on this sort of marketing but WB did a similar one to great effect late last year for The Dark Knight and it peaked all of interests in a big way. It’s a true teaser in the sense that there is absolutely no footage from the movie, just some spoken dialogue, the title of the film and an advertisement for IMAX. They’re doing it in a similar fashion as Order of the Phoenix (which was my least favorite film so far), with only select sequences in 3-D. Strong speculation indicates the actual trailer might be appearing in front of The Clone Wars in August but until then, we’ll have to live with these 23 seconds.
Rating: 
Conquest is a film that plays out like a fevered dream after watching 24 hours of swords and sandals epics. It’s got all the gore and sleaze you’d expect from the maestro of mutilation, Lucio Fulci, who must of used up most of the world’s dry ice on this production alone. Every scene is simply drenched in fog, not to mention brain bashing, bare boobies, zany monsters, and clumsy battle sequences. There is no trailer that I could find, but I am working on it.
Posts
All Comments
