Movies

A brand freaking new trailer. Love the use of both Philip Glass and Muse on the soundtrack.

How excited are you about this? I’ll answer that for you: very.

Via here and (of course) here.

So I’ve always wondered what rejected scripts of popular movies were like.  Apparently here’s one from Dark Knight that was submitted by Michael Bay:

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blog/show?id=947994%3ABlogPost%3A355506

Enjoy.

P.S.  In case you’re wondering, I’m not serious.

Well I’m thrilled to be the first pizappa-er (pizappan?  pizappese?) to post about Dark Knight.  I won’t say much about the plot or the action as I don’t want to spoil anything.

Now I thought Batman Begins was brilliant, but I was trepidacious about Dark Knight when I first heard about it.  My main issue was “why remake the Joker, when Jack Nicholson was so good?  Why not go with one of the other multitude of Batman villains?”  And then to top it off, they apparently have Heath Ledger playing the Joker?  What?

Now this was before Brokeback Mountain came out, which (gay jokes aside) was a brilliant movie, and Heath Ledger was incredible.  After that, my mindset started to change about him, and after seeing some of his work in a new light, I was starting to feel better about him taking on one of the best villain roles ever created.  In fact, a week before his death I even confessed to a fellow pizappish that I “officially consider myself a Heath Ledger fan.”  So I was quite saddened by his death.

After seeing Dark Knight, his death has become even more tragic, as his performance is nothing less than brilliant.  He is absolutely mesmerizing, disturbing, and hilarious everytime he’s on the screen.

Though Ledger steals the show, Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhal (best cast change ever), Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, seesh, the rest of the cast, are all wonderful.  And Christopher Nolan has never been better at creating a blockbuster movie that has a whole lot of depth to it.  It’s going to break every sales record there is, and it’s a movie that truly deserves it (beating out shallow summer blockbusters like Spiderman III and Episode III.  I’ve probably offended a ton of people with that comment).

The only two criticisms I could even make (and these are not spoilers, don’t worry) are:

- why is the mayor so clearly wearing eyeliner?

- I can’t quite tell if it’s the writing or the actors, but several of the one liner actors are just terrible.

That’s literally all I’ve got.  It’s hard to not say this is the best movie thus far this year, so I’ll just say it.  It’s the best movie I’ve seen thus far this year.

So this is a rare occurrence where I encourage you all to be one of the masses flooding to see this movie.  At the very least you should be massively entertained by the Caped Crusader once again.

Apologies for the awful title; I’m not feeling all that clever right now. I just feel the need to point out that the Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan have wrapped shooting on their upcoming movie Burn After Reading. Who’s got two thumbs and is really excited for this movie? This guy, right here.

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Via mefi, check out the Reel Geezers. Two 80-something movie professionals reviewing current movies. All the reviews have a ton of spoilers, so I’d probably watch only if you’ve seen the movies in question, or don’t care about spoilers. They hit all the best picture nominees from ‘07:

• Michael Clayton
• Juno
• There Will Be Blood
• No Country For Old Men
• Atonement

And there are plenty more at their youtube channel.

I love the way they interact—lots of interrupting and telling each other the other one is wrong—but their reviews aren’t just cranky old-person rants. They’ve each got at least 40 years of movie- and TV-making experience, and base a lot of their criticisms and praise from that perspective. They discuss the narrative, character motivations, music choices, and acting (all the stuff you’d expect a critic to hit on, I suppose) really intelligently… and often crankily.

I love it.

I enjoyed Juno more than I figured I would. It had some fun ingredients including a unique soundtrack, simple characters, jaded humor, and plenty of quotable quotes (favorite being “prom is for wienises”).

Appreciation value is likely higher for folks who have kids, are in the process of having kids, or are planning to have kids.

I continue my tradition of not really posting original content by linking to the greatest movie poster ever, found (as always) via I Watch Stuff!.

Awesome.

must not click must not click must not click must not click:

…I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West.

While shopping at Meijer yesterday, I noticed that they’ve added a Redbox machine, where you can rent a DVD for a day for $1. Always a sucker for fancy new methods of media consumption, I found myself poring over the list of available movies. There was a reasonable spread of available movies, but none that really captured my imagination… except for one.

I knew full well that it would be bad. But I love the first two Alien movies, and that love obliges me to watch each sequel as it comes out, no matter how increasingly wretched they progressively get. And so it was that, after Angry Teti opened some early Mother’s Day gifts, we retired downstairs to watch… Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. I don’t know why she insisted on watching it with me, but I’m glad she did, because it let us record for posterity some of our commentary as the horror unfolded. Spare yourself the horror of watching this, and instead read on. You’re not missing anything. I’ve added a few timestamps in case you inexplicably want to actually watch the movie:

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