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All the Best People Shave Twice a Day

I just watched a really fantastic trailer tonight, and it just made me want to post it and share it with everyone. Then I got to thinking, why not just start a draft and work on this for a few days and just get a crap load of future movie news out of the way? So that's what I'm doing here. These movies are all ones that you should be keeping an eye on. I include trailers where possible, just click on the movie title for a link to the trailer or whatever I was able to dig up through my extensive research. Get ready.... go!

Marie Antoinette: Now, let's start off with the warning on this one. It stars Kirsten Dunst. She's just meh in my book. She was all right in Eternal Sunshine, The Virgin Suicides, and Small Soldiers, but she wasn't particularly the best part of any of them or any others that I've ever seen her in. And, obviously, the best part in Virgin Suicides was James Woods. The next warning is that it's written and directed by Sofia Coppola. I like her. I loved Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides. But I know there are some of you who hated those movies, but I don't really care. This one looks like a winner, and I'm excited. Also, it has Jason Schwartzman, who, besides sharing a name with myself, shaves twice a day. In the film, he plays Louis XVI and I recently saw him in an episode of Freaks and Geeks, and that really made my day. Seriously. Release date: Fall 2006

Silent Hill: Okay, so it's a video game adaptation, which means it's gonna suck, right? No! You are so wrong! First off, not all video game adaptations suck. Need I mention the sleeper hit of 1993, Super Mario Bros.? What a hell of a cast. Bob Hoskins, who I recently saw in Unleashed with Jet Li and really enjoyed, if not only for the bald Russian guy factor; John Leguizamo, another meh in my book, however, he was in Land of the Dead, so I suppose that gets him a bit of street cred; Dennis "frigg'n" Hopper, who was also in Land of the Dead, and, I mean, he's just frigg'n cool; and of course Samantha Mathis in her breakout role as Princess Toadstool, or Daisy, who was in a totally cool deleted scene with Christian Bale in the American Psycho Collector's Edition DVD. Also, there's Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which kicks so much ass on so many levels. But, really, all you need is one word to describe it's "rock your face off" value: Nemesis. Bam! That's all you need. If you don't get it, see the movie, from the time it starts till the time it ends, your face is completely rocked off. Really, the only video game adaptations you should avoid are those directed by Dr. Uwe Boll. Luckily, all the video game properties he's eating up aren't very good anyway. I think that Silent Hill will be one of those adaptations in the non-suck arena of video game movies. It stars that chick from Pitch Black and Man on Fire. But she's not why you should go see it. It's got Sean Bean as some guy who does not have a British accent and it looks like a pretty sweet horror movie. But that's not why you should see the movie. The reason you should see it is because - get ready for it - it's directed by Christophe "Brotherhood of the Wolf" Gans. That's right, the awesome director who brought Mani to life now brings us a horror movie based on a video game. Now, the movie's not rated yet, but I think we can expect an R. Here's to hoping. Release date: April 21, 2006

Night Watch: This one's actually coming up quick. It's said to be "The first chapter in an epic fantasy trilogy." It's set in present-day Moscow where the forces of day and night do battle or something. It's also Russian. Now, I'm really hoping this thing turns out. I'm not sure how big a release it's gonna get, since it's a foreign flick and all, but since it has a vampire (possibly multiple), a sorceress, and a mage-transformer (I'm going off of the main cast list from imdb), this thing can't not be completely sweet. Also, if you watch the trailer, there's this chick that morphs into a tiger and totally messes up this guy's bedroom. Release date: February 17, 2006

Brick: This movie looks really great. I mean, I hadn't really heard anything about it before I saw the trailer, but it looks like it could be a really good mystery flick that isn't overblown and unrealistic. It stars that guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun who's been in a few indie films since the show was cancelled and all. I don't know, I don't really follow his career. An interesting note, for me at least, is that the movie is written and directed by the guy who did May, a truly twisted movie about this girl who tricks all these blind kids into finding something on a floor that's actually covered in shards of glass. Genius, really. Release date: March 24, 2006

Ultraviolet: Here's the one that I'm really frigg'n excited for. I don't give a damn about a single one of all the other movies compared to this one. Written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, the guy who did Equilibrium, starring Milla Jovovich as some sort of vampire-like entity, or something, I'm not totally sure what's goin on and I sorta want to wait for the movie. I know it takes place in a future society, that much is obvious. In this future society, there are these super soldier guys made of glass that attack these vampire people and blow into rooms, totally wrecking walls, by rolling up into a little ball, very much like Metroid. The coolest thing about this movie is that there are people made of glass. As glass people, it's hard for them to mate, so they mostly just hunt vampire-like beings with guns and stuff. They also ride motorcycles and roll up into balls, totally wrecking numerous houses and buildings. Now, as a glass person, the worst thing that could possibly happen to you is that you could break, so they spend all their time making sure they don't break. The cool thing about this movie is how Milla Jovovich goes around breaking as many glass people as she possibly can. She uses swords, batons, guns, cars, other glass people's bodies, and so on. Now, some might see this as a sad thing, but you have to remember, these glass people live their life in fear of ever breaking, Milla is just trying to help them get over their fear. By breaking them. Rated PG-13 for sequences of violent action throughout, partial nudity and language. Release date: Coming Soon (or TBA, if you prefer)

The Hills Have Eyes: A broken family reliant on cell phones, PDAs, and Podcasts, reunite for a summer vacation that will bring them back together. However, they are foiled by a group of mutants living in tunnels who waylay the technology-dependent family and teach them something about love through the only method they, being mutants, could ever know. The method of... PAIN! I'm very much hoping that there're more severed limbs in this movie than there were in Saw, which had absolutely none, despite the Saw movie posters with severed limbs all over them. What makes me excited about The Hills Have Eyes, is the fact that it's being directed by the guy who did High Tension, a wonderful little slasher flick where some random guy gets a buzzsaw to the chest through his windshield. HOLY CRAP! Release date: March 2006

V for Vendetta: The trailer starts off with Natalie Portman, sporting a very charming British accent. Then our ears are brought to the melodic voice of Hugo Weaving, who plays V. You of course know Hugo from his roles in Lord of the Rings and The Matrix as Elrond and Agent Smith, respectively. Finally, we get to the harsh, glorious voice of John Hurt (who reads a pleasant story about slavery on The Skeleton Key special features), and finally, the sound of some dude's hand busting against V's mask. The movie's adapted from some comic I've never read, but, according to some random guy in one of my classes (he wasn't actually enrolled in the class), the writer of the comic was very displeased with how the Wachowski brothers handled the material, calling them imbeciles. I then discovered that the random guy's favorite commercial from the Superbowl was the one where the shaved sheep goes "streaking" through the farm animals' game of football, or whatever the hell they were lining up for. I hated that commercial so much, but apparently it was the number one commercial according to some website and the stupid people who voted for it. Girls, probably. If there's an animal or a baby, or a shaved animal or baby clothes or hats on dogs, girls really like it and can't stop laughing or talking about it. People made of glass share this same sort of humor. In Ultraviolet, Milla Jovovich shatters their dreams and their laughter and their glass chests with her healed boots of good taste. Anyway, V for Vendetta should have some action too, or at least knives with glowy trails on them, and also some guy shatters his hand on V's mask. Remember, remember the 5th of November. Release date: March 17, 2006

The Fountain: The interesting thing about this movie is that it takes place in the past, future, AND present. I don't really know what it's about, but it looks sweet since it involves this guy questing, presumably for the titular fountain. The movie stars Hugh Jackman (aka Wolverine and "main rope swinger" from Van Helsing), Rachel Weisz (who totally fucks up and forgets the protective ankh that Keanu Reeves gives to her before they're about to fight multiple demons plus Satan in Constantine), and Ethan Suplee, who will once again be reviving his role as the retarded gorilla of Cold Mountain fame. The movie's being written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, the guy who did Requiem for a Dream and Pi. Apparently, he also directed an episode of "Lost" which has the chick who plays the daughter in the above mentioned movie The Hills Have Eyes which also stars Ted Levine who played General 'Bloodbath' McGrath in the movie Wild Wild West, starring the very versatile Will Smith, lead actor of Tony Scott's crackerjack thriller Enemy of the State, which also starred none other than thespian juggernaut Jake Busey! Release date: 2006 (probably the summer)

There're some others that look interesting, somewhat appealing, but I'll leave those for the theoretical "other post". The party's in the backyard, go ahead and sign the guest list, and please help yourself to some COMMENTS. You bastards.

Toxic Waste Creates Hermaphrodite Arctic Polar Bears

It takes some big frigg'n news to get me to update this beast (and an exceptional amount of freetime and boredom), and believe me, I've found the Giant Squid of things to write about - the Michael Jordan of news items, if you will. Entertainment Weekly reported that ex-Darth Vader, current-douche Hayden Christensen is set to play the "Bob Dylan" role in the Edie Sedwick biopic, Factory Girl. Now, the character that Christensen is supposed to be playing is actually named "Danny Quinn," however the character was originally scripted as Bob Dylan and they decided to change it later in order to make it more ambiguous. This is odd since all the other characters in the movie go by their real names, such as Andy Warhol played by Guy "Too Good to Play Daredevil" Pearce and, of course, Edie Sedwick played by Sienna "#48 on Maxim Magazine Hot 100 of 2005 List" Miller. Supposedly, director George "My Name is Ridiculous" Hickenlooper said that rumors of Dylan's affair with Sedwick were too iffy. But Christensen says, "I'm gonna play Bob Dylan," which probably means he'll be swaying a lot and have very few lines beyond "yep" and "nope" and "mhm" a la Masked and Anonymous. The film is being written by screenwriter Captain Mauzner, who, beyond having a really awesome name, scripted Wonderland, which was a totally great biopic about porn legend John Holmes played by master thespian Val Kilmer who almost won the 2003 Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Animal Wrangler in the classic film Masked and Anonymous.

UPDATE!
I've just read that Lou Reed had something to say about this film that just got bought up by the Weinstein Co. He says, "I read that script. It's one of the most disgusting, foul things I've seen - by any illiterate retard - in a long time. There's no limit to how low some people will go to write something to make money.” He sounds a bit surprised, I think. He shouldn't be anyway. Also, I just found out that Jimmy Fallon's gonna be in this movie, most likely looking at the camera and giggling a lot.

Summer Movie Extravaganza!!!
Actually, that's probably a topic I'll delve more into later on as it gets closer. For the moment, I just want to get everyone really pumped. I put a trailer in my aim profile that I said was the summer movie to end all summer movies, but it seems like "Herbie: Fully Loaded" might have a little competition after all!! But before you read any further, drop everything you're doing and watch this!!!

Wow, this movie has everything, especially STAR POWER! I'm so glad Queen Latifah's finally getting these lead roles that break convention and don't make her out to be a fat black woman with a sassy attitude. She's really come a long way since her days of, what? did she used to do hip-hop? This movie is actually a spin-off of a sequel of a bad movie! I love how they're pumping it by letting the world know that it's from the same producers as "Barber Shop" and "Bringing Down the House." That's a true sign of quality. And, yes! That is Kevin Bacon with a weird accent. It seems his manager is keeping with his system of "taking what he can get." He's not mentioned as a big name in the cast at the end of the trailer. Instead, they mention some guy named Djimon "Digimon Houn-who?" Hounsou. It looks like Alicia "My god! her lips freak me out" Silverstone is making her big cinematic comeback with this movie, shifting slightly from her role in 1997's "Excess Baggage." The best line in the preview is by far "See now, if a plane crash, we could eat for days." This line could mean a lot of things, and I think it'll be interpreted in many different ways, but it's definitely good to see that American audiences can finally handle jokes like this again, post 9/11. And if you want to be totally radical and be just like me, hang this up as your new desktop background, somebody might regret it, but it won't be you! So, get ready, kids, cause it looks like summer's starting March 30th 2005!!!

The Black Man's Take on UFOs

Holy crap! A new post! It's not gonna be very in depth, so don't get too excited, it's just something I thought I'd copy/paste what I read on the interweb.


XZIBIT'S WHITE THEORY ON ALIENS

Hip-hop star XZIBIT has a unique theory on the existence of ghosts or aliens - "only white people" encounter such supernatural beings.
The MULTIPLY rapper and PIMP MY RIDE host claims African-Americans are too busy with other issues to make wild claims about UFOs or spooks.Xzibit says, "Black people don't really see ghosts or aliens. People who see aliens and shit, they never see them in urban settings. Aliens don't f**k with the hood, you never see some brother saying,
'Oh man, and then there were some lights, and it just came down.'
"N**gers don't see aliens, n**gers don't never see ghosts, either. Black people are dealing with too much shit.
"It's always somebody living in a trailer park with three teeth, a trucker hat, howling, 'We seen the light.' I lived in South Central (Los Angeles) and none of them motherf**kers dare come this way."


Apparently, all black people are too cool for UFOs. Personally, I think the majority of UFOs are Norse gods or maybe just visions people are having, like in the Lion King when Simba sees Mufasa in the sky, I think there's a lot of that going on. It happened in Van Helsing too, a movie I highly recommend.

You know, Wobbles... I'm kinda mad at you
Good movies are few and far between, but from time to time there's a flick that's able to properly balance script, direction, visual style, acting, and soundtrack into a glorious, wondrous movie that will possibly make it into my collection. Tarantino, P.T. "Boogie Nights" Anderson, Terry Gilliam of the Monty Python crew, Sergio "Spaghetti Western" Leone, Robert Rodriguez, and Wes Anderson of Royal Tenenbaums fame have all made some excellent movies. It's no surprise that these guys all write their own screenplays as well. They know their movies inside and out, that's why they're able to deliver such a fantastic blast of awesome into the face of the viewer. There are, of course, many directors who only direct and still turn out a great flick, Michel Gondry comes to mind, David Fincher (pre-Panic Room)... I can't really think of many others, none too worthwhile anyway. The point is, great movies don't come along too often, but I'm going to try and make some predictions of good movies to come. Some will be released this summer, some this fall, the rest will be out next year or years to come, and some of them may get canned, ultimately, it's all left up to the sands of time. So, without further adieu, I give you my first list of Random Upcoming Movies That Might be Good or RUMTMG for short.

Spider-Man 2: I really liked the first one, up until the spirited ending with Spidey hanging off the top of an American flag. I don't doubt that an ending like that showed terrorists all over the world that America was unchanged by 9/11 (never forget). I also disagreed with the Green Goblin outfit, though Willem Dafoe is still a god among men. Speaking of gods among men, look forward to seeing 2 incredibly awesome badasses in Spider-Man 2. I am of course speaking of Alfred Molina and naturally another cameo by Bruce "Check out Bubba Ho-tep" Campbell. Alfred Molina is a vision in Boogie Nights, in fact I think his scene is probably my favorite in the movie, next to the ending scene of course. He's actually been a badass for even longer than that, think back to Raiders of the Lost Ark, he made the movie what it is as Indy's double-crossing sidekick in the beginning. Director Sam Raimi is sure to make plenty of bank come July 2nd.

Anchorman: Will Ferrell's been a busy man of late. He's got about ten projects in the works and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Anchorman looks to be a funny movie, the latest preview is delightful, and Will Ferrell has said that this is his dream role. So July 9th, we should be in for something special, at least somethin better than Elf.

Donnie Darko: This wondrous gem of a movie is being re-released on July 23rd as a limited release. Richard Kelly's directing and writing debut has been thoroughly stripped and molded into something that may even be better than the original release. We're not just talking deleted scenes thrown back into the movie, there's going to be at least 20 minutes of new footage attached to the actual movie, along with a new soundtrack and sound FX. When Donnie Darko was first released, nobody knew about it since it got little to no advertising and was hardly released nation wide. Now we can all enjoy Patrick Swayze in a role written specifically for him.

Garden State: Zach Braff's directorial debut made quite a splash at the Sundance film festival. The trailer shows some incredible visual flare, it looks very mood oriented. This movie is supposed to be released July 30th, but I believe that's the New York and LA release date, so we might have to expect it a couple weeks later than that perhaps. Braff is currently working on two other scripts before he gets back to his Scrubs show, which is one of the few sitcoms on television that doesn't suck, perhaps the only one - in general, television sucks anymore.

Collateral: This movie could go either way. It has an interesting premise and Tom Cruise plays a hitman. I sort of hate Jamie Foxx though. Let's hope director Michael Mann can pull this one off. He's shown that he knows what he's doing with his movie Heat. Though I despise Al Pacino, he wasn't so bad in Heat. Speaking of Heat, rent it, Val Kilmer plays one of his good roles in it, it's always hit and miss with Val, Heat is a hit, The Doors is a miss. Collateral comes out August 6th, the same week as Little Black Book starring Brittany Murphy (You'll remember her from piles of crap) - needless to say, I don't think it'll have much competition.

Hero: 7 Hong Kong Film Awards, 6 amazing lead actors, and 2003 Foreign Language Oscar nominee. Miramax, being Tarantino's bitch, picked this little piece of heaven up from somewhere in Asia and slapped Quentin Tarantino Presents on the front of it, just like Iron Monkey. Hero was made by the folks who put together Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and stars Jet Li as a soldier with no name. The trailer is marvelous, an opus of color and visual effects, this movie is one I'm really looking forward to come August 20th.

There's not much else coming out this summer that sounds like it's worth a damn, sadly, I know I'll be seeing and paying for (in more ways than one) a lot of crap. Speaking of crap, there are two more sequels planned for the Shrek franchise due to ogre-whelming demand, so all you Shrek aficionados will have all your Shrek questions answered in the 3rd and 4th films. There're some awesome projects in the works slated for release much further in the future that I'll mention next time. Until then... May your coffin be made of 100 year old oak from a tree that I plant tomorrow.

I never drink... wine.
Van Helsing. He's one of the coolest characters ever imagined. In the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, the character of Van Helsing was played gloriously by Anthony Hopkins. He gave us such kickass lines as:
"Mr. Morris, your bullets will not harm him. He must be beheaded. I suggest that you use your big Bowie knife."
Here's a few others:
Mina Harker: How did Lucy die? Was she in great pain?
Van Helsing: Yeah, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.
and...
Van Helsing: Jack. Come here. I know how deeply you loved her. That is why you must trust me and believe...
Jack Seward: Believe? How can I believe?
Van Helsing: I want you to bring me before nightfall a set of postmortem knives.
Jack Seward: An autopsy? On Lucy?
Van Helsing: No, no. Not exactly. I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart.

Now, I'm not gonna lie, the movie itself wasn't too great. It stars Gary Oldman as Dracula and Keanu Reeves as a zombie. Gary Oldman's seen better days (need I mention The Fifth Element). Winona Ryder is also in it, but sadly she was horrible. The only reason to see the movie is for Hopkins as Van Helsing. Now, what if there were a movie solely based on the character Van Helsing, wouldn't that rock? The answer is yes, of course, but not if it's written and directed by Stephen Sommers. He's the same hack that crapped out The Mummy 2 and The Scorpion King. In his latest romp starring Hugh "Kate and Leopold" Jackman as Van Helsing, Sommers proves that he can make a shit-ton of money off of a movie where there's not a single moment someone's not swinging on a rope and if Dracula is going to be onscreen, he better be upside down and walking on the ceiling. After completely raping the character of The Mummy, a classic Universal monster of old noir horror flicks, Sommers felt the need to wipe his ass with no less than three more classic monsters. The movie Van Helsing sees the ruin of The Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein's Monster, not to mention the misuse of Mr. Hyde (voiced by Robbie Coltrane) and Van Helsing himself. Get this, Stephen Sommers came up with a concept for a Van Helsing TV series during the making of the movie, NBC who was in the process of being bought out by Universal, grabbed it up and wanted 6 episodes. Well, it seems, NBC is now passing on the show. Is this because Van Helsing sucked so badly? Yes, I wouldn't doubt it.

Maybe one day someone'll make a real Van helsing movie, and maybe it'll be done right. When the majority of the cast is computer generated 98% of the time, audiences don't really give a damn about the characters or their death-defying leaps to swing on some random rope. The movie should have only involved vampires and other creatures of Satan, showed Van Helsing's struggle of always having to deal with that kind of evil, and given us one badass one-liner after another (see quotes above).

Ogre-Whelming Early Demand
I watched American Psycho again recently, everyone should see it, I think it's my favorite movie in my collection. I hope to update this blog a bit more often over the summer. I might have some more freetime. We'll see. I'll be working a lot, hopefully, maybe at Hollywood Video, it'd be good since they have movies there and such. Though, I may end up working at CopyMax again since I'm guaranteed a job there, I hate that place, but I need money. As I've changed my major to media arts, I hope to make at least one or two short films this summer and work on and possibly finish a script for a big movie I have in mind that I'd like to get underway starting immediately next semester. I'll try and keep everyone updated on any movies I do. Any movie or character ideas would be greatly appreciated, as well as ideas for good music for a soundtrack as well as scenes that might go along with a particular song. I also plan on posting a list of movies that people should watch over the summer. Just stuff that I enjoy or that I think folks should watch to expand their knowledge of modern cinema, like Masked and Anonymous. I'll also want to do a post on upcoming movies or projects underway involving some of my favorite directors, actors, and writers. If anyone else gets any good ideas for post ideas, message me or leave something in the comments and I'll take off on it. Um- other than all that, there's a few really promising movies on the Apple Trailers site, look along the left side after clicking the link and look for Mr. 3000, Sleepover, and The Door in the Floor, I can't wait to see them all, they're going to be fantastic.