Although I am certain it happens every day, it is not every day one is privy to the glorious sight of Liam Neeson punching wolves in the face. For that reason alone, Carnahan’s 5th feature film - and perhaps his most personal since his debut - is worth the watch, but it would also be selling it short. Stunningly photographed and given an extremely emotional and relatable spine on which to lay its characters, The Grey soars above other survival films in how deftly characterized and executed it is. Intense, supremely badass and visceral, it grabs you, shakes you and doesn’t quite let you go until its somewhat disappointing finale. Its wolves (and major threat) are also pleasantly exaggerated, giving the film an almost supernatural undercurrent - which also helps when The Grey delves into the obligatory (yet not always successful) philosophical considerations of man vs. nature, beast vs. man, beast within man and so on…
The most ridiculous, unabashedly and unapologetically militaristic film to come around in a while, Battleship, the latest from producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura’s evil venture with Hasbro Entertainment (having brought us the abominations that are the Transformers and G.I. Joe series) unbelievably manages to one-up its predecessors in every possibly conceivable way, reducing cinematic notions of plot, characters and coherence into blazing shards of molten metal lost at sea.
Adapting possibly one of the most repetitive strategy game in the history of mankind – and without the “I’ve sunk your battleship” line to boot- director Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) and his army of dilettantes manage to craft a film in which plot and character become completely inconsequential; a film that replicates the thrills of the game closely and excessively, down to the shouting of numbers and letters, grid patterns peg-shaped missiles, invisible field forces, hits and (oh-so-many) misses. Missiles are launched, hundreds of little computerized humans die, and your brain goes numb. Repeat for nearly 2 hours and a half.
Rife with meatball nationalism (the title gloriously and laughably appearing when our main character, interpreted by Taylor Kitsch, joins the Navy) and misguided humor (painfully exhibited in an opening gag involving a chicken burrito and a terribly embarrassing use of music), Battleship is a somewhat admirable film in how it manages to be a pure product (I stress “product”) of spectacle and abstraction – making Transformers: Dark of the Moon look like a structurally sound and orchestrated symphony in comparison. Abomination of digital-era filmmaking, Battleship quickly introduces its conflict (Aliens attack Earth, Battleship must defend Earth, Loser will Become All-America Hero in Process), its cardboard cut-out characters and immediately proceeds at assaulting your brain with hysterical CG-animated naval battles, at the center of which evolves borefest Taylor Kitsch (one of the main reasons John Carter failed earlier this year), a quickly dispatched Alexander Skarsgård, a ridiculously unusable Rihanna, a racially convenient Asano Tadanobu and a criminally underused (and bored) Liam Neeson – or rather the idea of these actors (let alone characters), dwarved by the incessant clashing of metal happening around them and the ghosts of an planetary Pearl Harbor hanging over their heads.
And what could’ve been a crafty exercise in world-building and invention (the possibilities of creating a mythology around a board game that has none) culminates into throbbing displays of excess devoid of sense; so many boats and battles that ultimately collapse into each other as one undistinguishable aberration, almost beautiful in their failure to be anything but vibrant digitized teals and oranges, screenwriters Jon & Erich Hoeber (of 2010’s far superior comic book adaptation of Warren Ellis’s RED) seemingly refusing to develop characters or villains into something more cohesive than a pretext for battle.
Much like the Transformers films, Battleship exhibits an aberrant fetish of machinery and metal. Water against metal, fire again metal, explosions, debris and so on – all of which are photographed so closely they reach levels of kinetic abstract expressionism Jackson Pollock would have be proud of, had he been a computer software devoid of a soul. For most of the film, I honestly had no idea what the hell was happening, nor did I care. A scene opening the third act, set to the pounding sound of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” comes so close to being a full-fledged advertisement for the Armed Forces any hope Battleship had of being dismissed as brainless, innocuous entertainment are immediately shattered: war veterans appear out of thin air to help Kitsch and co. prepare the ancient Missouri Battleship (a museum ship) for its final and most important battle, subtext and politics couldn’t be cleared and more despicable.
A film about a “loser” becoming a man through the falsely glorificating powers of the military and a country blindly gung-ho at defending itself rather than engaging in dialogue, my retinas and ethics hadn’t been this bluntly assaulted since Stallone’s The Expendables (2010). Unlike it, though, Battleship works as a thinly veiled collage, as a literal explosion of ideology, as an abstract essay on fire, water and metal – like that punch in the face that makes you see cartoonish stars rotating above your head. But it sinks so low at everything else I almost cannot help admiring it with misty-eyed masochism.
If Michael Bay represents the pinnacle of chauvinistic, macho American blockbuster filmmaking, Battleship’s Berg (or Berg’s Battleship, if you want to take the metaphor a step further) stands tall as his offensively erect penis, protruding and poking your eyeballs for what seems like an eternity that simultaneously goes by extremely quickly, given how mind-numbing it ultimately is.
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim, 2012)
A near-masterpiece and probably my favorite film of 2012 so far.
Finished watching all 5 seasons of the show today (for a research paper, of all things, I am going to be writing this weekend on aesthetics of unease and fragmented narratives in horror and comedy). I am disheartened, but am also already looking forward to rewatching it as well as finishing Tom Goes to the Mayor (2004-2006), tracking down Tim and Eric Nite Live! episodes (2007-2008) and watching the John C. Reilly starring spin-off Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule (2010-present), the Chrimbus special (2010) and Rick Alverson’s The Comedy (2012).
Cahill’s philosophical character study falls right in line with the cerebral science-fiction trend pioneered by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and brought back in force with recent films such as Primer (2004), The Clone Returns Home (2008) and Monsters (2010—which, while far less philosophical, shows similar ambition and manages to give life to big ideas with very limited means). When promising MIT student Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) causes a deadly accident, her life falls apart. Flash-forward to four years of juvenile detention later, and she is profoundly changed, in search of forgiveness and faced with a whole new world. A new planet, in fact: Earth 2 has entered our Earth’s orbit and made contact with us, revealing to be absolutely identical to our world—down to its timeline and inhabitants.
Another Earth suffers from the same issues as many of its indie contemporaries—excessively lingering progression, occasionally hollow philosophical riddles and so on—but is set apart by a wonderful performance from breakthrough actress and co-writer Marling, who shows incredible depth as the fragile, pained and quite possibly mentally ill character. Her performance alone makes the film worth seeing, as one can’t help but crawl under her skin and embark on her tragic journey of redemption. While it’s beautifully shot and features an excellent score by Fall On Your Sword, the main problem with Another Earth is that, as a viewer and fan of high-concept science-fiction, I found myself infinitely more fascinated by the staggering philosophical, scientific and theological questions that the existence of Earth 2 raises than by the drama and character study at hand. The film fails to address any of these questions—instead brushing over them to add an illusion of depth to the simple narrative—and going out, I found myself thinking more about cosmology, the existence of God and fate than about the character arc at the core of this picture. […]
Last year, at Sundance, young actress and screenwriter Brit Marling was revealed to be a distinctive and captivating new screen presence and creative voice to the American indepedant film scene with Mike Cahill’s Another Earth (nearly year-old review reblogged above).Alongside the low-budget, high-concept sci-fi filmalso premiered the less talked about - until now - Sound of my Voice, directed by first time feature film director Zal Batmanglij and co-written by Marling as well. Strikingly similar in atmosphere, tone and open-ended ambiguity (with potential, shall you choose to believe, elements of science-fiction) to Another Earth, Sound of My Voice is a fairly captivating slow-burning thriller about an enigmatic cult (of epic implications) that simultaneously offers a similar existential - and generationally pertinent - look at the aimlessness, ambitions and desire to create, impact and believe of American 20-somethings. “To see her is to believe her.” Most importantly, perhaps, Sound of My Voice is quite the opportunity for Marling to showcase her onscreen magnetism , a post-Greta “post-Sevigny” Gerwig It Girl in the making — which should shine again in Batmanglij’s upcoming film The East, which will also star Ellen Page, Alexander Skarsgård and Patricia Clarkson.
[…] On the heels of the irritating failure that was Alice in Wonderland (2010), Burton, with usual partner-in-crime Johnny Depp, finally assembled his long-planned dream project: a modernized film adaptation of the highly influential cult Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which aired on ABC from 1966 to 1971 for a totality of 1,225 (!) episodes.
Playing out like a hyper-dramatic version of Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) by ways of Mario Bava, Burton’s Dark Shadows is a bizarre mess of a film, not without its redeeming qualities. Surprisingly enjoyable, if only for its highly theatrical, hyper-real aesthetic and intentionally camp recreation of the 1970s (and perhaps the lowest of expectations), Burton focuses his film (written by Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer author Seth Grahame-Smith) on Barnabas Collins’ return and his strife with Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green, appropriately spellbinding), despite (and perhaps only in reference to the original series) seemingly introducing us to the world of Collinsport through Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) – sans the iconic voice-over, unfortunately.
And while one can question the film’s entire existence (I did), I will say that Dark Shadows does prove successful at recognizing the difficulties inherent to its existence. The potential traps of adapting such elevated levels of soap opera drama are mostly avoided (and in places reinforced) by the balancing use of playful, hammy humor quite characteristic of Burton’s entire oeuvre. With the help of the rest of the Collins family (which includes Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins, Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Julia Hoffman and Chloë Grace-Moretz as Carolyn Stoddard), spearheaded by the grandiloquence of Barnabas/Depp (who does his usual shtick with expected effect), Burton offers us the Addams family film he never made, for better or for worse. The multiple pieces of the narrative fall into place with ease, but quickly, the film’s gorgeous photography (by French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel) and grandiose set design overshadows the overwrought intrigue Burton walks us through with the help of flashbacks and appropriately Gothic layering of narratives.
Without having seen much of the show at all, it seems apparent that Grahame-Smith attempted to collapse and compress every major (or iconic) arc of the show into one narrative, which, as a result, is neither epic nor properly paced. Instead darting a multitude of confused, sometimes useless, directions and asides, the film quickly reaches a point of utter nonsense when rock icon Alice Cooper appears in the context of a ball with little to no incidence on the broader storyline. Admittedly fun, but confused, it is hard for me to situate Dark Shadows’ intentions, past what I know of its creators. Depp and Burton being obvious die-hard fans of the show, their (re)vision oscillates between disrespectful extremes and playful homage, never quite finding its footing a film per se, but offering more than the average feat of set decoration, Gothic atmosphere and expressionistic make-up to compensate for it. Somewhere above Alice, yet painfully low in comparison to most of his cinematic offerings, Burton’s Dark Shadows does nonetheless strike me as a genuine effort. In many ways, this film is the beginning of what seems to be Burton’s return to form, which hopefully gets consolidated with the feature film version of his 1984 short film Frankenweenie later this year. With no specific or emotional attachment to the original show, 2012’s Dark Shadows did not fuel rage, but it did not incite any particular reaction: instead of the prolonged sigh I was expecting, I shrugged and moved on.
Jack White - Sixteen Saltines (AG Rojas, 2012)[watch]
24 years-old music video director AG Rojas is nothing short of a revelation to me. Coming into the public eye with the controversial (and brilliant) “found footage” video for Earl Sweatshirt’s eponymous song, Rojas’ shockingly consistent video output seems to be mainly concerned with spontaneity and energy, offering a great, fantasized look into a young, mostly black and latino America (even when dealing with Jack, eh, White) through the music of Gil Scott-Heron, Emeli Sandé and Spiritualized, to name but a few. His work also made me realize the potential of music videos and my lack of knowledge in that specific area of short form filmmaking I’ve been unconsciously dismissing for the longest time. His short film Crown was accepted into Slamdance 2012.
When Marvel Studios hinted at their plans for a blockbuster movie crossover in 2006 and confirmed it shortly following the success of Iron Man in 2008, it all seemed too beautiful, ambitious and improbable to be true. Yet through trial and error (5 films designed to test the waters, so to speak, and hopefully get things right), Marvel (now joined to Disney) and their army of scribes and moviemakers managed to create something beautiful (and enormously profitable) for themselves.
Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (2008) got things rolling smoothly with a blend of humor and high-octane action that has come to be characteristic of the Marvel cinematic universe. Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk (2008) was significantly less successful but nonetheless established the direction the Hulk would be going in – and would be used for – in the upcoming crossover event. The success of both initial films quickly prompted the studio to pursue Iron Man 2 (2010) – which suffered from a scattered and overly ambitious storyline that losing sight of many things – and move ahead with Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), two highly enjoyable films mainly designed to establish the remaining players of what would be the biggest movie event of 2012: a full-on and completely unprecedented superhero extravaganza crossover that would unite Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man and the briefly-seen super-assassins Black Widow and Hawkeye under a common threat: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers.
The idea of a cinematic crossover of this magnitude is impressive and respectable enough, but how? How could a single film contain and, not to mention, make sense of so many characters without losing sight of emotion and pacing? How could a single script unite the patriotic tone of a First Avenger with the wise-cracking playboy humor of an Iron Man, to name but two? To avoid the Spider-man 3 syndrome (which Iron Man 2 didn’t), Marvel not only opted for the safe route, establishing their characters’ strengths and weaknesses in previous films (perhaps the only way to pull off an ensemble film of this scale), but also summoned the talents of Joss Whedon, geekdom’s poster boy and and veteran screenwriter extraordinaire behind such fan favorite TV shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse. Whedon’s talent for writing ensemble casts and character dynamics would hopefully be this film’s saving grace and when he proclaimed, in 2010, he wanted The Avengers to be the Glengarry Glen Ross of super-hero films, there seemed to be hope on the horizon…
Whedon’s The Avengers doesn’t bother with formalities and instead throw us right into Nick Fury’s operation. Seeking to harness energy from the Cosmic Cube (renamed “The Tesseract” for the sake of the film), S.H.I.E.L.D. is quickly attacked by Thor’s mischievous brother Loki (and, historically, the Avenger’s first-ever villain) seeking to retrieve the cube for grander purposes. Expected, but not predictable, thus begins The Avengers: in a spectacular opening sequence and threat of global chaos that only gets complicated as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes require assembling and one, again, wonders “how?”.
Drawing for a multitude of storylines, Whedon swiftly reintroduces the characters the previous films had left us with, situating them in world and mental state of their own with no need of recapitulating. Captain America (Chris Evans) as the driving force, followed by a Hulk (an excellent Mark Ruffalo) in need of convincing and a millionaire playboy ex-arms dealer (and show-stealer Robert Downey Jr.) with no real reason of joining Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) initiative. With a compromised Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and a distraught Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) already in the bag (of tricks), Whedon carefully plants the seeds of his dysfunctional unit (or time bomb, to borrow’s Dr. Banner’s assessment of the situation), which culminates in a middle set piece the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier so breathtaking, both in writing, character use and execution, it nearly overshadows the climactic battle.
Consistently, Whedon walks the fine line between campy and humorous, his writing situated somewhere between a Brian Michael Bendis and a Mark Millar, yet resolutely his own; navigating a simple, yet intricately woven storyline through the sheer potential of his characters, which are perhaps at their best written here (i.e., Cap, particularly charming as the man out of time, at times nearly reminiscent of Buffy’s Xander in his awkwardness). In fact, the film’s best scenes are not those of explosive actions, but rather those of escalating bickering or silent confrontation between the team-to-be, at the center of which Ruffalo’s Banner often stands, innerving and interestingly following of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s introductory 1964 storyline.
And while Whedon gets just about everything right with this adaptation/sequel/event, some of it does look, like extremely high-budgeted television, which isn’t exactly saying it looks bad. The Avengers finds the director at his most exalted and cartoonish, using (some would say abusing) all manners of titled angling and inventive, energetic framing. In any other context, these extravagances would have been an annoyance, but Whedon literally makes the film seep with a sensible kinetic energy that is never confusing and instead wildly appropriate for what is, after all, an adaptation of sequential art. Moving seamlessly from character to character, plot point to plot point, The Avengers leaves little time to think, question or argue; it is a well-oiled machine designed for slick, escapist entertainment that succeeds in almost every aspect.
That said, this brisk, masterful pacing is not without its consequence: one constantly wishes for more of the Black Widow, more of Hawkeye and more of their relationship, which is clearly hinted at but was most probably left on the cutting room for, along some 40 minutes of Joss Whedon’s initial director’s cut. One can only assume a lot of delightful dialogue was also cut (probably involving Fury, which seems underdeveloped in a film in which he could’ve shone as a character), but whether it was an absolute necessity or simple studio imput verbose filmmaker Whedon had to comply with will not be know until the inevitable, special features-filled, director’s cut DVD/Blu-ray comes out. But again, it is almost inconsequential to the film’s enjoyment, as Whedon, at every plot turn, hooks you deeper into a super-powered orgy making you wish you were a kid again.
Ultimately, The Avengers might just be the new, seminal superhero film, setting the bar extremely high for future installments of Marvel Studios’ “Phase 2”. Shining through content more than through form, Whedon never loses sight of the various characters he is dealing with, instead using them as the various ingredients of an explosive and intelligent cocktail. While we have Shane Black on Iron Man 3 and TV director Alan Taylor on Thor 2 to look forward to, the future of Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe should be interesting as its arch villain was revealed in the post-credit scene of this film (and already hinted at in Thor) and believe me, it’s a good one. The Avengers ends and one immediately wants more, which is the say The Avengers have successfully assembled and left an indelible mark on the landscape of blockbuster entertainment and comic book adaptations.
![Battleship (Peter Berg, 2012)
The most ridiculous, unabashedly and unapologetically militaristic film to come around in a while, Battleship, the latest from producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura’s evil venture with Hasbro Entertainment (having brought us the abominations that are the Transformers and G.I. Joe series) unbelievably manages to one-up its predecessors in every possibly conceivable way, reducing cinematic notions of plot, characters and coherence into blazing shards of molten metal lost at sea.
Adapting possibly one of the most repetitive strategy game in the history of mankind – and without the “I’ve sunk your battleship” line to boot- director Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) and his army of dilettantes manage to craft a film in which plot and character become completely inconsequential; a film that replicates the thrills of the game closely and excessively, down to the shouting of numbers and letters, grid patterns peg-shaped missiles, invisible field forces, hits and (oh-so-many) misses. Missiles are launched, hundreds of little computerized humans die, and your brain goes numb. Repeat for nearly 2 hours and a half.
Rife with meatball nationalism (the title gloriously and laughably appearing when our main character, interpreted by Taylor Kitsch, joins the Navy) and misguided humor (painfully exhibited in an opening gag involving a chicken burrito and a terribly embarrassing use of music), Battleship is a somewhat admirable film in how it manages to be a pure product (I stress “product”) of spectacle and abstraction – making Transformers: Dark of the Moon look like a structurally sound and orchestrated symphony in comparison. Abomination of digital-era filmmaking, Battleship quickly introduces its conflict (Aliens attack Earth, Battleship must defend Earth, Loser will Become All-America Hero in Process), its cardboard cut-out characters and immediately proceeds at assaulting your brain with hysterical CG-animated naval battles, at the center of which evolves borefest Taylor Kitsch (one of the main reasons John Carter failed earlier this year), a quickly dispatched Alexander Skarsgård, a ridiculously unusable Rihanna, a racially convenient Asano Tadanobu and a criminally underused (and bored) Liam Neeson – or rather the idea of these actors (let alone characters), dwarved by the incessant clashing of metal happening around them and the ghosts of an planetary Pearl Harbor hanging over their heads.
And what could’ve been a crafty exercise in world-building and invention (the possibilities of creating a mythology around a board game that has none) culminates into throbbing displays of excess devoid of sense; so many boats and battles that ultimately collapse into each other as one undistinguishable aberration, almost beautiful in their failure to be anything but vibrant digitized teals and oranges, screenwriters Jon & Erich Hoeber (of 2010’s far superior comic book adaptation of Warren Ellis’s RED) seemingly refusing to develop characters or villains into something more cohesive than a pretext for battle.
Much like the Transformers films, Battleship exhibits an aberrant fetish of machinery and metal. Water against metal, fire again metal, explosions, debris and so on – all of which are photographed so closely they reach levels of kinetic abstract expressionism Jackson Pollock would have be proud of, had he been a computer software devoid of a soul. For most of the film, I honestly had no idea what the hell was happening, nor did I care. A scene opening the third act, set to the pounding sound of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” comes so close to being a full-fledged advertisement for the Armed Forces any hope Battleship had of being dismissed as brainless, innocuous entertainment are immediately shattered: war veterans appear out of thin air to help Kitsch and co. prepare the ancient Missouri Battleship (a museum ship) for its final and most important battle, subtext and politics couldn’t be cleared and more despicable.
A film about a “loser” becoming a man through the falsely glorificating powers of the military and a country blindly gung-ho at defending itself rather than engaging in dialogue, my retinas and ethics hadn’t been this bluntly assaulted since Stallone’s The Expendables (2010). Unlike it, though, Battleship works as a thinly veiled collage, as a literal explosion of ideology, as an abstract essay on fire, water and metal – like that punch in the face that makes you see cartoonish stars rotating above your head. But it sinks so low at everything else I almost cannot help admiring it with misty-eyed masochism.
If Michael Bay represents the pinnacle of chauvinistic, macho American blockbuster filmmaking, Battleship’s Berg (or Berg’s Battleship, if you want to take the metaphor a step further) stands tall as his offensively erect penis, protruding and poking your eyeballs for what seems like an eternity that simultaneously goes by extremely quickly, given how mind-numbing it ultimately is.
[via eXpress News]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4as4qWTrE1r159loo1_1280.jpg)
![Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011)
Cahill’s philosophical character study falls right in line with the cerebral science-fiction trend pioneered by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and brought back in force with recent films such as Primer (2004), The Clone Returns Home (2008) and Monsters (2010—which, while far less philosophical, shows similar ambition and manages to give life to big ideas with very limited means). When promising MIT student Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) causes a deadly accident, her life falls apart. Flash-forward to four years of juvenile detention later, and she is profoundly changed, in search of forgiveness and faced with a whole new world. A new planet, in fact: Earth 2 has entered our Earth’s orbit and made contact with us, revealing to be absolutely identical to our world—down to its timeline and inhabitants.
Another Earth suffers from the same issues as many of its indie contemporaries—excessively lingering progression, occasionally hollow philosophical riddles and so on—but is set apart by a wonderful performance from breakthrough actress and co-writer Marling, who shows incredible depth as the fragile, pained and quite possibly mentally ill character. Her performance alone makes the film worth seeing, as one can’t help but crawl under her skin and embark on her tragic journey of redemption. While it’s beautifully shot and features an excellent score by Fall On Your Sword, the main problem with Another Earth is that, as a viewer and fan of high-concept science-fiction, I found myself infinitely more fascinated by the staggering philosophical, scientific and theological questions that the existence of Earth 2 raises than by the drama and character study at hand. The film fails to address any of these questions—instead brushing over them to add an illusion of depth to the simple narrative—and going out, I found myself thinking more about cosmology, the existence of God and fate than about the character arc at the core of this picture. […]
[via Fangoria: “Fantasia Day 4”]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loqkuzS4qf1qzyw6so1_r1_1280.jpg)
![Errors of the Human Body (Eron Sheean, 2012)
[Watch the teaser trailer via Twitch]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m475889bRi1r159loo1_1280.jpg)
![Dark Shadows (Tim Burton, 2012)
[…] On the heels of the irritating failure that was Alice in Wonderland (2010), Burton, with usual partner-in-crime Johnny Depp, finally assembled his long-planned dream project: a modernized film adaptation of the highly influential cult Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which aired on ABC from 1966 to 1971 for a totality of 1,225 (!) episodes.
Playing out like a hyper-dramatic version of Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) by ways of Mario Bava, Burton’s Dark Shadows is a bizarre mess of a film, not without its redeeming qualities. Surprisingly enjoyable, if only for its highly theatrical, hyper-real aesthetic and intentionally camp recreation of the 1970s (and perhaps the lowest of expectations), Burton focuses his film (written by Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer author Seth Grahame-Smith) on Barnabas Collins’ return and his strife with Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green, appropriately spellbinding), despite (and perhaps only in reference to the original series) seemingly introducing us to the world of Collinsport through Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) – sans the iconic voice-over, unfortunately.
And while one can question the film’s entire existence (I did), I will say that Dark Shadows does prove successful at recognizing the difficulties inherent to its existence. The potential traps of adapting such elevated levels of soap opera drama are mostly avoided (and in places reinforced) by the balancing use of playful, hammy humor quite characteristic of Burton’s entire oeuvre. With the help of the rest of the Collins family (which includes Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins, Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Julia Hoffman and Chloë Grace-Moretz as Carolyn Stoddard), spearheaded by the grandiloquence of Barnabas/Depp (who does his usual shtick with expected effect), Burton offers us the Addams family film he never made, for better or for worse. The multiple pieces of the narrative fall into place with ease, but quickly, the film’s gorgeous photography (by French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel) and grandiose set design overshadows the overwrought intrigue Burton walks us through with the help of flashbacks and appropriately Gothic layering of narratives.
Without having seen much of the show at all, it seems apparent that Grahame-Smith attempted to collapse and compress every major (or iconic) arc of the show into one narrative, which, as a result, is neither epic nor properly paced. Instead darting a multitude of confused, sometimes useless, directions and asides, the film quickly reaches a point of utter nonsense when rock icon Alice Cooper appears in the context of a ball with little to no incidence on the broader storyline. Admittedly fun, but confused, it is hard for me to situate Dark Shadows’ intentions, past what I know of its creators. Depp and Burton being obvious die-hard fans of the show, their (re)vision oscillates between disrespectful extremes and playful homage, never quite finding its footing a film per se, but offering more than the average feat of set decoration, Gothic atmosphere and expressionistic make-up to compensate for it. Somewhere above Alice, yet painfully low in comparison to most of his cinematic offerings, Burton’s Dark Shadows does nonetheless strike me as a genuine effort. In many ways, this film is the beginning of what seems to be Burton’s return to form, which hopefully gets consolidated with the feature film version of his 1984 short film Frankenweenie later this year. With no specific or emotional attachment to the original show, 2012’s Dark Shadows did not fuel rage, but it did not incite any particular reaction: instead of the prolonged sigh I was expecting, I shrugged and moved on.
[via eXpress News]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3z56lQB8u1r159loo1_1280.jpg)
![Jack White - Sixteen Saltines (AG Rojas, 2012)[watch]
24 years-old music video director AG Rojas is nothing short of a revelation to me. Coming into the public eye with the controversial (and brilliant) “found footage” video for Earl Sweatshirt’s eponymous song, Rojas’ shockingly consistent video output seems to be mainly concerned with spontaneity and energy, offering a great, fantasized look into a young, mostly black and latino America (even when dealing with Jack, eh, White) through the music of Gil Scott-Heron, Emeli Sandé and Spiritualized, to name but a few. His work also made me realize the potential of music videos and my lack of knowledge in that specific area of short form filmmaking I’ve been unconsciously dismissing for the longest time. His short film Crown was accepted into Slamdance 2012.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3mvnzIEck1r159loo1_1280.jpg)
![Rocky Votolato - Sparklers (AG Rojas, 2011)[watch]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3mxztEukL1r159loo1_1280.jpg)
![Emeli Sandé - Daddy (AG Rojas, 2011)[watch]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3mx1bIef61r159loo1_r1_1280.jpg)
![Earl Sweatshirt - Earl (AG Rojas, 2010)[watch]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3mw0pURwi1r159loo1_r1_1280.jpg)
![The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)
When Marvel Studios hinted at their plans for a blockbuster movie crossover in 2006 and confirmed it shortly following the success of Iron Man in 2008, it all seemed too beautiful, ambitious and improbable to be true. Yet through trial and error (5 films designed to test the waters, so to speak, and hopefully get things right), Marvel (now joined to Disney) and their army of scribes and moviemakers managed to create something beautiful (and enormously profitable) for themselves.
Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (2008) got things rolling smoothly with a blend of humor and high-octane action that has come to be characteristic of the Marvel cinematic universe. Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk (2008) was significantly less successful but nonetheless established the direction the Hulk would be going in – and would be used for – in the upcoming crossover event. The success of both initial films quickly prompted the studio to pursue Iron Man 2 (2010) – which suffered from a scattered and overly ambitious storyline that losing sight of many things – and move ahead with Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), two highly enjoyable films mainly designed to establish the remaining players of what would be the biggest movie event of 2012: a full-on and completely unprecedented superhero extravaganza crossover that would unite Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man and the briefly-seen super-assassins Black Widow and Hawkeye under a common threat: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers.
The idea of a cinematic crossover of this magnitude is impressive and respectable enough, but how? How could a single film contain and, not to mention, make sense of so many characters without losing sight of emotion and pacing? How could a single script unite the patriotic tone of a First Avenger with the wise-cracking playboy humor of an Iron Man, to name but two? To avoid the Spider-man 3 syndrome (which Iron Man 2 didn’t), Marvel not only opted for the safe route, establishing their characters’ strengths and weaknesses in previous films (perhaps the only way to pull off an ensemble film of this scale), but also summoned the talents of Joss Whedon, geekdom’s poster boy and and veteran screenwriter extraordinaire behind such fan favorite TV shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse. Whedon’s talent for writing ensemble casts and character dynamics would hopefully be this film’s saving grace and when he proclaimed, in 2010, he wanted The Avengers to be the Glengarry Glen Ross of super-hero films, there seemed to be hope on the horizon…
Whedon’s The Avengers doesn’t bother with formalities and instead throw us right into Nick Fury’s operation. Seeking to harness energy from the Cosmic Cube (renamed “The Tesseract” for the sake of the film), S.H.I.E.L.D. is quickly attacked by Thor’s mischievous brother Loki (and, historically, the Avenger’s first-ever villain) seeking to retrieve the cube for grander purposes. Expected, but not predictable, thus begins The Avengers: in a spectacular opening sequence and threat of global chaos that only gets complicated as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes require assembling and one, again, wonders “how?”.
Drawing for a multitude of storylines, Whedon swiftly reintroduces the characters the previous films had left us with, situating them in world and mental state of their own with no need of recapitulating. Captain America (Chris Evans) as the driving force, followed by a Hulk (an excellent Mark Ruffalo) in need of convincing and a millionaire playboy ex-arms dealer (and show-stealer Robert Downey Jr.) with no real reason of joining Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) initiative. With a compromised Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and a distraught Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) already in the bag (of tricks), Whedon carefully plants the seeds of his dysfunctional unit (or time bomb, to borrow’s Dr. Banner’s assessment of the situation), which culminates in a middle set piece the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier so breathtaking, both in writing, character use and execution, it nearly overshadows the climactic battle.
Consistently, Whedon walks the fine line between campy and humorous, his writing situated somewhere between a Brian Michael Bendis and a Mark Millar, yet resolutely his own; navigating a simple, yet intricately woven storyline through the sheer potential of his characters, which are perhaps at their best written here (i.e., Cap, particularly charming as the man out of time, at times nearly reminiscent of Buffy’s Xander in his awkwardness). In fact, the film’s best scenes are not those of explosive actions, but rather those of escalating bickering or silent confrontation between the team-to-be, at the center of which Ruffalo’s Banner often stands, innerving and interestingly following of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s introductory 1964 storyline.
And while Whedon gets just about everything right with this adaptation/sequel/event, some of it does look, like extremely high-budgeted television, which isn’t exactly saying it looks bad. The Avengers finds the director at his most exalted and cartoonish, using (some would say abusing) all manners of titled angling and inventive, energetic framing. In any other context, these extravagances would have been an annoyance, but Whedon literally makes the film seep with a sensible kinetic energy that is never confusing and instead wildly appropriate for what is, after all, an adaptation of sequential art. Moving seamlessly from character to character, plot point to plot point, The Avengers leaves little time to think, question or argue; it is a well-oiled machine designed for slick, escapist entertainment that succeeds in almost every aspect.
That said, this brisk, masterful pacing is not without its consequence: one constantly wishes for more of the Black Widow, more of Hawkeye and more of their relationship, which is clearly hinted at but was most probably left on the cutting room for, along some 40 minutes of Joss Whedon’s initial director’s cut. One can only assume a lot of delightful dialogue was also cut (probably involving Fury, which seems underdeveloped in a film in which he could’ve shone as a character), but whether it was an absolute necessity or simple studio imput verbose filmmaker Whedon had to comply with will not be know until the inevitable, special features-filled, director’s cut DVD/Blu-ray comes out. But again, it is almost inconsequential to the film’s enjoyment, as Whedon, at every plot turn, hooks you deeper into a super-powered orgy making you wish you were a kid again.
Ultimately, The Avengers might just be the new, seminal superhero film, setting the bar extremely high for future installments of Marvel Studios’ “Phase 2”. Shining through content more than through form, Whedon never loses sight of the various characters he is dealing with, instead using them as the various ingredients of an explosive and intelligent cocktail. While we have Shane Black on Iron Man 3 and TV director Alan Taylor on Thor 2 to look forward to, the future of Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe should be interesting as its arch villain was revealed in the post-credit scene of this film (and already hinted at in Thor) and believe me, it’s a good one. The Avengers ends and one immediately wants more, which is the say The Avengers have successfully assembled and left an indelible mark on the landscape of blockbuster entertainment and comic book adaptations.
[via eXpress News]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3iejn62Tg1r159loo1_1280.jpg)
