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Pacific Rim Loves You. Love It Back.

Pacific Rim Loves You. Love It Back.

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Pacific Rim PosterPacific Rim (2013)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Rob Kazinsky, Max Martini, Ron Perlman.

If you choose to see Grown Ups 2 this week instead of Pacific Rim, I will come after you. I know nothing about engineering, but I will find a way to build a titanic super robot and hunt you down. I know nothing about genetics, but I will find a way to grow a mutated giant monster and put it on your trail. And if you spent any money on any of the Transformers movies and you don’t go see Pacific Rim….

R-A-G-E!

Pacific Rim is here for you, summer movie fans and science-fiction worshippers: an original, thrilling, no-bloat SF geek explosion. Every summer has that film, the one that reminds us what fun the warm season movies are supposed to be, and makes us leave the theater walking tall as a 50-meter robot and loving life like a thirteen-year-old kid who hit the bank with a lemonade stand and can now afford that new video game.

I’ll admit a strong bias here, which is the same one that director Guillermo del Toro has: a reverence for the cinematic marvel of watching giant monsters knocking crap over. Pacific Rim is a contemporary love poem to Toho Studios and Tsubaraya Productions in the 1960s, the folks who brought the eruption of outrageous fun kaiju cinema. (Kaiju as Pacific Rim’s title cards define it means “giant monster.” I’ll be nitpicky as a fan and point out that the literal Japanese meaning is “strange beast,” with no reference to size. Daikaiju means “giant strange beast.” However, in fan speak kaiju has come to refer to the entire genre of special effects films centered on giant creatures.) Del Toro creates a whole world where giant monsters and human-piloted robotic suits can slug away at each other in awe-inspiring set-pieces stuffed with hero poses and fist-pumping victory shots. It’s so damn gorgeous and it feels so good.

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Check Out the How To Train Your Dragon 2 Teaser Trailer

Check Out the How To Train Your Dragon 2 Teaser Trailer

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I love it when a really great film sneaks up on me. It doesn’t happen very often any more — as Editor-in-Chief of the BG website, it’s more or less my job to stay on top of the latest in fantasy entertainment — but when it does, it’s a real delight.

My favorite film of 2010, and one of my all-time favorite animated films, period, snuck up on me. My kids came boiling up out of the basement, begging me to come watch it with them on DVD. So I did. They were aquiver with excitement as they watched it again — for what turned out to be the fourth time — trying to stay quiet and not spoil the surprises for me.

The film was How To Train Your Dragon, and it was everything they said it would be: funny, surprising, original, and absolutely riveting. See Andrew Zimmerman Jones BG review here, in which he calls it “Hands down, of the fantasy films I’ve seen this year, my favorite.”

And now the sequel has snuck up on me. Or at least the teaser trailer has — I had no idea the movie was in production. But I’m delighted to hear it, and anxiously awaiting the finished product. Canadian writer/director Dean DeBlois, who also directed the first film, calls this one “the epic second act of a much larger story.” Here’s a look at the trailer posted two days ago on YouTube, where it already has over 1.6 million views.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 was produced by DreamWorks Animation and directed by Dean DeBlois. The voice cast includes Gerard Butler, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, and Craig Ferguson. It is scheduled for release in June 2014.

Weird of Oz Dissects a Zombie!

Weird of Oz Dissects a Zombie!

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world war zNow that zombie apocalypse has gotten its most mainstream imprimatur with a big-budget summer blockbuster starring Brad Pitt, I thought I’d take a break from my reading of Arak comic books this week to chime in on the trend. I’ll also revisit and share my original review of the book on which Pitt’s new star vehicle is “based” (and, for those of you who have read World War Z, you’ll know why I put that word in quotes).

I’ve been a fan of zombie films since I was a teen (back in the ‘80s, Barbara Mandrell sang, “I was country when country wasn’t cool”; I guess I could say much the same thing about zombies), ushered into the land of the undead by late-night viewings of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and White Zombie (1932, starring Bela Lugosi, and that’s way old-school).

Zombies are big business these days, the virus finding new vectors to infect untapped audiences and turn them into fans. This unprecedented outbreak began in the early years of the new century with some very well-done and popular films including 28 Days Later (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake) and Shaun of the Dead (2004). Romero himself, the granddaddy of the whole genre, returned with Land of the Dead (2005) and a couple of subsequent installments in his ever-expanding zombie mythos.

walking deadMore recently, the comic-book series The Walking Dead became a big hit among readers, then went on to be adapted into the AMC series that is currently one of the most popular shows on cable television. Zombie novels have become so ubiquitous, they now constitute their own sub-genre, like vampire or werewolf novels. You might also say zombies have now “jumped the shark,” following the lead of Twilight into teen romance territory (Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, as well as, apparently, a slew of others in this latest fad. I haven’t read any of these, but I can only imagine: “Is that part of your lower intestine leaking from your abdomen, or are you just happy to see me?”).

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Goth Chick News: They’re Heeeerrrreee… Again

Goth Chick News: They’re Heeeerrrreee… Again

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image002At the end of June, MGM and Twentieth Century Fox announced they will co-finance and distribute a remake of the 1982 horror classic, Poltergeist, causing fans all over the globe to let out a howl of collective agony.

Any movie that can send practically an entire generation into therapy over a stuffed clown and television static should be left entirely alone.

Seriously.

But of course Hollywood cannot seem to keep its hands to itself.

Gil Kenan (Monster House) is set to direct from a screenplay by writer David Lindsay-Abaire (Oz: The Great and Powerful) and the film is being produced by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) and Rob Tapert (The Posession) via Ghost House Pictures.

Okay, the credentials had made us feel only slightly better before the synopsis sent us right back into a tailspin.

A family man called Eric Bowen (rather than Steve Freeling – GC) moves his wife and kids to a new town in the hopes of a fresh start, a plan which goes horribly wrong when his daughter, Madeleine, is abducted by evil forces.

Wow… original.

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“Hi-yo, Silver! Awayzzzzzz…” The Lone Ranger Defeats Insomnia!

“Hi-yo, Silver! Awayzzzzzz…” The Lone Ranger Defeats Insomnia!

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TheLoneRanger2013PosterThe Lone Ranger (2013)
Directed by Gore Verbinski. Starring Silver, Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, Ruth Wilson, James Badge Dale, Helena Bonham Carter.

At the climax of the new cinematic exploit of the Lone Ranger, director Gore Verbinski finally busts out his skills at orchestrating thrilling and intricately choreographed action set pieces. He hits viewers with a top-notch closer aboard a train full of silver roaring around a Mousetrap structure of parallel tracks. The sudden eruption of “The William Tell Overture” on the theater sound system stirs listless audience members awake. For a few minutes, The Lone Ranger feels like The Lone Ranger: old-fashioned Western thrills starring one of the great Do-Gooder heroes. A few folks in the audience clap. Some notice they haven’t finished their popcorn.

Then everybody leaves the multiplex to go home and catch up on their nap times, which they never realized they needed.

That’s the most damning criticism I can lob at this new Lone Ranger: I nearly nodded off twice during my screening. I say this as a hardcore fan of the Western genre, a nostalgia monster, and a fellow who has never before fallen asleep during a theatrical showing of a movie. Not even Meet Joe Black. The only other time I came as close to the narcoleptic fit I experienced here was due to an unfortunate application of medicine that carried warnings regarding heavy machinery.

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Adventure on Film: Merlin

Adventure on Film: Merlin

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shot08Bad films reek, and at a distance, too.

Bad Arthurian films have a special odor all their own. John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981)  may be a mess, but it’s a glorious mess, chaos of the highest and noblest order; in retrospect, it smells remarkably sweet.

Sadly, where Excalibur rises above both its Wagnerian grand guignol and its elaborate and intentional eccentricities, the mini-series Merlin (1998) sinks beneath a morass of imitative, careless, and flashy choices. It’s like a pretty stone chucked into dark and thankless waters: for an instant, on its way down, it glimmers. And then, blessedly, three hours later, it’s gone.

The star-studded cast is jaw-dropping. A film that boasts John Gielgud, Miranda Richardson, James Earl Jones (voice only), Isabella Rossellini, Rutger Hauer, Billie Whitelaw, and Helena Bonham Carter shouldn’t be a failure –– such an outcome shouldn’t be possible –– but as with so many popular music albums featuring a glittering luminati of “guest stars” and “collaborators,” star power proves to be yet another form of lead weight. Without the grace of good storytelling and with far too many overwrought effects, even the best actors on the planet prove to be nothing more than celluloid cannon fodder.

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The Kids Are More Than All Right: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome on Blu-ray

The Kids Are More Than All Right: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome on Blu-ray

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Mad MAx Beyond Thunderdome CoverMad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie. Starring Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Helen Buday, Frank Thring, Bruce Spence, Robert Grubb, Angelo Rossitto, Angry Anderson, George Spartels, Edwin Hodgeman.

“This you knows. The posts on Black Gate travel fast, and time after time I’ve done the tell. But this ain’t one body’s tell. This is the tell of us all who love the Mad Max franchise. And you gotta listen to it and remember. ‘Cause what you hear today, you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow. I’s looking behind us now, into history-back. I sees those of us who got the luck and started the haul for hi-def. And I remember how it led us here and we were heartful ‘cause we saw the pan-and-scan VHS of what was. And we knewed we got it straight.”

If it weren’t for my aversion to camping and having to use porta-potties, I would attend Wasteland Weekend every year, a “360° post-apocalypse environment” held each September in the Southern California desert for other Mad Maxians. I’m that much of a fan. I prefer an air-conditioned theater and a marathon of the three films (to which a fourth will be added next year) over risking a Gila monster bite, however.

Now I can hold the movie marathon in my less-well air-conditioned apartment — with indoor plumbing and absolutely no Gila monsters! — because Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome made its debut on Blu-ray last week, completing the trilogy in hi-def.

For both fans and the general public, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome generally ranks below the other two movies, Mad Max (1979) and The Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 (1981). The third film plays a lot nicer with other children than its predecessors: the low-budget exploitation biker/revenge flick of Mad Max and the violent action spectacle of The Road Warrior took a Spielbergian mid-‘80s shift that’s positively heartwarming. This was when the series went from an earned “R” rating to a family-friendly PG-13, and its rough wasteland-traversing hero came to the rescue of a clan of K-through-12s.

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Goth Chick News: Jack Is No Longer ‘All Work and No Play,’ or Toy Story Gets Redrum’d

Goth Chick News: Jack Is No Longer ‘All Work and No Play,’ or Toy Story Gets Redrum’d

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image002Characters or situations out of context always have an unsettling value to them as far as I’m concerned.  There is something highly disquieting when the supremely “normal” is turned upside down and becomes something icky.

Like Peter Straub turning a Normal Rockwell, Christmas-in-a-small-town setting and adding a horrifying entity to it in Ghost Story, an inebriated party girl going for a moonlight swim in Jaws, or the upended nursery rhyme in A Nightmare on Elm Street – safe, predictable things turning terrible is an old trick that skeevs me out every time.

So imagine the multiplied creep-factor if this happened to something as safe and innocent as Toy Story.

And what if Jack Torrence’s downward spiral at the Overlook Hotel was reenacted for us by Woody and all the toys had “the Shine” on them?

It doesn’t get more disturbing than that — and yet this is exactly what artist Kyle Lambert has dreamed up for our uneasy pleasure.

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First Full-length Trailer Released for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

First Full-length Trailer Released for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-posterCurse teaser trailers and their teasing ways! I was teased as a kid, teased all through high school, and now I have to put up with teaser trailers. The universe, it is a cruel place.

Fortunately, teaser trailers are followed by full-length trailers. Eventually. As has now happened with The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second installment in the three-part Hobbit epic from New Line Cinema and WingNut films. The story picks up where last year’s billion-dollar blockbuster The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey left off, following Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin and their dwarven companions into the Kingdom of Erebor, the dark heart of Mirkwood and the Necromancer’s lair, Esgaroth, and finally the human town of Dale to confront the dragon Smaug.

The trailer has some nice surprises, including plenty of scenes of Orlando Bloom as Legolas and Lost alum Evangeline Lilly as the elf Tauriel. If you watch closely, you can see the spiders of Mirkwood, the barrel escape down the river, and our first look at the terrifying Smaug himself.

The trilogy will conclude next year with The Hobbit: There and Back Again. All three films are based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, originally published in 1937.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was directed by Peter Jackson and written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson. It stars Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood, Christopher Lee, and A-lister villain Benedict Cumberbatch as both Smaug and The Necromancer Sauron. Check out the complete trailer below.

Pulp Heroes of 1990s Past: The Shadow on Blu-ray

Pulp Heroes of 1990s Past: The Shadow on Blu-ray

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The Shadow Blu-ray coverThe Shadow (1994)
Directed by Russell Mulcahy. Starring Alec Baldwin, John Lone, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Boyle, Ian McKellen, Jonathan Winters, Tim Curry.

The global whirlwind success of Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 triggered a flurry of retro-hero movies. Eight years later, the gaudy nipple-suited failure of Batman and Robin brought an end to the cycle, and it wasn’t until the double-hit of X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002) that our current comic book flood started. But we got a few interesting films during the retro-hero phase, such as Dick Tracy, the well-loved The Rocketeer … and the semi-forgotten The Shadow, which came out on Blu-ray this week to offer its mixture of elegance and error for a new audience.

A film about the pulp hero the Shadow was in development since 1982 under the auspices of producer Martin Bregman. Originally, Robert Zemeckis was slated for the director’s chair, but the film dwelled in limbo until Batman blew up the box-office. When Bregman was at last able to get the project going, Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) had replaced Zemeckis, and writer David Koepp (Jurassic Park) was on screenplay duty.

Universal Pictures had The Shadow pegged as a blockbuster in the summer of 1994: it received a heavy marketing push, with numerous merchandizing tie-ins and the announcement of an SNES video game. Universal even planned for a Shadow stunt show at their Hollywood theme park. But after a decent opening weekend, where it came in at #2 under The Lion King’s second monumental weekend and beat the awful Blown Away, The Shadow plummeted to become one of the summer’s disappointments. Plans for a franchise vanished into the darkness with the same skill as the Shadow himself.

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