Day: July 29, 2010

I got stuck on a story late yesterday afternoon and consequently missed my last shot at seeing Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Universal, 8.13) for free. Okay, maybe I half-wanted to miss it due to serious concerns about sitting through another default, deadpan, deer-in-the-headlights Michael Cera performance.

Michael Cera (l.), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (second from left) and the cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (including Allison Pill, second from right).

It’s gotten to the point where the very thought of Cera and that annoying look on his face — a look that says (a) “Uhhm, do I want to be here?,” (b) “My mind is slightly blown but I’m also kinda bored at the same time,” (c) “Whoa, she’s kinda hot” and (d) “It’s not easy being the hippest, most deapanny guy in the room” — will make my jaw tighten and my teeth start to grind.

But the mostly positive reviews for the film, especially the one by Cinematical‘s Todd Gilchrist, have convinced me that I erred in semi-consciously blowing off last night’s screening. Scott Pilgrim is some kind of generational event flick, and anyone with any pretensions to being half-aware of movies as diviners of cultural currents has to see it and deal with it. It’s possible that I’ll hate it, but it has to be seen.

My son Jett got to the 6 pm Lincoln Square Scott Pilgrim all-media on time, saw it and liked it. I asked him to bang out a couple of graphs.

“If you grew up with Super Mario, Nintendo and Atari, you’ll be in sync with the humor in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” he wrote last night. “It’s a love story structured like a video game in the cutthroat world of dating when you’re 18 to 24 years old. Before you jump into this flick you’re going to have to think video-game rules — second lives, Japanese anime fight sequences, magical powers, and the possibility that anyone, including Michael Cera, can kick the shit out of you.

“I’m calling it the funniest movie of the year, thanks in part to great performances by Cera, Alison Pill and Kieran Culkin. Try to imagine snarky humor in the style of Speed Racer and Dragon Ball Z, and you’ll come close to the chemistry I’m speaking of.

“Can’t buy into the idea that a guy has to fight off seven evil ex-boyfriends to win the girl of his dreams? If so you’re being too literal. Scott Pilgrim unfolds in a realm like any video game you might play today, which always has a sequence of levels and evil bosses you must defeat in order to win the game. Either you get this or you don’t, and guys like Rex Reed probably won’t.

“If you look past the video game motifs, the story’s jabout a wimpy 22-year old boy in love with a tough guarded girl with a rocky past. But otherwise forget about the absurdity — it’s beside the point.”

Update: I’ve learned that last night wasn’t my last shot at seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for free. There are five more press screenings on 7.29, 8.2, 8.4, 8.9 and 8.11.

MTV.com is reporting that Radar Online has posted a non-attributable quote from a source close to Leonardo DiCaprio saying there’s “not a chance” that Leo will star in Mel Gibson‘s untitled Viking movie, for obvious reasons.

Okay, Biutiful may not be a Sony Classics movie after all, I heard today. Maybe it will and maybe it won’t, but don’t bet the farm. Sometimes the winds shift.

A forthcoming Bluray combo-pack of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (Universal Home Video, 9.21) will include a director’s cut running 156 minutes, or 15 minutes longer than the 141-minute theatrical version. The question, of course, is whether the extra length will make it a stronger film or just another case of directorial indulgence or lost “darlings.” Scott’s longer version of Kingdom of Heaven was, of course, far superior to the theatrical cut, so here’s hoping.

The only officially announced Venice Film Festival selections that seem even vaguely pulse-quickening are Juian Schnabel‘s Miral, Vincent Gallo‘s Promises Written in Water (nice title), Tom Tykwer‘s Three, Ben Affleck‘s The Town (out of competition), Casey Affleck‘s I’m Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix (ditto), Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ A Letter to Elia (ditto), and John Turturro‘s Passione (ditto).

This recently released trailer for Titanic 2: Electric Boogaloo is not a mash-up. It’s selling an actual, honest-to-God, straight-to-DVD movie about a second Titanic hitting a second iceberg. The stars are Bruce Davison and Brooke Burns. Okay, I’m kidding about the Boogaloo but everything else is genuine. Really.

Asylum will be releasing Titanic 2….wait, is it Titanic 2, Titanic II, or Titanic 2: The Asylum Version? Or Clash of the Titanics? Anyway, it’s out on 8.24.

HE takes its hat off to Titanic 2‘s director, screenwriter and costar Shane Van Dyke. He’s 30 years old, 6’3″ and the grandson of Dick Van Dyke and grand-nephew of Jerry Van Dyke. Making such a film and getting it distributed took balls of steel.

I was talking a while back about Kenneth Branagh throwing up each and every day in his hotel room during the making of Thor. Can you imagine what poor Bruce Davison must have been feeling during production?

The production reportedly used the Queen Mary in Long Beach so “play” the Titanic II or…you know, the actual ship.

According to DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze, Criterion’s forthcoming Bluray of Terry Zwigoff‘s Crumb “has bright colors, heavy grain and looks far more film-like than either of the previous Sony DVDs (1999 and 2006 Special Edition). However, I don’t know that it is a film that benefits extensively from the move to Bluray 1080p.”

Wells translation: Who’s running the show over there? They take a funky little film like Crumb and Bluray it? Why?

Back to Tooze: “Although saying that, it is true that much of the comic art and facial close-ups can look surprisingly impressive in the higher resolution.

Wells translation: Well, I have to say something nice about the Bluray upgrade…right? Gotta keep my relationships at par.

Back to Tooze: “Crumb is not a viewing experience that one will recall for its striking appearance but the Criterion HD does support the ‘rustic’ feel of the film’s content. It is dual-layered with a very high video bitrate and colors seem brighter and truer than SD could relate. Skin tones seem warm and contrast exhibits healthy black levels. One must surely feel that this Blu-ray exports the most honest original representation of this amusing, thought-provoking and, sometimes, painful portrait.”

Wells comment: In other words, the decision to put out Crumb in Bluray was at best quizzical and at worst pointless. What does it cost to master a film for Bluray? $100 grand? Less? I would have much preferred a Bluray of Downhill Racer over Crumb.

If nothing else I’m guessing that the Crumb Bluray is a way for the Criterion grain monks to flex their muscles, strut their stuff and remind the world what they’re still in the game and not backing off an inch. The Grainmakers!

On the left, a 31 or 32 year-old Jeff Bridges in a scene from Tron (’82). On the right, a CG plastic-surgery version of “young” Bridges in the forthcoming Tron Legacy. The latter was achieved by youthing down the present-day Bridges, 60, with digital scrubs and touchups. Except the result doesn’t really look like Bridges. It looks like a cross between a celebrity lookalike and a Bridges dummy you might find inside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. It’s a lazy effort.

Jeff Bridges in Tron; 60 year-old Bridges de-aged through CG scrub-down in Tron Legacy.

Imagine how cool it would have been if Bridges had been convincingly youthified — if the 31 or 32-year-old version had literally been brought back to life. For “real.” I don’t know enough about CG techniques to speak with authority but I know a thing or two about what’s possible. And if you ask me director Joseph Kosinski should have told his team to digitally copy and re-work frame images from various Bridges’ films in the late ’70s and early ’80s and then integrate them into Tron Legacy. That way we’d be looking at Bridges as he actually appeared nearly 30 years ago.

I was told a few months ago that Kosinski is “the new James Cameron.” And I’m starting to doubt that. Cameron would have never settled for this.

The Pursuitist has posted the trailer for Kenneth Branagh‘s Thor that was shown a few days ago at Comic-Con. Branagh + Thor = whore. You can’t tell me that an esteemed middle-aged British actor-director who knows from William Shakespeare did this film for any other reason than a large stinking paycheck, or that he didn’t retire to his hotel room every night during shooting and throw up.

Look at Chris Hemsworth — the brawn, the blonde hair, the Nolte-Schwarzenegger facial structure, the non-Barrymore-esque profile. He’s friendly and amiable and smiling in interviews (naturally), but he’s another Australian workout ape from Gold’s Gym. And poor Natalie Portman, pretending to be flirtatious and turned on by the whole comic-book superhero perversion. (“It might be tedious but I’ve been well paid!”) And Anthony Hopkins, the absolute whore of whores playing another bearded father of another powerful but tortured legend in the wake of Beowulf and The Wolfman.

And finally, look at the trailer. Listen to the soundtrack when Thor/Hemsworth arches his back and hows at the unfairness of things by going “Aaahrrrrgh!” Hell is not other people — hell is movies like this with the same old ingredients, time and time again. This is why I fantasized about strafing the Comic-Con faithful, because they support films like this and clamor for more.

Paramount will release Thor in 3D on 5.11.11.