Thursday, September 10, 2009

Ryan's Junk Drawer

Hey, hey, hey. It's time for my junk! Wait...that doesn't sound right... This week brings us a veritable plethora (doesn't "Veritable Plethora" sound like a hard-core Christian rock band?) of movie nuggets, including some Pixar potentials, dueling super-prisons, a further shuffle down for The Road, and a pair of trailers that could not be more different. Let's dive in.

Here are the 5 top stories that didn't quite deserve their own post:

1.) Pixar poo-pooed - When Disney bought Marvel, the only thing that stopped some die hard Marvel zombies from eating their own brains was the thought that Pixar could both serve as a model for involvement between the two entities AND the thought that Pixar might play (not pee) in Marvel's pool. The rumor that quickly came up was that John Lasseter, head of Pixar and rich, richer motha-trucka, was eyeing Ant Man for their first foray into fanboy fare. Hell, Entertainment Weekly reported that the news was true, and they are never wrong (except when Owen Glieberman lies about seeing a movie...did I say that out loud...YES I DID! I DON'T FEAR YOU GLIEBERMAN, BRING IT). Well, CHUD.com contacted Edgar Wright, who has long been associated with the project, and it turns out that if this rumor is true...neither Wright nor Marvel's honcho of movies Kevin Feige know anything about it. Wright is tonally perfect for the film and, although Pixar's involvement sounds great on any subject, I tend to believe Feige and Wright on this one. Now, maybe both are true, and Pixar DOES want it, and Wright and Feige haven't been told yet. In that case, my money is on Pixar gettin' what they want. They are the most powerful company not trying to currently block health care reform.

2.) Supermax vs Supermax - So for an eternity now, David Goyer and Justin Marks have worked on a bad-ass sounding script that saw the Green Arrow trapped inside a prison for supervillains titled Supermax. It sounds fun, doesn't it? Well, Sony just bought a script called Supermax and that made all the nerds get excited because the description was this: "Supermax takes place in a Maximum Security Prison for the Super-Natural as a skilled guard must join forces with a lethal inmate after a riot ensues in order to fight his way through various monsters and mad-men in order to survive." Beyond the fact that apparently supernatural beings from the beyond get funky capitalization rules, that synopsis sounds pretty much like the OTHER Supermax. Yeah, that's right, there are TWO scripts called Supermax and they sound damn near identical. I smell a lawsuit...and bacon (that may be my fingers...my fingers always smell like bacon). So, long story short, we may get one movie called Supermax...or two...or none. See why this didn't make the regular news.

3.) Winding on down, The Road - So I got an email from a PR rep that The Road is moving...AGAIN. This film has done more shuffling than the 1985-1986 Chicago Bears. It was supposed to be practically on DVD by this point, and now we have to wait AGAIN as the film is due in November...Thanksgiving to be exact. This makes no GD sense. (A) The date is PACKED with movies, including Fantastic Mr. Fox, Ninja Assassin, Old Dogs, and Nine, which is a movie FROM THE SAME COMPANY that is also hoping for Oscar. WTF? This isn't a sign of a lack of confidence to be sure, it's not like they're dumping it...but what the hell is going on with this movie? An early screening review I read called it one of the most important films of the last 20 years. A review in Variety last week called it a turd. I just want to see the thing. This is the strangest release tango I've ever seen.

4.) Get high - Part of Up in the Air was shot in Omaha, and one of my friends may or may not have a tiny frame or two that he appears in. That's not why I'm excited. Vera Farmiga is one of the reasons I'm excited (yum), but the real reason is that Jason Reitman's film looks like a tender, tragic Thank You For Smoking (his first and best film). Don't take my word on it, watch this and tell me how good it looks.




5.) It's not that good - You'd be hard pressed not to think that Black Dynamite is going to be awesome, but EVERYTHING I heard has been pretty much meh on this faux exploitation film. Oh, I'm still going to have to see it, but I don't have that high of hopes. UPDATE: There is a reader out there who knows his, her, or hermaphroditic-track-star stuff. I have been alerted to several positive things said about the entire affair and must have imagined people other than one critic hating it. My B yo. Still, the trailer rocks, right?



That's the junk for this week. I promise to find more juicy bits of tid next week...provided you scroll down on the blog a bit and pick me up one of those items I asked for. What? It seems like a fair trade.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Meh?

Variety: "A vastly entertaining film, with a playfully suave and acrobatic perf by co-writer Michael Jai White in the title role, this film will delight both discriminating fans of the blaxploitation tradition and ordinary lovers of goofy, in-ya-face thrills."

Ain't It Cool News (Vern): ". . . BLACK DYNAMITE is pretty god damn spectacular."

Cinematical: "One of those eminently quotable comedies that frat guys and movie geeks will come back to time and again."

Film Threat: " . . . an impeccably mounted send-up of the seventies Blaxploitation genre."


Etc. You get the idea.

September 10, 2009  
Blogger Ryan said...

See, now, that's awesome. Keepin' me honest. I don't know why I remember thinking that everyone was dogging on it. I stand corrected. I haven't seen it so I don't know shit. I want it to be good, that much is true. Thus, I stand before ye humbled.

September 10, 2009  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cool Ryan -- I can't wait to see it again! Incidentally, I'm sure you're correct that there were a few people "dogging" . . . probably film snobs who reflexively don't like what regular people like, and say things about how a film didn't "explore the deeper black/white paradigm and confront the eschatological and ontological issues which every man, woman, and child faces in this techno-capitalistpig-patriarchal-hierarchical-misogynist wasteland we call the 21st century"." Yeah, OK.

I saw it at Tribeca and I laughed all the way through -- which is what I want from a comedy. I don't really care if it meets the high-flown standards of some pointy-headed intellectual twit who's convinced himself that Solaris is a good movie.

See you on opening day, 10/16!


Anon (definitely not a hermaphrodite!)

September 11, 2009  
Blogger Ryan said...

Boy do I hope that the internets don't hold a secret copy of my Solaris review somewhere. I believe I described it as "the finest exploration and confrontation of eschatology and ontology that every human confronts in this internet-centric, neocon-corrupted, intergender-phobic dystopia we refer to as the modern world." I may be paraphrasing myself, but you get the idea. Best wishes, non hermaphrodite!

September 11, 2009  

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