But me, I wasn’t able to get that excited. I didn’t see the clips, or any video for that matter; I wasn’t familiar with Millar’s series. All I had to go off of were some screenshots–which were interesting, but still. It wasn’t until last week that official video was released, a teaser, and I was able to get an actual taste. And, well, it does look like a lot of fun. But I think for now I’m still holding off on going all giddy bananas. Check it out embedded below.

The idea gets me more than anything else: this young, geeky guy gets bored and decides to play superhero, get in costume, give himself a name, fight crime–all without any kind of powers. Then his friends join in. It all sounds right up my alley. And now with the trickle of advanced screenings started, a whole new wave of hype is building. Peter at /Film says a friend of his saw it and called it “one of the best movies” he’d “ever seen,” and another declared it the “best superhero movie ever made,” and a third likened it to a cross between The Matrix and Shaun of the Dead.

To echo the insightful musings of a young Joey Lawrence circa NBC’s Blossom: “Whoa.”

Here’s the first official trailer below, but it’s a Green Band and apparently patchy, bereft of some of the more bloody, hardcore elements that were shown at the Con. So maybe reserve final judgment till the R-rated Red is released. I know I am. I love the style here and I love the promise of seeing brutal violence being doled out (specifically, it sounds) at the hands of innocent little Hit Girl in a story about fake superheros. But still, I still need some convincing.

Kick-Ass is expected April 16th of next year.

Check out the preview attached at the foot.

A ’60s period piece, A Single Man has the same production designer on staff that AMC’s Mad Men has had for all 3 of its seasons, Dan Bishop. And it shows. The trailer has Mad Men’s same sleek but not necessarily glamorized aesthetic. Word has gotten out too, that, also like Mad Men, A Single Man will feature certain time-specific events–like the Cuban Missle Crisis and Psycho’s theatrical run–which I think adds a nice depth, especially considering the film’s main thread follows the conflict of Colin Firth’s character’s sexual preference. If the time period is relevant, why not flesh it out and make it a character?

As for the film’s visuals, it’s really no wonder they look so good. For 10 years Tom Ford was the creative designer for Gucci and was apparently the guy who built the brand back up when it was on the fringe of bankruptcy. Personally, I don’t really care too much about that, but it’s interesting, to see a guy so visually-oriented make the switch from fashion to film. And I’ve always been a sucker for style. Give me even a bad film that looks amazing and I’d probably err close to a 3star.

Oh, and get this: rumor has it that Harvey Weinstein guaranteed Tom Ford an Oscar for either Best Picture or Best Director when he bought the rights to his film–which to me seems like a pretty stupid thing to guarantee but, again, interesting. Especially that Firth already won Best Actor at Venice.

The picture also stars Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult (The Weather Man) and Matthew Goode (Watchmen, Match Point). And just take another look at that poster. Something about it. I could stare at it all day.

A Single Man will hit limited markets December 11th.

Van Diemen’s Land

Moody, extremely well photographed and about cannibals, Van Diemen’s Land can’t help but remind me of 1999’s Ravenous–only, you know, good.

Where Ravenous was hokey and sensationalized–a “bad guy,” double-crosses, boppy music behind life-and-death chase scenes–Van Diemen’s Land looks spooky and subtle, so much so that you might not even catch after one viewing of the preview what the movie is actually about. Which is awesome.

Out now in Australia, no date is set for a US release, and I’m not expecting one. But definitely something to look out for on DVD. Any movie about eating people where I can use the word “subtle” is more than okay in my book.

*And the award for Unbridled Tagline Awesomeness goes to: “Hunger is a strange silence.” Ughhh, poetic and simple like a shiver.

Broken Embraces

I haven’t seen enough of Almodovar’s work. “Almodovar.” Some might say that giving yourself the 1-word name self-branding treatment is unspeakably pretentious (I might agree), but with the kind of respect the artist formerly known as “Pedro” garners from his movies, I’m pretty sure he can do just about whatever the hell he pleases.

What I love about Almodovar’s stuff is how color-oriented it is, the bold reds and blues, always easy to look at. You can even see it in the poster. And there seems to be a duality going on in Broken Embraces that celebrates that, one between reality and fantasy, or maybe memory and present day, where each side warrants its own style, one light and fresh and grounded, pretty, and the other broken and disjointed, cold steely hues and a steady cam.

But it’s not only that; I haven’t seen enough of Penelope Cruz‘ work, either. She’s an absolute monster in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and seems to really be reestablishing herself lately, becoming a regular with Almodovar, working with Woody Allen, playing next to Ben Kingsley in Elegy. There’s something about powerful female leads. I can’t put my finger on it but they almost seem to have some kind of extra layer that men don’t have, something more surprising, maybe. Am I alone on this?

Broken Embraces has already made rounds (to rave reviews) at festivals and will be in US theaters (in NY and LA) later this year. If you don’t live there, well, besides being square, you should probably make it a Netflix.

The Attic Door

Child actors are so hit or miss with me. The little girl in The Fall? Brilliant. Anikan in Episode I? Well…that’s too easy. But you get what I mean.

Kids are rarely great performers and almost never seem like actual kids. And that’s what I worry about in The Attic Door. But besides their two iffy lines of dialogue, the atmosphere coming off this thing is killer and leaves me literally aching to see what in the name of all things holy is up in that attic.

What the filmmakers call on their blog a “haunting and romantic story about growing up,” the teaser for The Attic Door is deliciously vague–carnivorously vague. What we get are these disjointed tidbits of information: 1) the kids are alone, by themselves in an empty house tucked away in a sandy, golden, empty part of the world, and 2) there’s something they’re afraid of. A ghost, maybe. Or whatever’s in the attic. Or whatever.

I honestly can’t find a date to expect The Attic Door, even in limited theaters. This is a tiny, tiny movie and it seems from the creators’ site that they’re scraping whatever money they can together to get it distributed. So keep an eye out.

Until then, you’ll just have to get your jollies from the puffy shirt that kid’s rocking in the still above. Pretty sure that makes him the first pirate.

Runner Ups (click the titles for trailers):
Pirate Radio
Not that this looks bad, but biopicish-type films just usually aren’t my cup of tea. That being said, Phillip Seymore Hoffman stars, and in my book, he’s hands down one of the best working actors today and maybe the most intense living actor of our time. I’ll at least consider anything he’s a part of. And plus, it’s a cool story. The very idea a ship full of people infected with a case of stickittotheman neosis sailing off to rock feels more like a righteous fable in today’s age of factory-line pop than anything else. In theaters this Friday.

Antichrist
The only reason I’m not including this in the main list is because it’s already out in limited markets. Nowhere near me, of course, but I’m sure in Chicago and NY it’s available. Starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg (The Science of Sleep, I’m Not There) as “He” and “She,” Antichrist is about, well…it’s hard to say: a psychiatrist, a patient, nature, religion, sex. The trailer is surreal and darkly beautiful, telling of a woman’s imagined (or maybe not) journey toward the Garden of Eden. Before the Garden, though, are the woods, and “Nature is Satan’s church.” This movie looks trippy and bodacious.

One of the craziest scenes in Chan-wook Park’s 2003 crazyfest Oldboy is one where the main character is fighting a line of thugs down a hallway. If memory serves, the shot is a static side-view, and he’s just raking them all down, one by one. Then he picks up a hammer and when he raises it, the screen freezes, and a dotted line is drawn from the metal in his hand to the skull of some hapless goon who’s about the meet its business end. It’s awesome. And grotesque. …And awesome. …But grotesque.

Then there’s the scene where someone gets a tooth pried from their head with a hammer’s end. Oh, and the one where some dude gets his tongue cut off. Oh yeah, then there’s the whole *premise* of the movie and its gruesome payoff (which I won’t spoil if you haven’t seen it).

Point is, Oldboy is hardcore, the kind of hardcore you mostly only see in foreign films. It’s brutal, the violent portrait of a man who’s driven insane by a 15-year state of forced solitude with no explanation, and how he’s one day set free to seek answers and revenge. The character is desperate and tragic, locked for the better part of his life in a hotel room where gas is pumped in every night to put him to sleep and the the words: “Smile and the world smiles with you. Cry and you cry alone.” are written on the wall. So he smiles, by himself in an empty room with long unkempt hair and a worn and tired face. I’m telling you, it’s hard to watch.

Now I ask you: Does that sound like a prime vehicle for Steven Spielberg?

In case you haven’t heard about this atrocity, ad-wizards over at Dreamworks hatched up a plan awhile ago to Americanize Park’s film. Okay, no surprise there. But what made it insane was who they had lined up to do it: none other than long-time blockbuster tycoon Steven Spielberg–and Will Smith, who’d be wielding the hammer.

First, let’s get the platitudes out of the way. Yes, Spielberg is a more than capable director. He’s a legend. And Will Smith? I love the guy. Fresh Prince, in my oh so humble book of convictions, is one of the few, few sitcoms that was able to totally get away with having one of those random serious episodes about loneliness or social injustice without it seeming random or cheesy–and I credit not just the writing but Smith’s performances (I’m thinking specifically of the episode where Will’s father abandons him for the last time and Will loses it, screams to Uncle Phil, breaks down and the episode fades out in silence). Ali or Hitch–I’ve got nothing but respect for the guy.

That being said, he’s still Will Smith. And sure, I like to fancy myself an open-minded guy, but I’m sorry, the original Oldboy isn’t even a full 7 years old yet and this combination just seems so off-the-wall and out-there and…(what’s another cliche for “random”?)…oh: from left-field that you have to wonder who the first jackass was to pitch it.

To lighten the blow, Spielberg’s version wasn’t to be a straight remake of Park’s Oldboy but a adaptation of the Oldboy manga series. So it wouldn’t have *technically* been a “remake.” But still. There’s no way you’re watching this thing and not comparing it to the Korean original.

Keep in mind, it is still possible for the project to be picked up by another studio and completed, but let’s just enjoy this while we have it, shall we? What’s that old saying? ““Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift—that’s why it’s called the present”? Well, today consider me a proverb-spouting optimist.

Celebratory Carlton dance!

Here’s the trailer for Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy. If you haven’t seen it–such a definite must:

You know how when you discover a word you’ve never heard before and all of a sudden you hear it everywhere–in class, at the bank, carved on doors in bathroom stalls? That’s how it was with me and We Live in Public. Apparently Josh Harris was the “Worhol of the Web” in the ’90s with his creation of “living in public,” living for over a decade in an apartment rigged with dozens of webcams filming his and his girlfriend’s every move. But I only first heard of him through an episode of Errol Morris’ First Person I caught just last month. After that, some friends were talking about him. Then I heard about this documentary.

From Ondi Timoner (DIG!), We Live in Public won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, making Timoner the only director in history to win the award twice. And it’s not just about Harris and the 5,000 hours of footage he recorded in his apartment; it’s also about the 100 people he got to live together in an underground bunker for a month in front of cameras. It’s about virtual reality, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, human behavior–the very notion of identity. Or, is “persona” a better word?

“Everything is free except the video we capture of you,” Harris says of those in his bunker–”that we own.”

We Live in Public’s distribution has been spotty, shown in museums and brought around from city to city one at a time. So if you get the chance to catch this on a big screen, jump at it. This one seems like it very well could define a generation–or at least a generation that might have been.

Youth in Revolt

What happens when “Mr Nice Guy” Michael Cera falls in love with a girl who only loves bad boys? He turns his life–and himself–upside down to win her affection. Talk about comedic hi jinx!

Two things excite me about this preview:

One, it’s great to see Michael Cera trying something new, breaking for awhile from the George-Michael/Paulie Bleeker/Evan from Superbad awkward shy guy thing. He’s great at it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s good to see him stray from the formula, see what else he’s capable of. And here we get both sides of him, some old and some new. So score.

And two, despite my bad impersonation of a Rob Shneider-esque movie pitch at the beginning, Youth in Revolt’s premise actually does ring pretty true, depressingly enough. I think it’s something every “nice guy” has dreamed of at least once: giving in and turning himself into the asshole, if for nothing else than to see what would happen. Start wearing shades inside, smoking cigarettes, acting all distant and unaffected. Hey, it works for Don Draper.

The cast lined up here is pretty interesting, as well: Justin Long, Steve Buscemi, Zach Galifinakis, Ray Liotta. I’m expecting a pretty good time out of this one.

Youth in Revolt will hit theaters early next year on January 8th.

Precious

Here’s one I’m not sure I’d have included on my list right-off because of the elements in it that feel Oscar bait-y. The underdog story, the inspirational figure, lines like, “People do love you, Precious. Your baby loves you. I love you!”–all those things are definitely here. But so is this great tragedy to the character that I really don’t see being too easy to wrap in a neat pre-credits sweater of warm fuzzies. Which I like.

When I was little, playing in the family room of my grandmother’s house, there was usually 1 of 5 movies on in the background: My Girl, Sister Act, Curly Sue, Ghost Dad or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. After so many years though, movies you watched when you were little start lumping together into a kind of sub-category. They actually start to become their own nostalgia and you maybe take for granted that anything you used to watch back when you were a kid was just that–a kid’s movie, corny and classic but never actually any good.

That’s how it went with me, anyway. Until I came across Roger Rabbit on TV one night years later and kept it on for the memories. I was shocked to find it different than I remembered, different than I left it. This wasn’t just a simple nostalgia pick, this movie was awesome! This weird and incredible stylistic mix of film noir and colored pencil. Heavy shadows and cigar-smoking babies. Weasles in double-breasted trench coats and a hard-boiled private eye. Fedoras and gin together with a “bad guy” who’d kill cartoons–literally kill them–by lowering their bodies into toxic vats of what he called “dip.” And this would disintegrate them, wisps of steam from their dematerialized carcasses wafting from the bubbling green slime.

Even at 22 it scared the hell out of me.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit to me is one of those true pieces of rare movie magic, capturing a sense of everything that cinema is capable of similar to ways The Wizard of Oz did or Willy Wonka, of stealing you, just for an hour or two, showing you something unbelievable but making you believe it. And there’s a grown-up quality about all of it, too. So much of what they get away with would never fly in a more modern animated film geared at least in part toward children.

So a sequel. The great innovator Robert Zemeckis, with titles like Back to the Future, Beowulf and the upcoming A Christmas Carol to his credit, has announced that recent advancements in animation have given him a good idea for a second installment of RR, one that doesn’t rule out the use of 3D motion capture. The characters from the original won’t be dimensionalized, he says (thank God), but maybe others will, or maybe the 2D models will be animated through motion capture? For a fuller look at Zemeckis’ hinting go HERE.

The point is, it’s in the works, with original writers Peter Seaman and Jeffrey Price working on a script even as we speak. And there’s definitely a lot to be excited about. A sequel like this could very well set another standard for what’s possible in animation, incorporating these new elements. But lightning…it usually doesn’t strike twice. Back to the Future II is kind of barely passable, so is Ghostbusters II and so many other second attempts at real, inspired life. And if the edge is taken away from something like this to make it more PC, if the bad guy stops melting toons and starts just locking them up, if you take away the drinking and the smoking and the sex jokes, then all you’d have is annoying Roger Rabbit and some cutesie CG talking animals. And that would be bad, the dead returning to life but with bolts in its neck, loose stitching barely keeping it all from falling apart.

But hey, as long as the sultry Jessica Rabbit’s in the picture I’m on board. What a fox. That she would ever waste her time with that Roger character is simply laughable, I’m sorry. Talk about unrealistic.

Enjoy the trailer for the original embedded below and keep your fingers crossed for #2. Here’s to novelty.

I found this trailer and these amazing stills literally over half a month ago and still haven’t posted them. Don’t ask me why. I could tell you I was busy, sorting out old student loans or tuning up my car, but the truth is that I probably just didn’t know what to say about them. And maybe I still don’t.

On a personal level I could tell you that I always imagined animation getting dark and serious one day. And not like Coraline dark. I’m talking depressing, no-irony dark. I envisioned the style serving as some kind of metaphor for maybe the falseness of a character’s life, how, to that character, everything might feel forced and fabricated, plastic–pixalated. The image I had–and don’t ask me why–is of a gritty cartoon man sitting on the edge of his bed, shirt off, his sheets tangled and crumpled behind him. He’s slumped over with his head in his hand. He’s looking around, examining the dim yellow light leaking from his closet door, the blue glow of the blocky numbers on his alarm clock. The silence. The fibers of who knows what in his carpet.

I don’t know. This is just always what came to mind when I thought about animation’s new breed–Animation: The New Class–when a big-time director would take on an animated film and everybody would be shocked.

To be fair, animation has changed, is really always changing. Digital design obviously redefined everything when it came along, and then there’s claymation, and stop-motion, and rotoscoping, semi-big names like Richard Linklater using it to wax philosophic in things like Waking Life. Or just look at the beginning 10 or 15minutes of Up, just how surprising and powerful and sad it is. Check out Wall-E, with its jaw-droppingly impressive visuals and more mature and risky dramatic techniques (like how much in the movie is expressed through wordlessness). And then there’s the raunchiness of something like a Team America: World Police, or the relentlessly depressing nature of a Grave of the Fireflies.

So this is me acknowledging the other side of the scale. Changes have been made. They have. But still…not the changes I’ve always kind of wanted. You can say all day that something like Wall-E isn’t strictly a “kid’s” movie–and I’d probably agree, maybe it’s not–but it’s not an “adult” movie, either. And that’s what I’m talking about. The change I’m waiting for is one that will make animated films not just “adult enough” but “adult – period,” something that will stop me from always lumping animated movies, no matter how much I love them, in with other animated movies. Stop me from thinking about them differently.

I’ve always been of the mind that anything can be good, that if you don’t like an entire genre you just haven’t seen the exception yet, that the idea of girls liking “chick flicks” and guys liking explosions is bogus. So why then do I still have a faction set up in my mind, animated movies on one side and everything else on the other?

This big tonal change I’m thinking of, it’s not just about something being deadpan or cynical, either; I don’t need an ending to go all existential on me, suggest that morality and God and love don’t actually exist, or for a script to explore human consciousness for me to qualify a cartoon as “adult.” But if something did go that way, it’d be a total paradigm shift for the genre (if you could call animation a genre), and I’d be taken back. And there’s nothing like being taken back at the movies. That’s when material really sinks in.

So I do think there is a place for Bergman themes and Gilliam surreality in animation. And I don’t know if Metropia will be the one to find that place, make us believe that the content really does warrant the form, but I’m hoping. Because, really, these screenshots are just incredible.

I know I really didn’t say much about this particular movie, but what’s there to say? It’s from Sweden; it features voice acting from Vincent Gallo and Juliette Lewis; it has an adult rating; it’s set in a dystopia. But it’s the pictures that are important. Just look at them; they articulate far more than I or any description ever could.

Here’s the trailer. Despite voice work from American actors, no US release is set.

When I think back to what really got me into movies, if I’m being honest, tracing the line alllll the way back – I’d have to say it was probably Quentin Tarantino. The things he did with his camera, how he manipulated traditional plot structure, the overt stylistic techniques–it was all new to me then, and fascinating. I fell in love with the idea that nothing had to have rules, not movies, not anything. That things could happen differently. That movies didn’t have to be just story; they could also be show.

That brought me to David Lynch, which was equally earth shattering. But it wasn’t until I saw Naomi Watts in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive that I was really hooked, officially closing in on that blurrily defined “buff” territory. Alone, what I loved in that film was the same that caught my interest in Tarantino, that complete and unapologetic middle finger he gave to mainstream cinema and the very idea of tradition. But Watts, it was her performance that, probably for the first time, connected with me on a genuine emotional level. She wowed me in a way I’d never been before, truly showed me something new. And ever since, she’s been on a sort of pedestal of mine, the blonde, all-powerful dragon I’m chasing every time I fire up my DVD player or feel the lights go down in theaters.

So imagine my surprise when I read in The Hollywood Reporter that Forbes Magazine rated Watts the #1 actress in Hollywood to bank for her investors.
The list said that, according to the amount each actress makes per film and how much their films make, Watts brings in the best returns, having made box offices about 44 bucks for every 1 she earned in her last 3 big movies.

Now, the list is a little misleading because the actresses you might have expected make way more a movie than Watts, obviously skewing the ratio. But still. I hope this means more good things for her career. She’s been great in everything I’ve seen her in but none of her parts have had even close to the amount of fire as Mulholland’s, or they’ve been overshadowed by CGI, or not leads.

So I’m still waiting for something to come along that’s as risky and dynamic, a film she could carry and get credit for carrying. It’d be ridiculous at this point for me to compare her to any of the “Greats,” your Kate Winslets or Meryl Streeps, your more “proven” actress with more rock-solid filmogs, but maybe in a few years. After a few more parts she could really sink her teeth into, maybe that comparison wouldn’t be totally out of the question.

Until then, is it weird that I take this news as something of a personal victory?

Here’s Watts in a one of my favorite scenes from Mulholland Drive. Row Three actually just posted a dissection of it yesterday. (They must have read my rough draft). No spoilers if you haven’t seen the film.

(But you should really see the film)

(Seriously)

(Now)