Another death that has hit me hard, I talk about the greatest ever actor to work with Kristian Schmidt. RIP Sir Christopher.
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Slightly later than planned, my video looking at:
Action Force the Movie. What on Earth is the flag Duke is waving in the poster supposed to be? Another YouTube video, this time centred on the Doctor who seemed to have been purposefully created to provide a trick "How many Doctor Whos have their been?" trick question for pub quizes (in the days before Richard Hurdnall, John Hurt and two David Tennant's confused things). It's the Cushing Dalek Movies!  Is this the end of Optimus Prime? Or like some sort of less alien Noel Edmunds does he have something surprising in his box?
It's all in the second deadly dymamic part of my look at: Prey!  A special and amazingly put together video looking at the original film. But which mainly mocks Hart to Hart. I wouldn't want to be Lionel Stander in the morning when he reads this.
All in The Transformers: The Movie.  It's a case of three times the pleasure this week as I not only finish off Target: 2006, and not only cover the comic adaptation of the film, but also the ultra rare and hyper obscure movie poster magazine!
This is an event that can only be celebrated with a picture of Masterpiece prowl looking disapprovingly at Masterpiece Grimlock. Target: 2006 Epilogue. Winter Special 1986 Transformers The Poster Magazine.  Of all the characters Marvel has been carefully plotting to bring to the big screen individually before getting them all together for The Avengers, Thor was always going to be the most difficult sell for the non-comic fan audience. He looks silly, speaks silly, and isn't even as well known as either Iron Man or Captain America were before their films.
The smart move Marvel Pictures made was to appoint Kenneth Branagh as director. Not an obvious big action movie choice, but throughout their work to create their cinematic Universe Marvel have repeatedly shown enough faith in the pull of the characters themselves to get people involved who wouldn't have gotten near a Summer Blockbuster tm at the time. It worked with Robert Downey Jr. and John Faveau on Iron Man in spades, and Branagh was a perfect choice here for what is a very Shakespearean set up in the Asgard portions of the film. He knows how to get large performances from the actors without it feeling too OTT or hammy.  They gave her back to me, Scotty.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is, in retrospect, on of the strangest films ever made, pretty much by any standards. It doesn't feel very much like a post-Star Wars sci-fi blockbuster, feels at odds with the following original cast Trek films and by being one of the very first films based on an American TV series it's missing most of what would subsequently become the standard rules for translating something from the small to the big screen. So much of it feels very, very odd. Now of course, it's slightly unfair to call a film odd just because no one had yet decided that the best way to do a TV based film was to completely recast it, throw in some heavy irony and give the original actors tokenistic cameo roles (the '09 film, despite not technically being a remake, otherwise shows how to do that sort of thing right). Nor to criticise it for not being more like Trek films as yet unmade. But, for me, this is one of the things I enjoy most about the film, it's different and a type of movie that would never, ever be made today. Arguably with good reason as it's deeply flawed in many ways, but at least that makes it more interesting to watch.  Ever since I saw Mac and Me, I've dreamed about meeting you!
Sometimes a bad trailer can really put you off a movie. When Paul came out earlier this year the promo spots didn't make it look all that funny, the best gag in the whole thing being the dead bird one. When you factor in that only two thirds of the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy team (Pegg and Frost) were involved it looked like director Edgar Wright was going to be badly missed. Indeed, most of Pegg's work without Wright, barring Star Trek, hasn't been especially good. Has anyone watched Run Fatboy Run yet? Luckily trailers can be deceptive. The film is a lot more juvenile and sillier than either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz (and remember those were hardly gritty realistic dramas to start with), and in particular has characters going around swearing for cheap laughs as if the writers (also Pegg and Frost) were teenagers who're still excited by naughty words. However, silly and juvenile can be entertaining if you're in the right mood, and this is still an extremely funny film.  Ah Michael Bay, loud, rude, not afraid of speaking his mind and clearly having the time of his life and not giving a toss what people think of him. A person very easy to dislike, and who has made what may well be the ultimate review proof film series of all time with his three Transformers films. Critics have pretty much slammed and hated all three, but the paying public clearly don't care, flocking to see them in droves.
I've never been a particular fan of Bay, Armageddon annoyed me so much the internet doesn't have enough Picard facepalm pictures, and the least said about Pearl Harbor the better. However, for a director who excels at action scenes and explosions whatever his other flaws he was pretty much born to direct a film based around a principle which boils down to giant robots beating merry hell out of each other as things explode. |
AuthorStuart Webb. Who knows everything about nothing and not a lot about that. Archives
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