Every Monday morning, InsidePulse Movies Czar Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings an irreverent and oftentimes hilarious look at pop culture, politics, sports and whatever else comes to mind. And sometimes he writes about movies.
Could there be more Harry Potter films and/or books? Perhaps, if J.K Rowling has anything to do with it. Apparently while she’s still trying to go in a new direction after the franchise that made her a billionaire, after sponging off welfare to write the first book, we can really decode what she’s trying to say by this:
“If I can’t write anything that people want to read, I’ll go back to the usual crap because people will buy it.”
And it’s totally understandable why she’d go back to it. You always revisit the old when you’re in that position, I think, if only because it helps keep coins in the coffer. But the one thing wondering is where you would go with Harry Potter at this point; from what I’ve read (as I have not read a page or watched a minute of the films) the last book (and obviously the last film) wrap the whole thing up rather neatly. So where does it go from here? I’ll tell you where without knowing anything about the whole “Harry Potter” bit besides what I’ve seen on the poster and in book displays. I actually had to consult Wikipedia and/or Google for this.
Listen to me now and believe me later.
At this point there’s only one way you can look at Harry Potter: down the road in the future. Since we’ve wrapped everything up nice and neat with Harry the teenager, you can’t look at anything with the twerp as it stands now. You really don’t need to see him earning his PhD in wizardry, for the love of Pete, so looking at Harry the adult allows you some room to play with. Plus it allows you to cast another actor in the role if Daniel Radcliffe wants to leave the role behind, which would be understandable and probably cheaper because Radcliffe could probably ask for (and get) a bigger check in the future.
With that in mind, I’ve come up with a couple ideas J.K Rowling could use. Call them:
Kubryk’s Guide To Harry Potter 2.0: After the Money’s Run Out
5. Harry Potter and the Koreans on my Lawn
Director: Clint Eastwood
Plot: Harry Potter (Clint Eastwood) is a widower in his old neighborhood, watching as it slowly decays in loneliness as the last of his wizard friends to be alive. When neighborhood kid Thao (Bee Vang) tries to steal his car, he becomes a wizard Mr. Miyagi and teaches him in the ways of using a stick to cast spells and manliness.
4. Harry Potter and the Decision
Director: Ryan Murphy
The Plot: Harry Potter (Matthew Morrison) is the world’s finest wizard and savior of humanity, but even he can’t defeat his biggest secret: his true sexual orientation. Attracted to years to his best friend Ron (Kevin McHale) but never acting on it, it comes to a boiling point when the two go on a fishing trip together that’ll change their lives forever. That and they inexplicably break into song & dance numbers every 12.3 minutes.
3. Harry Potter and the Comeback Trail
Director: Sylvester Stallone
The Plot: Years retired from wizardry, Harry Potter (Robert Downey Jr.) is called back into service to take on Ron Weasley (Tony Curran), who has since become evil in the years after the Harry Potter franchise ended. But there’s one problem: he gave up his wizard stick years ago for a woman. He now has to get his wizardry back to par and take down the evil ginger. Plus, it gives us the greatest thing ever: A TRAINING MONTAGE!
2. Harry Potter and the Cross-Dressing Aunt
Director: Tyler Perry
The Plot: Years after walking down the aisle with Ginny (Gabrielle Union), Harry Potter (Rick Fox) has a crisis of conscience. He has a great job and loves his wife, but his secretary (Diane Lane) is tempting him to have an affair. Enter his Aunt Medea (Tyler Perry) to teach him a lesson on life, love and good old fashioned Christian morals.
1. Harry Potter and the Epic Bachelor Party
Director: Todd Phillips
The Plot: Harry Potter (Zach Galifianakis) and his best friend Ron (Bradley Cooper) are long removed from their days as swinging bachelors at Hogwarts. When an opportunity comes to relive their glory days, they set off for the land of wizards once more.
Thoughts like these probably kept me out of the good colleges and/or a good wizardry school.
Random Thoughts of the Week
One of the more exceptionally funny things I read this week came out of the mouth of Jessica Alba, star of such massively successful and award-winning films as Into the Blue and Honey, had quite the earful. I’m presuming she somehow got misquoted, or there was some context that was missing from Elle Magazine’s preview. But this is kind of damning. And by kind of damning, I mean really damning:
“Good actors, never use the script unless it’s amazing writing. All the good actors I’ve worked with, they all say whatever they want to say.”
When it comes down to it, all the blathering in the world about this comes down to one simple question I thought immediately after seeing the headline on Deadline Hollywood: “Someone actually cared enough to ask Jessica Alba about acting?”
It sounds really odd, especially in light of the fact that she’s essentially Megan Fox without the career-killing instincts, to hear Alba actually discuss the act of crafting considering the best actor she’s been on screen with has been Bruce Willis. Not that Willis is a horrible actor, far from it, but there’s a difference between being on screen with a box office heavyweight and an acting heavyweight. I love Bruce Willis, don’t get me wrong, but he’s more in the John Wayne mold than in the Gary Cooper ideal. Wayne was a world class presence and Cooper was a world class thespian; I love both but for different reasons.
There is a bit of a difference between sharing screen time opposite the like of Hollywood “heavyweights” Paul Walker & Dane Cook as opposed to Phillip Seymour Hoffman & Tom Hanks. If you’re across from the former you don’t have to do much to keep up other than look good in a bikini. Neither are anything special when it comes to dramatic acting so the ability to smile and look pretty is pretty much the only requisite. Hence the reason most actresses in those films don’t end up doing much beyond that, career wise. We’re not exactly on edge waiting for the next blockbuster starting Jordana Brewster, that’s all I’m saying, and Jessica Alba is the same actress but just a bit more high profile (for now).
Conversely if you’re across from the latter there is significant prowess at the craft of acting that’s expected, if not demanded, from the position. You don’t see P.S Hoffman in a romantic relationship in a film with an actress that doesn’t have dramatic gravitas in the same manner you need to have a Julia Roberts opposite Hanks. A good rule of thumb when it comes to dealing with young actresses, I’ve always thought, is that you measure their overall level of talent in direct proportion to a handful of things they do (or don’t do) on the screen. Certain things like box office receipts and critical prestige tend to overpower other categories.
Why go to all this trouble? Because by giving Jessica Alba any sort of credibility as an established actress you’re kind of lowering the bar, that’s why. Really she’s a pretty face who can be replaced pretty easily, much like Megan Fox and the ilk. As much as I want to give her some credit, or Fox for the matter, if you look back at the assorted cinematic resume of Ms. Alba there’s nothing that says “only Jessica Alba could play this role.” What does one remember about a typical Jessica Alba role? How hot she looked, that’s all. Nuts for nothing she’s ridiculously good looking but once those begin to fade she’ll get replaced by some other good-looking but marginally talented model/actress with youth on her side. So it kind of leaves a dilemma: how do you exactly qualify her, or someone in her situation, in terms of a cinematic career? Or, in other words, there needs to be a method.
Alba’s famous and known but you don’t buy a ticket to see her in a film. But at the same time she’s actually famous for something, as opposed to merely being famous for being famous, so you can’t completely dismiss her. It leads to a dilemma: there are lots of things going on in the world of evaluating an actress. To do so properly would need to be done with care for both the actress and her profession. You just don’t go about this willy-nilly; it can take years of research and study to do it properly. If you only use critical accolades and box office receipts you’re doing to the evaluation of an actress what Joe Morgan did to baseball: letting a handful of numbers dependant on the skills of others determine dominance when the art of the Sabermetric gives much more insight into the impact of a particular player on the baseball field.
Or you can half-ass it for the sake of comedy.
Let’s face it: that’s way more fun and honest. Monday Morning Critic is not only 100% gay friendly but also 100% pro-making fun of Jessica Alba. As such, I’ve come up with this week’s descent into stupidity:
The Kubryk Eight Point Guide to Evaluating a Young Actress
8. Poignant Nudity – Any actress can do a nude scene, but it takes a special one to know the proper time to do one. Some do it far too early and it becomes almost expected; Jennifer Connelly was like naked in every film she did in her 20s and it kind of obscured the fact that she’s a really talented actress. And who remembers that Halle Berry took her top off for both Swordfish and The Last Boy Scout besides the guy who uploaded them into Mr. Skin? Some do it far too late in their careers and it becomes a “who cares” moment that is washed away in time, like tears in the rain. Like if Sarah Jessica Parker did a film where she’s naked the entire time it’d be shrug-worthy because she’s years removed from being Buffy. In many ways it’s the last thing someone can do to stay relevant; some actresses refuse to do nude scenes because the allure of potential nudity is a subconscious thing. We want to think this will be the moment, that all the effort of tracking it down and sitting through film will give us a brief glimpse of nudity. A good example is the WWE. Who can get excited for a WWE Diva in a bra and panties match after she’s already posed for Playboy?
7. Romantic Comedy Skills – Ranks right up there with Nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills and computer hacking skills in the young actress skillset. Being able to star in a romantic comedy with a variety of leading actors and be able to be flawless in the genre on a regular basis is remarkably tough. Drew Barrymore may have made most of her resurgent career opposite Adam Sandler, but she was also stellar opposite Jimmy Fallon and Justin Long, amongst others. The ability to have chemistry with one person is tough but possible to do; you can get by with strong casting in many films. But being able to do the same with various actors with various levels of ability is an under-rated talent. The romantic comedy is the last bastion of story-telling, as it’s cliché but in the right hands it’s effective.
6. Public Speaking – When an actress opens her mouth there are one of two reactions. The first is “Ok, I can see that” because it’s something not completely embarrassing. Hearing Natalie Portman speak is fun because she’s thoughtful and eloquent with what she says. I am not a fan of her work, I admit, but you can tell she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’d be fun to have a beer with and discuss politics, et al. The second is “Please shut up and just go back to looking hot, you’re ruining my masturbatory fantasy.” Basically any interview that Megan Fox does falls under this.
5. Backstage Reputation – In Hollywood things don’t come out about someone’s peculiarities at random. As much as the creative process has a bit of randomness to it, people’s behavior doesn’t. Reputations are earned for a reason; Katherine Heigl is known as someone that has attitude problems because she’s probably acted up on set enough that crews got sick of her shenanigans. Reputations are earned, rightly or wrongly, because of how people handle themselves in a professional setting. You can tell how long someone is going to be a mainstream, high profile actor/actress by how they handle themselves in their craft. Everyone raves about Timothy Olyphant and how wonderful he is yet you don’t hear that about many actors in his generation who have a higher profile. When they’re long gone he won’t.
4. Bikini Photo Availability – You know how you can tell an actress views herself as a sex symbol as opposed to a thespian? By how many times they show up on TMZ and their ilk just casually walking around in a bikini. Like Megan Fox must own three pieces of actual clothing and 100 bikinis because there’s always tons of shots on the pseudo-spank sites of her. Image is coordinated and crafted now in the same manner it always has been, just now it’s a bit more subtle than the studio deciding who gets what particular image for all of America to embrace. Publicists, P.R folks and the entertainment press (including paparazzi) are all in a coordinated game like they were 50 years ago, don’t kid yourself.
You don’t see Natalie Portman in a bikini constantly, nor Amanda Seyfried or a handful of other actresses, because they are thespians first and foremost. They don’t sell their sexuality as the sole part of their appeal; hence they don’t prance around in them for the benefit of the paparazzi. Think of it like this: if an actress had a headline on Yahoo! that promised nude pictures, if your first reaction is “Really?” then you’re dealing with an actress. If it’s “Finally!” then you’re dealing with a sex symbol; you don’t watch Jessica Alba in a movie because you’re enthralled with her acting in the same way you don’t actively search for Amy Adams in a bikini.
3. Screen Presence opposite Meryl Streep – Streep is always opposite some young actress in like every film. It’s usually in some sort of subordinate role, like a daughter or an underling, but you can tell how good an actress can be by how well she does onscreen with the best actress of the last 30 years. It was one of the amazing things of The Devil Wears Prada as well as Doubt. While you could tell Amy Adams was going to kill it opposite Streep, as she did in the latter film, Anne Hathaway really arrived as an actress when she held her own in the former. Amanda Seyfried … not so much in Mamma Mia! unfortunately.
2. Accent Use – Part of acting is sometimes doing a foreign accent. Christian Bale does an American accent enough that it’s shocking to hear him speak with his native Welsh accent. So when a young actress goes outside her wheelhouse and uses a foreign accent, ala Carey Mulligan ditching her native British for a flat Midwestern tone in The Greatest and a pseudo New England accent in the Wall Street sequel, it means something. If it sounds god awful, like Winona Ryder doing an English accent, then yeah.
1. Role Diversity – For years everyone’s been wondering if Kate Hudson will ever show the promise she had in Almost Famous. Why? Because she hasn’t taken on roles requiring anything other than to be the object of someone’s desire. It’s kind of the problem when an actress becomes a favorite in romantic comedies; there’s always another leading man to star opposite from and typecasting does have its benefits in regular work. It’s why being able to say not, to take on roles that require different things, is as important as it is. It’s why Hilary “One L Two Oscars” Swank is probably her generation’s premier actress and Jennifer Anniston is still famously known as the victim of a home-wrecking Angelina Jolie.
A Movie A Week – The Challenge
This Week’s DVD – Centurion
Something that’s bugged me about the rise of Sam Worthington is that for all the hype about his talent, and how he was the next big star, when I have yet to see the talent that’s been hyped for so long. He’s been in a number of high profile films, and he was an adequate action hero in them, but he doesn’t really have a screen presence or charisma that a guy who headlines a handful of summer blockbusters is supposed to. I just don’t see it in him. I see lots of others who have it but just haven’t had the opportunity to show it, like Timothy Olyphant or Michael Fassbender.
Olyphant finally has his chance with Justified, one of the best shows on television that people aren’t watching en masse. Fassbender has had a slow but steady rise since he hit the big time with 300, given the distinction of having one of history’s greatest one-line taunts. He’s not quite a huge star, but after the next X-Men film everyone will know who he is. And they’ll want to check out Centurion, a sort of poor man’s 300 revolving around the doomed Ninth Legion of the Roman Army.
It has a rather simple premise: Dias (Fassbender) is the sole survivor of an attack and captured by the enemy. Rescued by the Roman Ninth, and later betrayed from within, he ends up amongst a small group of survivors who has to fight their way from behind enemy lines all the back to safe territory. Think of The Warriors but with Gladiator sensibilities, from the guy behind both Descent films and Doomsday.
Eschewing things like character development and plot for near non-stop action sequences; this is essentially District B13 for the epic set. At a trim 90 minutes or so, this is a really quick viewing. Marshall has an insanely high pace that he keeps up, with a pause only a handful of times, for the length of the film. It gives the film a sense of urgency that is reminiscent of The Warriors but with the violence knob turned all the way up. This is a swords and sandals film that really pushes the limit of the R-rating for a change.
The problem is that this is the popcorn version of the usual epic swords and sandals film; there’s enough room that another hour of material of character development that the film could compete with the usual sorts like Gladiator as there’s a story to be found here about a group of men trying to get home against all odds. As it is Centurion is a nice find on DVD and bound for cult status for all the right reasons.
Slightly less than strong recommendation.
What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club
The Next Three Days – Elizabeth Banks is wrongly convicted of murder. Russell Crowe is going to break her out. Liam Neeson chews some scenery because he can.
See It – Robin Hood was a disappointment, but still perfectly acceptable entertainment. While I doubt this will be a brilliant film, it looks like it’ll hit the “good” mark as opposed to anything higher.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – Harry Potter and his little friends get ready for the final showdown.
Skip It – A good barometer on how I’ve viewed the Harry Potter series from afar is how my young cousins view the series. They’ve grown up with the series, literally, and as the movies have come out it’s gone from being more open to those who haven’t read the books to more for the hardcore fans. As such I say skip it unless you’ve been an avid reader of Harry Potter and the ilk. If you are a fan, which I’m not, I say indulge your little inner wizard.
Do you have questions about movies, life, love, or Branigan’s Law? Shoot me an e-mail at Kubryk@Insidepulse.com and you could be featured in the next “Monday Morning Critic.” Include your name and hometown to improve your odds.
Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @MMCritic_Kubryk.
