On tap this week:
– More prison rape jokes than you can shake a stick at involving Wesley Snipes
– Twilight gets more space in my column then it ever deserves
– Samuel L Jackson – The GPS device
And slightly much more!
I was driving to Traffic School this weekend and had my GPS on to get me to the courthouse. It was about an hour drive, as I had a speeding ticket in a county a bit far from me and had to do it down there, so I used the GPS in my phone so I wouldn’t get lost going there. I have the English woman setting on mine, but I kept thinking it would be totally awesome if I could get someone else besides her or the computer voice. And then I kept thinking, then noticed a girl on the street who was very well put together, then an idea came to me.
Celebrity GPS
I’m sure someone is probably already about to patent this, but wouldn’t it be awesome if you could have GPS that had a famous celebrity voice to it? I mean in this economy movie stars are seeing their checks slashed and you know some would be willing to sell out their voice if it meant some fat cash. And considering some of the movies that have come out in the past couple years, perhaps a run doing GPS recordings would be much more beneficial than a remake of a Japanese horror flick.
Me, I’d buy the one with the Samuel L Jackson voice to it. You could have the regular Sam Jackson voice, which he uses in the films where he doesn’t yell, but the big seller would be “Sam Jackson overacting to save a film” voice. The one that curses every five seconds like it’s about to go out of style.
“HEY MOTHER [redacted]. You were supposed to [redacted] turn right at the stop. You didn’t. Make a MOTHER [redacted] U-TURN AT THE NEAREST [redacted] LEGAL OPPORTUNITY TO DO SO AND GET YOUR MOTHER [redacted] CAR TO BAKERSVILLE ST.”
Thoughts like that kept me out of the good colleges.
Random Thoughts of the Week
With the rather slow news tide in films, the most prominent thing to come out this week was that David Slade of 30 Days of Night is going to helm the third Twilight flick. It’ll be the third director in the series, as Catherine Hardwicke bowed out after the first one and Chris Weitz apparently won’t follow New Moon up. Something having to do with post-production and a tight scheduled for making the third film.
It’s interesting that the franchise is doing the Harry Potter route and changing up directors nearly every film. It’s not like any of them will be worth a damn in the long run, but it lends itself to something I’m pondering this week. Telling a story over a trilogy, or however many films the Twilight franchise is going to run, is a difficult task for any one director. Having three different ones is going to give you three different story-telling manners.
I’m just curious Weitz and Slade will take on the series; bringing a harder masculine edge to what’s really a feminine story. Two different male perspectives is going to make for an interesting story in and of itself. I thought the first film was god awful, and there’s no way in hell I’d be caught dead reading any of the books, but the next two films of the trilogy are a bit more intriguing now I have to admit. It’ll be interesting to see the difference in tone and style. Slade set up a terrific atmosphere and pace in 30 Days and Weitz did a great job with the sheer size of Golden Compass, so it’ll be interesting to see what they do with the next two films in the franchise.
As well as it’ll be interesting to see how the cast reacts to a pair of new directors; for better or worse Kristen Stewart and gang have crafted iconic characters. Usually it’s interesting to see the kind of character arc they’re given in a particular franchise, but given the influx of new direction on a regular basis it’s going to become much more unique. Maybe one director will get a great performance and seem to lead the character in one way, but perhaps the other will not and/or want to go to a different direction. The Potter franchise has largely succeeded because the film’s overall story was probably done for some time; the tone and theme are pretty easy to recreate with the same principles. I think that’ll largely be the case, but potential for some offbeat shenanigans between flicks could be amusing.
How they react to different direction is going to be interesting, but it isn’t without precedent. George Lucas handed his characters in the Star Wars franchise over to other directors but at the same time he had complete control over it. Stephanie Meyer doesn’t. It’ll make for an interesting turn, to say the least.
A Movie A Week – The Challenge
This Week’s Film – Passenger 57
There was once a time when Wesley Snipes was one of the hottest actors, period. From 1989 to 1993 Snipes was in the bulk of the films that established him as a star and allowed to cling to fame for nearly two decades afterwards in a series of direct to DVD films on par with Steven Seagal’s action career. From Major League until Demolition Man Snipes had a heckuva run that inspired 15 years of regularly awful films and the Blade trilogy., Passenger 57 was perhaps the beginning of the end for him. Now he’s getting ready to get man-raped in prison on tax-evasion charges, but once upon a time Snipes was the man. And Passenger 57 was maybe the peak of his career. And he’ll probably end up being Passenger 58 on the Midnight Meat Train in six months.
Snipes is John Cutter, an airplane security specialist on a trip to take a job as an Executive VP of Security. But terrorists take over and he has to save the day. If it sounds familiar, that’s because this was the post Die Hard era of action films. Every significant action film ever made spawns a slew of imitators and Die Hard was so good and established a relatively easy formula to follow that cranking out crappier versions of it with different settings wasn’t that hard. 1992 was the year where it reached its peak as Passenger 57 and Under Siege came out to some success. The rest, as they say, is downhill.
For the period it’s not that bad of an action flick, and is easily the best of Snipes’ action flicks. The film is entirely derivative of Die Hard, down to the witty banter, evil Eurotrash, inept law enforcement and “tense” situations. It’s not very good, mind you, but it’s enjoyable crap. Plus it has Elizabeth Hurley in “evil bitch” mode and it’s hot as all hell, too.
Mild recommendation.
What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and Northwestern University Co-Eds with low standards at The Keg
Battle for Terra – The last remnants of humanity take on some peace-loving aliens because they want their planet.
Skip It – A loaded voice cast, for sure, but this looks three different ways of stupid. And it’s animated and NOT from Pixar, which pretty much guarantees it’ll be awful.
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – Matthew McConaughey is a serial philanderer that gets visited by some ghosts to show him how much of a doucher he’s been in the past.
Skip It – I just read an article on McConaughey in Men’s Journal about his need to explore life. It’s fascinating as he talks about his theory on life, “Just Keep Livin,” and I was glued to it while riding the exercise bike. He might make bad films but he’s a first rate human being who’d be on the list of guys I’d want to have a beer with. The sad thing is that article on him is infinitely more interesting than this film will be.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine – We learn all about the origins of the cinematic version of Wolverine, the coolest cat in the X-Men franchise.
See It – When a work print was leaked online it caused many ruffles in Fox’s feathers. But it was just a work print, after all, and the finished product is probably significantly different since they did a massive amount of re-shoots rumored to be financed by their influx of cash from the Watchmen deal. I think it has potential to be a great film.
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.
