What's on the Menu (December 18-20)

- Posted by Rusty

This weekend, it’s all about Avatar. James Cameron’s mega-expansive sci-fi behemoth is looking to make a big splash (and is very much worth it, but more on that later), and very few movies are challenging the self-named King of the World. Still, there’s a bit of something for everyone, especially if, like me, you can never go wrong with a Hugh Grant romantic comedy. Let’s take a look at the new releases… [breakdown of new releases after the jump]

1. “Avatar” - By now, you’ve seen the trailers, the TV ads, the posters, the non-stop interviews with the cast and crew. Avatar is being sold as a big deal, an important step in the evolution of filmmaking…and it’s very well-deserved praise. We just caught this last night in IMAX 3-D (expect a full review from one of us in the next week; Luke is currently putting the finishing touches on his The Lovely Bones review), and it’s a hell of a good time. A big, smart, and surprisingly emotionally engaging ride, and a trip to a whole new world like only the movies could deliver. The story follows Jake Sully (Terminator Salvation’s Sam Worthington, in an excellent performance and one that should officially make him a star), a paraplegic ex-marine who gets sent to the distant moon of Pandora. Using a breakthrough in science, he is able to able to interact with the locals, a race of 10-ft-tall, cat-like, blue beings called the Na’vi, through the Avatar program (headed by Sigourney Weaver, star of Cameron’s Aliens), all done by transferring his consciousness into the body of a genetically engineered Na’vi. From there, the film launches headfirst into the world of these “alien” beings, as Jake has a great change of heart and steps up to defend Pandora from the natural-resource-obsessed human military. As we’ll talk about later, the film’s not perfect; I think its biggest hurdle is that we’ve seen this story before—it’s essentially Pocahontas, albeit with probably the best special effects ever put on screen. But though you could foresee pretty much every story beat, the experience itself is fascinating and enormously entertaining. This is an amazing world created here, and the characters that roam Pandora’s wide-spanning forests and floating mountains, particularly Worthington and his love interest, Zoe Saldana’s Na’vi warrior, Neytiri, are well-written and all sympathetic (a nice relief from what could have easily been a hollow, very pretty spectacle). If you can, be sure to catch this in theaters—it will be fine on DVD, but this is the kind of experience that demands the biggest screen possible.

2. “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” - I’m pretty positive this will be a weak film. I’m also positive that I’ll watch it…and, knowing me, probably more than once as it makes its rounds on HBO and TNT. The thing is, I think Hugh Grant is the absolute best romantic comedy lead out there. He brings just the right amount of self-deprecating charm and wit every time, and he raises what should often be disposable films (ie, Two Weeks Notice, Music & Lyrics, Mickey Blue Eyes) into something that I just keep watching. Same goes here: the concept—about a bickering high-class New York couple forced to go into the Witness Protection Program in Wyoming (ah, the countryside—what horror!) after witnessing a murder—sounds pretty lame, and yet the trailer still made me laugh. I think Parker’s a likable actress as well, even though I couldn’t stand the Sex and the City film, and the two of them together (after their first pairing ages ago in the murder drama, Extreme Measures) might be enough to make this a breezy, if forgettable, good time (the great Sam Elliot, here playing (you guessed it) a cowboy helps too). Reviews are pretty awful, so I think this is probably best saved for DVD or cable. Still, by now, you’d know if you want to see this or not, and I’m sure there are far worse date flicks out there. This is from writer/director Marc Lawrence who also made Two Weeks Notice, Miss Congeniality, and Music & Lyrics—minus Miss Congeniality’s awful sequel, all of those films are ones that I’ve enjoyed and kept re-watching over the years. This will probably join that club—a probable mix of goofy humor, bad plotting, and very charismatic actors.

And, on a final note, while I love Grant and always glad to see him working, here’s hoping he’ll take on a meaty role in a drama some time soon—he’s just as talented as his more respected British peers (and hilarious in person), so I’d love for him to remind us of that once again.

3. “The Young Victoria” - Like this week's Crazy Heart, this has been getting plenty of buzz for star Emily Blunt's lead performance. She’s going to be huge one day (if she’s not already)—she’s talented, beautiful, and, so far, has shown excellent taste in films, taking quality supporting parts (ie, Dan in Real Life, The Young Buck Howard, The Jane Austen Book Club) as opposed to leading roles in bland star vehicles. And, come on, even Meryl Streep admitted she’s one of the best young actresses, particularly after Blunt stole The Devil Wears Prada from its more known stars, Streep and Anne Hathaway. This looks like her first big leading role, and the subject—about Queen Victoria’ rise to the British throne—is ripe for awards attention, not to mention some good historical drama. I like period pieces such as this, and, like Shakespeare in Love and many others, it features a who’s-who of top-notch British talent in supporting roles (including Jim Broadbent, Miranda Richardson, and my personal favorite, A Knight's Tale's Paul Bettany!). Could be worthwhile—the topic is interesting, the script is from the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park (one of the best films I’ve ever seen), and I’m sure Blunt will rise to the occasion to deliver a superb central performance, with hopefully a well-deserved first Oscar nomination as a result.

4. “Crazy Heart” - I'm not too familiar with this film, other than all the awards attention it’s been getting for star Jeff Bridges. He already has Golden Globes and Screen Actor’s guild nominations for this part—that of an aging country musician out to rediscover his humanity—and the film sounds like one of those quiet, powerful dramas than sneak in around Oscar season and steal the thunder from more obvious candidates. It co-stars one of my favorite actresses, Maggie Gyllenhaal (Stranger than Fiction, Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight), and Bridges has consistently been one of our finest and more respected performers. Seriously, the guy is so consistently good, I often take it for granted—he casually puts in solid work in popular films like Iron Man and Tron (with its sequel out next year!), and yet knocks it out of the park in smaller, more thoughtful roles like Seabiscuit and K-PAX (not to mention his iconic turn as The Dude in The Big Lebowski, a role he semi-reprised in the fun surfing-penguin cartoon, Surf’s Up). I hope this gets him the awards love he deserves, and the film itself could be quite good as well, at least judging by the outstanding reviews.

And that’s it for this weekend. Minus the questionable Did You Hear about the Morgans? (which I think will still be entertaining, despite its contrived plot), there are some excellent choices out there this weekend. Avatar is an easy recommendation, and I’m really itching to see The Young Victoria as well.

How about you guys? Are you planning to see any of these new movies?

We’ll be back with reviews of The Lovely Bones and Avatar very soon. And, for next week, I’m putting together a list of my favorite Disney hand-drawn-animated cartoons, and Luke and I will post lists of our Top 10 Films of the Decade before the New Year.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Clips courtesy of Trailer Addict.
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News Bites: Full-length “Avatar” trailer now online!

Check this out below. You won’t be sorry…

Wow. On a visual level alone, Avatar looks to be something amazing—a true movie-going experience, something that we haven’t had in quite some time... [more thoughts after the jump]

I like that the Na’vi, those blue, cat-like creatures on the gorgeous planet of Pandora look like real things. Real, breathing creatures that seem to occupy space and interact believably with the human characters. And just look at those surroundings, with the forest beasts, flying dragon-things, the floating mountains, and the poppy, stoner-ific colors. For special-effects, this looks to be one for the books.

This is also our first real glimpse into the story. We saw 20 minutes of footage at Comic-Con—beautiful stuff, but we barely got a sense of what the rest of the movie will bring. This gives us a better idea. Sam Worthington is sent undercover (using his “avatar,” a special, psychically-connected being made form Na’vi and human DNA) to infiltrate the primitive lands, and help the “good guys” get what they want, in this case being rare natural resources. I think we know where this story will go—Worthington will have a change of heart, he’ll see the beauty of the uncorrupted, indigenous aliens, and fight back against that greedy human military. We’ve seen variations on this before, and, minus the totally original setting, I doubt this one will break new ground in terms of story beats.

Still, Cameron could deliver something worthwhile here. He’s never been the most original storyteller, but he’s a master of details—for good characters, the right emotional balance, actions sequences that actually resonate (this is the same guy that made Terminator 2 have a heart—he’s a real talent when he’s in his element). I’m hoping Avatar will compensate for familiarity with those Cameron trademarks. Impossible to tell now, but this 3 ½ minute trailer is one whopper of a preview. If it fails, it’ll be one of the most good-looking weak movies ever. If it reaches Lord of the Rings-like epic brilliance? Well, consider us lucky viewers then.

What do you guys think? Does this make you want to see Avatar (which comes out in IMAX 3D glory December 18th) any more or less?

Trailer courtesy of Yahoo! Movies.
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The Daily Munchies: Man-sized Snacks!

Posted by Ace

Okay, so I don't know why our last couple posts have been about Chick-flicks, but I'm going to put an end to that right now.

If you haven't seen it, here it is... the trailer for Avatar.



Soooo siiiick! It looks amazing. We actually got to check out footage of this at Comic-Con and the trailer makes me feel all giddy again. I can't wait 'til December 18. But if you're one of the lucky few, there are special sneak peek screenings of clips of footage happening all over the country tonight. So enjoy!

... And just in case you've been living under a rock for the past few months...

Inglourious Basterds comes out today!



Okay, testosterone is back to normal... Peace!
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James Cameron’s Epic Creation - Avatar

Posted by Luke

Whether are you a massive fan or a jealous hater of James Cameron, it is quite clear that in each of his films Mr. Cameron expertly pushes to create a visual experience that will transport the audience to a strange alternate universe.

Mr. Cameron’s work includes such blockbuster films franchises as Terminator and Terminator 2 which caught the eye of fans around the world and enabled Mr. Cameron to cash in with huge-budget studio-backed films. Confidently, Mr. Cameron took on Ridley Scott’s Alien, creating a sequel called Aliens. He crafted a spectacular high-action thriller that fully lived up to the original masterpiece. Mr. Cameron’s last film, Titanic, the most profitable film ever, made him king of the world. Now, Mr. Cameron is back with his long-awaited IMAX 3D science fiction epic Avatar that will reach thousands of screens worldwide on December 18, 2009.

Avatar is based in the future on a distant planet called Pandora. Jack Sully, played by Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation and Clash of the Titans, set to release in March 26 in 2010), is a paraplegic war veteran brought to Pandora to embark on a new mission. The mission was assigned by Jake’s superior, Dr. Grace Augustine, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver (The Ice Storm and Infamous) who starred in Mr. Cameron’s Aliens. The world on Pandora is inhabited by the Na'vi, who are quite similar in appearance to humans, except that they are ten feet tall, and have blue skin and cat-like jade eyes.

James Cameron filming a scene with the male lead Sam Worthington who plays Jake Sully


Mr. Cameron shared Avatar clips with a packed audience at Comic-Con. In the almost twenty-five-minute-long clips, we learn that the human race wants to destroy the Na’vi to gain complete control of Pandora. The humans use avatars that look like the Na’vi; like The Matrix, in Avatar, a human lays down on a contraption (see picture below) that links the human’s brain to the avatar and lets the human control it. Using the avatars, the humans can live on Pandora, interact with the Na’vi and perhaps help the humans to obliterate their rivals.

During one of the first Avatar clips, Jake Sully connects to his own specially made Avatar. Learning to control an Avatar takes time, but Jake wants none of that. A quick battle ensues as the team scientists try to control Jake’s Avatar in a losing effort. Jake’s Avatar swiftly rushes out of the room, attempting to control his newly-adopted body and not get caught, and he succeeds. After this scene, the film takes the audience to the strange planet of Pandora to blow away anything fanboys have seen before.

James Cameron looking over the creation of an Avatar


There it was – Pandora. Quite frankly, the amazing 3D effects are simply breathtaking -- the brilliant array of colors showing the tropical trees, baby-blue water and huge mountains was dazzling. Although the brush of vast psychedelic colors was remarkable, the motion-capturing of the actors really was something to behold. Each actor playing a Na’vi had incredibly detailed facial expressions, spot-on eye movement and perfect movement of their long gangly blue bodies. Although many directors have attempted to use the motion-capture technology, most of the results lacked depth. Avatar succeeds where the others have failed. The clips featured a number of shots of Pandora including Jake’s interaction with a possible love interest, a Na’vi native named Naytiri, played by the beautiful and lovely Zoe Saldana (Star Trek and Vantage Point). Another spectacular scene is when Jake Sully’s avatar battles a dragon-like monster hand-to-hand; the results demonstrate elite control of the camera with CGI in full effect. Soon enough, the Comic-Con house lights went on and the clips were over. It was over. Done.

Avatar was filmed partly in New Zealand at Peter Jackson’s Weta Limited studio using state-of-the-art cameras specially built for the filming of this massive undertaking. Mr. Cameron is a master epic director, and he surrounds himself with the best in the business. Jon Landau, who produced Titanic, helps with the organizing and attempts to troubleshoot problems and run the huge operation as smoothly as possible. Of course, understanding Mr. Cameron’s vision is extremely important to Avatar and the director of photography, Mauro Fiore (The Kingdom and Training Day), did a masterful job shooting this ambitious creation. The hundreds of special effects wizards, artists and set designers working with the team of editors slowly began compiling each scene in post-production. After viewing 25 minutes of never-before-seen footage, the audience of 6,500 in Hall H at Comic-Con gave the Avatar creators a standing ovation.

Even though Mr. Cameron has a great record of producing profitable films, Fox Studio wanted to make sure it was investing in something worthwhile (the studio claims Avatar has a 240 million dollar budget, however, rumors are the bill will rise to about 300 million without even considering the huge marketing campaign). To satisfy the studio, Mr. Cameron and his team created a clip just under one minute long to show the studio big-shots what Avatar would look like. Although Mr. Cameron said the short clip did not nearly show how good the film will look, obviously the studio suits liked what they saw. It was green-lighted and set up for pre-production. Four years later, after great anticipation from sci-fi fanatics, thousands of Comic-Con viewers and some lucky Amsterdam folks have seen what will make the general audience feel as amazed and tripped out as those old Woodstock stoners.

It is clear and simple: this epic film needs to be seen -- on a big screen with 3D if possible. If you are like me, you’ll be there on Friday, December 18 at 12:01 a.m. I hope you are right next to me to witness the evolution of cinema together.

Poster of Avatar screening at 2009 Comic-Con

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