Your Lucky Day from Dan on Vimeo.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Rider Strong in the new short film "Your Lucky Day"
I was waiting for months to see this film which debuted at The Seattle International Film Festival earlier this year. Rider Strong plays the lead role in this film in which an old man who is a regular customer of a convenience store finds out his lotto ticket is a multi-million dollar winner. Rider is at first just there to shop, but he overhears this conversation, pulls out a gun, and demands the ticket. The old man resists and then a police officer who was also shopping in the store tries to intervene. He tries to shoot Rider but ends up killing the old man. Rider then shoots the police officer who then appears dead. In an effort to not have to kill everyone who remained in the store, Rider invites them all to share in the millions in exchange for the destruction of security tapes and invention of an alibi which everyone agrees to use. I will not give away the ending. The film in its entirety was posted onto the filmmaker's Vimeo page, so the video below is actually not a preview, but rather the film in its entirety. Enjoy!
Monday, August 9, 2010
Reviews: Zac Efron in "Charlie St Cloud"; plus Private Screening of Oksana Lada in "Crumble"
Before I begin my reviews of "Charlie St Cloud" and "Crumble", I wanted to share some good news, Alex Barreto's short film "Career Day" won best short film at the New York International Latino Film Festival awards. Congratulations to Alex and Foe Killer Films on their award!
Today I finally went to see Charlie St. Cloud, which features Zac Efron (High School Musical) in the lead role alongside Charlie Tahan (who is also in Meskada, an upcoming movie produced by my friend Jen Gatien) and Amanda Crew (The Haunting In Connecticut). Zac Efron plays Charlie St. Cloud, and Charlie Tahan plays his brother, Sam St. Cloud. Charlie is a sailor who lives with his mother and brother. Sam is getting baseball lessons from Charlie because their mother can’t afford to pay for summer camp and the brothers make a pact to meet up at a certain time every day to practice throwing and catching a baseball. One night Charlie is ambushed by his brother as he is pulling out of the driveway. Sam convinces Charlie to give him a ride to a friend’s house to watch the baseball game on TV. As they drive down the road they joke around, and Charlie begins to have some trouble keeping an eye on the road. They stop in the middle of the street, an error that leads to tragedy. Two cars hit their car in succession, and once they are pulled out of the totaled car, they are put in an ambulance, and this is when Sam dies. At this point in the film, I couldn’t help but cry. Not many films get that kind of reaction from me. During Sam’s funeral, Charlie runs off into the woods to the secret spot where he had promised to meet Sam every day… and when he gets there, Sam’s ghost is waiting for him. The brothers talk, bond, and practice with the baseball, and at this point Sam realizes if he shows up at the correct time each day, he can spend time with his deceased brother, as if his brother were alive. Charlie takes a job at the cemetery so that he can work close to his brother’s grave and gives up sailing. Sam isn’t the only ghost Charlie sees, he also ends up seeing a friend of his who died in military service, and when he talks to this friend, he is seen by his coworker from the grave yard, and his coworker thinks Sam is crazy, since he appeared to be talking to himself. Then Charlie one day meets Tess (Amanda Crew). Tess is complaining about the flowers being dead at her relative’s gravestone, and Charlie agrees to plant some new ones for her. Charlie continues to play baseball with his brother’s ghost, but as Charlie gets to know Tess, the more time he is spending with her. Ray Liotta (Heatbreakers) meets Charlie for lunch one day and tries to convince Charlie to begin living his life again. One day, spending time with Tess results in Charlie losing track of time and going late to the spot where he usually meets Sam. Sam is hurt by this, and points out to Charlie that Tess followed him to the spot. Charlie turns around, sees Tess, and Tess tries to comfort Charlie. Tess is planning on sailing around the world, a feat she says should take her up to 6 months, so she tries to explain to Charlie that she doesn’t know if their getting so close before she leaves is a good idea. Then one day she takes her boat out and there is a terrible storm. She decides to test her boat by sailing directly into the storm. She goes missing, and everyone assumes she is dead because the search parties could not find her. After a lot of grieving Charlie suddenly realizes she probably isn’t dead, because he figures out the coordinates of where she probably is on the basis of what he would do if he sailed through such a storm. As he is out searching for Tess, Charlie realizes that rescuing Tess will require him to miss his daily meeting with his brother, and that this means he may not ever get to see his brother’s ghost again. He decides to keep looking for Tess and he does find her, after spotting her capsized boats near a jagged rock embankment. The movie ends with Charlie going back to the spot where he usually meets his brother, only to find that now he can HEAR Sam, but not SEE Sam. Sam says goodbye at this point, and then Charlie goes to find Tess and the two live happily ever after. This movie is a high quality drama, one that stirs up lots of emotions, especially sadness, though there are also a lot of happy moments which keeps the movie balanced.
This past Sunday night I went to a private screening of the new short film "Crumble" which featured lead roles by Okasana Lada (The Sopranos), Alexandra Grossi (The Sheol Express), and Raymond Hamlin (Nightmare). I had been invited to the red carpet premiere but my RSVP wasn't found until the day after the event. So my friend Renata Lorenc invited me to a private screening party on Sunday, an event open only to Renata's friends, which was held at the home of a friend of hers here in NY. Renata wrote, directed, and produced for the film. The film is set to premiere in Los Angeles but there is also discussion about doing a tour of film festivals. The film was shot in just 4 days, but the script was thirtysomething pages long. The movie begins with Oksana trying to convince her new husband Michael (Hamlin) to stop using drugs, and her husband responds only to offer her cocaine, and then to hire a female prostitute Bianca (Grossi) to seduce Oksana. Bianca and Oksana meet out in the hallway and get a chance to talk. Oksana is already upset at her husband for being a junkie and derelict, so she is somewhat open to Bianca, who makes it clear she is attracted to Oksana and she reassured Oksana that Oksana is not a prostitution client to her, but rather someone who Biance genuinely likes. Oksana still says no to Bianca, though. Then she thinks more about the dysfunctionality of her relationship with Michael, and decides to go to the address listed on the business card Bianca gave her. It turns out to be the address of a nightclub where a drag queen is monitoring the front door. Oksana talks her way inside and finds Bianca. The two begin to dance together but someone interrupts and pulls Bianca away for a prostitution client. Oksana goes looking for Bianca and finds her drugged by the prostitution client, and gets upset, so she lifts Bianca up and tells Bianca she is going to take her out of the club to someplace safe. Suddenly the pimp who also doubles as Michael’s drug dealer shows up and tells Oksana he owns her now that Michael “sold” Oksana to the prostitution club and the pimp claims he now has the right to keep Oksana there forever and that she no longer has individual rights as a human being. At this point, Bianca is recovering from the drugs she was on, and she pulls out a gun and tells everyone to stay away or else the pimp will be killed. This results in a clean getaway for Oksana and Bianca who decide they will drive and keep driving until they find a suitable town or city to live in where the pimp won’t find them. This movie is to be commended for taking a strong stance against the enslavement of human beings by pimps. It makes an important statement against the trafficking of prostitution slaves. I have had the pleasure of working on two movie premieres for the Redlight Children foundation, an organization that uses films to raise money to fight child prostitution slavery. Also, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have a similar organization that they set up to battle against the enslavement of children as prostitutes.
For information on these foundations visit:
http://www.redlightchildren.org
http://demiandashton.org
For information about Crumble:
http://www.crumblethemovie.com
For information about Charlie St. Cloud:
http://www.charliestcloud.com
Me with Director/Writer/Producer Renata Lorenc at the private screening of Crumble:
Today I finally went to see Charlie St. Cloud, which features Zac Efron (High School Musical) in the lead role alongside Charlie Tahan (who is also in Meskada, an upcoming movie produced by my friend Jen Gatien) and Amanda Crew (The Haunting In Connecticut). Zac Efron plays Charlie St. Cloud, and Charlie Tahan plays his brother, Sam St. Cloud. Charlie is a sailor who lives with his mother and brother. Sam is getting baseball lessons from Charlie because their mother can’t afford to pay for summer camp and the brothers make a pact to meet up at a certain time every day to practice throwing and catching a baseball. One night Charlie is ambushed by his brother as he is pulling out of the driveway. Sam convinces Charlie to give him a ride to a friend’s house to watch the baseball game on TV. As they drive down the road they joke around, and Charlie begins to have some trouble keeping an eye on the road. They stop in the middle of the street, an error that leads to tragedy. Two cars hit their car in succession, and once they are pulled out of the totaled car, they are put in an ambulance, and this is when Sam dies. At this point in the film, I couldn’t help but cry. Not many films get that kind of reaction from me. During Sam’s funeral, Charlie runs off into the woods to the secret spot where he had promised to meet Sam every day… and when he gets there, Sam’s ghost is waiting for him. The brothers talk, bond, and practice with the baseball, and at this point Sam realizes if he shows up at the correct time each day, he can spend time with his deceased brother, as if his brother were alive. Charlie takes a job at the cemetery so that he can work close to his brother’s grave and gives up sailing. Sam isn’t the only ghost Charlie sees, he also ends up seeing a friend of his who died in military service, and when he talks to this friend, he is seen by his coworker from the grave yard, and his coworker thinks Sam is crazy, since he appeared to be talking to himself. Then Charlie one day meets Tess (Amanda Crew). Tess is complaining about the flowers being dead at her relative’s gravestone, and Charlie agrees to plant some new ones for her. Charlie continues to play baseball with his brother’s ghost, but as Charlie gets to know Tess, the more time he is spending with her. Ray Liotta (Heatbreakers) meets Charlie for lunch one day and tries to convince Charlie to begin living his life again. One day, spending time with Tess results in Charlie losing track of time and going late to the spot where he usually meets Sam. Sam is hurt by this, and points out to Charlie that Tess followed him to the spot. Charlie turns around, sees Tess, and Tess tries to comfort Charlie. Tess is planning on sailing around the world, a feat she says should take her up to 6 months, so she tries to explain to Charlie that she doesn’t know if their getting so close before she leaves is a good idea. Then one day she takes her boat out and there is a terrible storm. She decides to test her boat by sailing directly into the storm. She goes missing, and everyone assumes she is dead because the search parties could not find her. After a lot of grieving Charlie suddenly realizes she probably isn’t dead, because he figures out the coordinates of where she probably is on the basis of what he would do if he sailed through such a storm. As he is out searching for Tess, Charlie realizes that rescuing Tess will require him to miss his daily meeting with his brother, and that this means he may not ever get to see his brother’s ghost again. He decides to keep looking for Tess and he does find her, after spotting her capsized boats near a jagged rock embankment. The movie ends with Charlie going back to the spot where he usually meets his brother, only to find that now he can HEAR Sam, but not SEE Sam. Sam says goodbye at this point, and then Charlie goes to find Tess and the two live happily ever after. This movie is a high quality drama, one that stirs up lots of emotions, especially sadness, though there are also a lot of happy moments which keeps the movie balanced.
This past Sunday night I went to a private screening of the new short film "Crumble" which featured lead roles by Okasana Lada (The Sopranos), Alexandra Grossi (The Sheol Express), and Raymond Hamlin (Nightmare). I had been invited to the red carpet premiere but my RSVP wasn't found until the day after the event. So my friend Renata Lorenc invited me to a private screening party on Sunday, an event open only to Renata's friends, which was held at the home of a friend of hers here in NY. Renata wrote, directed, and produced for the film. The film is set to premiere in Los Angeles but there is also discussion about doing a tour of film festivals. The film was shot in just 4 days, but the script was thirtysomething pages long. The movie begins with Oksana trying to convince her new husband Michael (Hamlin) to stop using drugs, and her husband responds only to offer her cocaine, and then to hire a female prostitute Bianca (Grossi) to seduce Oksana. Bianca and Oksana meet out in the hallway and get a chance to talk. Oksana is already upset at her husband for being a junkie and derelict, so she is somewhat open to Bianca, who makes it clear she is attracted to Oksana and she reassured Oksana that Oksana is not a prostitution client to her, but rather someone who Biance genuinely likes. Oksana still says no to Bianca, though. Then she thinks more about the dysfunctionality of her relationship with Michael, and decides to go to the address listed on the business card Bianca gave her. It turns out to be the address of a nightclub where a drag queen is monitoring the front door. Oksana talks her way inside and finds Bianca. The two begin to dance together but someone interrupts and pulls Bianca away for a prostitution client. Oksana goes looking for Bianca and finds her drugged by the prostitution client, and gets upset, so she lifts Bianca up and tells Bianca she is going to take her out of the club to someplace safe. Suddenly the pimp who also doubles as Michael’s drug dealer shows up and tells Oksana he owns her now that Michael “sold” Oksana to the prostitution club and the pimp claims he now has the right to keep Oksana there forever and that she no longer has individual rights as a human being. At this point, Bianca is recovering from the drugs she was on, and she pulls out a gun and tells everyone to stay away or else the pimp will be killed. This results in a clean getaway for Oksana and Bianca who decide they will drive and keep driving until they find a suitable town or city to live in where the pimp won’t find them. This movie is to be commended for taking a strong stance against the enslavement of human beings by pimps. It makes an important statement against the trafficking of prostitution slaves. I have had the pleasure of working on two movie premieres for the Redlight Children foundation, an organization that uses films to raise money to fight child prostitution slavery. Also, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have a similar organization that they set up to battle against the enslavement of children as prostitutes.
For information on these foundations visit:
http://www.redlightchildren.org
http://demiandashton.org
For information about Crumble:
http://www.crumblethemovie.com
For information about Charlie St. Cloud:
http://www.charliestcloud.com
Me with Director/Writer/Producer Renata Lorenc at the private screening of Crumble:
Monday, August 2, 2010
Sony To "Reboot" Spider Man Franchise
Today I read an article about Sony's decision to do a "reboot" Spider Man movie in lieu of creating the much anticipated "Spider Man 4" that they had been expected to do until recently. The article I read was unusually harsh, and focused mostly on anger over Sony's decision not to shoot the movie in New York. Reading this article compelled me to write one of my own, with my own perspective on the matter, because I have some positive things to say about the new film, despite being upset that they decided against making a fourth installment of the existing series.
Learning that Sony had inexplicably decided not to produce a fourth installation of the Spider Man saga that had seen so much success over the past decade, in effect also dropping Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst from the lead roles in the new movie, my first instinct about what to expect was negative. There are some bad precedents for other film studios' attempts to start successful major movie franchises over again from scratch or change the storylines of such sagas, and also when they replace popular lead actors from such franchises with new actors.
Terminator: Salvation is the most glaring example of how a studio destroyed one of the most profitable franchises in history. The first mistake they made was by choosing Christian Bale to replace Nick Stahl who had played John Connor in Terminator 3. This decision made no sense because Christian Bale does not look like a John Connor. So the claim that this decision was made because John Connor needed to look older makes no sense. What did make sense was the previous choice that if Edward Furlong who played John Connor in T2 were to be replaced, Nick Stahl was an excellent choice, becuase if you look at what Edward Furlong looked like in T2, and compared him to Nick Stahl- they look enough alike to make the transition between T2 and T3 to be believable. Terminator 3 was, in my opinion, the best Terminator movie ever. Another sensible choice was Thomas Dekker to play John Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series. He really does look somewhere in between the younger Edward Furlong, and the twenty-something Nick Stahl. He was credible as a John Connor and the TV series was excellent. Then out of nowhere Cristian Bale, who looks nothing like Stahl, Dekker, or Furlong... gets casted as John Connor. None of the actors who pulled off credible performances as Connor look anything like Bale, and you can tell that if even 10 years were to pass, all three of those actors would look pretty much the same as they do today. In 20 years, maybe they will have a few gray hairs, at most. So the notion that John Connor in the space between Terminator 3, and Terminator Salvation, would suddenly look like a 45 year old, was totally ridiculous and cost the newer movie a lot of credibility. Then, to make matters worse, they scrapped the role of Catherine Brewster which had originated with Claire Danes' appearance in Terminator 3. In T3, Arnold Schwarzenegger's good guy Terminator character claims that in the future, John Connor dies but his wife then leads the resistance. But in T-Salvation, there is no Catherine Brewster character at all. How can John Connor have a wife in T3 and then suddenly she disappears and his character has no memory of her having ever even existed? T-Salvation didn't pick up where Terminator 3 left off - John Connor and Catherine Brewster were supposed to be hiding out in an underground Presidential fallout shelter and coordinating resistance-organizing efforts via radio transmissions with a microphone. Another confusing casting blunder... in T-Salvation they tried to create a "lookalike" Terminator model designed to appear SIMILAR to Arnold's model... this was a disaster because all this did was make the movie look cheap. They could've casted Kristanna Lokken or Summer Glau to play Terminators in the movie and made the film have SOMETHING in common with the earlier films or show. T-Salvation made no sense to me, I watched it on a friend's DVD twice to try and make sense of the plot, and the movie could only be explained as having nothing to do at all with any of the three prior movies or the television series. It is no wonder the movie flopped. It was a disgrace to the Terminator name. Also, why they decided to cancel the extremely well-written and well-produced Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series remains a mystery.
Then there is the Batman Series, which, interestingly, also has Christian Bale in the lead, as Batman. This is the series which got restarted with disappointing results. In the 1990's series the lead role of Batman was played by different actors in almost every installation. Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney all played Batman. Chris O'Donnell gave the final two installations some consistency by playing Robin. Since Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney are all middle aged adults anyway, the transition of leads didn't make much of a difference, and in this case, the casting of Christian Bale later in Batman Begins was not offensive or ridiculous. That said, I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and was bored to death by them. Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins, but these movies didn't have the comic-book feeling to them that the 1990's films had. They felt like surreal dramas instead of action-adventure films. These two films did very well at the box office, but they still serve as another example of a studio re-starting a franchise of popular and exciting films, and ruining them. My favorite Batman movies remain Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.
All that said, if there is anyone who would be biased against a new Spider Man movie that doesn't have Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the leads, it would be me. It's really unfortunate that they decided to cut the series off at Spider Man 3 without finishing the storyline of Peter Parker's love affair with Mary Jane Watson. They would've been expected to finally get married in Spider Man 4, if the movie had been made. Knowing that audiences will not get to see the two get married is extremely disappointing. The scene in Spider Man 3 where Tobey is falling through the air and more concerned with saving the ring with which he plans to propose than he is with saving his own life was one of the most touching moments I've ever seen in an action movie. There was a strange comment posted underneath the article I read today where someone claimed Sony replaced Tobey because he was getting too old to play Parker, and this makes no sense. Tobey looks identical today to the way he looked in the first Spider Man movie. So this argument didn't make any sense. Yet once they did decide to re-start the series rather than to continue it, one would assume this means they would be replacing the lead actors as well.
If they had made a bad choice for a replacement for Tobey, I would be boycotting the new Spider Man movie and telling everyone else to do the same, but it happens the actor they chose for the role truly is deserving of the role, and this is why I felt the need to write my own article about this matter. An actor named Andrew Garfield was chosen to be the next Peter Parker. I am already familiar with his work, since he played one of the leads in Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep's 2007 film "Lions For Lambs". This movie was a political movie with a strong antiwar message, a movie that dramatized the way politicians and media pundits were mutually responsible for the lies and effects of the misinformation campaign waged by the Bush administration in the leadup to the Iraq war. Garfield plays a student called into his college professor's office to receive a lecture about his academic and personal potential, in which he's also told a tragic story about two students who volunteered to serve in the military only to die in the Iraq war. Garfield's performance alongside Streep and Cruise showcased a talent worthy of being casted in a lead role alongside them. It is for this reason that I am actually excited about the new Spider Man movie, and this is why I felt compelled to write this article. Garfield not only looks the part of Peter Parker, he is capable of pulling off a performance of equal caliber to Maguire. I recommend that anyone interested in getting to know Garfield's work, rent Lions For Lambs on Itunes by clicking here. Also, coming to theaters later this year is another of Garfield's projects, a movie called "The Social Network", where he plays a lead alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Rashida Jones, and Justin Timberlake. I've seen the trailer for it, and the movie looks great. Something a little along the lines of a modern day spin off Ryan Phillipe, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Claire Forlani's now-classic techno-thriller "Antitrust".
So with all that in mind, I have to give a thumbs up to Sony (not for rebooting the Spider Man series because 1-3 deserved to be followed with a 4, and there is no justification for them to think Maguire and Dunst warranted replacement) but instead my accolades are to the fact that since they did decide to remake the series, they at least decided to recruit an actor of equal caliber to Maguire, a sign that they intend to create a film that audiences will enjoy just as much as the prior Spider Man films. It doesn't matter where they decide to shoot the film, since the New York skyscrapers are usually done with blue-screens anyway. What matters is the talent involved in making the movie, because it is the talent that makes a movie worth seeing, not the budget.
For more information of Andrew Garfield's upcoming movie "The Social Network", you can visit http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com
Here is the trailer for "The Social Network":
Learning that Sony had inexplicably decided not to produce a fourth installation of the Spider Man saga that had seen so much success over the past decade, in effect also dropping Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst from the lead roles in the new movie, my first instinct about what to expect was negative. There are some bad precedents for other film studios' attempts to start successful major movie franchises over again from scratch or change the storylines of such sagas, and also when they replace popular lead actors from such franchises with new actors.
Terminator: Salvation is the most glaring example of how a studio destroyed one of the most profitable franchises in history. The first mistake they made was by choosing Christian Bale to replace Nick Stahl who had played John Connor in Terminator 3. This decision made no sense because Christian Bale does not look like a John Connor. So the claim that this decision was made because John Connor needed to look older makes no sense. What did make sense was the previous choice that if Edward Furlong who played John Connor in T2 were to be replaced, Nick Stahl was an excellent choice, becuase if you look at what Edward Furlong looked like in T2, and compared him to Nick Stahl- they look enough alike to make the transition between T2 and T3 to be believable. Terminator 3 was, in my opinion, the best Terminator movie ever. Another sensible choice was Thomas Dekker to play John Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series. He really does look somewhere in between the younger Edward Furlong, and the twenty-something Nick Stahl. He was credible as a John Connor and the TV series was excellent. Then out of nowhere Cristian Bale, who looks nothing like Stahl, Dekker, or Furlong... gets casted as John Connor. None of the actors who pulled off credible performances as Connor look anything like Bale, and you can tell that if even 10 years were to pass, all three of those actors would look pretty much the same as they do today. In 20 years, maybe they will have a few gray hairs, at most. So the notion that John Connor in the space between Terminator 3, and Terminator Salvation, would suddenly look like a 45 year old, was totally ridiculous and cost the newer movie a lot of credibility. Then, to make matters worse, they scrapped the role of Catherine Brewster which had originated with Claire Danes' appearance in Terminator 3. In T3, Arnold Schwarzenegger's good guy Terminator character claims that in the future, John Connor dies but his wife then leads the resistance. But in T-Salvation, there is no Catherine Brewster character at all. How can John Connor have a wife in T3 and then suddenly she disappears and his character has no memory of her having ever even existed? T-Salvation didn't pick up where Terminator 3 left off - John Connor and Catherine Brewster were supposed to be hiding out in an underground Presidential fallout shelter and coordinating resistance-organizing efforts via radio transmissions with a microphone. Another confusing casting blunder... in T-Salvation they tried to create a "lookalike" Terminator model designed to appear SIMILAR to Arnold's model... this was a disaster because all this did was make the movie look cheap. They could've casted Kristanna Lokken or Summer Glau to play Terminators in the movie and made the film have SOMETHING in common with the earlier films or show. T-Salvation made no sense to me, I watched it on a friend's DVD twice to try and make sense of the plot, and the movie could only be explained as having nothing to do at all with any of the three prior movies or the television series. It is no wonder the movie flopped. It was a disgrace to the Terminator name. Also, why they decided to cancel the extremely well-written and well-produced Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series remains a mystery.
Then there is the Batman Series, which, interestingly, also has Christian Bale in the lead, as Batman. This is the series which got restarted with disappointing results. In the 1990's series the lead role of Batman was played by different actors in almost every installation. Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney all played Batman. Chris O'Donnell gave the final two installations some consistency by playing Robin. Since Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney are all middle aged adults anyway, the transition of leads didn't make much of a difference, and in this case, the casting of Christian Bale later in Batman Begins was not offensive or ridiculous. That said, I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and was bored to death by them. Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins, but these movies didn't have the comic-book feeling to them that the 1990's films had. They felt like surreal dramas instead of action-adventure films. These two films did very well at the box office, but they still serve as another example of a studio re-starting a franchise of popular and exciting films, and ruining them. My favorite Batman movies remain Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.
All that said, if there is anyone who would be biased against a new Spider Man movie that doesn't have Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the leads, it would be me. It's really unfortunate that they decided to cut the series off at Spider Man 3 without finishing the storyline of Peter Parker's love affair with Mary Jane Watson. They would've been expected to finally get married in Spider Man 4, if the movie had been made. Knowing that audiences will not get to see the two get married is extremely disappointing. The scene in Spider Man 3 where Tobey is falling through the air and more concerned with saving the ring with which he plans to propose than he is with saving his own life was one of the most touching moments I've ever seen in an action movie. There was a strange comment posted underneath the article I read today where someone claimed Sony replaced Tobey because he was getting too old to play Parker, and this makes no sense. Tobey looks identical today to the way he looked in the first Spider Man movie. So this argument didn't make any sense. Yet once they did decide to re-start the series rather than to continue it, one would assume this means they would be replacing the lead actors as well.
If they had made a bad choice for a replacement for Tobey, I would be boycotting the new Spider Man movie and telling everyone else to do the same, but it happens the actor they chose for the role truly is deserving of the role, and this is why I felt the need to write my own article about this matter. An actor named Andrew Garfield was chosen to be the next Peter Parker. I am already familiar with his work, since he played one of the leads in Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep's 2007 film "Lions For Lambs". This movie was a political movie with a strong antiwar message, a movie that dramatized the way politicians and media pundits were mutually responsible for the lies and effects of the misinformation campaign waged by the Bush administration in the leadup to the Iraq war. Garfield plays a student called into his college professor's office to receive a lecture about his academic and personal potential, in which he's also told a tragic story about two students who volunteered to serve in the military only to die in the Iraq war. Garfield's performance alongside Streep and Cruise showcased a talent worthy of being casted in a lead role alongside them. It is for this reason that I am actually excited about the new Spider Man movie, and this is why I felt compelled to write this article. Garfield not only looks the part of Peter Parker, he is capable of pulling off a performance of equal caliber to Maguire. I recommend that anyone interested in getting to know Garfield's work, rent Lions For Lambs on Itunes by clicking here. Also, coming to theaters later this year is another of Garfield's projects, a movie called "The Social Network", where he plays a lead alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Rashida Jones, and Justin Timberlake. I've seen the trailer for it, and the movie looks great. Something a little along the lines of a modern day spin off Ryan Phillipe, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Claire Forlani's now-classic techno-thriller "Antitrust".
So with all that in mind, I have to give a thumbs up to Sony (not for rebooting the Spider Man series because 1-3 deserved to be followed with a 4, and there is no justification for them to think Maguire and Dunst warranted replacement) but instead my accolades are to the fact that since they did decide to remake the series, they at least decided to recruit an actor of equal caliber to Maguire, a sign that they intend to create a film that audiences will enjoy just as much as the prior Spider Man films. It doesn't matter where they decide to shoot the film, since the New York skyscrapers are usually done with blue-screens anyway. What matters is the talent involved in making the movie, because it is the talent that makes a movie worth seeing, not the budget.
For more information of Andrew Garfield's upcoming movie "The Social Network", you can visit http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com
Here is the trailer for "The Social Network":
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Alexandra Barreto's short film "Career Day"
What a busy 48 hours I had this weekend! After attending and writing about the NY premiere of Thomas Dekker and Natasha Lyonne's new film "All About Evil", I got an email at the last minute informing me there would be a screening of "Career Day", a short film I'd been wanting to see because Alexandra Barreto (Pepper Dennis, Blood Makes Noise) plays the lead role in the film. It screened Saturday afternoon at the New York International Latino Film Festival, presented by HBO. The movie begins with Alex cooking in the kitchen as her son asks her if he can go to work with her so he can write about her job for his school's parent "career day" assignment. Alex denies his request, telling him that since she works in a hospital, she doesn't want him going there and catching a disease from any of the sick patients. The kid doesn't want to take no for an answer so he follows the bus his mother takes to work, only to find that she exits the bus in front of a strange building, clearly not a hospital. Somehow he talks his way into the establishment which turns out to be a stripper bar. He even manages to get served alcoholic beverages at the bar, and then trouble ensues when he confronts Alex about her true profession as a stripper. Alex is to be applauded for taking this role in a film clearly meant to humanize strippers, and by extension, prostitutes, clearly with the message that strippers and prostitutes are not objects or degenerates, but rather real human beings faced with tough and tragic lives with issues beyond their control that drag them, involuntarily, into an underworld they would prefer not to be in at all. Some feature length films have carried the same message. "Joyride" (Tobey Maguire, Amy Hathaway), "Twist" (Nick Stahl, Tygh Runyan), "Whore" (Thomas Dekker, Megan Fox), and "Where The Day Takes You" (Lara Flynn Boyle, Will Smith)" all had plots or scenes meant to compel empathy for those who have the misfortune of being forced by circumstance into the world of stripping and/or prostitution.
Alex is currently involved with two other short film projects where she is collaborating with her boyfriend Rider Strong (Boy Meets World, The Penthouse) and his brother Shiloh Strong (The Mommies, Dinotopia). She is playing the lead in their upcoming short film "Dungeon Master", which Rider and Shiloh wrote, directed and produced. Additionally, she recently finished writing a short comedic film of her own, "Method", about an actress who takes her job way too seriously. "Method" is also a collaboration with Rider and Shiloh producing & directing, and Alex acting. So far they haven't posted either film on IMDB, but both films and the process of making them are discussed on Rider and Shiloh's blog. The brothers made their debut as filmmakers in 1998 with their short "Irish Twins", which I attended the premiere of at the Tribeca Film Festival. An excellent film which won awards at some of the other festivals it played at, I was impressed at how it had the quality of a major studio production, and it definitely overshadowed the other films it was competing with.
For more information on "Career Day" and future screening notifications, you can visit Foe Killer Films' Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/FoeKillerFilms
To read about Rider, Alex and Shiloh's work on "Dungeon Master" and "Method", check out Rider and Shiloh's blog at
http://www.strongbrothersmagicshow.blogspot.com
Trailer for Career Day:
Trailer for Irish Twins:
Me at the screening of "Career Day":
Alex is currently involved with two other short film projects where she is collaborating with her boyfriend Rider Strong (Boy Meets World, The Penthouse) and his brother Shiloh Strong (The Mommies, Dinotopia). She is playing the lead in their upcoming short film "Dungeon Master", which Rider and Shiloh wrote, directed and produced. Additionally, she recently finished writing a short comedic film of her own, "Method", about an actress who takes her job way too seriously. "Method" is also a collaboration with Rider and Shiloh producing & directing, and Alex acting. So far they haven't posted either film on IMDB, but both films and the process of making them are discussed on Rider and Shiloh's blog. The brothers made their debut as filmmakers in 1998 with their short "Irish Twins", which I attended the premiere of at the Tribeca Film Festival. An excellent film which won awards at some of the other festivals it played at, I was impressed at how it had the quality of a major studio production, and it definitely overshadowed the other films it was competing with.
For more information on "Career Day" and future screening notifications, you can visit Foe Killer Films' Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/FoeKillerFilms
To read about Rider, Alex and Shiloh's work on "Dungeon Master" and "Method", check out Rider and Shiloh's blog at
http://www.strongbrothersmagicshow.blogspot.com
Trailer for Career Day:
Career Day teaser trailer from Foe Killer Films on Vimeo.
Trailer for Irish Twins:
Irish Twins Trailer from Meyer Management on Vimeo.
Me at the screening of "Career Day":
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