In a stroke of viral marketing brilliance, Christopher Nolan gave his intrepid fans on Twitter a sneak preview of “The Dark Knight Rises“: the first photo of Tom Hardy as Bane in the next Batman film.
As fans discovered, tweeting “#thefirerises” helps fill in the hidden Tom Hardy image on “The Dark Knight Rises” website, which launched Friday. Holy Twitter, Batman! What a way for Nolan to mark the first week of filming.
Tom Hardy is becoming one of my favorite actors, and while I didn’t love the movie Bronson, it was his performance in there that proved to me he was the right choice for Bane, and no doubt helped Nolan’s vision as well.
Painfully mediocre. That is how I first described Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides as the credits rolled. Not the worst movie ever, in fact, barely worse than the 3rd movie – but with less disappointment attached to it this time around. Maybe that stems from my low expectations, and because going in I had heard only negative things surrounding this latest installment. Either way, the movie felt a little stale to me. And I know I’m not the biggest Pirates fan out there, but I genuinely enjoyed the first movie, and I thought the 2nd one was alright. But they definitely seemed to get worse as they went for me. This newest installment though seemed to be little more than quick money grab by Disney. Hell, even the girl who came dressed as a pirate seemed underwhelmed…
I had virtually no expectations going into seeing the movie Bridesmaids. At best, I would spend some quality time with Kristen Wiig and her deliciously witty sense of humor. At worst, I would see yet another SNL great succumb to an astronomical cinematic fiasco (though none can hold a candle to the mind-numbing scrapbook of atrocities Eddie Murphy has to his name). If anything, the film’s marketing had me intrigued: “A Hangover for the girls!” What in the world does that mean? That it had the same plot, but the characters have different plumbing? That it’s a raunchy comedy that appealed more to women? That The Hangover didn’t appeal to women? That I was abnormal to be a woman who enjoyed The Hangover? While I still don’t get the foundation of this particular marketing ploy (other than its ability to attract fans of the Hangover), I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film.
For this list I looked at movies that were simply unable to live up to their incredible trailers. Trailers that were able to build an epic anticipation for the movie they were previewing. On this list are some of the best trailers ever made, which just goes to show, you don’t need a quality movie for a quality trailer…
10.) Watchmen
To start off the list I picked a movie that I actually liked. The problem is the trailer is so brilliantly crafted that is should’ve been a movie that I loved. This is a trailer I watched probably 100 times before the movie came out, and I was convinced that Watchmen, released in 2009, would indeed be was worthy DC Comic follow-up for 2008’s masterpiece The Dark Knight. These expectation proved lofty and unattainable. While not a bad movie, it’s simply not the same quality of movie advertised below…
There are just a lot of things that you put together that make the perfect combo. Peanut Butter and Jelly for instance. Then there is Alien VS Predator, Monsters VS Aliens, or Mega Shark VS Crocosaurus. Even Cowboys and Aliens looks to be something spectacular this summer. Staying with the ‘v.s. aliens’ thing we’ve got going here brings me to the next big thing we have coming our way: Dinosaurs VS Aliens.
Not impressed by that? Then you have no soul or you’re a communist. What if I throw the name Grant Morrison in there, does that help? Because the superstar comic book writer will indeed be taking on the duty of plotting out this latest piece of box office gold. (Or crap depending how you look at it.) And not to mention Barry Sonnenfeld, an alien extraordinaire, will be directing! If you don’t remember Mr. Sonnenfeld he is currently working on his third Men In Black movie.
Grant Morrison has made in his mark on comics in everything from X-Men to Batman, and Superman to Animal Man. He has a penchant for the weird in a lot of cases and I would say that Aliens fighting Dinosaurs is pretty effin’ weird. This little snippet from Deadline will help enlighten you on the direction this movie will be going:
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While Sonnenfeld has scored his biggest commercial successes with aliens, he’s also a dinosaur fanatic who sparked to the idea of combining them. “Growing up, my fascination was all things dinosaur, and as an adult, I’ve had some success making films about aliens, so this is a dream come true,” said Sonnenfeld, who first met Liquid Comics founder Sharad Devarajan when he wrote a forward for one of Liquid’s graphic novels. “We’ve been trying to do a project ever since.”
The graphic novel will chronicle a secret prehistoric world war battle. When an alien invasion attacks Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, the planet’s only hope is the giants that roam the planet with, it turns out, a lot more intelligence than previously realized.
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Holy God I hope these dinosaurs talk and wear battle armor, that would be priceless! I will most definitely be picking up Morrison’s graphic novel if it comes out before the movie just to see what they might have in store. I think Barry Sonnefield has that creative spark to make something such as this an entertaining movie. Sure Men in Black 2 sucked, but you can’t blame a guy for trying to trump something as enjoyable as the first Men in Black.
You’ll see me checking this movie out in theaters regardless of how bad it looks… it’s frickin’ Aliens V.S. Dinosaurs! Next thing will be Robert Kirkman’s (The Walking Dead) Super Dinosaur!
The problem with Phantasm is that on one level it’s rubbish. And that is as far as some people will see, but if you look a little deeper you’ll find a gem – although it is in the rough.
Phantasm is about Jody (Bill Thornbury), his younger brother Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) – who is an ice cream man – and their attempt to stop ‘The Tall Man’ (Angus Scrimm – Femme Fatales) from stealing corpses to turn into an undead, dwarf slave army. It’s that simple.
It is – unsurprisingly – a horror film, but it’s more of an old school horror film. It’s quite low on gruesome horror and gore. Most of the film is blood free – or yellow gloop free, as that passes for monster blood here – and there are only three on-screen deaths. It isn’t low on terror though. It’s the slow building kind.
The Tall Man and the glimpse of a hooded dwarf figure is all you get at the start of the film. Even though it pretty much begins with a death. It isn’t untill Mike breaks in to the funeral home that things change and the horror becomes full force.
It’s at this point in the movie that one of the most famous – iconic, no doubt – horror creations appears. The thing that most people will associate with Phantasm. The Silver Ball.
If a person knows nothing else about Phantasm they’ll probably know about the ball. It’s more recognizable than The Tall Man. So it is a surprise how little it’s in the film. It appears at this change point in the film, when the terror goes from unknown dread to full on attack. It whooshes into the film with no explanation, looking impressive. It’s here that the second death occurs. And it is the most bloodiest.
Picture courtesy of Phantasm Archives…
The ball only appears once more. It’s on-screen for less than 5 minutes. But boy does it create a lasting impression. However, there is no explanation for it. Like the old fortune-teller near the start of the film, it’s introduced and the it’s gone. No reason.
There are other elements that show up; things that make no sense; apparent holes in the story. From the Lady in Lavender to the weird red planet to the strange photograph Mike finds in the antique shop that’s never mentioned again. There is Myrtle, the house maid, who is introduced just to startle Reggie and is never seen again. The list seems long…
The Lady in Lavender…
This slightly haphazard approach to story telling could be seen as a weakness, but it wasn’t the original intention. Most of it occurred through editing of the film to get it down from a bloated – though more logical – 3 hours to a more cinema friendly 90 minutes.
The film gets more and more bizarre untill it reaches its climax, and doesn’t so much end as implode! The ending could leave you scratching your head, in which case you’ve kind of missed the point. The whole film plays out like a nightmare. The sort that starts out strange and then drags you into the darkness.
There are dark lonely roads. Endless pursuit. An evil presence that just can’t be stopped. The terror when you think you’ve awoken, but you’re still asleep. This why it seems to make no sense, because dreams – and nightmares – seldom do.
There are a few niggles. The acting is, at times, hammy, and the special effects are a little ropey. Considering though that most of the actor where fairly inexperienced, it was made on a small budget, and this was only the third film made by Don Coscarelli, I’m willing to over look these. Released just a year after John Carpenter‘s Halloween, this movie helped to usher in the ‘Decade of Horror’ know as the the 1980’s.
It is, over all, extremely entertaining, as long as you’re willing to just go along for the ride. Try and make too much sense out of it all and you’ll not enjoy it – and have a headache.
Grizzly Bomb 