Kazuo Hirai, president and CEO of Sony, sat down with Jon Fortt of CNBC’s “Closing Bell” at the AllThingsD Digital Conference yesterday to address rumors that the company was “looking a spinoff 15 to 20%” of their Entertainment division, including Sony Pictures and Sony Music.
With films like Iron Man 3 and Star Trek: Into Darkness in theaters you might ask yourself how The Great Gatsby fits in. I’m here to tell you that it fits in just fine. With an average shot time of less than five seconds (I know, I counted) Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby is more kinetic and distractingly edited than any of the action fare it competes with. All Michael Bay has to do when confronted with arguments of his sometimes incomprehensible editing style is point to The Great Gatsby.
Let me state for the record that in equally incomprehensible fashion, I have read the book The Great Gatsby twice and I have seen the Robert Redford version of the film twice, and yet despite my great experience, having actually studied this book in school, I remember nothing except the ending. I guess it didn’t make that much of an impression. But I do remember it having a generally slower pacing and a sense of melancholy. This latest film has none of that. It’s either full blast crazy or full blast sad and angry. Nuance is missed. Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) narrates the experience of his meeting the titular J. Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). Carraway is not a big city guy and is taken in by the bewildering experience of the temptations in the city, including the various experiences he has when his neighbor Gatsby takes a liking to him. Luhrmann depicts all of this in a wild set of flashy scenes, cutting between one crazy image after another, leaving only enough time per image for them to barely register before being replaced by another crazy image. I feel like Luhrmann’s vision of Gatsby would do damage to a still developing child’s brain and it certainly hurt mine.
Whenever a new Star Trek or Star Wars entry appears on the horizon, the fan boys and girls get into weird vitriolic discussions of which is better. It’s a silly discussion because it’s all about personal preference, but more than that the franchises have different goals. Star Wars is space opera. Broader emotional contexts of good vs. evil, with a better action focus. Star Trek is a more cerebral endeavor. Often denounced for being slower and more talky, but also being willing to delve into complex ideas of humanity and politics more fully. I get it though. It’s natural to defend your favorite, but really they are different entities. It’s just a silly argument to have. So they should all just stop.
In addition, the same director J.J. Abrams, is taking over the Star Wars franchise as well. Which is a good thing, because I am here to tell you that, after what he did with Star Trek: Into Darkness, without question…. Star Trek is better.
With a movie as iconic as Iron Man 3, it seems that this review is best meant for the people who wouldn’t see it opening weekend because I’m not sure any words I use would influence any decision in the first three days. I’m not even sure the casting would influence anyone in those first three days. In a seemingly increasing trend in big films, only the biggest names show up.
Robert Downey Jr. reprises his role as Tony Stark (aka Iron Man). Gwyneth Paltrow is the plucky Pepper Potts, Stark’s “girlfriend Friday”. Don Cheadle keeps the role of Colonel James Rhodes, who mans War Machine, an Iron Man clone of sorts. But let’s add two more huge names. Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian, jilted scientist who doesn’t take kindly to Tony Stark, and Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, super villain of the world. Oh, and William Sadler, who people might remember as that guy from Shawshank Redemption. But I always think of him as that guy from Die Hard 2 or even better as the hero of Demon Knight. All of which are better films than Iron Man 3. But don’t take this the wrong way; I quite liked the latest outing for our metal hero.
So you may have guessed that I review movies after they come out, not prior to release like most professional reviewers. That’s just a consequence of current circumstances, however – I’ve learned there’s a benefit to doing this. A lesson that presented itself to me as I saw the ensemble, dysfunctional nuptial movie The Big Wedding. Just about everyone in this cast is famous and often that’s a bad sign. Rather than hire the best people for the roles, when an amateur script comes along, I think producers toss famous names at it to combat the lack of interest otherwise. It’s like having a barrel of sub-par fireworks and firing them all off to seem more impressive. Not that Susan Sarandon, Robert De Niro, Dianne Keaton, Robin Williams, Katherine Heigl, and Topher Grace are unimpressive but I think they all feed off of each other knowing not one is going to be the most impressive, because in a film like this it doesn’t really do to stand out. My mother called me yesterday explaining that she thinks she’s caught up on all my movie reviews and noticed that I have yet to review a movie that she’s interested in. When I told her I saw The Big Wedding and was making it my next review she said it didn’t look very good but “I like Susan Sarandon.” This is the effect studios are going for: sell the actor, not the movie.
2011 was not a good year for Sony. During that time, the PlayStation Network was famously hacked which resulted in Sony shutting down the service for over a month. A few months later, Sony Pictures would eventually be hacked with nearly 1 million accounts compromised. Behind the attack was a member of the hacker group LulzSec. The attack was supposedly carried out by SQL injection which is deemed to be a very low level, lower security operation. Sony, in conjunction with the FBI, would eventually arrest and convict one of the hackers and now a US district judge in Los Angeles has given a guilty verdict.
One of the things I noted in the middle of watching Oblivion was how the soundtrack is so similar to Daft Punk’s TRON: Legacy soundtrack. This factoid went into a list of things that are bugging me lately. Namely that movies copy each other. People fell all over themselves for the Daft Punk soundtrack so it only stands to reason that any futuristic movie for the next couple of years copies that formula regardless if it’s the best choice. In looking up Oblivion’s director, Joseph Kosinski, I learned he directed the aforementioned TRON: Legacy. So I guess it makes more sense now. He also stayed with the tried and true movie sci-fi legacy that futuristic order comes in the form of completely hoseable, white and clear surfaces. Oh and that the opposition lives in the dark caves of the world’s underbelly, resembling mole people that scavenge for whatever dirty remnants they can find. In fact, members of the opposition are even named “Scavs.”
By the time I got around to seeing Side Effects, it had been in the theaters for a number of weeks. I had expected a depressing and angry corporate malfeasance picture. And that’s exactly what I got… in act one. What I didn’t expect were the second and third acts. It’s like sucking on a Gobstopper for the first time and realizing the layers keep getting tastier the more you stick with it. Once again I went with my friend G.I. Joe, still recovering from his gall bladder removal. We even flipped a coin at what movie we would see. I think I should start doing that more often. Side Effects is fantastic.
Channing Tatum is one of many stars packing this film. He plays a recently-released white collar criminal, married to Rooney Mara’s mentally unstable Emily. We know she’s unstable because Emily drives her car straight into a wall, on purpose. The couple decide to seek out the help of Dr. Jonathan Banks played by Jude Law. With her depression getting the best of her, including a sad breakdown at a work party, the couple continuously search out alternative medical solutions. Jude Law brings a real, caring humanity to the rich, educated, and driven Dr. Banks. Despite his success and the nary-a-hair-out-of-place sense of organization that he brings, you can feel that he truly cares to help his patients. The writing is so smart and human. There’s a remarkable scene where Dr. Banks is explaining to his patients about a drug trial he’s being payed to promote. It’s short and simple, but its purpose is to make clear that this man has a strong ethical code. He’s so straightforward and honest with his patients, I never once felt he didn’t deserve the success he reaped. After consulting with Emily’s previous therapist, Dr. Victoria Siebert (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones), he decides to put Emily on a new drug – but with disastrous effects.
“That’s not what I was expecting.”
Without doing any prior research into this topic, I am fully convinced 72% of movie reviewers have made a pun about Danny Boyle’s new movie Trance not putting them “under its spell.” Or something equally obvious. And while I am fairly curious how close my guess is to the actual percentage, I’m not willing to do the work of counting up the numbers because I don’t care about this film enough to put forth the effort.
Trance is a psycho-sexual thriller starring James McAvoy as Simon, an employee at an auction house who gets himself involved in an art theft scheme but gets amnesia after being hit in the head during the crime. His criminal partners, led by the violent and empathetic Franck (one Vincent Cassel), take Simon to a hypnotist to unlock the secrets of his mind to find the missing painting.
Rosario Dawson brings a cold sexuality to the role as hypnotist Elizabeth and in a moment of confused and provocative decision making, she inserts herself fully into the criminal underworld, taking over control of the operation for reasons that will be uncovered later. Or will they?
If I had managed to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation on Easter Sunday I might have thought it proof of God. Because for all its flaws, everything that is so incredibly dumb about it, everything so strangely wrong, I somehow enjoyed myself. After hating, and I do mean hating, the original film, this one I went into ready for the worst. And despite actually wanting to dislike this film, I couldn’t. It left me dumbfounded, my brain confused. I didn’t know why I liked it. It was the ‘Immaculate Projection’.
Make no mistake. G.I. Joe: Retaliation is not a good movie. It’s just hard to not enjoy yourself.
Dwayne Johnson plays Roadblock, Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce is the president, Bruce Willis is General Joe Colton (the man G.I. Joe is named after it seems), someone plays Jinx, someone else plays Flint, yadda yadda. This is not meant as an insult to the actors and actresses who took on the other roles, but one thing that struck me is how we know nothing about anyone. There is zero backstory to the characters so calling them one dimensional is almost gracious. Roadblock, Jinx, Duke, Colton, Flint, and whomever else you care to mention are like interchangeable blocks with different name tags on them. They just show up to shoot guns. It doesn’t matter that Jinx uses blades. It could be Flint that uses blades. It just happens Flint uses guns. Whatever. Not like it made a bit of difference. The casting and subsequent plotting is like making a movie out of Lincoln Logs. Every piece is like every other piece and none is really important on its own.
I don’t know what is in the air, but the 80’s hardcore action flick has made a comeback. These are movies defined by wise cracking heros laying waste to the enemy with hands, feet, knives, guns, explosives, and random household items. A hero that single handedly is able to do what the police, fire, FBI, and US Military can not: beat the bad guy. The better of these of recent times are The Raid: Redemption and Dredd. Then there are the cringeworthy bad kind like The Expendables 2. Now, filling in the current void comes Anthony Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen. I am happy to say it falls firmly in the former camp with Dredd.
Gerard Butler comes in as resident bad-ass Mike Banning, secret service agent extraordinaire that is banished from the White House after a presidential car crash sequence that will have you wondering why anyone would ever drive so fast in a blizzard on a bridge. Banning is called back into service by circumstances outside his control. From his boring office across the way at the Treasury Department, he witnesses Korean terror squads take over the White House in wave after wave of fairly ingenious attacks. I have to commend Fuqua’s direction in the attack sequence as it answers a lot of the “well why don’t we just…” questions. Like, “why don’t we just get some jets and take them all out?” It’s a full throttle, slam bang, and more bang and slam action sequence that doesn’t let up for a good ten minutes.
Sony Pictures and Marc Webb are knee deep in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 which opens in just a little over a year from now. The sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man which is curiously being shot on film this time around and not digital already has all the original cast members returning like Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Sally Field while adding a few new heavy hitters like Jamie Foxx, Shailene Woodley, Colm Feore, and Paul Giamatti.
Now, thanks to a tweet, director Marc Webb has revealed yet another actor to join the already impressive roster, BJ Novak. If Novak looks at all familiar, it’s because you probably know him from The Office and Inglourious Basterds. Webb joked:
Day 38. A supposed rumor about a Dunder-Mifflin takeover of Oscorp?
We have three new releases cracking the top 5 this week. First up is DreamWorks’ animated film The Croods, pulling in $44.7 million. This is about even with 2010’s How to Train Your Dragon ($43.7 million) and Megamind ($46 million), and a vast improvement over November’s Rise of the Guardians The #2 spot belongs to Olympus Has Fallen, taking in $30.5 million. Starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman, it seems that fans favor their Butler in more action films, with the film ranking in as his highest gross in nearly 4 years.
Admission, the third new debut, rounds out the top 5 with $6.5 million. In between these is Oz The Great And The Powerful, which was dethroned after two weeks, falls to #3, but still managed a healthy $22 million take, for a $178 million domestic total thus far. And The Call went from #2 to #4, adding $8.7 million for a total of $31 million. The rest of the top ten are listed below.
‘Oz‘ maintains the top spot, pulling in an additional $42 million, for a $145 million 2-week total. ‘The Call‘ and ‘Incredible Burt Wonderstone‘ open at 2nd and 3rd place, earning $17 and $10 million respectively. ‘Jack the Giant Slayer‘ falls to 4th, adding $6 million for a $54 million total, while ‘Identity Thief‘ moves to 5th, adding $4.5 million for a $124 million total.
‘Snitch‘ falls to 6th, adding $3.5 million for a $37 million total, while ‘21 and Over‘ drops a spot to 7th, adding $2.6 million for a $22 million total. ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘ holds its 8th place spot, adding $2.5 million for a $125 million total. And at the bottom of the top ten are ‘Safe Haven‘ at 9th and ‘Escape from Planet Earth‘ at 10th, adding $2.5 and $2.3 million respectively.
Jonathan York, the self proclaimed right hand of Sony Santa Monica, tweeted the above picture which inspired this entire post. Over the last five years, we’ve seen Hollywood’s take at what a God of War movie could be like. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, then you need to purchase Clash of the Titans and more importantly, Wrath of the Titans on Blu-ray and just sit back and enjoy. After you’re done with it, tell me that that’s not how a God of War movie could/would be like. I’m personally a fan of the two movies and despite what you may think of them, it proves that thematically and technically, a God of War movie is now 100% plausible.
Much like the games, a GoW movie offers a unique and untapped world to viewers with a very different ‘hero’ which is a nice change of pace for gamers and moviegoers alike. So if a movie were to happen, who would you want to play the lead antagonist, Kratos?
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