A Hit of Deja Vu

So, tonight I rented from the REDBOX, which is probably one of the best inventions ever. If you don't know, it's a DVD rental vending machine at most local grocery stores, where you can rent new dvds for $1 every night (via payment to a credit card). You can even check what each particular redbox has in stock before you go (take that Blockbuster). I love it, and might just think it's better than NetFlix (yea, so I am actually getting commission from REDBOX for this, but who cares, right?)

ANYHOW, that was not what I wanted to write about. What I really wanted to talk about was Shutter Island. I may be one of the few people left who cares about movies who hasn't seen it, but I can now say that I have actually seen it. And it also makes me really upset with myself, as I do think I am quite a Scorsese fan (though apparently not a good one). I really enjoyed the film, but something didn't sit right with me after watching it. I thought it was a good movie, but there was just something odd about the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo (future Incredible Hulk in The Avengers) and Ben Kingsley.

It's about a U.S. marshall sent to a psychiatric hospital that just so happens to be isolated in the middle of nowhere on an island. He is there to investigate the disappearance of a patient named Rachel Solando, but as he delves into the case, things get weird (very good descriptive term, huh?) and the distinction between reality and fantasy begins to become very hard to detect. I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it, but the ending too, also SPOILER ALERT manages to be extremely ambiguous regarding the mental state of our main character.

Is DiCaprio seeing double, or are we?

This basic outline is what really got me feeling strange, like I had deja vu (and no, this was not a break in the Matrix, so please don't geek out). It was eerily familiar, like I had seen DiCaprio in something very similar to it very recently. Then, it struck me. Inception. Inception, like this film, blurs the lines of reality and fantasy and makes people question whether what they saw was actually a part of the actual storyline or just inside the mind of the lead character, which happens to be DiCaprio in both. They both also heavily feature water as both a primary part of the setting but also as a symbol of (pretty cliched, I know) each character's awakening to what is happening in the films, or, as is the case in both films, a bridge for them to discover more about the truth of reality. On top of that, each is haunted by the memory of their dead wife, and each even feels responsible for her death. Aye scamoles!

What is really strange is that I loved both films and didn't dislike them at all for the similarities (I am also biased to like Scorsese anything but I may have preferred Inception). I am sure more similarities will come to mind as I continue to think about this, but if you have seen both movies, let me know if you can think of anything or if this idea makes sense to you! I'll add any additional thoughts below this post and include comments from you about what you might find similar between the two.

NOTE: Obviously, I don't think one film copied the other in any way. I just think it is such a weird (there's that word again) coincidence that they share so many qualities.

I said good day, sir!
-E

A Hit of Superpowers! (for a not-so-super sequel coming soon)

While I am on the subject of originality, I thought I would also talk a little bit more about sequels, which you should note is not officially on my dislike list (ps. looking for suggestions for more to add...can't think of them all at once). So, I wanted to examine them a little bit and figure out just what about sequels makes me tick. As I said before, Toy Story 3 was fantastic and it proves that if a sequel can stand on its own apart from an adjoining film, it's almost always money in my book. There are instances when the films will of course have cliffhangers and depend on others for complete resolution, but these are the types of sequels that are planned ahead and ultimately part of one long story, so I won't examine them either. I am most thinking about the cash-cow sequels, the ones made after the first film was a success and was never planned to tell a larger story outside of the one it first presented. Quite often, these are the kinds that ultimately fail, but not in every case (like Jurassic Park's sequels...just kidding!)

However, there is one category or genre of films that seems to often produce at least one great sequel, at least in the more recent years and I have found that to be the superhero genre. Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, and X2: X-Men United have all, in my opinion surpassed the excellence of their originals and to me showed the potential for franchises to live long and happy lives (I haven't seen Iron Man 2 yet but let me know what you thought!). But some of their sequels, those wonderful third entries, have shown a certain greediness and love of excess that ultimately derailed the franchises. Particularly, I am thinking of Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Both of these films added several and I mean several new characters to their worlds and instead of enhancing the film, they ended up just making the films seem bloated and too busy.

In the particular case of X-Men, which is supposed to feature multiple characters on a team, I would be all for a lot of characters, as long as they didn't distract from the main plot and if featured, were actually given some depth and reason for being there. But, in the Last Stand, available on DVD so that you too can understand my sadness over Brett Ratner's sorry excuse for a sequel, the characters were there and that was about it. The characters from the previous films also came along for the fun, but were mainly relegated to standing in the background, ceasing to develop, and in some ways existing within the movie as if they were only there because the actors who played them could fit that particular shooting day in their schedule. That was the ultimate problem with the film. Nobody wanted to be there, but everyone was. It was like a surprise party for someone that no one likes but feels bad for. Except in this case, there weren't even any drinks to help me forget why I was there in the first place!

The reason I went on this little rant today has been because of the barrage of news that comes in every day in regards to casting on the newest X-Men film called X-Men: First Class. This prequel, the fifth installment in the franchise, is trying to resuscitate the X-Men film brand (which was absolutely murdered by Brett Ratner) by going back in time and introducing us to the dueling leaders of good and evil mutants, Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, when they were just young men in college. Prequels can be hit or miss (Wolverine is an example of how much of a miss they can be) but in the end they are some form of sequel to me, whether they are called so by name or not, so they too must pass through the same amount of scrutiny that sequels do.

And here, it seems the film is trying to make the same mistakes that The Last Stand made. Every day or so over the past few months, there have been reports from various outlets that a new actor is joining the cast of this film. The cast currently consists of the following actors: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, Jason Flemyng, Oliver Platt, Morgan Lily, Zoe Kravitz, Bill Bilner. There are some impressive names on the list (shout out to ComingSoon.net for the complete list), but I don't think these actors are going to have any timeto showcase their talents or devleop their characters if they are all potentially considered principle players. Aye scamoles! I love me some X-Men, but this is crazy!

Anyhow, that's enough! Let me know what you think, you wonderful, non-existent readers, you!

I said good day, sir!
-E

A Hit of B.O. (and a little not-so-subtle film suggestion)

Ok, so I said before that I don't like remakes, and unfortunately, that seems to be the route that Hollywood is taking with much of the offerings that have come out recently and are continuing to come out for the foreseeable future. People have talked about this subject over and over again, particularly saying that originality is dead and that there are apparently no more new ideas. Of course, the film industry is a business and it seems that studios are sacrificing art and great storytelling for dollars (i.e. The Twilight Films...I've seen two and that is more than enough for me) and it's no secret that they've been doing that for a very long time. But in addition to the remakes and the reimaginings and the reinterpretations and whatever other word you want to slap on after "re", there are also tons of sequels coming out as well.


Just this past weekend, seven of the top twenty films at the Box Office (B.O...GET IT?!?) were sequels (yes, I am counting Vampires Suck as a sequel because it continues to showcase the same amount of garbage that all the other spoof movies from these same writers have thrown up[pun intended] at the box office). Obviously, an original idea is harder for a studio to put money behind because it has not proven itself to be a contender at the box office. Sequels build off of tried-and-true formulas, and there certainly are some really good ones, including this summer's Toy Story 3. However, in most cases, the sequel tends to fall far from where many originals shined. At least I think so in my oh-so-important opinion. But this stuff is what most moviegoers have to work with. So, where's the originality?

Well, there has been some this summer, and the golden example is Inception. This original idea from the Nolan brothers (I hope they start to become referred to this like the awesome Coen Brothers, but not like the Wachowski brothers, who I think are a little overrated) has shown that audiences are willing to pay the big bucks for a unique movie-going experience. And so should you!


I said good day, sir!
-E

Your First Hit of E(ntertainment)!

Don't you always remember the first time you had some E(ntertainment news)? I sure do. It was early on in my internet career when the web wasn't quite what it is now and when people actually referred to it as the web. It was probably sometime around my tenth birthday or so, and I'll explain why I remember it being around there in just a few paragraphs. I discovered a site called upcomingmovies.com (which has since disappeared after Yahoo bought it up in later years). It was run by a man named Greg and the website updated daily on news about, yes, you guessed it, movies coming to theaters in the near future. The site was amazing and at the time (at least to my knowledge) was one of the only places to go to find out immediate news about the entertainment industry, namely film and television news. I could go on every day and find updates on anything from the alleged Spiderman film being planned or dare I say it, very early news and rumors of what would one day be Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Ok, so it previewed movies both good and unfortunately for the latter of these two films, the bad).

In any event, the site created an addiction for me, an addiction to E(ntertainment news....not sure how long I'll keep putting that in parenthetical...maybe it'll be there forever...who knows?! ) that would only become worse (even worse than my StarBucks addiction of late). I had the world of film and television at my fingertips and I could learn about the ins and outs, the deals, the mergers, and the dealbreakers, and pretty much anything else I wanted to know about, even if the movie was coming out in ten years (the site had an extensive catalog of information on films only rumored for future release...hence Crystal Skull.)

So since then, I've been reading and reading from some great sites about the latest entertainment news, and there are so many that I love, but none more so than Zap2it, ComingSoon, MovieHole, and EW (shoutout to Michael Ausiello's ridiculous ability to scoop out the latest information quicker than anyone else I've read.) But I wanted to do something different than those sites who do a great job with their reporting. I wanted to take the news, bring it to you and tell you what I think because obviously, my opinion is so very important (but so is yours and I really want to hear from you audience, you wonderful, nonexistent audience, you!). This blog will be a conversation about E.

So, here's just a few things I would like to point out when it comes to some of my bias that will become utterly apparent in the blog in the future.

1. I am not a fan of Michael Bay films. There are many reasons, but seeing as this is the internet, I will leave it there and any apparent disliking of his future films will be understood and we can move on quickly. If you really want to know, refer to an old episode of my college entertainment news show called "Backstage Pass". I go on a rant about him and Transformers for a few embarrassing minutes.
2. I hate spoof movies. Don't get me wrong, but I really enjoyed Airplane! and shamelessly, Scary Movie 3 (both by the same director, mind you), but other than that, I think the others are garbage and those "writers", who shall remain nameless right now, have in recent years taken the film industry to its lowest levels with their lame, half-hearted attempts at humor, and I use the term humor very loosely.
3. I will see any movie even just once (yes, that does include films from the first two points, but that doesn't mean I have to like them).
4. I love independent features, even if I only see a handful of them a year. They continually remind me of the power of filmmaking and the lack of respect the public gives them for not going to see them! However, I will say that to go to an independent theater is like trying to find Megan Fox's acting skills. They are usually just in the city and that's always a hike.
5. I am tired of remakes, "reimaginings", re-whatevers! Let's get original people! This means you, TV, Movies, and yes, music (how many times are these "artists going to cover somebody else's music? Most of the time it's for no other apparent reason than money. If that's the case, you're not artists!)
6. I apparently like lists.

Ok, so there you have it, the first post in what is destined to be my sad attempt at running my own entertainment blog. Postings will obviously never be this long, and thanks so much if you actually made it all the way down here. It gets kind of lonely down here, so I appreciate the company!

I said Good Day, sir!
-E