As soon as I saw the trailer for El Orfanato (or The Orphanage if you prefer) I knew that I had to see it. It looked stunning, and the knowledge that Guillermo del Toro was involved as a Producer just raised my expectations and interest in it. So I was more than happy to receive a copy of it on Blu-Ray to review, but could it possibly live up to my expectations?
We, here at Stale Popcorn, have let you, the loyal reader, down in the worst possible way and I am writing to you right now to apologise for that - you see Kristina and I (less so, Wyv - he has to maintain the position of the stern disciplinarian otherwise this place would go to shit!) kind of pride ourselves on bringing a bit of dodgy humour and politically incorrect gaggery to this site… but we have failed you!
Despite an article on this very subject and two rave reviews, when the opportunity came to report on the box office success of The Dark Knight and strike comedic gold with a pun-heavy headline, we dropped the proverbial ball - and the IMDB picked it up. Ladies and Gentlemen, bow your heads in respect of:
Batman Is Robbin’ The Box Office
We’re sorry! We’re so so sorry! We will try harder!
But whilst the apologies are being thrown around, how about you US citizens put your hands up and apologise for the 70.9% drop-off on the wonderful Hellboy II: The Golden Army. What’s that about eh? LOL. Read the rest of this entry »
Now, I don’t usually go in for reporting the arrests etc of stars, as there are plenty of other sites that seem to delight in doing that, but I just saw this on Reuters and thought it deserved a mention considering the high profile of The Dark Knight in the news at the moment - Christian Bale has apparently been arrested in London for assault!
Sally Jupiter is one of the characters in Watchmen, a former superhero herself and mother of the Silk Spectre, and if you pay attention you can see a Vargas-esque painting of her during the trailer. But thankfully James Jean, who created the illustration for the movie, has uploaded a full size version, which you can see below, on his website with the following information: Read the rest of this entry »
So it looks like I’m in danger of turning the site into a Watchmen fanzine - but I don’t care! EW.com have published an “exclusive first look” at the movie that includes interviews with Zack Snyder and others and covers the problems of bringing it to the big screen and it’s well worth a look, if only to check out the six brand new images they are proudly showing off as well! Two of which might well give little shivers to people familiar with the comic - and if you’re wondering I’m on about the Comedian ones (one of which you can see below). Read the rest of this entry »
Yeah yeah, I know we’ve already covered this in the comments (thanks for the link Grundy!) but I was on a long weekend this weekend and didn’t get a chance to post this when I would have, and I’m damned if I don’t want this to get the widest release as possible - but considering it’s showing in front of the cinematic titan that is The Dark Knight I think that has probably already happened…..
But I digress. In March 2009 we’re going to see something on cinema screens that a lot of people, myself included, didn’t think we would ever see - a movie adaption of Alan Moores’ stunning graphic novel Watchmen, which is being brought to the screen by director Zack Snyder who has already given us a decent remake of Day Dawn of the Dead and the enjoyable adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300. And judging by this teaser trailer he is making a fantastic job of bringing Watchmen to the big screen. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah romantic comedies. The joy of sitting down with your beloved, with a glass of wine, and enjoying a nice gentle “Rom-Com” together. The idea fills with me with horror. Neither I, nor my wife, are really “rom-com” people. And I much prefer lager to wine. But you get sent a movie to review and you have to sit down and watch it, regardless of whether it’s “your type of movie” or not. Which is why I found myself on Saturday night putting I Could Never Be Your Woman, a rom-com starring Michelle Pfieffer and Paul Rudd, into my DVD player and settling down with my wife with a lager in my hand to watch it. Hey, I’m not going to betray all my principles by having a glass of wine now am I!
Hype is a tricky thing. In some cases, it can work wonders for a film. In others, it can come back to bite a film square in its tush. There have been several instances lately when the hype for a film was so deafening before I watched it, only to have the film be an overhyped piece of garbage. The hype for The Dark Knight has been unlike any film I have ever witnessed. Theaters have sold out at an alarming rate, people are willing to pay $100 or more for a scalped ticket, and people woke up at ungodly hours just to catch screenings of this thing. Now, as stated above, I have been a victim of overhype more times than I care to remember (looking at YOU, Juno!), so I was considerably concerned at the raging hyperbole sweeping the Internet and critics’ circles in regards to this film. “Best movie EVER!”. “Oscar worthy!”. “Cures cancer!”. This has been my most anticipated film of the year, but it has also been my most feared. I was bracing myself for the likely possibility that this film was not going to be all that. So, as I stood in line with my sister and a friend at our IMAX theater, I silently psyched myself up to be disappointed by this movie. Read the rest of this entry »
Paul Andrew Williams made enough of an impression on me with his debut, London To Brighton (unreviewed by me) that I was prepared to seek out anything he decided to do as a follow-up with great interest. Anyone who has seen that gritty, depressing but really rather good film he made as an introduction, could have lazily labelled him as anything from “Britain’s Scorsese” right the way through to “Generation X’s Ken Loach”. They probably would NOT have thought he’d use up his ‘difficult second movie’ tag on something that would put him more in the company of Eli Roth or whoever is making throwaway horror flicks these days.
Williams’ new movie, The Cottage, takes the thematic right angle directional change made famous in Robert Rodriguez’ From Dusk Till Dawn and plays around with it as best he can on a tight budget. This is a inept criminals comedy mixed with a bog-standard slasher horror, and as an entertaining as the latter element is, it’s actually the most uninteresting aspect of Williams’ movie. Read the rest of this entry »
To be absolutely honest with you, I first encountered The Hammer under rather difficult circumstances. A few years back I’d written a screenplay called ‘Blue Corner’ that was semi-autobiographical mixed with a heavy dose of wish fulfilment. I kept on with second, third and fourth drafts, sending each out to the network of people I share my work with in order to get feedback. One of those people, out in Chicago, sent me an e-mail saying that the latest draft was eerily similar to a indie film Adam Carolla was going into production with. My back immediately arched and I considered calling in the lawyers, just like I did when I wrote that screenplay, “Rex Flexal & The Wonderful Murderous Themepark of Dinosaurs”, only to see Jurassic Park released a few years later (snark! snark!). Someone managed to get a copy of the screenplay for The Hammer to me and I read it with great trepidation, only to find that not only was it too far removed from the screenplay I had written to be considered a rip-off (plus, how truly likely is that my rather amateurish writings would find them into the hands of the very funny Carolla?) but that it did better, more sophisticated, funnier and more original things with the admittedly similar story idea. However, after reading the script I liked it enough to put the film on my ‘radar’ so that I could check it out when it was finally released.
The Hammer comes to Region 1 DVD after a short cinema run. Despite good critical word of mouth, the film was going to be released straight to DVD until Adam Carolla insisted it be released on the big screen and put up around $300,000 of his own money for prints and promotion to fund a limited release.
How did it do on its journey from the screenplay I read to the final result on the screen?
I sat down to write my review of Pixar’s latest release and, more so then when I had to write my opinions about The Dark Knight or Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I found myself really struggling. I mean I’d made notes on a pad of paper as I sat through it but when I read them back I just found that I’d written random words over and over (research with a dictionary reveals they all essentially mean the same thing!). Then there’s the aspect of just HOW honest do I be with you, the member of this here Stale Popcorn community? Do I talk truthfully and openly about the full impact that this film had on me? Or do I “man-up” and just paste over the “emotional impact” stuff and talk about “action sequences” and the like?
On top of all that, in the shadow of my reviews for The Dark Knight and Hellboy II, I’m suffering a crisis of confidence - feeling as if I’m unable to intelligently and cohesively get across to you the full extent of these films’ brilliance. There’s better reviews of Pixar’s latest film, WALL-E, out there then the one under my name. One of them is on this very site, to be found right here! There’ll be better come along in the future too.
In fact, let me not even bother trying to review this. Let me just list every word I had written down regarding this film during my viewing experience and then let me admit, embarrassingly, what impact it had on me. Then let’s get the hell out of here so, if you’re really that interested in seeking critical opinion on this flick, you can head on over to Roger Ebert’s website or AICN or whatever floats your boat!
Not every movie can be a five ‘popcorn’ experience. I understand that. However, seeing The Dark Knight, Wall-E and Hellboy II: The Golden Army pretty much one after the other, does kind of spoil you a little. I suppose if you went from watching any or all of those three movies back to back into watching something like Meet Dave, that allegedly awful Eddie Murphy “comedy” would have its flaws heightened way more then if you were pissed up and bored on a Friday or Saturday night.
So I guess one of the greatest compliments I can offer to Peter Segal’s Get Smart is that, even in the wake of three genuinely brilliant and masterful films, it didn’t play that badly with me at all. In fact, if you assess it for what it is and what it needs to do before you even go into watching it then you’ll find that - just like Wanted (my review of which can be found here!) - it’s dumb, it’s empty-headed but it is exactly what you want from a big budget genre piece like this.
As explained to the people hosting this advanced screening, I’m as well within the ‘target grouping’ for this movie as they could possibly have hoped for: I know enough about the original source material without being easily labelled an “expert” or an “ignorant”, I’m a HUGE fan of Steve Carrell, I like a lot more of Dwayne Johnson’s big screen work then I hate and I dig enough of Peter Segal’s work as director (The Longest Yard remake, 50 First Dates, My Fellow Americans) to know he can do a good solid job with this sort of stuff AND I can forgive him for Anger Management, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps and Naked Gun 3!
In fact, I got quite a generous laugh from the audience I was sat with when I suggested at this movie’s end that they use me on the poster with the following quote “… Want to see The Dark Knight, Hellboy II or Wall-E and find yourself with sold-out screenings? Go see this! You won’t feel conned out of the price of your ticket!” Read the rest of this entry »
Wow! One day off from work, two advanced screenings of two films I’m very much up for seeing (this here movie and Peter Segal’s Get Smart) but both are showing on opposite sides of the River Tyne, one is an illegitmate make-shift one but is the film I am most pumped about getting to view, the other is a legitimate advanced preview with one of those “chat” things afterwards (see my reviews for Iron Man and Prince Caspian to get a feel for what they’re like!) but - seeing as one will be starting roughly ten minutes after the other finishes - no matter how many times I stare at my watch, count on my fingers, mentally time the route I’d have to travel through the horrific Tyne Tunnel I just can’t seem to work out a way of being able to see both.
However, if I’d admitted to you dear readers that I’d opted out of an opportunity to see Guillermo Del Toro’s hugely acclaimed Hellboy II: The Golden Army way ahead of its UK release (illegitimate or not!) and went with seeing Steve Carrell, Dwayne Johnson and Anne “My Boyfriend’s Assets Have Been Frozen And I’m Certainly Not With Him For His Looks, So Watch Me Run” Hathaway in Get Smart then I’d rightfully have expected to get my ass taken and handed back to me with many a Stale Popcorn reader’s foot wedged well and truly up it!
However, one “I’m sorry I can’t come into work today - I think I have leprosy” phonecall to my boss later, mixed with many a moving traffic violation and a sequence of running at a pace that made my man-tits jiggle I did indeed manage to catch both Hellboy II and Get Smart on the same day (thanks to a delayed start for the latter!).
You know how this review is going to go. You know just of how high a standard this film is. Nothing I can say is going to convince this franchise’s naysayers to re-evaluate it. Nothing I can say can better the acclaim already out there. But I just want to pull down the methaphorical trousers of Mr Del Toro and brown-up my nose in his anus regardless!
Think of this as less of a “review” per se and more just ‘musings’ (spoiler-free, I assure you as all ‘considered’ spoilers are given their own heavily labelled section at the very end, after the rating, that is easily avoidable!) on a viewing experience that hit me hard in a lot of ways. I learnt my lesson with Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (see here then here for more on that!) but I feel a lot safer with what I’m about to say with this film. Even so, I can’t really ‘review’ the film without discussing “certain aspects” and I don’t want to go there out of respect for Wyv, Kris and the rest of you who haven’t been blessed by this cinematic joy just yet. So, treat this as nothing more than an “Ode De Joy” or a love letter of sorts without anything that can ruin your enjoyment OPENLY cropping up along the way. I’m taking a road-trip to see this at the nearest IMAX (which isn’t near at all) and I have opening day tickets booked also for the standard showing! Let’s meet back up post-release and all jump around together with spoiler-rific delight over The Dark Knight.
In the meantime… Read the rest of this entry »
Honestly, I think this trailer makes it look like a weak ripoff of Sin City. I think that this trailer is pretty awful (although I like the song), but maybe you’ll like it. There’s plenty of pretty girls to look at, at least. Yahoo’s got it in HD here, so take a peek.
Here’s a great way to round out a week, with another chance for you to win a DVD from us. This time I have up for grabs three copies of the latest comedy starring Matthew Perry, entitled Numb, on Region 2 DVD.
Here’s the synopsis:
Thirty-something screenwriter Hudson Milbank (Perry) is a man with serious mental issues. Already suffering in varying degrees from obsessive compulsive disorder, kleptomania and constant negative thoughts - all of which he blames on his poor relationship with his “crazy” mother (Helen Shaver) - Hudson’s psychological problems escalate when a marijuana binge triggers a further complaint. A victim of depersonalization disorder, Hudson begins to feel completely disconnected from his body and everything around him to the point where nothing seems real. His only distraction from the unreality of his life the Golf Channel on TV, which he watches for days on end.
Out of the blue he meets Sara (Lynn Collins), perfect and quirky, and the only person around whom he can be himself. But Hudson’s various conditions take their toll on the couple’s budding relationship and he is forced to seek help from yet another in a never-ending succession of doctors. A cognitive therapist, Dr. Cheryl Blaine (Mary Steenburgen) appears to have the answers Hudson has been looking for, until she begins making sexual advances towards him and he realizes she’s even crazier than he is. Convinced that Sara is the only one who can save him, Hudson knows his only hope is to win her back. Just when he believes all is lost, a chance encounter with a homeless man provides the long-absent motivation he needs to get his life back on track.
Sounds like fun, huh? And the DVD comes with an audio commentary by director Harris Goldberg, ‘Numb: An Inside Look’ (featuring interviews with actors Matthew Perry, Lynn Collins, Mary Steenburgen, Kevin Pollak and writer- director Harris Goldberg) and a trailer. Read the rest of this entry »
While you’re waiting patiently for the internet debut of the trailer for Watchmen why not feast your eyes on the teaser for the forthcoming fourth entry in the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation, which stars the seemngly never not-busy Christian Bale in the role of saviour of mankind John Connor.
If you are one of the lucky ones who have already seen The Dark Knight then you will have already seen the trailer for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, or if you are going to be watching the movie when it goes on release later on in the USA you will get to see the trailer for what could hopefully be an amazing (and very long awaited) movie. But if you are not lucky enough to be seeing The Dark Knight just yet, you won’t have to wait that long to see the Watchmen trailer!
There are times when I wish that someone else would write certain pieces of news. Like when a piece of news hits that makes some part of me shudder in fear and hurt.
Now, I know we’re only talking movies here. I know that it’s not going to have an affect on the credit crunch or other difficulties facing us here in the UK, or the political situations around the world, but dammit this is a movie site and if I want to get upset about a movie announcement then I’m gonna!
Right, so anyway Bloody Disgusting via AICN have reported that Rob Cohen, who will soon be giving us The Mummy 3, is in talks with Paramount to produce, and possibly direct, a remake of classic 80’s movie The Monster Squad, which Paramount have acquired the rights to.
Excuse me a second….. Read the rest of this entry »
Stale Popcorn
The natural home of the movie geek within
Email: Submit News | Contact Site Admin | Advertising Enquiries
© 2007 Stale Popcorn, all rights reserved. (Privacy Policy | Terms of Use)
Stale Popcorn is proudly powered by WordPress
