Thursday, July 28, 2005

ARTICLE: Jon Keeyes
















Good friend and fellow filmmaker Jon Keeyes has a great article on him in the current issue of Ft. Worth Weekly on news stands now. Or you can read it by clicking on the link below.

Jon Keeyes article

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Seventy-8 Hook-ups...

Congrats to Seventy-8's Director of Photography Jason Todd Hampton and makeup artist Adrienne Hoverson. They are officially engaged!

Also Seventy-8's Producer Mark Mahlo and First Assistant Camera Sarah Bowman have already tied the knot a few months ago. Congrats to Mark and Sarah!

Sunday, July 17, 2005

REVIEW: The Fantastic Four



I saw this movie for free. Otherwise I would not have seen it at all. I got a free ticket in the DVD for "Man on Fire" of all things. I'm a moderate comic fan at best. I know a lot more about DC comic's peeps than Marvel. So my knowledge of F4 is limited to the old cartoon series from way back in the day. So I can't really give much of a review from that perspective. What I can do is say that from a film point of view I was kinda torn with this movie. I'll start with the writing...

Michael France's script is great in that it invests time in the characters and the discovery of their powers and what they mean good and bad. What's kind of grey is the plot. There is none. This is a 2 hour character study with a threadbare plot driven climax as an after thought. At least that what's it felt like. The F4 is a disfunctional family of sorts that after an incredibly bad special effects mishap in outer space come back to earth with Super Duper powers. And for some reason they all have different kinds of powers. Then after about 2 hours of figuring out these powers, the bad decides to blow some shit up with a rocket launcher and they spring into action.

Now the direction from Tim Story is melba toast. He is Ok with dialog, but when it comes to action sequences, he needs to go back to school. The action scenes are flat and static. And I think he is what dragged this movie down the most. His style is just plain pedestrian and is fine in another movie but here you need someone with flair, say a James Cameron or Sam Raimi. You have to make the unbelievable believable as possible, and he didn't pull that off here. But enough of that. I also put blame on the studio for trying to insert all these pop culture references everywhere. Ads, Ads, and more product placement that you can shake a stick it. I know it pays for the movie, but use a tad more subtly. At least the Coke neon sign and Coke truck from Superman II didn't show up. ( I used Coke twice. Check please!)

The casting is so-so. Dr. Doom, I don't think so. And speaking of Doom, the mask sucked. Just because it looks cool in the comic means it looks like a Halloween mask on screen people. Mr. Shield himself as Ben The Thing was perfect. HE really captured him the best you can. The suit was iffy, but the performance carried it for me. Ms. Alba, who is at the moment the hottest thing on the planet is OK as Sue Storm. I'm not convinced she is a good actress yet. Then Johnny Storm is actually really good as the cocky punk Human Torch. Although the X-games scenes with him are annoying and a desperate attempt to sell more extreme sports merchandise, I enjoyed his performance. But the worst is saved for Mr. Fantastic. I don't know who this actor is, and I'm sure he is good, but not as Mr. Fantastic. Again he simply looked like Mr. Fantastic and added nothing new to him for the big screen. In my opinion they should have gotten a "name" and tried to reinvent this character a little bit. He's the leader of the 4 and really leaves you with no hint of leadership ability.

Well I have gone on too long on this one. All in all if you are bored and want to go see a superhero movie, check your expectations at the door and you might get a few jolts here and there. If you want to see a real Superhero movie go see Batman Begins, then rent the original Superman and X-Men 2.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

CD: Tahiti: The Birth of Whack



Listen up, Como Clapp here! My friend and fellow whack loser and Funky Town inhabitant Tahiti (aka Walter Archey III) has a new CD out called The Birth of Whack. Its a true Hip Hop throwback that I think anyone can get into. Its a really good EP that recently won Album of the Year at the Hip Hop Conspiracy Radio Music Awards. Its Hip Hop the way it used to be. If you like stuff like Pharcyde, Basehead, and Jurrassic 5, then you will dig this for real. Its not tricked out gangster rap, it is smooth hip hop with substance over style. My Amy did the album cover design, and its a sweet cover I must say. You can read a review of the album by clicking here

And you can read even more reviews and purchase the CD at

Tower Records
or
cdbaby.com

And don't forget to visit the official Tahiti website at:
Whack Loser

Monday, July 11, 2005

REVIEW: Asian DVD Marathon



BULLET BALLET: dir: Shinya Tsukamoto

Well I spent the weekend with numerous allergy attacks. So I was laid out for the majority of the weekend. However I did manage to view some DVDs from the stack. Being a huge Asian cinema fan, I decided to start there and didn't look back. The first movie I watched was BULLET BALLET from Tetsuo: The Iron Man director Shinya Tsukamoto. The director also takes on the lead acting role as Goda. This is a black and white highly stylized flick that really surprised me. I was expecting a John Woo esque bullet ballet, but instead got a really interesting and often times mediating look at violence. If you have seen Tetsuo and are looking for the same, you may be slightly disappointed here, but stay tuned cause it has moments of sheer greatness. The story concerns Japanese film editor, Goda who upon coming home one night finds his girlfriend dead of a self inflicted gunshot wound. Goda however does not believe that she would have committed suicide and begins a quest to find out if a local gang may have done it. In the process he becomes obsessed with buying a gun himself and killing those he "thinks" may be responsible. Through a series of misunderstandings he is forced to align himself with the gang because he is the only one that they know that owns a gun and can protect them from a hitman hired to kill them all. BULLET BALLET is a dark film that is edited with a fast paced highly visual style that moves well with the mind set of the lead character of Goda.

THREE EXTREMES: dirs: Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan, and Chan-wook Park

Well, this is one of those movies that may be better while watching drugged up as I was, but even sober you might have fun with this Asian horror experiment. Let me roll this out to you... This is a kind of Twilight Zone: the Movie but Asian style. They took one big time director from Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea and they each made a short horror film, hence the title, THREE EXTREMES. The first is Miike's BOX. Like most of his stuff, BOX is kind of all over the map, but it does have some moments of unforgettable imagery. The short kind of challenges you to keep up and is rather fractured in its structure, so if you leave and come back without hitting pause you may as well go to the next short. All in all I thought BOX was good Miike, but not "over the top holy fucking shit he didn't just do that" Miike. The next short is a cut down version of the feature length film by HK's Fruit Chan called DUMPLINGS. It stars Bai Ling as a magical ex-surgeon who puts chopped up fetus' in her magical age curing dumplings. I won't say too much about this, because after I watched it I then popped in the full length version, so I'll get to that review in a minute... The third short was Chan-wook Park's CUT. I found CUT to be somewhat flat. This has been done before and much better. This extra on the set of a director's film kidnaps his wife and and the director and makes them admit sins to each other while chopping off the wife's fingers while sitting at a piano. OLD BOY was my favorite film last year because of the energy that film had. This one has moments but most of it feels staged and flat. Let's move on to DUMPLINGS shall we...

DUMPLINGS: dir: Fruit Chan

I have not seen many Fruit Chan films before, but maybe I should start. This movie will freak you out. As I said before, this is the full version of the short included on THREE EXTREMES. In a nutshell, this lady wants to look young for her cheating husband and does so with the help of Bai Ling's age defying fetus filled tasty dumpling treats. Yes, you read it right. Age defying fetus filled tasty dumpling treats. Yum yum. That's about all I have to say about this flick. I liked it. The photography by Christopher Doyle is outstanding in every regard. Every single shot is a magazine cover. His color pallet is so sweet to feast your eyes upon. For such a terrible subject he paints the frame like its a masterpiece. Nice work. Of note, Doyle is Wong kar-wei's Cinematographer. And man is he good. I think THREE EXTREMES is coming out in the U.S. from Lions Gate sometime soon. Check it out. If you want to get the import DVD of DUMPLINGS, you can order it at the bottom link and THREE EXTREMES too.

HK FLIX

Friday, July 01, 2005

Superman Returns


supermanreturnslogo
Originally uploaded by genzod.

I don't know if anyone out there cares, or knows about this, but there is a new Superman movie coming out next year called, Superman Returns which is a sequel to the Christopher Reeve Superman I and II. Bryan Singer, the guy that directed The Usual Suspects and both X-Men movies is directing and is not trying to re-invent the wheel, but continue the legacy set forth by the original films. He's a big fan of the originals and wants to pay tribute to them with this film while starting over at the same time. Anyway if anyone is interested they are showing making of segments every week on the set as they go along on the The Blue Tights Network website. Check it out, it has some cool info on the film as it comes together.