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My oh my!

Of all the un-necessary sequels Hollywood is churning out - we have been treated to a sequel to one of my favourite 80’s flicks as a young ‘un, Richard Donner’s ‘The Lost Boys‘.

Having re-watched it recently on DVD, I will admit that the first film hasn’t exactly aged the best. I bought the special edition of the DVD mainly to see exactly what “The Two Coreys” were up to nowadays. It turns out not much.. who’d have guessed?

Anyways, a sequel over 20 years in the making (not really.. looks like it was written, directed and shot in a weekend): The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe. Oooooh.. doesn’t that title just instill you with nothing but confidence. And it may suprise you to find out it’s a straight-to-DVD release - shocking, I know!

And what’s more even suprising is the fact that they got back 3 of the stars of the original? Sam and The Frog Brothers (or Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander respectively). OK, so Hollywood clearly isn’t beating down their doors for work but were they THIS desperate?

Trailer is below and I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t even finish watching it. It’s pretty damn horrific but hey, different strokes for different folks. It’ll be released in the Summer but the real question is, will anyone even notice?

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Sorry.. first post in a long time. Will keep the updates more regular after this!

I didn’t realise the Ang Lee’s 2005 ‘Hulk‘ was that much of a success that Hollywood would ask for a sequel. I never saw it but read numerous reviews of it being absolutely slated.. so much so that I avoided it.

So when I read about a sequel, all I can see before my eyes was question marks:

• Would Ang Lee return to the direct it? Unlikely!
• Would Eric Bana return in the main role? Equally unlikely!
• Who would replace them if and when they didn’t return?

So with news of the sequel came news of the casting of Bruce Banner in the sequel… and lo-and-behold.. it’s Edward Norton. It’s a suprising casting choice to say the least.. not a bad one but surprising. I think simply due to the fact that Edward Norton has always been one of my favourite actors and could do no wrong at one point in his career. He’s the last person I thought to be cast in a comic-book movie, and a sequel in which the first film was deemed being a critical and commercial failure. Still, it could be beneficial for his career, but I really doubt it.

And onto the director, a man by the name of Louis Leterrier who I was completely unaware of - turns out he directed The Transporter series which I never really understood the hype over. The first one was average as best, the second one was atrocious.

But I digress, I’m gonna reserve judgement on the movie as it’s unfair to dismiss it so early.

The film’s teaser trailer will apparently be broadcast on MTV this evening but here’s a little taster for the time-being. Will add the full trailer when it’s posted. It’s released June 20th in the US.

I actually recently re-watched The Indiana Jones Trilogy as I hadn’t really sat down and watched them in years - probably since I was a young ‘un. But they’ve actually aged very well - I mainly think it was due to the fact that the Indy Trilogy never really relied on any real special effects (which were always susceptible to looking quite tame and at times cringe-worthy, compared to modern standards anyways).

Anyways, below is the trailer for the much-anticipated next film in the series: ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull‘ (which is being released almost 20 years after the last film in the series: ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade‘). It’s worth noting that when the newest film in the series was announced, it’s fair to say there was a lot of reluctance among fans in the film community with the firm focus being on Harrison Ford playing the role again at the impressive age of 65.

But it’s a relief to say that from this trailer, he looks more than capable of playing the role and it all looks very impressive and exciting. It’s actually more or less a teaser trailer as it gives practically no real information on the storyline (and the dialogue is quite sparse). Steven Spielberg seems to be bringing Indy into the era of CGI - not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

It still looks like it could be one of the films of the year though (along with ‘The Dark Knight‘ of course), and I will be one of the first in line at my local cinema to go see it.

Speaking of which, expect it in the UK & Ireland in the Summer (or the 22nd May to be precise).

From the looks of WALL-E, Pixar look like they’re back with a winning formula after the quite un-impressive Cars.

And keeping up Pixar’s tradition of making even the most bland thing adorable, the character of WALL-E is no exception. And no doubt those adorable eyes will result in plenty of kids screaming “I WANT IT, I WANT IT!” to their parents in their local toy store. As well as sending teenage (and older) girls weak at the knees. It will inevitably sell LOADS in merchandise. Alarm clocks, teddy bears, toys, clothes, school-bags etc. You name it - expect it to see it in stores this coming Summer.

Regardless, we have yet another trailer released for WALL-E but this time, it’s an actual trailer with a brief insight into the story (as opposed to the teasers we’ve got from Pixar so far).

But this does look great. Pixar have never fully won me back since 1995’s ‘Toy Story‘. I enjoyed a lot of their films (last year’s ‘Ratatouille‘ being my favourite of their recent efforts) but I think it was the fresh appearance of ‘Toy Story’ that has stuck with me. It was 1995 and we’d seen nothing like it - and everything looked so crisp, professional and fantastic. Now these CG-animated come a dime-a-dozen each year with the majority being utter dreck (’Barnyard‘ anyone?).

WALL-E looks very different.. and definitely the most i’ve been anticipating a Pixar release in a long time.

To summarise ‘Cloverfield‘ - this is a film which will REALLY divide audiences. And I’d probably bet more people will loathe it than love it!

And there’s a good (and by no means) superficial reason for this divide - the stable tool of Hollywood in recent times has been “the shakey cam”. We’ve all seen it used in ‘The Blair Witch Project‘ and to a more professional extent, Paul Greengrass exploited it in ‘The Bourne Supremacy‘ and ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘.

It has always been a sore point with audiences - it’s never bothered me to be honest. But as it becomes more and more common with portraying action scenes and car chases / crashes (see ‘Bourne’ examples), audiences are becoming more and more peeved with it.

This is where the audience for ‘Cloverfield’ will likely be divided. It takes the idea of “shakey-cam” and spreads it out over 85 minutes. A large percentage of cinema-goer’s will do one (or all) of the following:

• Give up on the film half-way suffering from a case of nausea.
• Give up on the film as they can’t track exactly what’s going on in action scenes
• If you’re in the same cinema I’m in, start giggling / chatting on their mobiles and generally ruin the film for everyone else (note to self: write a blog post complaining about this later).

And unfortunately for them, there’s more than enough innovation in the film than I’ve seen from an action movie (or “monster movie”) in a long long time. The movie (in my eyes anyways) oozed of innovation and something special and different and here’s where I shall start discussing details of the plotline so click ‘Show’ below if you’ve seen the film.

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It has a very solid crew behind it - it was directed by Matt Reeves (who created the very under-rated TV show ‘Felicity‘), produced by “golden boy” JJ Abrams (co-creator of ‘Lost’, creator of ‘Alias‘ and whose next directorial effort will be ‘Star Trek‘ this coming Christmas) and was written by ‘Angel‘, ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost’ writer Drew Goddard.

The cast are all practically unknowns… and to be perfectly honest, they’re not particularly standout performances either. But running around and acting scared for 85 minutes will never stretch your “acting muscles” - but no doubt, many members will get their chance in more demanding roles after the success of ‘Cloverfield’.

I could talk about the film in detail as it’s quite an interesting film, but as I said at the top of the post, it will really divide audiences and people who enjoy it will discuss elements of it in detail while people who didn’t still suffer motion-sickness. Oh, and by way, I’m joking by “pigeon-holeing” people who didn’t like it exclusively to those who couldn’t bear shakey-cam, the film has more than a fair amount of flaws. But personally weighing the pros and cons up, I enjoyed it a lot (probably more than most action movies of the last year or two). But that doesn’t mean I would like to see a ‘Cloverfield’-esque movie every Summer.. but it’ll no doubt happen now that it’s proved successful.

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