Loo.me

I’ve been pretty pumped for the theatrical release of Miami Vice ever since i read about it 6 months ago.  So, in preparation of the movie’s release this weekend, i had been watching episodes of the first season of the Miami Vice TV show. That, and listening to Jay-Z’s and Linkin Park’s Numb/Encore every chance i could get (that’s the song playing in the movie’s trailer).  Watching the tv shows this past week, two episodes stick out in my memory from that first season, 1) the 2 hour pilot and 2) an episode called “Smuggler’s Blues.”

Let’s talk about the pilot for a moment. The pilot is a great beginning to a great series. It establishes Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) as an ex-football superstar from U. of Miami – a boozing, emotionally-crippled, undercover agent whose marriage has fallen apart and has him living on a sailboat with an alligator named Elvis. He also drives a Ferrari and a cigarette boat to keep up his high-roller profile so he can easily co-mingle with the corrupt players of the Miami drug scene. His partner, fellow officer Ricardo Tubbs, is a NY officer (not detective) who has followed a drug lord to Florida to bring him to justice for murdering his brother. After initial friction between Crockett and Tubbs, the two decide to work together to bring down the drug lord and in the process they establish some good chemistry and eventually become partners.

Leaving the theater after viewing the movie version of Miami Vice this weekend, i had a strange feeling in my gut. The movie was incredibly cool: the fight scenes, the women, the cars, the music – all very slick. But, something wasn’t sitting right with me. And it was Colin Farrell. In the TV show, you buy into Crockett as an authentic southerner and a conflicted man who is torn between his job and the people he loves (co-workers, women, family). He is cold, distant and entirely dedicated to his job, yet at the same time has a warm heart and is making progress in dealing with his demons. He’s slowly becoming emotionally available to those who love him.

In the movie, you have no idea who Colin Farrell is. There’s no back-story provided. Because he has the same name (Sonny Crockett) as the TV show, you have to assume he’s the same guy. But he doesn’t act like Don Johnson’s Crockett. There’s no mention of him as an ex-football player, he doesn’t seem southern. In fact, he seems Irish. Like the TV-show Crockett he drives a sweet Ferrari but without any explanation you assume he’s either extremely wealthy like Will Smith’s Mike Lowery in Bad Boys or dirty like Michael Douglas in Black Rain.

Another problem i have about the movie is Crocket’s relationship with Tubbs (Jamie Foxx). In the TV-show, there is always a scene where Tubbs is helping Crockett open up and they have a genuine friendship who have each other’s back. In the film, Crockett basically does whatever he wants to do and leaves Tubbs to handle most of the details. There’s no love shown between the two. From the very first scene when Crockett was hitting on the bartender at a club, writer/director Michael Mann makes Crockett look like a complete cad. I was pretty confident that movie-Crockett would leave Tubbs hanging anywhere at any time for a hot chick. TV-Crockett would never have done that. He was older and not looking to just hook-up with any hot piece of ass that strolled by – all his romances were pretty serious (Gina and Brenda). For example, there’s a scene in the movie where Tubbs and Crockett go to the drug lord’s house in the middle of the Latin American jungle to set up the deal and Crockett asks the financial broker of the drug lord (the beautiful Gong Li) to go for a drink and then just takes off with her on the boat to Cuba. Way to strand your partner. How is Tubbs supposed to get home? Is he going to bum a ride from another drug lord at the house, “um, yeah, hey any of you guys doing a deal downtown? Any chance you can drop me off at my hideout?”

Given my Crockett and Crockett & Tubss issues, i still really liked the movie. It was very cool. In fact, if you haven’t seen the TV show lately, you’d probably enjoy it more. As for the plot, similar to the TV episodes, it is a) totally ridiculous, b) rarely makes sense, c) is never really quite resolved, d) involves a shipyard for the final drug exchange, e) unfortunately does not include the phrase “it’s going down” (which appears in each TV episode roughly 3 times), and doesn’t matter b/c the movie is cool enough without it. Even though the film is not up to Mann’s other classics Heat or Collateral, it is still worthy of a viewing.

The plot happened to be the exact same plot of the “Smuggler’s Blues” episode from the first season. In that episode, Crockett & Tubbs are recruited by DEA to pose as drug smugglers in an effort to expose someone in law enforcement who is murdering drug dealers and their families and ends with Trudy being held and bound to a bomb in a trailer. In the movie, they again pose as drug smugglers in an effort to expose a leak in some law enforcement agency and ends with Trudy being held and bound to a bomb in a trailer. While this plot is entertaining enough, I think they would have been better off remaking the pilot episode which introduces a Miami police detective James “Sonny” Crockett who reluctantly teams with New York bred newcomer to the Miami scene Ricardo Tubbs to solve several murders connected to a mysterious Colombian drug lord (and connected to Tubb’s brother death). This is a much better story that could re-create a twenty-first century version of the Crockett and Tubbs characters and perhaps even start a movie franchise. This could have been the Batman Begins (Christian Bale) of the series instead of Batman Return (Michael Keaton and Danny Devito).

So, bottom line – if you’re looking to get yourself in deep, so deep you don’t know which way is up (a line used in both tv show and the movie), i’d recommend you take a trip to the 80’s and rent the DVD’s rather than turning on Netflix.

I know i’m late on this but here it is – the first trailer about the upcoming transformers movie: click here

To read my related posts about them, go here.  I’m pretty excited.

Having read many reviews of the newly released Superman Returns, i wasn’t expecting much from film when i entered the theater. Two and a half hours later, i left feeling completely entertained and fulfilled. Feeling misled by many critics, i began to wonder why the movie was being panned by critics i generally trusted. Going back to the reviews, i found that almost every critic that gave the movie a compared it to the first two originals.

For instance the New York Times can help but repeatedly discuss the greatness of Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman’s roles rather than the effectiveness and charm of Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth. For instance, the NYT review actually lists all the characters of the 1978 film and only after praising the original storyline and cast does it briefly mention the actual participants in the current film:

Released in 1978, that film ushered Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s original comic creation into the blockbuster age with frothy wit and a cast that included Marlon Brando in a creamy scoop of white hair and Gene Hackman in clover. Christopher Reeve, of course, wore the cape and tights, while Margot Kidder did a fine approximation of the young Katharine Hepburn at her most coltish. Valerie Perrine and Ned Beatty added some laughs, while Glenn Ford supplied a pinch of gravitas.

The NYT’s infatuation with Reeve continues later in the article:

Mr. Reeve worked the tonal changes with similar ease, delivering a superhero whose earnestness was strategically offset by his fumbling, bumbling, all-too-human twin, who was just the ticket for the post-Watergate, pre-Indiana Jones moment. Mr. Singer’s Superman, played by Brandon Routh, is a hero of rather different emotional colors, most muted……Part of the charm of Mr. Reeve’s interpretation was that a guy this impossibly handsome, who literally towers over everyone in the office, could hide behind a slouch and oversize eyeglasses.

The NYT is not the only review to do this. Roger Ebert’s review is the same:

Routh may have been cast because he looks a little like Reeve, but there are times when he looks more like an action figure; were effects used to make him seem built from synthetics? We remember the chemistry between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder (Lois Lane) in the original “Superman” movie, and then observe how their counterparts are tongue-tied in this one. If they had a real romance (and they did), has it left them with nothing more than wistful looks and awkward small talk?

Of course, Lois doesn’t remember the romance between her and Superman because he erased it at the end of S2, but apparently Ebert forgot that point.

What gets me about these constant comparisons to the past films is that, as a 28 year old, i don’t remember them. The first and second films came out when i was 8 months old and 2 years old. And, anyone younger than me probably doesn’t remember them nor think fondly of them. Thus, you have 2 brand new generations of viewers who are experiencing a modern Superman film for the first time. It seems that older reviewers get caught up in their own nostalgia when reviewing a remake and i’m sure older film-goers may agree with them, but for me these reviews prove the generational gap just as much as the reviews of Dumb & Dumber did when that film came out in the mid-90’s and was generally panned by all viewers.

The long and short of it – is Superman it a classic? Definitely not. But it is a very enjoyable popcorn movie and is more than enough to make the July 4th movie going experience worthwhile, as long as you haven’t seen the originals and can barely remember the Ronald Regan presidency.

Taken from (here) – thought it was worth reposting…..

There's nothing like an eviction notice to make a man resort to desperate measures. Charles Webb, author of the original novel that was made into The Graduate, was facing homelessness when he decided to sell his unfinished sequel to Random House, which plans to publish the novel next year. The book will revisit Ben Braddock and his now-wife Elaine ten years later, as they home school their two children in upstate New York. The sequel is appropriately titled Home School (unless Random House changes it to simply The Graduate II — I wouldn't be surprised), and Mrs. Robinson is somehow featured in its story. Webb isn't sure whether or not a movie will be made since he doesn't know how the rights will be handled. Originally, he didn't receive a dime for the rights to The Graduate. His last novel, New Cardiff, was adapted into the film Hope Springs.

Obviously if there is a film, the cast of the original would not return (although it would be interesting to have Katherine Ross return as her character's mother), and the Mike Nichols film is such a classic that anybody cast in the iconic roles will spark controversy and protest. Then there's the matter of the soundtrack. Okay, that is easy — a number of artists today are going for that Simon and Garfunkel sound. See the Garden State soundtrack for evidence. The thing I'm most worried about is that now we may get a sequel to Rumor Has It to explain its character's connection to Webb's follow-up.