Sheet-y Saturday (on a Sunday)

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

All eyes are set on Kathryn Bigelow's followup to the astonishing The Hurt Locker and considering she's once again dealing with boys' territory she might just blow our minds again. So far the campaign for Zero Dark Thirty has been rather tasteful. This redacted teaser poster for example forces us to look closer, to examine more and considering she isn't even showing us any of the famous faces in the movie, it's safe to assume Bigelow is on her top game. 

Only god knows what this movie's about, but why - one wonders - is it falsely advertising the actors in it or have the actors been so photoshopped they look unrecognizable?

Why does Uma look like Katherine Heigl? Why does CZJ look like Keira Knightley and why oh why does Dennis Quaid look like a Tom Cruise impersonator? The horror! (Said horros is clearly expressed in Gerard Butler's WTF face)

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Ralph Fiennes' adaptation of Coriolanus seems destined to be one of the highlights of this cinematic year and our first looks at its marketing campaign shines with promise. Gotta love the almost tribal feel the painted faces and colors give the image. Look closer and you shall see those are not tribal markings but guns! Or wait, are we already receiving a message from the film?

Is it just me or does Ralph Fiennes have one of the most beautiful noses in the industry? Excited about Coriolanus?

How to Train Your Dragon **

Director: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders

Once again disregarding time accurate conceptions in favor of contemporary behavior and any trace of verisimilitude within the time and characters, Dreamworks Animation Studios delivers what might be one of their most successful attempts at maturing.
In How to Train Your Dragon we meet Hiccup (voiced somewhat annoyingly by Jay Baruchel) a young viking who's the shame of his town.
While everyone else in town-including other kids his age-indulge in the tradition of dragon slaying, Hiccup pretty much messes up every time he leaves the house.
His father Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler in an unimaginative 300 way) the village leader leaves for battle and expects his son to have achieved something when he returns.
Fortunately for Hiccup he meets Toothless, a young dragon (of a race nobody has seen before!) who befriends him and soon enough he's not only taming all the other dragons but becomes the village's favorite son.
For all the Oedipal and quasi-environmental issues at its center, there is really nothing in this movie you haven't seen before.
It indulges itself with cliché after cliché; from the characters' names to the things they do. Really what is it with Dreamworks insistence of disregarding everything in favor of contemporary personalities children will enjoy? Don't they have the slightest sense of historical conscience?
The film is somewhat entertaining though and visually it's beautiful to behold (Roger Deakins acted as visual consultant) but it puffs more often than it soars.

The Ugly Truth **

Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Katherine Heigl, Gerard Butler
Bree Turner, Eric Winter, John Michael Higgins, Cheryl Hines

Heigl plays Sacramento TV producer Abby Richter, a work obsessed woman who has convinced herself she has no time to find the man she deserves (you know what that means in modern rom-com slang: psychotic control freak).
When her morning news show begins to falter in the ratings, she's forced by her boss to hire Mike Chadway (Butler) a cable TV personality whose show, the eponymous movie title, has become a new benchmark of crass, rude television.
He gives advice to men and women about relationships always considering feelings a load of BS and highlighting everything that leads to orgasms.
He represents everything Abby is against and of course by the end of the movie they will end together (opposites attract, first appearances are rarely accurate, biggest stars end together...you name it, we've seen it).
The movie isn't special and it seems to know it; therefore it gives in to some low class humor (who would've thought the word "cock" could come out of the angelical Heigl's mouth so much? or that a pussy-as in cat-could spark so many lazy jokes about the female genitals) like bikini clad girls wrestling in a pool of, cherry, Jell-O, baseball fellatio cams and a scene with a sex toy that works only because of Heigl's determination (and a too obvious reference to "When Harry Met Sally").
The movie doesn't reach all-time low levels of crappy, because of the chemistry between Heigl and Butler (so many movies lately are counting on being saved by chemistry that it should really start scaring screenwriters), their banter may not be the stuff of classic Hollywood battles-of-the-sexes, but it makes the crassness sting a bit less.
She is all cute pouts and fabulous outfits, he's all about the rugged charms of a rogue, the sexual tension between them is palpable and they both look damn good throughout the film.
As long as they've got the looks people will keep coming to their movies and that might just be the ugly truth.

RocknRolla **

Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson
Mark Strong, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Jeremy Piven, Jimy Mistry

Tom Wilkinson seems to draw immense pleasure from unleashing his inner sleaze playing Lenny Cole, a London crime boss negotiating a multimillion deal with a Russian property dealer (Karel Roden).
There’s also One Two (a hilarious Butler), Mumbles (Elba) and “Handsome” Bob (the scene stealing Hardy) a group of crooks trying to intercept the money from the deal with the aid of a sly accountant (Newton). Add to this an allegedly dead junkie rock star named Johnny Quid (Kebbell), a stolen painting (and ingenious McGuffin), carnivorous crawfish and a duo of Russian hitmen. Put all of those characters, situations and items together and you end with this movie, where the plot is the last thing that matters, but that doesn’t keep Lenny’s assistant Archie (the wonderful Mark Strong who by far owns the movie with his mixture of tough and coolness) from trying to narrate everything.
Guy Ritchie has a knack for brutal comedy (and his writing isn’t half bad) that gives the movie its intense energy and entertainment value, but he also has some deep rooted issues that make the movie lack something.
One of them is his insistence with gay jokes; from Brad Pitt’s ultra toned physique in “Snatch”, to Adriano Giannini’s scruffy appeal in “Swept Away” Ritchie has a weird ability to capture the beauty of the male body that would make Derek Jarman’s eyebrows give an ironic raise (and who can blame him when he was married to the gay icon by excellence…).
In this film he makes one of his characters gay, but instead of using this to stereotyped, yet effective, comedy purposes he has several other characters become fascinated by what this homosexuality implies about them.
This discomfort would’ve been effective (gay crooks!?! A riot!) if the director wasn’t drawing unintentional homoerotic attention to random moments of the film.
Ritchie turns a chase sequence of ACME proportions into a Hugo Boss perfume ad by having a very fit thug take his shirt off to reveal his extremely ripped physique…in slow motion.
The same two characters will later become involved in a torture scene which includes gagging, policemen hats and vodka. And “I’m not gay” becomes almost a catchphrase within the movie.
Another of Ricthie’s problems is his need to create his own language and untie himself from other currents. While it’s immediately obvious that “RocknRolla” draws heavily from the filmographies of Tarantino, Scorsese and even the Rat Pack (going by way of Steven Soderbergh), Lenny often reminds other characters and the viewers that they aren’t gangsters.
This constant need of Ritchie to reaffirm his role, which here evokes vintage James Bond and Sam Peckinpah, only comes off looking as a slightly pathetic fear of being emasculated (again…he was married to Madonna, one can’t blame him entirely).
“RocknRolla” spends far too much time worrying about what it’s not that it ends up not knowing what it actually is.