BuzzSugar

Movie Preview: A Nightmare on Elm Street

BuzzSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:30:42 -0700

Enough of you are into slasher flicks that I think you'll appreciate this trailer for the latest installment of A Nightmare on Elm Street. What's different about this one, set to release in 2010? Freddy Krueger is played by the genuinely creepy and genuinely good actor Jackie Earle Haley.

Billed as a re-imagining of the horror classic and produced by Michael Bay, the movie's trailer opens with a sad, evocative image of a younger Freddy being chased into an accident, precipitating his fate as a cold-blooded killer. The fact that the trailer can make you feel empathy for one of pop culture's greatest villains is a feat unto itself and makes me think this movie will be about more than just gory, creative ways to kill someone.

To see the trailer, which also stars Kellan Lutz, Connie Britton, and Melrose Place's Katie Cassidy, just read more.

Pilot Watch: Human Target

BuzzSugar — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:30:45 -0700

The networks have announced their Fall schedules, but which series will be worth watching? Throughout the Summer, as I watch the pilots, I'll be posting my first impressions. Note that a lot can change before a show actually makes it to air, so these aren't reviews, just quick thoughts on how the shows look now. Today's pick: the Fox action drama Human Target, which will launch after American Idol next year.

What's it about? Christopher Chance is a bodyguard to the extreme, boldly throwing himself into the line of fire to save his clients' lives.

Who's in it? Mark Valley, Chi McBride, Jackie Earle Haley

The good: The pilot is full of fast-paced, one-wrong-step-and-you-die action, not unlike 24. As he showed on Fringe, Valley has a strong presence on screen, and he makes an appealing action star. McBride and Haley don't have a ton of screen time in the pilot, but it was enough to make me want to see more from their characters - McBride as Christopher Chance's business partner/manager, Haley as a renegade hired gun - who add a bit of snark and comic relief.

The bad: From what I knew about the comic book series on which the show is based, I was expecting Christopher Chance to literally become the target of the bad guys who are chasing his clients. To find out he's just their bodyguard was a bit of a bummer. Some of the action was a little cheesy, and the success of the show might depend on the writers' ability to find new and dangerous scenarios for Chance every week. We get a hint that the show might explore what compels Chance to take these dangerous jobs, but it's mostly lost in all the train-jumping and heist-stopping.

Will I watch? We'll see how the TV schedule shakes out come January, but I'm not jumping out of my seat with anticipation.

To check out a trailer and some photos, just read more.

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Photos courtesy of Fox

Meet the New Krueger: Jackie Earle Haley

BuzzSugar — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:30:06 -0700

I haven't seen more perfect casting than this in a long time: Jackie Earle Haley will replace Robert Englund in the role of Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Haley has played some mighty creepy roles in recent years, like the pedophile in the 2006 drama Little Children and eerie masked avenger Rorschach in Watchmen. Director Samuel Bayer even mentions Haley's work as Rorschach as specific reasoning for this casting:

"Looking at his performance in Watchmen, here’s a guy playing a character under a mask yet you feel tremendous empathy for him," said Bayer of the actor. "And in Nightmare, he is going to be under prosthetic makeup. You have to feel something for the character. The greatest villains are multi-dimensional and I think he will bring that to the character."

Bayer, who called this take of Krueger "Nosferatu meets Ed Gaines," is not afraid that Hayley is in any danger of being typecast the way Englund was. “It’s what you bring to the material. He’s a well-rounded actor who will not be stereotyped by this. If anything, he’ll be celebrated for it.”

Well, if they have to keep remaking movies, at least some of the casting is spot-on. I'm happy for Haley, as I think he could potentially play any number of creepy characters and I think he'll do justice to this classic role. What do you think of this news? Could Jackie Earle Haley be the stuff of nightmares?

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Buzz News Roundup, 3/6

BuzzSugar — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:30:26 -0800

Andrew McCarthy will play Lily's father in the Gossip Girl spinoff pilot. - The Hollywood Reporter
Michael Jackson is set to perform 20 to 25 shows at London's O2 Arena. - Billboard
Paramount Vantage and Comedy Central have jointly acquired the rights to Ghosts/Aliens, Trey Hamburger's supernatural comedy novel, and will develop as both a series and feature. - The Hollywood Reporter
Steve Carell will star in and produce the comedy Hi-T, about a man dealing with uncontrollable mood swings after an injury forces him to take testosterone injections. - ComingSoon
Universal is finalizing a deal for The Adjustment Bureau, a "contemporary love story with sci-fi overtones" that may feature Matt Damon in the lead role. - Variety
U2 is on track to score its seventh no. 1 album next week on the Billboard 200 chart with No Line On the Horizon. - Billboard
Bravo has renewed Shear Genius and picked up a series about fashion photographers. - TV Week
20th Century Fox has signed director Tom Dey to develop a big screen adaptation of the Marmaduke comic strip. - ComingSoon
Jackie Earle Haley has been tapped to star alongside Chi McBride in Fox's drama pilot Human Target, based on the DC Comics title. - The Hollywood Reporter

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Watchmen: Fun For Fans

BuzzSugar — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:30:33 -0800

It's obviously difficult to adapt a beloved written (and, in this case, drawn) work for the big screen - and it’s downright impossible to make an adaptation that satisfies every viewer (or certainly every megafan). I truly enjoyed reading the comic book series Watchmen by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore, and having seen the film adaptation, I don't dislike it. It's probably the best we could have asked for as far as adaptations go. And I know it's useless now to say that the work should never have been brought to film in the first place (though I do feel that way), so now that it has been made into a movie, is it any good? From a fan's perspective I say, sure, it's fine. But I don't have any other perspective to go by.

I have no idea how this movie comes across to someone who has never read the comic book series. I can't even pretend to be unbiased about this - as a fan, just seeing these characters come to life is incredibly exciting. But as a standalone movie, I can admit that it's probably not great. Essentially, it's made for the fanboys (and fangirls) and other viewers may not understand or like it. It's campy, sometimes resembling a silly soap opera, and truthfully I am hard-pressed to remember any distinct images or scenes from the movie, just a few days after seeing it. It's certainly temporary entertainment, and for some it may be frustrating to watch. For more about the movie and my take, read more.

The opening credits (which I got to see at Wondercon, awesomely) are perhaps my favorite part of the whole thing as we hear Bob Dylan's "The Times, They Are A-Changing" and go through a series of slow-motion images of what's been happening politically over the Cold War years, along with images depicting the rise and fall of masked vigilantes in the US. Originally revered as society's helpers, by the 1980s masked crime-fighters have become hated, and people want their good ol' police officers back protecting them. One "mask" is the dark outlaw Rorschach, who still wears a mask of ever-shifting ink blots over his face. Now in 1985 New York City, Rorschach notices that someone has been murdering former masked avengers one by one and he becomes determined to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, tensions between the US and the Soviet Union are reaching a boil and nuclear war seems imminent. The movie strings together several different stories of the various former crime-fighters while simultaneously increasing the threat of nuclear destruction within the US-Soviet conflict.

Director Zack Snyder is very faithful to the written work (though he makes some decisions to make certain scenes bigger or smaller, like a particular sex scene that seems to go on for approximately forever). So any real issues one has with the story of Watchmen or with the characters are probably issues with the source material itself and not so much with Snyder's adaptation. That said, even having read the series, the movie is way more violent than I thought it would be. At times it's that cartoonish violence that's easy to take, but some of the gore is startling. In movie form it's just gruesome.

Despite this faithfulness to the material, though, there's a weightiness and a complexity to the written work that doesn't quite come through, leaving many of the scenes to fall flat and empty. The written work is expansive and complicated and multilayered - to pare it all down to a storyline people can understand (even in the lengthy running time of approximately 162 minutes) is an insanely massive task to take on. And in attempting to do so, some parts of the book simply don’t translate well. Dr. Manhattan (a physicist who has an accident in his lab, resulting in his becoming an all-powerful blue, glowy giant being), for example, comes across as just silly and in fact, I found myself at times bored or annoyed with him. His scenes with Laurie are even more tiresome.

Perhaps unsurprisingly (but no less satisfyingly), the best moments come from Rorschach. Aside from being a fan favorite in general, Jackie Earle Haley does a marvelous job making us care about Rorschach and see him as a disturbed man with a strong sense of right and wrong. He's pitiable and a little bit frightening, too. It's easy to root for Rorschach; it's easy for the audience to want to be on his side. We know that he's a bit messed up but somehow all the more likable because of it. And the dark electricity Haley brings to the screen in each of his scenes sets the character of Rorschach apart from the rest.

And maybe I'm easily amused, but the ever-shifting mask he wears is unendingly cool to watch.

See, that's the thing. As a fan, I forgive so much. I don't know how to recommend this movie to the uninitiated - I have no idea what it looks like, or if it's worth the nearly three hours in a movie theater. But as a fan I was going to go anyway, and short of total disaster, I was probably always going to think what I think: that it's cool-looking and super satisfying to see these characters come to life.

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros.

BuzzSugar at WonderCon: Watchmen Takes the Stage!

BuzzSugar — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:30:07 -0800

Saturday at WonderCon started with a bang: Watchmen director Zack Snyder appeared before an extremely packed house along with his cast to reveal about 20 minutes of footage from the movie, including the opening credits.

The conversation was lively and the footage very exciting. Of course, I can't give my final opinion till I've seen the movie start to finish, but based on what I saw this weekend, it's hard for me to imagine this film stumbling too hard. I'm a huge fan of the graphic novel, so I may be a wee bit biased - though it's hard to tell if that would make me easier or harder on the film. I guess I'll know soon, but to see my thoughts on the panel and more details about the clips, read more.

The ballroom crowd went wild when, in addition to director Zack Snyder, most of the major cast members showed up on stage. They included Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Jackie Earle Haley, and Patrick Wilson.

After some chatting about the movie, Snyder announced he was showing us the first 20 minutes or so of the movie. The opening credits of Watchmen are astonishing and manage to cram in the history and back story of the movie's alternate reality, all set to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin."
We also got to see a scene of Rorschach (Haley) in prison that practically had the crowd on its feet by the end. I'll just say this: it's violent, it's kick-ass, and I think it's a taste at how satisfying seeing this graphic novel on the big screen could be.
A couple of funny moments: Morgan said that in approaching his role as The Comedian, he had to somehow make the character seem human in the midst of "killing, raping and pillaging throughout the world." Crudup said in order to make Dr. Manhattan seem distracted, he just thought of "walking on the surface of the sun and things like that."

If there's a sequel, it probably won't involve Snyder, who called such rumors "crazy talk" and added, "To me it seems impossible to even talk about. That's like a sequel to Moby Dick."
For the record, Snyder couldn't be cuter in person.
If the film does well it will almost certainly get a director's cut re-release this July. Currently, the movie is 2 hours and 43 minutes long, and the director's cut will be 3 hours and 10 minutes.
When talking about all the cuts Snyder had to make for the theatrical release, he mentioned the studio requesting less of two things: violence and Dr. Manhattan's blue, er, private areas.
Snyder also said that the companion story to the comic, Black Freighter, has been created as an animation and will be released on DVD a week after the movie hits theaters.
Dave Gibbons, the novel's illustrator, had nothing but kind words for the movie, saying "It's completely surreal" and "This is like the movie I saw in my head, and these are like the people I saw in my dreams."
Fun fact: Little Rorschach, whom we see in the opening credits, is played by Snyder's own son.

New Watchmen Trailer Provides More Info

BuzzSugar — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:30:11 -0800

OK, I'll admit it: When I first saw the teaser trailer for Watchmen, I didn't really get it. I liked the look of it and I think the use of that Smashing Pumpkins song "The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning" is inspired. But I didn't understand what was going on, unfamiliar as I was with the source material. Well, I decided to become familiar with the source material and now that I have, I'm a wee bit obsessed. To find out why and to see a new trailer, read more.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's comic book series Watchmen has received overwhelming critical praise ever since publication in 1986 and 1987. In 2005 it was included on Time's list of "the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present," and Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof has called it ''the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced." Unlike other superhero franchises (Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, etc.), Watchmen was deemed "unfilmmable," with director Terry Gilliam stating that "by reducing it to a two or two-and-a-half hour film, it seemed to me to take away the essence of what Watchmen is about.”

Well, in this superhero-happy era of filmmaking, Watchmen was going to be made, and admirably enough (at least in my opinion) 300 director Zack Snyder took on the project mostly because he loves the work and he worried that the wrong director wouldn't do it justice.

Now I'm almost done reading Watchmen and while I wasn't sure I'd like it, I have to say, I'm totally mesmerized. I think I see what all the fuss is about. And yesterday I (somewhat) patiently waited until 5:00 p.m. my time to catch the latest trailer for the film, which opens March 6, 2009. I've rarely been this intrigued by something I won't see for another four months. The new trailer provides more information on the story, so check it out below and tell me what you think.

Images courtesy of Warner Bros.

Movie Preview: Winged Creatures

BuzzSugar — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:30:53 -0700

I watched the trailer for Winged Creatures before I knew the full cast list. I already knew that it included Forrest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson and was surprised to find a whole slew of other amazing actors involved, including Jackie Earle Haley, Guy Pearce, Kate Beckinsale, and Big Love's Jeanne Tripplehorn. In addition, there's Dakota Fanning as a real, live teenager - not a precocious little kid.

The plot reminds me a little bit of that ill-fated TV show The Nine (which probably should have just been a movie in the first place): "A group of strangers form a unique relationship with each other after surviving a random shooting at a Los Angeles diner."

The whole look and feel of the film is eerie, moving, and quite sad, not unlike the tone of Mystic River (but slightly less dark). There doesn't appear to be a release date yet for Winged Creatures, but I hope it comes out soon. To check out the trailer, read more.