Covering Movies, Television and Other Life Altering Issues
Dan and Jessica discuss: Parker, No more 3D Star Wars, Terrence Stamp on George Lucas, Paul Giamatti is the Rhino?, Evil Dead is NC-17 (for now).
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Show note: For all the information on Parker you could ever hope to have check out The Violent World of Parker. It’s a great site with a ton of information.
By Dan Delgado
I must admit to having low expectations when walking in to see Parker, the new actioner starring Jason Statham. At one point I did have higher hopes, having read several of the books the character is based on, but a low rottentomatoes.com score and the spoilery trailer itself changed that.
Statham plays Parker, a no-nonsense thief who seems to have a heart of gold. The movie starts off fine, with a heist at a state fair and ends well with a heist in Palm Beach, FL. However all that stuff in between is a bit middling. Cliche’s pile on as Statham looks to get even with a crew he worked with who double cross him. A lot of it a by the numbers movie with a few surprises thrown in. Surprises like it’s excessively bloody and violent (which is okay with me).
Statham is very choice for the stoic Parker and Jennifer Lopez is fine as Palm Beach real estate agent who gets roped into his revenge plot, though her desire to run away with him is a mistake in the script. She should be more terrified of this guy. Done right and Parker would kick off a new series of films. Done a little better than average, like this is, will probably not. Go with low expectations and you’ll be fine.
Dan and Eric discuss: Shields and Yarnel, Stinkin’ Badges, Larry Fine, JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars, Justice League movie lineup, Ebay bans Django, Weekend previews: Hansel and Gretel, Movie 43, Parker.By Dan Delgado
Okay here we go. New year, new movies to look forward to right? Sure, and that means writing up one of these “Hey, I’m looking forward to these 10 or 20 movies,” type articles. However I have decided to not limit myself. So here are just a random list of movies due out in the first half of 2013 that I want to see. Not everything I am interested in made the list. So for example you may notice that Pacific Rim isn’t on here. Yes, while I will probably see just know I am not jumping all up and down about it. I didn’t forget it. The second half will be posted whenever I get around to it, which is another way of saying ‘don’t hold your breath’.
Now down to business:
January
Parker: I don’t really have high expectations for this heist/action film. However, I have read several books featuring the character of Parker, here played by Jason Statham. The books are lean and mean. This movie seems to not be but I am holding out hope to see something resembling the guy Donald Westlake wrote about so often.
Stand Up Guys: This trailer makes this movie look like it could be great. I had read this already opened in a few places in December with lukewarm reviews. However Al Pacino and Christopher Walken together in a character piece about Pacino getting out of jail and Walken as his pal being charged with the task of having to kill him sounds like it could be compelling. And add in Alan Arkin to any mix and it gets better.
February
Bullet to the Head: This was on my much shorter list from last year. Here we have Sylvester Stallone in a nonsensical action flick directed by Walter Hill (48HRS) and produced by Joel Silver (Die Hard). Viva la 1980s!
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie: I just wrote about this here. Come on people, it’s MORT!
March
The Place Beyond the Pines: Ryan Gosling is a low level thief and Bradley Cooper is a cop. Both are destined to cross paths and this movie will probably be depressing. Yes, this kind of thing gets me excited. Melancholy, Baby!
G.I. Joe: Retaliation: More 3D! More Channing Tatum! This movie ran away from summer 2012 to avoid being a bust and did reshots and added more of hunky Tatum to bulk up its chance of success. Okay, so I’m not really serious about this, but I am curious to see if this move pays off. I should mention I absolutely hated the first one, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Hopefully you did too!
April
42: Here we have the story Jackie Robinson, who you should know broke the color barrier in baseball in 1947. I don’t know much about the guy playing Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) but it’s a great story that can be told over and over again and I would be a-okay with it. Plus Harrison Ford is Branch Rickey! Nice!
Oblivion: A futuristic sci-fi thriller with Tom Cruise that looks something like Wall-E meets The Omega Man. That description alone should get you in the theater, dammit!
Pain and Gain: Michael Bay makes a movie without giant transforming robot aliens. Here we have Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson as a couple of bodybuilding types who get mixed up in some crime and get in over there heads. Yes, this is my kind of movie. Bay won’t stay away from Transformers for too long unfortunately. Transformers 4 is next on his (and Wahlberg’s!) horizon.
May
Iron Man 3: If it’s May it must be Marvel Event Movie time. This year it’s the third Iron Man and so far the trailers make it look darker than the first two. Director Shane Black takes over for Jon Favreau in what looks to be an improvement over the second outing.
The Great Gatsby (2013): Another carryover from last year. This looks like it could be great. I’m not a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald or this book, but that trailer gets me excited about this.
Star Trek Into Darkness: Boy, this is whole darker sequel thing must be catching on. Now it’s in the title just to let you know, ‘we ain’t playing around.’ I really enjoyed the 2009 reboot of Star Trek (not really a Trekkie so blowing up the canon was okay for me) and hope this can live up to that one.
Also: Hey welcome to summer 2013 where sequels abound. Sure I’m down with Iron Man and Star Trek enough to write about them but I’ll probably be also checking out The Hangover Part III and whatever they’re calling Fast & Furious 6
June
Man of Steel: This new Superman movie sure looks and feels epic from the teaser trailers that have been released. I think that’s exactly how it’s supposed to look. Cross your fingers.
World War Z: Potential train wreck here. The only things I’ve read about this adaptation of the best selling novel of the same name is that the budget is way out of control and they’ve been reshooting as much as they can to make it not stink.
Also: There’s all kinds of other things going on in June like the meta comedy This Is The End, the Smith Family Robinson movie After Earth and who wouldn’t want to see Pixar’s Monster’s University?
EDIT: I did manage to do that second half list after all. I know, I’m shocked too: https://radiodan.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/movies-im-looking-forward-to-in-the-second-half-of-2013/
All over the internet I keep seeing people posting what movies they are most looking forward to in 2012. Never one to turn down a simple idea for a blog post I figured I should weigh in on this important subject as well.
I didn’t make my list with a set number in mind. I just picked out movies that I’m really looking forward to. There are others not on this list that I’m eager to see too. So don’t freak out that The Dark Knight Rises isn’t here. And of course there are a number I’m not that interested in but plenty of you are. So don’t freak out that The Hobbit isn’t here either. Also it’s in order of release date, not how badly I want to see them.
1. The Grey (Jan. 27) – Alaskan oil pipeline worker Liam Neeson is in a plane crash and wakes up in the snowy wilderness. However, before he gets to fully bond with the other male survivors over hot cocoa and a warm fire the group realizes they’re being hunted by a pack of wolves. Everything I’ve read about this is that it’s fantastic. Director Joe Carnahan gave us the excellent Narc and kinda fun Smokin’ Aces. The trailer with the twitter quotes though, has to go.
2. Being Flynn (Mar. 2) – Once a upon a time Robert De Niro was my favorite actor I looked forward to anything the guy was in. Then the 2000’s came and suddenly there wasn’t that much to look forward to. The guy has seemingly stopped trying. But wait! Here comes Being Flynn, starring De Niro as a guy who ditched his family years ago only to come across his son (Paul Dano) at a homeless shelter. And if you look close in the trailer, the guy is actually acting here. Can’t wait.
3. The Hunger Games (Mar. 23) – Really I think I’m more excited about this because my daughter read these books and loves them. She’s excited about a movie and it looks like that movie won’t suck. So hey, I’M excited about it too! Plus the idea of kids hunting kids sounds like something I’d be in favor of.
4. The Pirates! Band of Misfits (Mar. 30) – I cannot express how much I love the movies that come from Aardman Animation. From Wallace and Gromit and Flushed Away and Arthur Christmas, they just all hit the right notes for me. Funny and so damn clever. Based on the trailer I saw this looks like it fit right along side those. Basically it’s about a bunch of goofy pirates from what I can see.
5. Bullet to the Head (Apr. 13) – So there’s no trailer for this and it very well could be a piece of junk. However the 80s retro movie pedigree is too much to resist. Joel Silver produces! Walter Hill directs! Sylvester Stallone stars! In 1986 this would have made $100 million and played all summer. Now it’s a crap shoot. I can recall a time though that any movie of Hill’s (48 HRS, Streets of Fire, The Warriors, Extreme Prejudice) was a must see for me. I should mention I have no idea what this movie is about, but I’m sure SOMETHING will blow up.
6. Lockout (Apr. 20) – Here’s a movie I didn’t know existed until a couple of weeks ago. A sci-fi action movie that looks like it wants to be the new Escape from New York. It stars Guy Pierce as a badass who has to get the president’s daughter out of some ridiculous future prison in space. It looks bananas (in a good way) and I love seeing a change of pace like this for Pierce, who’s one of my favorites.
7. The Avengers (May 4) – You mean I get to see Captain America (Chris Evans) in another movie this year? I’m so down. Do I really need to say anything here? I don’t think so. I can tell you that this combo superhero movie (also bringing in Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk in case you hadn’t heard) is the one I’m going to try to avoid all trailers for. So far so good.
8. The Amazing Spider-Man (Jul. 4) – Yeah, yeah I’m not crazy they rebooted the Spider-Man movies either. That doesn’t mean I don’t love the character and his story. Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker sort of looks like the Steve Ditko drawings of him. That’s a good thing right? I don’t care what you think, I’m in.
9. Looper (Sep. 28) – Director Rian Johnson is two for two in my book (and in most other movie geek’s books as well). I loved Brick and The Brothers Bloom. This movie starring a time travelling Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis hasn’t had its plot spilled out all over the internet yet. The less I know the better. I like time travelling. I love Gordon-Levitt and come on, Bruce Willis is still The Man. The pedigree has me already buying a ticket.
10. Parker (Oct. 12) – I started reading the Parker books by Richard Stark last year. Lean and mean stories about a no-nonsense thief, they were direct and to the point. I got a kick out of them. The character of Parker has been in movies before but always with another name. Here what we have is an allegedly faithful adaptation of the character. If they get it right this could be a nice surprise. Jason Statham is Parker and Jennifer Lopez is also hanging around for some reason. Plus they filmed some of it in Palm Beach County. Neat!
11. Skyfall (Nov. 9) – James Bond is back! And it’s about time too. Here Daniel Craig returns as Bond facing off against Javier Bardem and also Ralph Fiennes is lurking around somewhere. I’m expecting this one to resemble closer to a classic Bond movie.
12. Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Movie (Dec. 21) – Commonly known as Kill Bin Laden, here is movie American’s can’t wait for. The story of seal team six or whatever else is going on here. Really we don’t know. What we do know is that Bigelow, and her writing partner Mark Boal, were prepping a movie about the fruitless hunt for Bin Laden when the news broke that the guy had been killed. Some rewriting later and now we have a happy ending. Also noteworthy is that this is Bigelow’s first movie since winning the Oscar for the Hurt Locker in 2009.
13. Django Unchained (Dec. 25) – I’m not the biggest Quentin Tarantino fan in the world. However the guy can most certainly get the job done. And the story of a western about a former slave turned bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) out to save his wife from plantation owners sounds too good to miss out. Plus a great cast to boot with Leo DiCaprio, Kurt Russell, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and James Remar (I’d go on but you get the idea) has got to be worth seeing. Her’s hoping QT brings all his pulpy goodness to the old west.
14. The Great Gatsby (Dec. 25) – Just what you want for Christmas: TWO Leo DiCaprio movies! Here he’s Jay Gatsby who has some great parties back in the 1920’s. Toby Maguire is Nick Carroway, who lives next door and is amazed at how cool his neighbor is. There’s also something about a romance with a married woman or something. I think we all know how this one ends but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t see it. Director Baz Luhrmann knows how to bring the visuals. Considering the source material, this one should be great.
Quick backstory that most movie geeks know anyway. The Mel Gibson movie Payback (1999), the darkly comic, sadistic action movie with a distinct and noticable blue tint was not supposed to be that way.
Director Brian Helgeland was fired off the movie (two days after winning an Oscar for writing LA Confidential. “Congrats Brian! Now get the hell out of here!”) before it was completed and an entire third of the movie was reshot. Different third act. Jokes added. Other jokeless scenes removed.
A few years back Paramount Pictures allowed Helgeland to go back and finish his version of the film, which is out under the title of Payback: Straight Up on DVD.
Because I am lame, I have not seen this director’s cut until this past weekend. I should point out that I am a fan of the theatrical version of Payback. The funny bits are actually funny and the movie seems to fit the persona Mel Gibson had at the time (you know before he adopted the new crazy one). So even though I was anticipating this meaner version, it was not as though I was anti-Payback.
Now having seen it, I can say that Straight Up is the way to go. The movie is leaner, and most definitely meaner. The blue tint is gone (which I liked!) and so is Kris Kristofferson and that silly kidnapping plot that hampered the third act.
Instead we now get Sally Kellerman (voice only), a new score, and a 70s crime drama look that fits the story better. Gibson is meaner and his character of Porter is much closer to his literary counterpart Parker (from the novel The Hunter by Richard Stark). Can someone tell me why you can’t call the guy Parker, by the way? Porter? Why?
And this reminds me, there are a ton of book about the Parker character, why do not have a series of movies to match? The anti-James Bond. Has no one thought of this?
Anyway, the point being that you probably should be adding this to your DVD library. Okay, so most of you already have, but still, you get the point.
The Radio Dan Show 