Be Still My Geeking Heart
Posted on Tuesday August 12, 2008, 14:42 by Olly Richards
I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up more widely, but I caught this story via the frequently excellent io9. Turns out that Joss Whedon was once pitching to make a Batman movie. Let's just think about that sentence for a moment. Joss Whedon, which is an ancient geek term for God, was planning to make a movie about Batman, which is an even more ancient geek term for 'ooooh, yay, where's my wallet?'. That could have been something special. Also, why did I not know this? I feel I should have been informed. I'll be the last person to criticise anything that Christopher Nolan has done with the Batman franchise, but I would give anything to see Whedon's take on Gotham. Some people don't get Whedon – and these people are punished by being forced to endure a Buffy-less hell of their own making, poor dears – and think of him as someone who only trades in pop-culture quips and dark camp. He's so... Continue reading... Comment Now (61 comments)
Back To TopIt's Political Correctness Gone Stupid
Posted on Monday August 11, 2008, 17:13 by Olly Richards
You've probably heard in the news today about this New York Times piece covering a protest against Tropic Thunder, which is being released in the US on Friday. A number of groups representing those with disabilities, including the organisers of The Special Olympics, are calling for a boycott of the comedy over its depiction of mentally impaired people. Sigh... The crux of the groups objections is the footage of 'Simple Jack', a film within a film that sees Ben Stiller's character, an action star in search of credibility, playing a horribly stereotypical mentally impaired man. They also object to the multiple uses of the word retard. What they seem to have missed, as so many of these protests do, is that it's the people expressing the less than enlightened views who are being mocked, not the people they are themselves mocking. Stiller's character is a bad actor who thinks tha... Continue reading... Comment Now (16 comments)
Back To TopWait, Was That Funny In The First Place?
Posted on Monday August 11, 2008, 10:18 by Helen O'Hara
 After watching The Love Guru, many emotions occur. Disgust. Dismay. Disappointment that so many talented people could have so mislaid said talent. But the chief feeling is a genuine worry that we have been misled for much of the last two decades. Because you come out of this utterly terrible 'comedy' thinking, "Hang on a cotton pickin' minute* here: if those awful, awful jokes were ones I've seen before in Austin Powers and Wayne's World, and they weren't funny here, were they ever funny? Have I been living in a dream world since 1991?"
See, The Love Guru's lead character, Guru Pitka, simpers and sniggers at his own jokes, just as do Wayne and Austin. He sets up elaborate double-entendres and then looks around theatrically to see if anyone else noticed. He becomes involved in huge musical routines and cops off with improbably hot women.
There are even explicit nods to his other characters - Bohemian Rhapsody playing on a car radio, a little finger poised by the lips, a... Continue reading... Comment Now (8 comments)
Back To TopFudge That, You Silly Barstool!
Posted on Wednesday July 23, 2008, 17:42 by Helen O'Hara
A few years ago, on an extended-family holiday to Florida one Christmas, I had the chance to introduce my cousins to the glories of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. They were about 12, 11 and 10 at the time - the perfect age for indoctrination appreciation of its many virtues - and far too sporty and studious to have seen such comedy classics. But imagine my horror when I realised that this version was edited for TV. Hence lines like, "Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal in his fist, in two weeks you would have a diamond." EH? Aside from the fact that the bit in italics was clearly inserted in a completely different voice, let's examine this. Ferris asked us to Pardon his French - but in this version, there's no French to pardon! And what is this American aversion to the word "ass"? It means either donkey or bottom, and unless we're five, neither is a particularly bad word. Is this like "fanny", which means somethi... Continue reading... Comment Now (98 comments)
Back To TopWhy Is Top Secret Still A Secret?
Posted on Friday July 11, 2008, 12:28 by Helen O'Hara
I brought Top Secret into the office this morning for reasons too boring to mention, and ended up putting it on the office telly for the delectation of all. What followed was a strange divide through the middle of the office. One half of those assembled started clamouring for the sound to be turned up during key scenes (the songs; the "I know a little German" gag; the introduction to the French resistance), chorusing lines along with the cast ("'ave we not met before?") and shaking heads in wonder at the visual gags. The other half, bemused, asked what exactly we were watching, and why. Now obviously it's a prerequisite of working in the Empire office that one be able to recite the script of Airplane!, or at least the jokes contained therein (it's much the same thing). But why the lack of love for Top Secret? Admittedly, it flopped on release. According to co-director David Zucker, no-one was interested in a comedy about Nazis and Elvis. People,... Continue reading... Comment Now (80 comments)
Back To TopAbout Time, DC...
Posted on Friday July 11, 2008, 08:03 by Chris Hewitt
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Warner Bros. executives have been meeting over the past couple of weeks with executives from DC Comics (and top DC talent, like Jim Lee), with the intention of overhauling Warner’s line of movies based on DC – which it owns, of course - titles.
To which I say, about goddamn time.
Now let’s get one thing straight. I’m a Marvel guy – always have been, always will be. But, quite frankly, it’s about time that Marvel had some proper competition.
Since 1998, when Blade effectively broke Marvel’s duck on the big screen, there’s been about eight trillion Marvel films – the Blade trilogy, the Spider-Man trilogy, two Hulks, two Punishers, two Fantastic Fours, an Iron Man, a Daredevil, a Ghost Rider, an Iron Man and even a Man-Thing (though that’s been swept under the carpet).
In fact, Iron Man and Hulk – as you probably already know – kicked off a bold new ... Continue reading... Comment Now (74 comments)
Back To TopWhich Dead Film Stars Would You Invite To Dinner?
Posted on Wednesday July 9, 2008, 16:14 by Olly Richards
So there were Helen, James and I, chatting to Marilyn Monroe about her boyfriend, Elvis, and the upkeep involved in wearing a white dress most nights of the week, which was, all things considered, not where we had expected the night to lead. We were at a launch party for Smirnoff Black's season of classic films at the Bluebird Restaurant in Chelsea, which are happening all month (details here). Go, but don't do what I did and smash a glass menu, inviting a number of other guests, who have apparently never smashed anything in their lives, to look at me like a dog had just lavishly vomited me on the carpet. 'Marilyn' (actually a delightful lookalike named Suzie) spent a while chatting with us, because we are film website nerds and people from Chelsea appear not to be able to actually see us, let alone talk to us, and after a while we got on to the unusual discussion of which dead film stars each o... Continue reading... Comment Now (64 comments)
Back To Top"The Gang's All Here"
Posted on Monday July 7, 2008, 09:47 by Chris Hewitt
So there I was, watching National Treasure: Book Of Secrets (don’t ask; I wasn’t even reviewing it), and something was bugging me. No, not Nic Cage’s hairline. Nor was it the car chase in London – as any Londoner can tell you, that was perhaps the greatest fiction of them all. Nor was it the fact that it was a pile of uninspired guff that somehow made over eight billion pounds, approximately, at the box office.
No, what was bugging me was Harvey Keitel.
Oh, I’ve got nothing against Keitel – he’s a great actor – but his mere presence in the movie, as FBI agent Sadusky is symptomatic of a flaw that’s become something of an epidemic in Hollywood: the return of unnecessary characters in sequels.
Sadusky was barely in the first National Treasure, and shows up for about five minutes in the sequel. I can’t even remember the function he performs in the movie – he’s essentially a cross between Basil Exposi... Continue reading... Comment Now (82 comments)
Back To TopAnyone For Tennis?
Posted on Wednesday July 2, 2008, 17:41 by Helen O'Hara
Here at Empire, we're dedicated, hard-working film journalists who only ever lift our collective nose from our collective writings to watch the films we talk about. Except, of course, when there's sport on TV, and at the moment, like the rest of the country, it's all about tennis. But to while away an idle moment between sets, we've been pondering a few essential tennis-related questions: 1. Which stars would you get to play the major tennis stars of today? Assuming you have a time machine, to allow for a bit more flexibility, who should play Federer, Nadal et al? Just to get you going, Ian Freer thinks Tarantino should play Roger Federer (I object! Not pretty enough); Andy Roddick is, we all agree, Seann William Scott, and we need Ewen Bremmer for Andy Murray. In the ladies', maybe a post-Supergirl Helen Slater as Maria Sharapova, maybe Gabrielle Union as Serena Williams and Olga Kuryenko as Ana Ivanovic. More suggestions please - for tennis players of yore as well, if you like. 2. Wh... Continue reading... Comment Now (56 comments)
Back To TopMovie Matchmaking Mayhem
Posted on Thursday June 19, 2008, 17:47 by Helen O'Hara
A friend of mine (No, not an inverted-commas-I-mean-me-really "friend"; honestly, a friend) is contemplating internet dating, and emailed me asking for advice on what films to list in his profile. This prompted quite a bit of discussion and soul-searching here in the office (could one ever love someone who despises Spielberg? Personally, I doubt it), so I thought we should open it up to you, the readers, for advice and counsel. After having a quick trawl around some sites, I've come up with a few preliminary guidelines for appealing to the largest possible number of people (assuming you want to improve your odds) and being true to thine own self, to allow one to find the largest possible number of suitable people. See what you think of these. 1. The guys (it's almost always men, it seems) who list only names like Tartakovsky and Svankmeyer are a bit suspect, in my opinion. I am sure there are genuine, down-to-earth people who love both these filmmakers, but to list only Continue reading... Comment Now (93 comments)
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