Here's what I've been watching lately:
The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein
Murder!
Lord Love a Duck
The Contract
The Tall Men
Semi Pro
Crossfire
The Walker
The Trouble With Harry
Meet Me in St. Louis
For the record, I particularly recommend Mad Songs and Lord Love a Duck.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Incredible Hulk
I recently had the chance (after much delay) to get out to my local cinema and see The Incredible Hulk. Some thoughts:
A few years ago Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins was more of an antidote to a series of earlier Batman films—three directed by Tim Burton followed by two directed by Joel Schmacher—than it was a sequel to these earlier films in the usual sense. Similarly, Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk reboots the Hulk franchise following the (in some respects) failed experiment of director Ang Lee’s 2003 film The Hulk (a film I recently saw a second time at Ebertfest 2008).
Lee’s film, which I’m here proposing be immediately retitled Bruce Banner, is dramacentric, focusing on two tragic relationships—Banner’s (Eric Bana) love for Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) and the return of Banner’s estranged father (Nick Nolte)—creating a weirdly skewed quasi-Oedipal love triangle that steals away too much screen time from the shoulda-been star of the show, the Hulk.
Leterrier’s action-drunk revision puts its baroquely muscled and veined CGI behemoth front and center (and for good measure tosses in Hulk nemesis the Abomination at no extra charge), while painting the Banner-Betty Ross (portrayed here by Edward Norton and Liv Tyler) romance in much broader strokes. Between the rock’em-sock’em, the film manages to shoehorn in an origin for Hulk archenemy The Leader, a Lou as well as do so dirty work setting up future Marvel franchises The Avengers, Nick Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D., and Captain America.
All points considered, as I’ve already eluded to above, I slightly prefer The Incredible Hulk to Lee’s earlier film, primarily because I feel that Leterrier takes the comic book character more seriously than did Lee, who seems to me to have been more interested in Bruce Banner than he ever was in the Hulk. At the same time, I prefer Norton’s portrayal of Banner to Bana’s. Granted, Tyler may not be quite as accomplished a dramatic actress as Connelly, but I actually found her lighter touch welcome in the later film. The villains in both films are the really weakness of each film, never really much more than stereotypical “bad guys” (and the latter film’s climatic slugfest is irksomely similar to the final battle in Iron Man, which had been released just weeks earlier). Looking back on the comic book adaptations of 2008, The Incredible Hulk won’t be remembered as the best (that honor will likely go to The Dark Knight), nor probably even the second or third best (Iron Man and Hellboy II, order depending on your tastes), but it’s a good solid entry at #4.
A few years ago Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins was more of an antidote to a series of earlier Batman films—three directed by Tim Burton followed by two directed by Joel Schmacher—than it was a sequel to these earlier films in the usual sense. Similarly, Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk reboots the Hulk franchise following the (in some respects) failed experiment of director Ang Lee’s 2003 film The Hulk (a film I recently saw a second time at Ebertfest 2008).
Lee’s film, which I’m here proposing be immediately retitled Bruce Banner, is dramacentric, focusing on two tragic relationships—Banner’s (Eric Bana) love for Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly) and the return of Banner’s estranged father (Nick Nolte)—creating a weirdly skewed quasi-Oedipal love triangle that steals away too much screen time from the shoulda-been star of the show, the Hulk.
Leterrier’s action-drunk revision puts its baroquely muscled and veined CGI behemoth front and center (and for good measure tosses in Hulk nemesis the Abomination at no extra charge), while painting the Banner-Betty Ross (portrayed here by Edward Norton and Liv Tyler) romance in much broader strokes. Between the rock’em-sock’em, the film manages to shoehorn in an origin for Hulk archenemy The Leader, a Lou as well as do so dirty work setting up future Marvel franchises The Avengers, Nick Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D., and Captain America.
All points considered, as I’ve already eluded to above, I slightly prefer The Incredible Hulk to Lee’s earlier film, primarily because I feel that Leterrier takes the comic book character more seriously than did Lee, who seems to me to have been more interested in Bruce Banner than he ever was in the Hulk. At the same time, I prefer Norton’s portrayal of Banner to Bana’s. Granted, Tyler may not be quite as accomplished a dramatic actress as Connelly, but I actually found her lighter touch welcome in the later film. The villains in both films are the really weakness of each film, never really much more than stereotypical “bad guys” (and the latter film’s climatic slugfest is irksomely similar to the final battle in Iron Man, which had been released just weeks earlier). Looking back on the comic book adaptations of 2008, The Incredible Hulk won’t be remembered as the best (that honor will likely go to The Dark Knight), nor probably even the second or third best (Iron Man and Hellboy II, order depending on your tastes), but it’s a good solid entry at #4.
Monday, July 07, 2008
A Night at the Home Theater
Tonight, after much delay (long story short--Netflix shipped me the DVD back in December and I'm just gettting around to watching it now), I finally am watching The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein.
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