In Contention

Tag: Spider-Man

  • Hero takes a fall

    In coming up with an idle, pop-related title for this post, I was faced with two choices: the one I eventually went with, or “We don’t need another hero.” I decided against the latter — partly because I’m sure other writers have already exhausted it, partly because The Bangles can always do with another shout-out — but in This Our Summer of the Superhero, it’d certainly be apt. With “Green Lantern” following “Thor,” “X-Men: First Class” and, earlier, its troublesome near-namesake “The Green Hornet” on the 2011 release schedule, and with “Captain America” still to come, casual moviegoers could be forgiven for wondering if their local multiplex has been part-colonized by ComicCon.

    It stands to reason that with so many darts being thrown at the same aesthetic and commercial target, some will hit their mark more squarely than others. If “Thor” managed to widely surpass expectations, the law of averages decrees that at least one of its Spandex-clad rivals will likely fail to meet them — or at least live down to expectations that had already been lowered. Critically, at least, it seems “Green Lantern” is taking that bullet: Kris may have appreciated Martin Campbell’s revival of one of the DC library’s dustier properties, but the first wave of reviews has been largely dismissive, with even the film’s vastly expensive effects work taking a beating from both high-end print critics and more genre-friendly bloggers like Drew McWeeny.

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  • Something else to remember Laura Ziskin by

    Across the movie blogs today, you’ve probably seen news of the sad passing of Hollywood super-producer Laura Ziskin, who lost a long battle with breast cancer over the weekend. Most of the obituaries have her name welded to the word “Spider-Man” in their headlines — certainly, her revival of the franchise in 2002 remains the most profitable work of her career. Still, that superhero franchise is hardly the only thing we owe her: also on her producing résumé are two films that shaped the careers of their female stars, “Pretty Woman” and “To Die For,” while industry legend has it that she was a key champion of “Fight Club” in the face of dismayed execs. One credit of hers I haven’t seen mentioned too often, however, is the 1987 Roger Donaldson thriller “No Way Out” — a remake, but one of my favorite pulp pieces of its era, and a reminder of what a terrific movie star Kevin Costner was back in his pre-Oscar prime. The trailer doesn’t really flatter the film, but if you’ve never seen it, let this be your excuse.

  • INTERVIEW: ‘127 Hours’ star James Franco

    James Franco sits in one of the countless, nondescript rooms on the sixth floor of the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles remembering the time he first met mountain climber Aron Ralston in the same building, perhaps in a room not unlike this one.

    It wasn’t even a year ago — January, to be exact, right around the time of the Golden Globes. Director Danny Boyle had recently offered the actor the role of Ralston in “127 Hours,” a film that would depict the harrowing six days the outdoorsman spent with his hand wedged between a boulder and a canyon wall. It was an ordeal that ended with Ralston cutting off his own arm, just below the elbow, in order to survive. And the film would — naturally, given the material and the filmmaker involved — be anything but conventional.

    But Boyle was adamant that the performance not be an “outside-in approach,” as Franco puts it. It couldn’t be slavish mimicry of personality or behavior. But there was this abstract idea of confronting one’s potential demise that remained somewhat elusive for Franco, yet something he nevertheless wanted to reflect in authentic terms. Little did he know he’d find the answer during that first meeting with Ralston, Boyle, writer Simon Beaufoy, producer Christian Colson and production designer Suttirat Larlarb.

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  • 10/6 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Making the case for dual ‘Kids’ nods, FX nabs ‘Social’ rights, Stone up for Stacey

    • On the hunt for “Catfish”‘s Angela Wesselman-Pierce. [Los Angeles Times]

    • Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write up the beginnings of the season (with a little quotage from yours truly). [New York Times]

    • Scott Feinberg makes the case for both Annette Bening and Julianne Moore getting nominated for “The Kids Are All Right.” [ScottFeinberg.com]

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  • CINEJABBER: One more time to kill the pain

    Catch the idea behind these weekend posts here.

    I don’t have much in the way of a conversation starter this week.  However, I was happy to see Emma Stone’s career taking off with the news that she’ll be offered the Mary Jane Watson role in Sony’s “Spider-Man” reboot.

    Many first took notice of the actress in last year’s “Zombieland” but most really perked up with her “Easy A” performance.  Personally, I’ve been quite taken by her since her big screen debut in Greg Mottola’s “Superbad.”

    I never took to Kirsten Dunst in the role, by the way.  There’s a certain sultriness to the character that Dunst (an actress I don’t like in general, “The Virgin Suicides” excepted) just didn’t have.  Stone has that in spades, though I feel like there’s still something slightly off.  Maybe it’s just the general idea of a “Spider-Man” reboot that I still can’t wrap my head around.  Who knows?  But this would be a smart choice by a young star at the beginning of her career.

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  • 9/27 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: ‘Wall Street’ timing, Oscar’s love affair with social relevance and a real-life ‘Whistleblower’

    • Does “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” have poor timing Oscar-wise? (Or, I don’t know, did it just kinda stink?) [The Guardian]

    • On Kathy Bolkovac, the real-life whistleblower of Toronto title “The Whistleblower.” [Lincoln Journal Star]

    • Andrew Garfield has played “Spider-Man” before, FYI. [Daily Telegraph]

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  • SHORT TAKE: “Kick-Ass” (**)

    “With no power comes no responsibility,” smirks high school student Dave Lizewski (aka Kick-Ass) over halfway through British director Matthew Vaughn’s slick, smug bubblegum-burst of a superhero movie. “Except that’s totally not true.”

    This essentially meaningless inversion of Lizewski’s Marvel stablemate Peter Parker’s motto – one wonders which half of the original aphorism is “totally not true,” for starters – is ultimately an apt summation of a film that tries to have its cake, eat it and noisily smash the plate against the wall.

    Aiming at once for nihilism and cuddliness, Vaughn delights in a long and loose moral leash, as an 11 year-old girl guns down corridors full of grown men without batting an eyelid, but steers clear of truly subversive thinking. Or much thinking at all.

    The “Spider-Man” reference is intended to ram home the concept of Lizewski (gamely played by Aaron Johnson, curiously resembling John Lennon slightly more here than he did in the Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy”) as a YouTube-generation Peter Parker: both are four-eyed, put-upon teenaged geeks spurred into assuming positions of moral authority by a lifetime of bullying, landing implausibly hot girlfriends in the process.

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  • 5/19 Web Round-up

    Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol• Anthony Breznicaan reports on the big “Christmas Carol” to do at Cannes. [USA Today]

    • John Hiscock talks to Ron Howard about getting around the Vatican’s disapproval of “Angels & Demons” while filming on location. [Daily Telegraph]

    • David Cox, meanwhile, believes the film will indeed hurt the Catholic Church with its depiction of an organization out of touch with modernity. [The Guardian]

    • And Noah Forrest just wants to know what happened to the Tom Hanks he knew and loved. [Movie City News]

    • Richard Woodward reports on the Jacques Tati retrospective going down at the Cinemathèque Française in Paris [Wall Street Journal]

    • A bit out of the blue, a list of the 10 best suspense films of all time. [The Independent]

    • Erica Abeel talks to Steven Soderbergh about his latest, “The Girlfriend Experience.” [indieWIRE]

    • Nikki Finke reports that yet another actor you could care less about has been cast in Marvel’s “Thor.” [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

    • Well that’s thinking outside the media coverage box for you: a look at…ahem…the “slash” fan fiction of the “Star Trek” dedicated. [Newsweek]

    • Sam Raimi wants to go back in time and do everything on the “Spider-Man” franchise differently.  You and me both, Sam. [Hero Complex]

  • 10/31 Oscarweb Round-up — HALLOWEEN EDITION!

    WALL-E• Tom O’Neil podcasts it with Rosemarie DeWitt. [Gold Derby]

    • Jeffrey Wells comes back to the “Valkyrie” poster with admiration a few weeks later. [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • John Campea is excited about the “WALL-E” Best Picture campaign. [The Movie Blog]

    • Debuting the new “Valkyrie” trailer. [Yahoo! Movies]

    • Anne Thompson takes her first real stab at the season. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Can a Pulitzer Prize winner save the “Spider-Man” franchise? [The Hollywood Reporter]

    • A grown-up’s guide to Halloween movies. [Premiere]

  • REVIEW: “The Incredible Hulk” (***1/2)

    When Ang Lee set out to direct the first feature film adaptation of Marvel’s Incredible Hulk property five years ago, some things were…different.

    Lee was coming off of the major awards success of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which led audiences – many of them skeptics – to ponder what he might be able to accomplish with the psychology of another action-oriented effort.

    However, Marvel had its hands tied. Unlike Detective Comics properties, which fall under Time Warner ownership and therefore receive continual distribution out of Warner Bros. Pictures, Marvel was still at the whims of studio discretion, its properties scattered to the winds despite having the consistency of an Ari Arad behind the scenes.

    Nothing could be said less of Lee as a filmmaker when the finished, disastrous product was unveiled. He took a gamble and hit craps…hard. And he bought back in two years later, bouncing back with a Best Director Oscar to show for it. But Marvel was left with a serious consideration that had likely lingered for many years: how to get a developmental handle on a catalogue of material that was bursting at the seams with cinematic potential.

    The difference now is Marvel Studios, which saw its first production “Iron Man” held on high by critics and audiences alike just one month ago. It was a home run for an unexplored property on the big screen, but could it be duplicated? And via a franchise that wasn’t nearly far enough removed from it’s immediate past to be considered stale by any means?

    Apparently so. Because Louis Leterrier’s “The Incredible Hulk” is not only likely to be the biggest, most exhausting (in all the good ways) film-going experience you’ll have this year, but it also holds the second turtle dove of a young studio’s seizure of what promises to be one of the greatest cinematic roll outs the genre has, or perhaps will ever see.

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