And I really love that movie. I truly do.

And now Iron Man 2 is coming up this Friday. And I couldn’t be more nervous about it.

I’m worried it’s just gonna be terrible. I think my reasoning is that the first time around there wasn’t so much focus on who the bad guys are, and I think that the people playing the bad guys are bad choices. The Batman franchise started to die when the films focused more on the bad guys than on Batman. Mickey Rourke? Really? He looks terrible. And silly. And Scarlett Johansson? Man, she’s so one-note actress (like Natalie Portman) it’s not even funny.

Maybe it’s the product tie-ins (I’ve seen about 25 in the past couple of days) or the bad guys in the movie. I don’t know. Just have a strange feeling about this one. Maybe it’ll be different once I see it, and I’ll see it, but we’ll see.

UPDATE - The reviews are in and they aren’t that great. Compared to the 92% that the first Iron Man film got among the top critics on RT, IM2 has gotten a rousing 66%. One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow tweeted “Iron Man 2: the stupid, it burns. Wait for DVD, watch in Italian, pretend it’s opera.” I kinda feel bad for John Favreau, who’s a great director, but I’m sure he’s laughing all the way to the bank since IM2 brought in, in the opening weekend, $128,122,480. Typical Hollywood. We’ll see, after word of mouth, what the dropoff will be.

Getting a Little Nervous About Iron Man 2…. is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

And everyone said that Avatar would be a game changer, the meme was coming down the pipe even before the movie was released and the whole understanding of why it would be the game-changer-to-be was because of the photorealistic characters. But for some reason that whole angle of the film has been lost in the cloud that it was in 3-D.

Glorious 3-D! Plants and animals and those Huey helicopter looking VTOLs and floating mountains and all. All of it in 3-D. And like I said earlier, the film looks great.

So now other studios have latched onto that breaking new technology from the 1950′s also and films all over the place are about to be released in 3-D, whether you want them to be or not. Clash of the Titans was filmed in standard 2-D, but after Avatar splashed big Warner Bros. went back and made Titans into 3-D to satisfy this unquenchable desire for Perseus and the Kraken and Medusa’s head to be in 3-D. The remake of Piranha is going to be in 3-D and even more films are coming out in that cutting edge 20th Century technology.

But butts in the seats in theaters have been declining for the past several years since HD has been introduced into the home theater market. The big studios have been asking themselves what could bring people back to the theater and they think they’ve found it, for now.

Going back to the game changer – I don’t see why the studios haven’t figured out yet why Avatar is really such a big deal, because it’s fairly obvious. Maybe it’s because of legal issues that would be involved in the making of film, but the logical end to what Avatar has brought us is filmmakers being able to have any actor or actress, living or dead, in their film. George C. Scott as Robert E. Lee in a Ridley Scott picture? Done. Jimmy Stewart and Jim Carrey finally together in a comedy after all this time? Doable. Grace Kelly back to play Julia Roberts’ mother? Not impossible. All it takes is a bunch of LEDs on a stand-in actor’s head and we can paint Charlie Chaplin in a new comedy from the Farrelly brothers. He could eat poop or something and then do a funny dance.

Voice talent could be big then and actors that never got work before could (secretly) put blockbusters on their resumes. Like I said, legal issues abound, since the families of these people might disagree with allowing their loved ones to return from the grave to be resurrected again on the big screen, but everyone in Hollywood has a price, right?

So 3-D? It’s a fad again. Hollywood should look to the real future – harvesting dead actors for profit.

Why Avatar Was Revolutionary and the Studios Just Don’t Understand Why is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

And the people of the area were very nice and we always had a great time there. It was fun.

So fast-forward many years later. To a month or so ago.

I had seen the preview for Amores Perros at the Inwood Theater many years ago and remembered at the time that it had been said that it was a sort-of Mexican Pulp Fiction, so when I saw it was going to be on IFC a couple of weeks ago I set up the Tivo to tape it. It sat there for awhile, waiting for us, and we finally watched it.

Oh boy.

If you don’t know about the movie, Amores Perros follows several groups of people in Mexico City in a non-linear story. There is Octavio, who is in love with his brother’s wife and wants to help her leave him, so he starts putting his pet Rottweiler into dog fights. There’s also a guy who is cheating on his wife with a soap opera star and her dog falls down in this hole in the floor and then she falls into the hole and requires some sort of surgery and she can’t walk anymore. And there’s a homeless guy who’s a gun for hire, killing people for money, but all he really wants is to see his daughter again and tell her that he loves her, so he double-crosses two business partners and steals their money and then….

But that would give away the ending, which, like mostly everything in Amores Perros, is heart-wrenching and sad.

And what you see of Mexico City is horrifying. It’s actually worse than Man on Fire, which was also a film about a guy who’s seeking revenge for a kidnapped little girl in Mexico City. The only thing that Man on Fire has that Amores Perros doesn’t have is a guy gets his fingers chopped off. Or Denzel Washington. He’s in Man on Fire, which makes the cool quotient of Man on Fire rise dramatically.

But still, Amores Perros is terrifying. And I’m also glad I never paid to see it, unlike Trainspotting. I will never go to Mexico City after seeing this film. Do I want to fear for my life, or that I might be kidnapped, or a family member might be kidnapped and then held for ransom? What if I paid and that family member was killed by the kidnappers? Or caught in a car chase where someone is racing an injured dog to the hospital? Then again, the dog is a Rottweiler, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it dying, but still, what if I was hit by those guys while driving? And then a crazy homeless hitman stole my wallet while he was pretending to help me? And what if a crazy homeless hitman killed me while I was there? How much would someone in Mexico City pay to have me killed if the Peso is so low to the dollar?

It boggles the mind. Give me a fake dreamy Mexico where the people are friendly and wonderful and no one will kill me if I decided to travel there. I’ll take Mexico in the late 1970′s for $1000, Alex.

What were some of Glenn Vance’s happiest memories of traveling as a child?

You know the answer.

After Seeing Amores Perros, I Only Want to Go to the “Fake” Mexico is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

Databank Keeper – “Okay, so what have we got so far?”
George Lucas – “Nothing. We have nothing.”
DK – “Alright…what is it? Human, creature of some sort….something…”
GL – “Not human. We have enough humans. Make it a creature.”
DK – “Sentient or not?”
GL – “Definitely sentient.”
DK – “Wise or not?”
GL – “Wise? Like Yoda?”
DK – “Yeah.”
GL -  “Hmm…not so wise. Just normal.”
DK – “Okay, a normal creature. What does it look like?”
GL – “Furry. Tall and furry.”
DK – “Like a Wookiee?”
GL – “Okay…no, make it short.”
DK – “Like an Ewok?”
GL – *Sigh* “Scratch furry. Make it scaly. And green.”
DK – “Like Greedo?”
GL – “…Okay. Scaly, green, big beaver teeth.”
DK – “Like Walrus Man?”
GL – “Why is this so hard?”
DK – “I don’t know. You thought this stuff up.”
GL – “Short. Pigish…creature.”
DK – “Like an Ugnaught?”
*George hits his fist on the desk – repeatedly*
GL – “Okay, not scaly and green. Scaly and…orange.”
DK – “…Orange is good.”
GL – “Yes, orange is good. Don’t have many orange creatures.”
DK – “What do we call the orange creature’s species?”
GL – “How about a…Rith.”
DK – “No can do. Too close to ‘Bith’. And ‘Sith’.”
GL – “Toynarian! Vimbanite! Morax! Anything!”
DK – “Toydarian, Mimbanite, Gorax. Already done.”
GL – “Okay…Flangian.”
DK – “Flangian?”
GL – “Yes. A Flangian. He will be a Flangian.”
DK – “Where did you come up with that?”
GL – “I just…created…it.”
DK – “Fine. What’s the Flangian’s backstory?”
*Silence for 5 minutes*
GL – “The Flangian was recruited by criminal elements on his home world, Flangia, and eventually grew up on a crime boss’ ship, the Bardo’s Luck. He eventually bought his freedom from the crime boss and joined went to the Imperial Academy. He was a good pilot but he got kicked out for…some reason…so he got back into crime and smuggled…things…around the galaxy. And then for…some reason…he got caught up in the Rebellion.”
DK – “…That’s Han Solo.”
GL – “YYYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
He breaks a technical Oscar against the wall.
DK – “You know this isn’t easy, George! Remember how long it took you to come up with Yoda?”
GL – “Jar Jar was so much simpler.”
DK – “Yeah, but the whole ‘race’ thing with him…”
GL – “Yeah, that sucked.”
DK – “Yeah.”
GL – “Okay…he grew up privledged, but then was sent to a farm when his parents died. He moved to a swamp planet and then after being hunted down by Dark Jedi he fled there to go live with…Ewoks or something. And his best friend, he’s a Jedi too, and so his friend and he love the same girl but finally have a duel on a space platform -”
DK – “…You’re kidding…right?”
GL – “…What?”
DK – “That’s like everybody you’ve ever created in the whole saga, main-character-wise.”
GL – “Hey, who came up with this? Me? Yes, me! I’m detecting a more critical tone than usual, so don’t screw with me! Making this stuff up is hard!”
DK – “Well exsqueeze me.”
GL – “Shut up, Jar Jar.”
DK – “Okay, easy one. What’s his name?”
GL – “How about…Fluke Bolo?”
DK – “Or Gorge Mucus? Come on, man! Are you kidding? Are you really out of ideas? Come on, man!”
*George hangs his head*
DK – “What should we call our scaly orange Flangian? I don’t know. Just say whatever pops into your head. That’ll be his name.”
GL – “Bill.”
DK – “Bill?”
GL – “That’s the first thing that popped into my head.”
*George twiddles his thumbs*
GL – “Okay, we can work with…Bill.”

The Creative Mind of George Lucas Divines a New Star Wars Character is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

But whether it’s Rob Lowe and Snow White dancing to “Proud Mary” or Savion Glover tap-dancing to the music from Schindler’s List, the musical numbers do serve their purpose. Imagine you’re the one sitting in that giant theater waiting for your name to be called as one of the honored few in your category. You’re crowded next to your co-stars and the producers, you kinda need to use the restroom but the lines are incredibly long and just at that moment the producers of the show have shined their timing wisdom on you and start showing a dance retrospective from the past eighty years of Oscars.

And all of those people that make the movies, most of them are the little guy, the guy you’ve never heard of that did something really cool with the special effects from Iron Man or The Dark Knight, shouldn’t he be honored too? Yes, he’s crammed into the boring part of the show, the part of the show that everyone watches just to see what the goofy costume designer is wearing and what bizarre political rant they’re going to go on during the Best Documentary award.

The Academy is made up of TONS of people, and they all want their moment in the sun.

What if you were that little guy? The guy that won Best Live Action Short? Wouldn’t you want your moment?

So stop complaining during the bloated, overly-long Oscars. Let’s win one for the little guy.

In Defense of a Looooong Academy Awards Show is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

But I have to agree with Corliss on his secondary point; being the end of the year this is the time for awards-caliber films, and this year is looking pretty lame. Early on I was interested in seeing Gran Torino but then my interest fizzled out for no perceptible reason even though I love Clint Eastwood. The Reader sounds so boring and Slumdog Millionaire deals with under-aged prostitution so they’re out in my book.

But Corliss doesn’t bring up the biggest glaring omission that he made about the two films that we do agree on. The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan who did the fantastic Memento several years back and John Favreau directed Iron Man. Favreau started out in indie films (Swingers, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) and then moved on to directing (Will Ferrell’s second most underrated performance – Elf) Indie directors tend to focus more on story and plot than, say, Michael Bay or that dufus McG because their budgets are usually in the high hundred-thousands or the low millions. What’s been great about Nolan’s and Favreau’s careers is that they so far have kept the indie ethic of storytelling first and just tacking on the special effects to aide the visuals.

I doubt Iron Man or The Dark Knight will get nominated for the big awards, other than Heath Ledger, but the were enjoyable and interesting films that deserved the critical accolades, and the piles of money, that they earned.

Richard Corliss and Why the Blockbusters Were the Best Films This Year is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

And so I was perusing it the other day and came across a headline, written with, as usual for AICN, with too many exclamation points -

Lucas Talks INDY 5!!

Wha…? More Indiana Jones movies? Isn’t Harrison Ford getting too old (Of course, it’s not the age, it’s the mileage.) to do this kind of stuff anymore? Shouldn’t he be the loving father in a Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson movie? Why not an arty drama, Harrison, like the Michael Douglas role you turned down in Traffic?

But then again George Lucas has never seen a bad opportunity to return to the well too many times. The second Star Wars trilogy was enough to prove that and once again Lucas is bringing the anger to himself. From AICN, quoting a Fox News article -

“I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison this,” he said. “But I have an idea to make Shia [LeBeouf] the lead character next time and have Harrison [Ford] come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out.

“And it’s not like Harrison is even old. I mean, he’s 65 and he did everything in this movie. The old chemistry is there, and it’s not like he’s an old man. He’s incredibly agile; he looks even better than he did 20 years ago, if you ask me.”

Come on, George! Leave. It. Alone! It was bad enough that you guys had to make just one more Indy film, we might have another 2 or 3 films where Indy is hobbling around while his son is the hero?

Good God, man, when are you going to know when to say when? Stop it! Just stop!

George Lucas Needs to Have Fewer Ideas is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

1) Damon has said no more Bourne films after this one.

I understand what he’s doing here. He wants to be identified with something else besides Jason Bourne ((Maybe he shouldn’t do any more of the Ocean’s movies then, either.)), but that doesn’t make it any easier.

2) The amazingly cool Brian Cox is gone.

I love Brian Cox. He’s one of the great character actors of his generation and seeing his character Abbott kill himself in The Bourne Supremacy was heartbreaking for me. I was very disappointed when he turned out to be a bad guy because up until that moment that he stabbed his lackey he was just a great amoral character.

3) More shaky camera fight scenes.

One of my big criticisms between the first and second films was the way hand-to-hand combat scenes were filmed. Doug Liman filmed the scene in Bourne’s Paris apartment from about 10 feet back, allowing you to see what was going on with the knife/pen fighting. Paul Greengrass shot the fight scene inside of the house in Germany way too close to the action and with far too many edits for my taste. French director Jean-Luc Godard ((If you don’t know him, Godard was one of the most influential members of the French New Wave movement in film. The New Wavers experimented radically with editing, visual style, and narrative, and the movement has been claimed to influence many movies, from Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde all the way to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Wes Andersen’s The Royal Tenenbaums.)) said “Every edit is a lie,” and it’s true. I would have preferred a more continuous feel to the combat than a shaky pile up of visuals.

4) No more Franka Potente.

Unless some miracle happened in that Indian river, Marie’s not coming back. That’s too bad.

And unless there’s a huge plot change, this is how it will all go down – the CIA will find Bourne somewhere and try to dispose of him. Bourne will rely on his training and smarts and will outwit all of them and overcome his adversaries. In the end he will be more paranoid than ever.

I’m sure it will be good, though. We’ll see.

What I’m Not Looking Forward to With The Bourne Ultimatum is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

In her favor, she’s been in some fine movies but that doesn’t mean that she’s been fine in them. Several cases in point I’ll go over here – Dave, The Truman Show and Breach. Let’s break ‘em down.

I loved and continue to love Dave. Why wouldn’t I love it, given that it was the first “date” I went on with my wife in college? In Dave, Kevin Kline is thrust into the role of President of the United States when the man (the real President) he was doubling for has a massive stroke. Linney plays the Oval Office secretary that the real President was having an affair with when he had the stroke and her “fawning” and “relief” when the “President” returns to office ring hollow. You can tell that Dave is a little freaked out by her reaction and with good reason – he has no idea who she is and she’s chomping at the scenery. Not a good choice for a rather important plot point.

I also love The Truman Show and still think that Jim Carrey has the makings of an actual living breathing actor in him, if he can just get away from mainstream fare like Fun with Dick and Jane or Bruce Almighty. But in The Truman Show, Linney once again rears her bad-actor head, this time in the role of Meryl, Carrey’s television wife. She’s over-the-top skittish and not likable at all, and maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t make her sympathetic in any way when she breaks down while Carrey interrogates her in their kitchen about his situation. The only good that could have come from that scene would have been if Carrey had killed Meryl with that jar of Mococoa she was holding.

And what can you say about her in Breach? It wasn’t a big money maker, but it wasn’t a bad movie at all, far from it. It was better than I thought it would be, but Linney plays tough-as-nails FBI agent Kate Burroughs, and she wasn’t a very good choice for the part. Get someone else, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, just don’t pick Linney to talk tough to Ryan Phillippe. It’s flat and silly and we know that she’s doing the one thing she doesn’t want you to know she’s doing : acting. She was just wrong for the part.

In her favor though she’s done some wonderful (or at least, good) films also where she too has been wonderful. You Can Count on Me, where she plays big brother to the way-cool Mark Ruffalo, is excellent, and she is too. She’s also great in Love Actually as the pathetically lonely Sarah who pines away for Rodrigo Santoro. She hits all the right notes as she tries to woo Santoro and take care of her mentally imbalanced brother. And while it wasn’t (any) good, The Life of David Gale featured her as an anti-death penalty advocate and she was very good. It always seems that the parts she’s best in are where she’s a pathetic little creature trying to get by in the world or fight for a higher cause. Unfortunately, you don’t get too far in Hollywood playing the same character over and over. [2. Or maybe you can. Case in point - Robin Williams.]

When Linney’s good and cast in the right character she’s great, but when she seems completely out of her league it’s embarrassing to watch. I just don’t “get” Laura Linney. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Is Laura Linney a Good Bad Actress or a Bad Good Actress? is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

“It’s a little bit of a cri de coeur to us, a little bit of a call to arms” against the prevailing conservatism, he told a media conference, adding that his country was living in “the era of Bush, which is about clamping down, being scared.” The 43-year-old, whose previous work was Hedwig and the Angry Inch, about a transsexual rock singer, said the film was his own small act of defiance against Bush. “If you can’t do elections you might as well do erections,” he said.

More…

One scene likely to create controversy in the United States and some other countries shows a gay threesome in which one participant joyfully bellows “The Star Spangled Banner.” The actor with the singing voice, PJ Deboy, said he did the scene to show that he was as American as anyone, despite resistance to gays in parts of the country, including Washington.

“I thought to myself: “Can I do it…?’ And I decided I could, because it is a patriotic act…. There’s nothing un-American about gay sex and there’s nothing unpatriotic about it,” he said.

Tim Robbins, an actor I’ve liked for a long time, is currently starring in a stage production of George Orwell’s “1984?. His thoughts on the play -

“We have right now a media that is willfully ignoring the high crimes and misdemeanors of the president of the United States…”"(Bush) got us into (the Iraq) war based on lies that he knew were lies. … His war has recruited more al-Qaeda members than Osama bin Laden could ever have dreamed for … yet no one in the media is calling for impeachment,” he said.

“Unfortunately, the book and the play is more relevant now than it ever has been,” he said. “(It) talks about continuous warfare as a means to control the Western economy, and as a way to control rebel elements within society through the use of fear, constant fear.”

“In my country we seem to be sanctioning renditioning of innocent people without trial… put them in jail without telling anyone… and torture them out of suspicion of what we think they might do,” Robbins said.

“This is exactly what Orwell was talking about when he spoke of thought crimes,” he added.

You may not know this, but as soon as the 3 people above said what they said, they were whisked away to a secret CIA prison camp where they were tortured and humiliated for saying and doing what they did.

Yeah, right.

Why do film makers feel that they’re under constant persecution, when they live in the freest country in the world? Many places, they wouldn’t be able to even make these films or say what they are saying. It’s just foolish.

Creatively Paranoid is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

Clerks II

For some of you, you’re wondering what I’m talking about. Like my parents. If you’re like me, you know that Clerks II is a sequel to Clerks, the 1994 film that cleaned up at Sundance and made a star of director Kevin Smith, who, upon finding out his film had been selected for Sundance, had to close up the convenience store he was working at at the time. It was a great rags to riches story, very Capra-esque.

At the time I loved Clerks. At the time.

After repeated viewings I think it grows less and less funny, but that first time that you see it it is hilarious, usually. It’s very much a guy comedy, though, I don’t know many girls that like Clerks.

And then he started making movies, none of which really did as well as Clerks. It’s like the story of a band’s 2nd album : the first album took 8 years to make, the 2nd, 3 months. And they’re never as good.

He made Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and then Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. After that came the worst of the worst, from what I hear, yes I haven’t seen it, Jersey Girl.

And now, with failure staring him in the face, he comes full circle with what made him popular. A Clerks sequel.

Lame!

Clerks II! Run For Your Lives! is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

If you’re like me and kind of lost interest in what James Bond does along about when Timothy Dalton took over, you probably won’t care about this new film either. But I like the old school James Bond films, they’re fun and have their silly kitsch factor about them. And go ahead and make fun of me, but after Connery my favorite Bondie is George Lazenby. Yes, I like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, ‘cause the movie rokkks, man. It’s got one of the better story lines and it’s the deepest you ever get into Bond’s character, since he gets married and all. And then she dies, which is gold, man.

But I’ve got a theory about all this James Bond stuff.

It started out with the last Bond film, Die Another Day. It was the 40th anniversary of the Bond juggernaut and they had a scene where the then-current Bond, Pierce Brosnan, was with John Cleese’s Q, and in the scene they’re walking through Q’s workshop and they have a lot of different gadgets and weapons that Bond used over the decades. Bond picks up the shoe dagger from From Russia with Love and looks at it like he has no idea what it is, just this quizzical look. He puts it down after pondering it a moment, but it sparked something in me. And I think I figured out who “James Bond” is.

Another thought – in the new film, Casino Royale, new Bond, the butt-kicking Daniel Craig, is shown earning his two zeros the only way that he can earn them – by assassinating two people. Later on Judi Dench’s M speaks with Bond. Now, if this were some sort of origin story, as it’s being purported to be, shouldn’t M look a little bit like Bernard Lee, who played him for decades before he died? If we’re going waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to tell how James became who he is, why is M a woman? I don’t think MI6 from 1964 would want anybody else but Moneypenny.

Because there are many James Bonds, and the name is a pseudonym for someone else hiding behind the persona.

And it’s backed up by the line said by Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service -

James Bond: [to the camera] This never happened to the other fellow.

It makes sense. If Daniel Craig has to earn his ‘00’ title then Judi Dench can be there, since Daniel Craig’s “James Bond” is circa 2006, not 1964. And it explains why Brosnan can eye a dagger shoe like a dork.

It totally makes sense. And you know me, I’m never wrong. Ever!

My Theory on James Bond is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

Can a Film That Opens on a Tuesday Win the Weekend? is a post from Glenn Vance's site.

As far as happily ever after, this is not. So why take the chance you’ll either be shot, poisoned or suffocated and even think about buying a repossessed house?

After Seeing The House of Sand and Fog, I Will Never Buy a Repossessed House is a post from Glenn Vance's site.