Author: Jason Apuzzo

Jason Apuzzo is co-Editor of Libertas Film Magazine.

LFM Mini-Review: The Green Hornet

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Seth Rogan drops 400 lbs. and attempts to bring nebbish humor to the role of Britt Reid, wealthy Los Angeles scion to a newspaper dynasty who is also secretly the masked crimefighter-vigilante The Green Hornet.

THE SKINNY: It’s a film that might’ve worked had the spectacularly miscast Rogan not been its star, co-screenwriter and executive producer. Not even a slick, stylish Jay Chou as Kato, a fabulous stunt-car (The Black Beauty) or a perky Cameron Diaz can save this colossal turkey from the boring, bloated pseudo-star/narcissist at its core.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK:

• Seth Rogan, the film’s black hole. His titanic ego – unsupported by any actual talent or personal warmth – sucks all life out of the film, and basically ruins whatever slim chances The Green Hornet had to entertain.

• Christoph Waltz, playing a neurotic Russian gangster. His entire role is like a joke that someone keeps re-telling at a party, even after nobody laughed the first time. I felt sorry for him. With that said, it’s nice to finally see Russians replace Italians as the urban villain-of-choice.

• The film’s erratic stabs at humor, which never really gel. Rogan is simply not funny enough as a writer, and is otherwise way out of his league as an actor carrying a film of this size. His lame efforts, paunch and Borscht Belt schtick remind you of how good the Lethal Weapon films were back in the day when they were clicking.

• The action scenes, which never really take flight – although it was fun seeing The Black Beauty take an elevator ride late in the film. I didn’t know cars could fit in elevators.

WHAT WORKS:

• It seems almost impossible that anyone could step into Bruce Lee’s shoes as Kato, yet Taiwanese singer-actor Jay Chou does a nice job of it – exuding a stoic cool, unexpected humor and great martial arts moves. The fight sequences, shot in ‘Kato Vision’ (a combination of ‘bullet-time’ and exaggerated, forced-perspective 3D) worked nicely enough – although there weren’t nearly enough of them.

• The stylish Black Beauty (an Imperial Crown), a car almost as iconic in its day as the Batmobile, is brought back to life with some nice weaponry and gadgets (‘infra-green’ headlights!).

• Cameron Diaz somehow manages the unthinkable by extracting humor and warmth out of a nothing role as Lenore Case, Britt Reid’s personal assistant. I really hope she got paid a lot for being in this film.

Cameron Diaz as Lenore Case.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Hollywood – Sony in this case – has just ruined a great ‘property’ from its past.

A few months ago I happened to pick up a bootleg copy of the entire, original Green Hornet TV series – starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee – and I’ve been enjoying it ever since. (I’m aware, by the way, that there have been many incarnations of The Green Hornet – including on radio, in film serials and in comic books.) The old show was stylish, cool, and somehow more menacing than most standard comic book-style fare. In fact, The Green Hornet may be the only comic book character I actually like, and I was eager to see him brought to the big screen.

What’s great about the original TV series is that the Britt Reid character has no superpowers whatsoever; he’s just this cool, retro-mod guy, with the ultimate bad-ass kung fu partner (I will not stoop to calling the great Bruce Lee a ‘sidekick’) – who spends most of his time acting like the underworld hoods he’s secretly pursuing. And when he’s off work, he kicks back with a cocktail and plots strategy with his sexy secretary. What’s not to like here?

Van Williams brought a subdued intensity to the role; his overcoat, mask and fedora were really the entire character – there wasn’t much else to speak of. And the music – with the jazz trumpet solo by Al Hirt – gave the show the perfect, swinging vibe for the time.

But I was under no illusions about what this new film was going to be like, once Seth Rogan got involved. A project that should’ve been done straight – and most definitely not like a Woody Allen routine – Rogan has instead turned this new film into a vehicle for stupid humor, gross-out jokes and cheap sentimentality. You might say that Rogan has the reverse Midas touch, in that everything he touches turns to lead rather than gold. Someone like Hugh Jackman, or maybe even Affleck – the newer, wiser Affleck – might’ve been perfect to play Britt Reid … but in any case, Seth Rogan should’ve been kept by armed guard about 2,000 miles away from this film. What  the hell did Sony owe him to give him this?

Anyway, save yourself the trouble of watching this mess – whether in 3D, IMAX or on a cheap bootleg. Rogan will sting you in any format you choose.

Posted on January 14th, 2011 at 10:29pm.

Invasion Alert!: The New Purpose of Alien Invasion is … Iraq War-Payback? + Brooklyn Decker & Rosie Huntington-Whiteley!



By Jason Apuzzo. • Given the sudden shift in theme and meanings in ABC’s V, it’s obvious that we’ve got to keep a careful eye on sci-fi these days – as each new project further proliferates and complicates the political messages being conveyed by the genre. Aside from V – which within one week went from satirizing global warming hysteria, to associating the Israeli Mossad and the Catholic Church with suicide bombing (!) – two other interesting cases in point are the forthcoming Battle: Los Angeles, and Steven Spielberg’s new Falling Skies TV series. Let’s do a little speculative ‘deep reading,’ shall we?

The latest Battle: LA trailer (see above), which just hit the internet this week, revealed something interesting: namely, the aliens’ motivations in the film for attacking Earth. Apparently Battle: LA‘s wave of alien invaders – among many similar alien hordes arriving on our planet during the 2011 and 2012 movie calendars – will be arriving specifically in order to seize our natural resources.

Now, this is a fairly typical theme in the alien invasion genre going all the way back to the 1950s, and it has been re-appearing as recently as in V (and James Cameron reversed the scenario in Avatar, with humans doing the invading) … and yet I can’t help but wonder if in a post-Iraq War world whether the subtext of this film, much as in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (at least, according to War of the World‘s screenwriter, David Koepp), is to let Americans now feel ‘what it’s like to be invaded/exploited’ ourselves? (Even when we’re not actually exploiting anyone, but liberating people living under tyranny.)

I only ask this because of this somewhat peculiar, on-the-nose line that appears conspicuously early in the trailer:

“When you invade a place for its resources, you wipe out the indigenous population. Right now, we are being colonized.”

Which real-world invasion/’colonialist’ scenario is that referring to? I’d love to know. Somehow I think I already do.

Were it to be a reverse commentary on the Iraq War, Battle: LA would certainly resemble Spielberg’s War of the Worlds – and, on that note, the other big alien invasion trailer to hit recently was for Spielberg’s Falling Skies TV series (see above).

Aside from recycling every cliché of the genre imaginable, the trailer was noteworthy for this similarly on-the-nose line:

“History is full of inferior forces creating so much trouble that the invading army leaves.”

Hmm. I wonder what ‘history’ this line is referring to here. I keep scratching my head, but I can’t come up with anything – maybe some of Libertas’ clever readers could help? In any case, one gets the sense from both the Battle: LA and Falling Skies trailers – and even from last week’s episode of V (alas) – that the thematic ‘purpose’ of some of these alien invasion thrillers may actually be Iraq War-payback.

Should that be the case – and I’m not yet assuming it is – I’m allowed to find such a message troubling; it has an angry, vengeful, self-loathing quality at a time when the mandarins of our culture are currently lecturing everyone about how we’re supposed to be ‘toning down our rhetoric.’ Hollywood, look in the mirror.

• We’re apparently going to be getting a Total Recall remake with Colin Farrell, a remake which will not be taking audiences to Mars this time , however – nor will the film be shot in 3D. This might actually be the only case in recent memory of aliens actually being removed from a project, rather than added to them (i.e., Universal’s Battleship).

• And speaking of Universal’s Battleship, James Cameron is back in the news – after a whole 2 weeks – for publicly blasting, so to speak, Universal’s alien-invasion themed Battleship. Here’s Cameron:

We have a story crisis. Now they want to make the Battleship game into a film. This is pure desperation. Everyone in Hollywood knows how important it is that a film is a brand before it hit theaters. If a brand has been around, Harry Potter for example, or Spider-Man, you are light years ahead. And there lies the problem. Because unfortunately these franchises are become more and more ridiculous. Battleship. This degrades the cinema.

Unfortunately I agree with him here. We just had Missile Command go into development this week, and in a few months we’ll be getting a third Transformers movie, with McG’s Ouija board game movie not far behind. What’s next, a Voltron movie? Oh, wait, somebody’s already doing that … In other Cameron news, incidentally, here is an update on the Cameron-Guillermo del Toro adaptation of Lovecraft’s ‘alien invasion’ novel At the Mountains of Madness.

Actress-model Brooklyn Decker of "Battleship."

• Incidentally, Universal’s $200 million alien-invasion ‘epic’/board-game adaption Battleship is currently in the midst of reshoots – based on the fact that multiple endings of the film were apparently shot (which probably doesn’t help the budget) – but nonetheless Battleship star Brooklyn Decker is out praising her ’embattled’ director, Peter Berg.

But her standing up for her director isn’t really what’s got you excited, though, is it? You want to see the recent pictures of her shooting the film on the beach in Hawaii – so here you go. You deserve that, after making it through the Falling Skies trailer.

Anne Francis, from "Forbidden Planet."

• It seems impossible, yet even more alien invasion projects were announced this week: Fox just announced that it’s put a movie adaptation of Atari’s classic video game Missile Command into development – a game which has no plot, incidentally; and, just today, something called Alien Sleeper Cell went into development, as well, with District 9 producer Bill Block attached. The title Alien Sleeper Cell alone should tell you everything you need to know about whether the current wave of alien invasion films carry political/ideological connotations.

• The lovely and talented Anne Francis of 1956’s Forbidden Planet has died – just a few months after her Forbidden Planet co-star Leslie Nielsen also passed away. Our condolences to her family. Ms. Francis was a marvelous star, and did a wonderful (if short-lived) series in 1965 called Honey West in which she played a stylish, 60s go-go girl detective. She had a sweet, pixie-like charm about her – and she will certainly be missed.

• Did you know that the alien invasion genre has even hit this year’s Sundance? Of course, Sundance being Sundance … they’ll be premiering Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (no, that’s not a Roger Corman movie) at this year’s festival, along with Another Earth (check out an interview with director Mike Cahill here) and Troll Hunters – the latter being, I suppose, more of a ‘creature invasion’ film.

Rosie Huntington-Whitely of "Transformers 3."

• And on the Creature Invasion Front, Piranha 3D just hit Blu-ray (including 3D Blu-ray; see our review here); David Fincher will apparently be shooting the massive squids of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 3D; Gareth Edwards, director of the indie alien invasion thriller Monsters (see our review here) has improbably been given the Godzilla reboot – which can only mean Legendary Pictures hasn’t actually seen Edwards’ film; and, of course, Troll Hunters will be getting its world premiere at Sundance. I love Troll Hunters’ trailer, by the way – is that because I’ve met so many trolls in LA? The movie does seem authentic in depicting trolls, although in real-life they’re usually much shorter.

• In other Alien Invasion/Sci-Fi News & Notes: we may be getting a Tron sequel after all; there will apparently be a Cowboys & Aliens Super Bowl commercial (you can catch actor Sam Rockwell discussing Cowboys & Aliens here); here are DVD/Blu-ray details for Skyline (see our review here); J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 and also Transformers 3 will be getting the IMAX treatment; we may also be getting a Super 8 trailer in March; there are some new production stills out for Steven Spielberg’s Terra Nova TV series; Charlize Theron may be in contention for the Alien prequels (I doubt she’ll make it; it will probably be Noomi Rapace); there’s a new TV spot out for I am Number Four; the new alien invader-comedy Paul has a new trailer (it’s terrible); the faux-documentary alien invasion thriller Apollo 18 will now be released on April 22nd; Jodie Foster has signed on for Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium; check out this new trailer for the Star Wars Blu-rays; and there’s a great new trailer out for the new Star Wars: The Old Republic video game.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Transformers 3′s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has an artsy, sexy new photoshoot out, perhaps designed to make people forget that Megan Fox was once the belle of that alien invasion franchise. Click here to see more of the shoot .. which is quite an eye-full.

And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!

Posted on January 13th, 2011 at 4:26pm.


Showtime Says The Kennedys Doesn’t Fit Their ‘Brand’; But Secret Diary of a Call Girl Does!

"Um, maybe we can do cameos on 'Weeds'?"

By Jason Apuzzo. To add to The History Channel’s initial rejection of Joel Surnow’s The Kennedys miniseries, you can now add Showtime’s rejection of the series – and also that of Starz and FX.

According to Showtime, even though the miniseries is “well-produced, well-acted and a quality piece of work,” it still apparently “doesn’t fit the Showtime programming brand.” Let’s remember here that several series that do apparently fit the Showtime brand are: Californication, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Weeds, and Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Available only as a bootleg?

I know that everyone is currently consumed with the controversy associated with the Arizona shooting, but this developing story with respect to the Kennedy miniseries is really quite extraordinary – and eerily reminiscent of the situation from several years ago with respect to ABC’s The Path to 9/11, a series that was critical of the Clintons. Whereas the CBS miniseries The Reagans – the series to which The Kennedys has repeatedly been compared in the media – did eventually land on Showtime, no such fate currently seems guaranteed for Surnow’s series, which is extraordinary.

In the years since The Path to 9/11 came out, my colleague Cyrus Nowrasteh has been reduced to handing out bootlegged copies of the film to friends and colleagues, because ABC refuses to release a DVD of the program. The situation is really quite incredible, when you consider that Path was a $40 million network movie that had 28 million viewers the night of its premiere. I’m sure Joel never thought such a situation was possible with respect to The Kennedys, yet here we are all over again.

It’s a shame that the Fox News and talk radio people are so busy right now having to defend their own careers, because at least they still have some measure of free speech in what they do. If you work in the Hollywood system? Forget it.

Posted on January 12th, 2011 at 3:36pm.

UPDATED: ABC’s V Back Tonight + New Morena Baccarin Interview with Details About the Show’s Future

Morena Baccarin as the alien queen, Anna.

By Jason Apuzzo. I just wanted to remind those of you who are enjoying ABC’s V that the show is back tonight, in what promises to be an interesting episode. Previews for the show (albeit not the one below) have shown a suicide bombing taking place during this episode; plus, the colorful Jane Badler – who played the alien leader in the old series – returns in this episode, something teased in the season premiere.

Also today there’s a new interview out with actress Morena Baccarin, who plays the Visitor queen, Anna. SPOILER WARNING: Baccarin reveals some tantalizing details about how the show’s storyline will be developing – including what cast members from the original series will be returning, and in what capacity; and, furthermore, it’s revealed that the producers have planned-out the storyline of the series through a hypothetical third season, a season which may or may not happen depending on ratings.

Click on over to Collider for more details. I’ve also embedded a preview for tonight’s show below.

[UPDATE: Having now seen the episode, I was not happy with it at all – and my earlier fears about the ‘suicide bomber’ subplot were validated, alas. Although there were aspects of the show I liked – particularly the speculative elements about the human soul, and Jane Badler’s juicy performance as the alien queen’s mother – I was very disappointed by the overall arc and purpose of the suicide bomber subplot. Its purpose seems to be to show that ‘desperate people in desperate circumstances’ will turn to terrorism, even – as we learn – an ex-Israeli Mossad agent. Memo to ABC: the Mossad fights terrorism, and doesn’t practice it. Had the leader of this rogue, suicide-bombing branch of the show’s ‘Fifth Column’ been a Chechen or a Russian, I think it would’ve been much more believable. As it stands, however, having its leader be ex-Mossad feels like a cheap shot toward the Israelis. Also: having the actual suicide bomber himself be a Catholic parishioner who is ‘inspired’ by Father Jack’s words was in extremely poor taste. What a disappointment. Two shows in, and my enthusiasm has already cooled.]

Posted on January 11th, 2011 at 2:26pm.

Director Peter Yates, 1929-2011 & The Lost Art of Understated Cool

By Jason Apuzzo. Peter Yates, the director of Bullitt and other acclaimed films, has passed away at age 82.

I was very sorry to read this today, because just last weekend I’d watched Bullitt while listening to Yates’ director’s commentary – which was superb. Yates was a fine director – one of my favorites of his was The Deep from 1977 – and was originally brought from the UK to the United States by Steve McQueen to do Bullitt (Yates’ first American film) because of his fine work on the 1967 film Robbery; Robbery had featured a great car chase and an avant-garde style that McQueen very much liked.

"Bullitt"'s cool sophistication has rarely been matched.

Yates and cinematographer William Fraker (who just passed away this past year) brought an understated, documentary styling to Bullitt that continues to make it a cut above its many imitators – a kind of clinical/ironic detachment that made everything in the film seem more believable, and therefore more intense. Almost as if eavesdropping, the audience hardly ever sees anything in Bullitt happen directly – but only through reflected images, windows, mirrors; plus, the long lenses Fraker used give the photography the feeling of being an act of surveillance. When combined with the tight, economical performances of the cast – and Lalo Schifrin’s jazz score – these qualities lend Bullitt a cool sophistication that few films of any genre can match.

I remember my parents telling me that when Bullitt came out in 1968, they were so excited by it that they sat through two consecutive screenings – something I don’t think they’ve done before or since. The film still has that kind of effect on people, I think in part due to its depiction of strong, stylish professionals (McQueen in particular) maintaining their cool in moments of extreme tension and suspense. Watch the famous car chase from the film above, for example. Look how perfectly dressed everybody is, and how they never lose their composure – even while careening over the vertiginous hills of San Francisco.

Yates and Irvin Kershner, who also passed away recently, were director/storytellers of a different generation who were less obtrusive, less likely to impose themselves on their material than today’s breed. They were, in short, pros – with a passion for documentary fidelity to reality – more than they were self-styled, egocentric auteurs out to distort reality (Nolan, Aronosfsky, etc.).

Yates will be missed; his films, however, will certainly live on and stand the test of time.

Posted on January 10th, 2011 at 1:51pm.

UPDATED: Kennedy Series Pulled by History Channel Due to Network’s ‘Rigorous Standards’; Ancient Aliens Apparently OK

By Jason Apuzzo. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 24 creator Joel Surnow’s 8-part miniseries The Kennedys has apparently been cancelled by The History Channel after the show “was not considered historically accurate enough for the network’s rigorous standards.” The series stars Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes and Tom Wilkinson.

I’m laughing at this, because just the other day while channel surfing I happened to notice that The History Channel is still running its rigorously accurate series Ancient Aliens, featuring theories on extraterrestrial visitations to our planet – theories explained by such noted, credible scholars as Erich von Däniken.

Greg Kinnear & Katie Holmes in "The Kennedys."

What a farce this decision is.

For the record, Govindini and I know Joel and are certain that he and his team have put together a show that more than merits a showing on a network that currently includes on its schedule such scrupulously accurate series as MonsterQuest, The Bible Code: Predicting Armageddon, Nostradamus Effect, The Real Face of Jesus?, Stan Lee’s Superhumans and UFO Hunters.

We’ve embedded the trailer for Joel’s series above, and frankly it looks great. It also appears to be pointed and opinionated on the subject of the Kennedys – but nothing out of bounds, from what I’ve thus far seen.

After all, don’t we already know that image and reality were often quite different with respect to the Kennedys? God forbid that discrepancy would actually be dramatized in a television series.

As a side note, The History Channel has just guaranteed a few more ratings points for this series when it eventually airs on another network (possibly Showtime, according to reports) – which it inevitably will.

[UPDATE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air for linking to this post. Welcome to our Hot Air readers.]

[UPDATE #2: It now appears that The History Channel pulled the show due to lobbying on behalf of Caroline Kennedy, and also Maria Shriver according to The Hollywood Reporter. As the story goes, the History Channel is co-owned by Disney – and Kennedy herself has a book deal with Disney – and she was planning to appear on (Disney’s) ABC network to do some exclusive promotion of the book. So it seems that Disney received an ‘either/or’ choice from the Kennedys, and ultimately decided to drop the show – and concoct this ludicrous story about the show ‘not being up to network standards.’ And so the farce goes on.]

Posted on January 8th, 2011 at 5:15pm.