Category: Movies

ST Covered by EW

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I’ll bet it’s not to hard to guess what will be the cover story of next week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly. That’s right, ZONErs, the new “Star Trek” movie will get the EW main feature treatment. The issue hits newsstands this Friday and will contain exclusive set visit photos.

I’m a huge fan of the original “Star Trek” in whatever form, tv series, cartoon or movie. I never gave any of the other incarnations of “Star Trek” more than a occasional glance. I am looking forward to the new movie though. It’ll be interesting to see if the magic can be recaptured. Perhaps the Entertainment Weekly cover story will give us a hint.

Empire’s 500 Greatest Movies of All Time

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Empire Magazine recently posted their list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. 500 is just too big a list to deal with… so, using just THEIR TOP 50, I made a list of MY TOP 10 of EMPIRE’s TOP 50. Without further adieu, here they are in alphabetical order:
  • Aliens (James Cameron, 1986): Took the Alien concept and made it a franchise… and the best movie of the series.
  • Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942): Bogie at his best.
  • Die Hard (John McTiernan 1988): Redefined the action genre and turned Bruce Willis into a star.
  • Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964): “There’s no fighting in the war room!” — Need I say more?
  • Godfather, The (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972): Perhaps the best cast movie of all time.
  • Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974): One of the rare movies that is as good as the original… especially when the original is as good as The Godfather.
  • Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The (Sergio Leone, 1967): Classic title + classic theme + Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, and Sergio Leone = All Time Greatest Movie
  • Matrix, The (The Wachowski Brothers, 1999): Redefined the action genre. If only the sequels had been as good.
  • Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994): Made Tarantino a star… and rightly so.
  • Terminator 2: Judgement Day (James Cameron, 1991): Like Godfather II and Aliens, a sequel that was as good as the original.

Now THAT’S the Spirit…

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Wow. Hard to believe after all the, uh, not so great stuff we’ve seen, but this trailer for Frank Miller’s movie adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit actually looks viewable. I still have no illusions that it will be on par with Sin City or 300, but it now looks MUCH better than other trailers and clips have presented it.So, that begs the question: Is this just a well cut trailer hiding a really bad film?


Who is the Cold Warrior?

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Yesterday Variety announced Shane Black will direct Universal Pictures’ “Cold Warrior.” Black is best known for his screenwriting abilities having written “Lethal Weapon,” “The Last Boy Scout,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” “Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang” [which he also directed] to name just four.

“Cold Warrior” will be based on a script by Chuck Mondry, and involves a Cold War era spy who is called out of retirement and teamed with a younger agent to take on a Russian-backed domestic terrorism threat.

My bet is you can guess who I’d love to see play the spy called out of retirement.

 

Hitchcock’s 10 Best

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TimesOnLine recently posted their choices for the Hitchcock’s 50 Most Memorable Moments. Using just their selections, I provide for your perusal, my Top Ten Hitchcock Moments:

  1. North by Northwest (1959) The crop-dusting scene: This is perhaps Hitchcock’s most famous scene: Cary Grant on the run from killers, finds himself alone in the middle of nowhere. A crop duster appears on the horizon. As it flies closer, we know even before the machine gun fire, that Grant has been found!

  2. Psycho (1960) The shower scene: If the crop dusting scene isn’t Hitchcock’s most famous, then this has to be. We still believe that Janet Leigh, the star of the movie, is going to come out okay. Once she takes a shower things will start looking up. Unfortunately they don’t, and she should have. Through the shower curtain we can see the murderer quietly sneaking over. Suddenly the shower curtain is thrown back, Bernard Herrmann’s score blasts and anyone who has ever seen the scene knows that taking a shower will never be the same.

  3. The Birds (1963) Climbing frame: When Tippi Hedren sits on bench and lights up a cigarette we see a single crow on the monkey bars behind her. As she begins to smoke a few more land. She’s oblivious to them and what they represent. Finally she takes notice of a bird that flies into frame and to the monkey bars. She [and the audience] see for the first time that dozens, perhaps hundreds of birds now cover the playground equipment.

  4. The Birds (1963) The “God” shot: This film is filled with so many memorable moments, and who can forget this classic scene? Hitchcock literally gives us a bird’s eye view of the carnage below… birds attacking, as the gas station explodes and the town goes up in flames… and as the camera looks in all directions all we can see are more birds!

  5. Psycho (1960) The discovery of “Mother” in the basement: Theater owners wouldn’t let people come in during the last minutes of the movie so as not to ruin the shocking surprise as we discover for the first time, the secret of “mother.”

  6. North by Northwest (1959) The amazing denoument: Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint have been chased across the country and find themselves trapped on, of all places, the presidents’ heads on Mount Rushmore. She is barely hanging on as Grant stretches to pull her up and suddenly…a happy ending. Like in Vertigo where we don’t see how Jimmy Stewart manages to get back to safety, it just doesn’t matter.

  7. Saboteur (1942) The Statue of Liberty dangle: Bob Cummings finally confronts the foreign agent at the top of the Statue of Liberty. During the struggle, the agent goes over the side, barley saved by Cummings’ grip on his sleeve. As Cummings struggles to bring him up the sleeve begins to slowly rip… one stitch at a time. Then comes the fall that seems to last almost as long!

  8. Lifeboat (1944) Starring Alfred Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock was the first director that I knew by name. I used to love looking for his cameos in movies and this was perhaps his most clever. He appears in a newspaper diet ad.

  9. Psycho (1960) Marion Crane’s car journey to the Bates motel: Poor Janet Leigh has gotten in way over her head, but she’s the heroine of the story so despite the bad weather and the worries so clearly seen from her expressions, we know everything will turn out okay in the end.

  10. Rear Window (1954) Lisa is caught in Thorwarld’s apartment: Grace Kelly plays Lisa, Jimmy Stewart’s girlfriend. Stewart is convinced that the neighbor across the courtyard has killed his wife. Lisa goes in to the neighbor’s apartment to search for evidence as Stewart watches from his window, immobilized with two broken legs. He [and we] are shocked when the murderer suddenly returns to find Lisa in his apartment!

RIP: Don LaFontaine

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Don LaFontaine died yesterday at the age of 68. You might not know his name, but I’d bet you would recognize Mr. LaFontaine’s voice. He was consider the voice-over king, and rightly so. What else would you call the man behind over 5,000 movie trailers, the in-studio announcer for the Academy and SAG awards, and whose voice could be heard on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, UPN, TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network?I’m going to miss hearing his iconic voice booming, “In a world where…” and I have to tell you movie previews are going to be a little less fun… “In a world where Don LaFontaine no longer resides.”

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, friends and fans.