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July
18/03 More
in weblog archive |
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SHIVER
ME TIMBERS
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black
Pearl
IMDB
| Official
site
dir.
Gore Verbinski
starring: Johnny
Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Kiera Knightely
A
thoroughly entertaining return to the pirate genre
once thought sunk, Pirates of the Caribbean
is a zesty, flavourful adventure that trusts its
origins.
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Arrrr
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Too often Hollywood tries to reimagine genres
grown dusty in the audience mind or tries to throw
in too much digital muscle, convinced that modern
viewers have grown up or grown too cynical. In
an industry where second-guessing from bean counters
results in overly bloated FX laden horrors, Pirates
of the Caribbean is a refreshingly conventional
adventure that trusts in the power of its stars
and in the flavour of its content to bring swashbuckling
to the screen once again.
Pirates
of the Caribbean
is a wonderful pirate movie that sails confidently
through the conventions of a forgotten genre.
Once dominant in Hollywood, the sailing ship genre
with its pirate subcomponent was an audience favourite.
Films like The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood
(one of my favourites) and the Black Pirate
made stars of matinee idols Errol Flynn and Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr. The genre was only around for a
decade and recent pirate films have been terrible
and expensive, most notably Cutthroat Island,
the film that ended Renny Harlin's Hollywood
run. It's hard to say what that movie lacked in
particular (a lot of it was bad) but despite its
trappings I never got the sense of adventure and
fun that Pirates of the Caribbean so completely
shows off.
Pirates
of the Caribbean has all the elements of the
forgotten genre. Memorable buccaneers, seedy ports,
deserted islands, parrots, peglegs, avast ye's
and arrr's. Curses that must be lifted, vengeances
that must be followed through and mythical vessels
looming out of the mist. These are all elements
that have all but disappeared from the movies,
preserved only in the actual Pirates of the
Caribbean ride itself at Disneyland.
In
this Pirates of the Caribbean, being a
pirate is definitely FUN. For an example of this
look no further than Johnny Depp's wonderful Jack
Sparrow, the mincing, nutty former captain of
the Black Pearl. There has never quite been a
character like Sparrow who is a cross between
famous NY queen Quentin Crisp and Han Solo. Sparrow,
a pirate who in every scene is on the run from
one angry party after another, is the embodiment
of the loveable rogue and is the perfect foil
to the bland, good looking Orlando Bloom as the
naive swordsmith. Where Bloom is earnest and boring
(his pursuit of the bodice heaving Kiera Knightely
is yawn-inducing), Depp's Sparrow evokes laughter
in the mere movement of his character.
Lots
of bucks swashed in this movie
Fun
also is the sweeping, mobile direction of Gore
Verbinski. In every scene something interesting
is happening whether it's a pirate being punched
out, someone swinging on lines, swords flashing
or fires blazing. Not since the age of models
in water tanks have sailing battles looked so
good and, for the most part, not digitally faked.
Sword nerds will have to forgive the closely filmed
duelling choreography, though, which doesn't seem
to have been affected by the last two great sword
films: Crouching Tiger or Rob Roy.
The
plot of Pirates is a bit convoluted but
isn't an obstacle to enjoying it. A mythical ship
crewed by undead pirates attacks an English port,
bearing away the daughter of the governor (Keira
Knightley). Her lowly suitor, Will Turner, a foundling
rescued from the scene of a pirate attack, enlists
the aid of imprisoned pirate Jack Sparrow to rescue
her. It turns out that both men have something
in common, the girl is on the Black Pearl and
Jack is the former captain of the ship seeking
revenge on his crew. The new captain of the Pearl
(Geoffrey Rush) is, like Sparrow, another nutcase,
who believes that he needs the blood of the governer's
daughter to lift a curse from himself and his
crew.
What
insues is a lot of sailing, a lot of swinging
from ropes, a lot of taking over ships and losing
ships, marooning, clashing of weapons and some
dodgy 3D effects. Pirates of the Caribbean
doesn't spend a lot of time on one element long
enough for you to complain. Not only is the direction
fluid, the story also keeps on moving so much
that you don't notice its more than two hours
running length.
Surprisingly,
the powers behind Pirates are Jerry Bruckheimer
and Walt Disney, two entities who are notorious
for putting out overblown explodoramas and pandering
bland material that Pirates of the Carribean
is not. Perhaps they had the presence of mind
to step back while director Gore Verbinski and
the capable cast took over. (It should be noted
that one of the great pirate movies was the Disney
version of Treasure Island, however).
In
theatres now
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July
16/03 More
in weblog archive |
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Lady-X
Recruiting poster
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| Need
samurai |
It's getting very late for Dylan Couper and I to be getting
together people for the Lady-X shoot. For one thing, we
still don't have cast pinned down. So, here is a recruiting
poster that I cooked up that I will be putting up on bulletin
boards this week. Click
here to see the full-sized version >> |
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July
15/03 More
in weblog archive |
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The
final goods on the T101, T800 serial number BS
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| A
younger, different serial number? |
Ciaran McNulty believes he has the final word on what
the Arnie Terminator's designation is. He writes in this
thread that Arnie is definitely the T101 and that
T800 came from the Dark Horse comics. Later
on someone suggests that he is actually the T-850 because
he has been adjusted in the third movie. Okay, no more
of this. It's getting as bad as Trekkies arguing over
Enterprise numbers. |
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July
4 /03 More
in weblog archive |
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| NON-JUDGMENTAL
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
IMDB
| Official
site
dir.
Jonathan Mostow
starring: Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes
Even
with the target of decent summer entertainment
locked, Terminator 3 is a bloodless,
somewhat weak addition to the Terminator story
that never quite achieves the driving rhythm and
tone of the earlier films. |
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Threevisited
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Those wondering if the third instalment of the
Terminator series matches the entertainment value
of the James Cameron films Terminator 2: Judgment
Day (1991) or The Terminator (1984)
will be pleased to note that Terminator 3:
Rise of the Machines does not let down in
the amounts of explosions, vehicle smashing, guns
blazing and robots fighting.
Each
Terminator, however, seems to get progressively
more sacharrine, less cold-blooded. The
original film had the constant feeling of fear
as the soft-fleshed humans fled from the unstoppable
killing machine who broke through walls, destroyed
cars and gunned down whole police forces. Terminator
2, which I had my problems with, had the
heavy-handed theme of armageddon and race survival
driving the characters forward but softened it
somewhat with the T-800's pseudo-fatherhood of
the adolescent John Connor, the future leader
of the human resistance. In Rise of the Machines,
the Terminator returns to not only protect the
adult John but acts as matchmaker as he brings
John together with his future wife, Kate. It
seems that the deadly future of machine-ruled
apocalypse was only postponed by the events of
the second movie. Now, a new Terminator model,
the T-X has come from the past to not only eliminate
John Connor but the nascent rebel heroes who help
him in the future. (The T-X is played by some
supermodel come to take Natasha Henstridge's
lock on naked science fiction killer roles away
from her.)
Lest
this sound like T3 is Father of the
Bride with explosions I will tell you it
is not. Director Jonathan Mostow capably guides
the film through probably more mayhem that either
of the first two films combined. However, what
T3 lacks over the first two films is a driving
script that pushes the action forward and gives
the characters an impetus beyond merely surviving
to the next scene. James Cameron is justifiably
praised as an action director but he, over the
present writers, also is a superb plotter, knowing
just when to hit the marks, when to rev up the
action and how to structure a film so that it
resounds.
Throughout
Terminator 3, I got the sense that the
writers were self-consciously trying to top elements
of its predecessors scene for scene, line for
line. There are the nudge-wink references to the
earlier films, the bar scene, the one-liners that
are only funny having seen numbers one and two
and set piece chases that throw up more metal.
These are all elements that satisfy by themselves.
Less than satisfying is that the movie seems to
get smaller as it winds up to its conclusion.
Even the spectre of nuclear war seems less than
horrible, antiseptic even, when the bloodless
action that lead up to the end elicits a shrug.
Consider that the first Terminator movie revived
science fiction as an action genre because of
its gun fetish, its hero the cyborg who resorted
to messy and indiscriminate machineguns and assault
rifles instead of phasors and lasers. The villain
in T3 is a makeup model whose hair is always restored
after every fight, who would have disposed of
her targets long ago if only she eschewed her
complicated nano-weapons for an Uzi. Terminator
3 does not have any fetish.
More
importantly, the message of warning that T3 carries
against supercomputers taking control over human
military networks is treated as a matter of fact,
perhaps as if having seen the previous two movies,
they don't want to spend any time making it real.
But this doesn't help the film's missing sense
of dread nor does it match a whammy of an ending
that sounds good in the retelling but lacks impact
without a proper windup.
As the T-800, Arnold Schwarzenegger is about as
good as he ever has been, a little smaller and
gravelly-voiced, perhaps. As John Connor and wife-to-be
Kate, Nick Stahl and Claire Danes are just serviceable.
Danes gets points for not being the damsel in
distress but the crusty Stahl is only a marginal
improvement over the whiny adolescent John Connor.
His flat delivery doesn't add anything to the
feeling that the real hero is to be revealed in
some Terminator sequel in the future.
In
theatres now
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"Hit
and Run" video now finalized
Plumb
Visual Thesaurus
A
day of elation
It's
Canada Day today
