Superhero fans are going to have a tough road ahead again. It has been announced that The Green Hornet is once again in preproduction for release in 2010. The only cast member so far annouced is the star. Britt Reid/The Green Hornet will be played by Seth Rogen. Yes, that Seth Rogen, the star of Knocked Up. He is writing a script with his Superbad writing partner Evan Goldberg, I would like to reserve judgement on this production until it actually gets finished and released (if it ever does, The Green Hornet has had a longer and tougher path to film that the last Superman movie). Sure Rogen isn’t exactly the first name that comes to mind as an action movie star, but he has shown with Pineapple Express, as has Kevin James in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, that a heavy guy can do believable action scenes (fans of the old Cannon TV show already knew this, but I digress). The thing about these two films is that they were action/ comedies, and my fear is that that is the way Rogen will take The Green Hornet. Instead of doing a serious superhero film like The Dark Knight or Iron Man, he will do something along the lines of Starsky and Hutch or The Dukes of Hazzard, spoofing the material while inserting some decent action sequences. My hope is that he will respect the material and want to stretch as a performer, playing everything straight and the only humor coming through character interaction between him and whoever plays Kato, like Bale and Caine do in the Batman films. But i have serious doubts. Where are Van Williams and Bruce Lee when you really need them?
Archive for February, 2009
So now Jason Vorhees joins Leatherface and Michael Myers by being revamped and updated for the new millennium and possibly the start of a new series (can Freddy Kruger be far behind?). Thank God! You know I was just sitting around the house Friday and thinking you know, I could really go for a movie where a bunch of oversexed, topless teenagers get killed with gardening tools, too bad their isn’t a new Friday the 13th movie out, oh hey look there is one. My prayers have been answered! All kidding aside, I don’t understand why they are still making these films. Teen slasher films as a genre have gone the way of Steven Sagall films, they still have a core group of fans, but aren’t going to set any box office records on fire. You know, a straight to DVD release at best. Of the three horror icons mentioned at the start of this rant, Leatherface and Michael Myers are not in the same class as Jason, they were featured in good and original horror films made by you film makers working to produce a good product as a calling card to show studios what they could do. Jason was created as a way to make money in a series of little originality, outside of a few gorey death scenes in the first few films. The first film was a virtual plot point for plot point rip off of Halloween, and the second film in the series, which introduced Jason, was little more than a retread of the previous film. Perhaps that’s why I’m less irritated and more amused by this new remake that is not a remake. Halloween is one of my all time favorite films, and is still able to produce suspense and fear when viewed today. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a film that still generates unbearable tension and horror in a viewer, and is still hard to sit through for me. The original Friday the 13th was a brainless, blood drenched attempt to cash in on the popularity of Halloween. It’s only value in terms of film history was in it’s splatter effects inpiring other film makers to make even more inventively bloody death scenes feature pretty girls having sex either right before dying or sometime during the actual act (talk about coitus interuptus!). Most don’t remember, but Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre featured little to no gore, using shadows and moody music to achieve their mounting scares. So considering that the new Friady the 13th has little more to overcome from the original than to make money, I think it will do fine.
Leave it to comic strip to put movie reviews in perfect context. One of my favorite strips is Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy, a humorous comic about a guy living with a friendly but not too bright dog and a self-centered, bad tempered cat (you know, real pets). The strip has always been a satirical updating of Garfield, and this past week they have set their sights on movie reviewers and the people that read them. Main character Rob has pulled up nothing but negative reviews of films he likes and then gets angrier and angrier at what he reads and commenting on line about how stupid the reviewer is. Helpful Satchel the dog wants to know why Rob is intnetionally making himself angry, which Rob can not explain, and finally Bucky the cat comes in to put everything in perspective, which is that they are disturbing his noon time nap and need to shut up. In the short space of a week’s daily strips Conley has dismantled the entire concept of reviews and readers. We don’t go to sites to research if we would want to see a new movie coming out, we go to see our opinion vindicated, or as with this story arc, we go to pick a fight. The deep, dark, truthful mirror always hurts, but at least this time it also makes you laugh, which is always the best kind of satire. Thanks Mr. Conley for holding up that mirror.
