X-Men: First Class

X-Men is a tough sell. Singer did an amazing job with the first two, but X3 and X-Men Origin's: Wolverine were awful. We've seen how comic book movies can be destroyed in the wrong hands, and while an impressive cast was lined up for X-Men: First Class, the trailer didn't give me to much hope. It seemed like a potential repeat of X3, an attempt at bringing way too much action and way too little story back to the X-Men universe. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The film begins with an almost shot for shot remake of Bryan Singer's Magneto origin sequence from the first film. We see his separation from his parents, and how the Nazi's worked to develop his powers in an attempt to make him a weapon. We see Professor X as a young boy, and Mystique. As the film progresses, we meet more and more mutants, and see them come together to face an enemy, Sebastian Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon), who not only is playing both the United States and Russia into going into nuclear war, but has also created a power of his own that threatens the entire world. I know that's a weird synopsis, but I'm trying to dance around some things so as to not give too much away.

This film surprised me. I really enjoyed it, but then again, director Matthew Vaughn did Kick-Ass, which did, indeed, live up to its title. The acting was great, with James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. The real surprise here was Kevin Bacon, not that he can't act, but just that he fit into his role as Sebastian Shaw like a glove. The action was great, the writing top notch, and the setting of the 1960's, which I thought was going to be a handicap for the film, was actually done really well, with period clothing, cars, sets, etc. The weakest link to the film was January Jones, as White Queen, who, while looks wise is a fantastic match for that character, can't act to save her life. She's one of Mad Men's only low points, and she's the only real low point for this film.

This film knocks the franchise back into being a player, and my only hope is that, with another Wolverine movie kicking around in development, that the exec's will take a page from this film, and make Wolverine right instead of ridiculous.

Mean Magazine Videos

I came across these, recently, because the Rogen/Banks one was on Cinematical. Their all kind of weird and interesting.

Seth Rogen & Elizabeth Banks In "This Is Not Sex" Directed By Tony Kaye from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Summer Bishil Battles the Forces of Darkness from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Mean Presents Bill Hader as The Bad Lieutenant from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Mean Magazine Presents Kate Beckinsale in Rollergirl from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Sir Ben Kingsley STOMPS into the shoes of Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Mean Magazine Presents Anna Faris in Ocean of Tears from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Mean Magazine Presents Dennis Hopper from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Mean Magazine Presents James McAvoy in The Dream from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.


Mean Magazine Presents Emma Stone from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.

Wanted

Choose your destiny.

Yeah, right.

Wanted is one of those films that tries to make fun of you, the audience member, for being the kind of person who simply accepts who you are as a person, when, if you just made the effort, you could unleash unbelievable power within yourself. Power, for instance, that can curve a bullet, slow time, allow you to hit harder, run faster, and, on occasion, even fly (sort of). In fact, the films main character, Wesley Gibson, goes so far as to, in no uncertain terms, call you a schlub (through the power of voice over narration), at various points in the film, and, after he starts to become proficient at all of the skills that this film tells you you should be able to unlock (if you just try), keeps reminding you of how big of a loser you are.

Wanted centers around Gibson, played by James McAvoy, a schlub himself, who works in a New York City accounting firm for an overly cliche fat, ugly, bitch of a boss. When the overly cliche Fox, played by Angelina Jolie (you see how they did that? They gave the Angelina's character the name Fox? Cause she's a fox? clever...), comes to "rescue" Gibson from his boring life, he learns that the dad he thought was dead, was actually only killed the day before, and was one of the world's greatest assassins. Fox (one name only, the whole movie) takes Wesley to meet Sloan (played by a horribly cast Morgan Freeman), to introduce him to the clan of assassins that his father was a member of, and see if he wants to join up. Oh, yeah, and Wesley is also being hunted by this random assassin guy named Cross.

Wanted is just ridiculous. It is. There are some of these movies you look at and say - "Oh, well that'll be fun", but Wanted is just stupid. It feels like it was written by some screenwriter when they were fourteen, and then they found it ten or fifteen years later and said "Hey, I could polish this up and sell it!". Who came up with this? And did everyone sign up for this for the paycheck? There's nothing redeeming about any of the roles. Jolie and Freeman are already stars, so its not like this is going to make them any more of a star, and McAvoy doesn't seem to really fit into the whole "action star" category. Don't get me wrong, he's leading man material, but he's NOT Bruce Willis.

I wish I could make some really academic response to this film, but, for me, it just comes down to one thing - Wanted is stupid. The only redeeming thing about this film is that Angelina Jolie is exceptionally hot in it. Hmmm... So, if you think about it, Wanted is kind of like Beowulf. Weird.

You know what, just save your hard earned dollars. Here you go, here's the best part of the movie - 

"Wanted" RED footage pulled before release?

According to Jim Jannard, head of the Red camera project, in a post to Reduser.net -

"There seems to be some confusion about RED on "Wanted" even though I posted the following a couple of weeks ago.

During production, we were told that some RED footage (from pre-production prototypes) would be used in the movie so we added "Wanted" to "Shot on RED" on red.com. As soon as we heard that would not be the case, we pulled "Wanted" from our website. "

This is odd, considering that one user points out a comment by Jon Farhat, the film's VFX supervisor, that speaks highly of the Red footage -

"RED

1. The camera crew thought it would be telling to take the early RED prototype and point it directly into lights, bright windows behind our subjects, etc. Jim and Jarred, (and even myself then) were cringing. We were shocked when we analyzed the takes, (instantly I might add) and there was an amazing amount of detail in the windows and sky. More than the 5218. We had to clip the RED a bit to match.

2. The blue record on the RED images is quite amazing. Even a major improvement since we shot in Prague. The cameras we used later in Chicago sported a greater dynamic range and an even more improved blue record. In both cases, we needed to add some contrast and throw some data away to match the film response.

3. Pulling mattes from green screen using RED is much easier than film and frankly any other digital image and works much better than the Genesis system for instance. For a couple years people have been been saying that pulling keys from Genesis is easy. True, but only for the body of the key. The sharper edges means that when you do have a problem with an edge, it's real ugly. Instead, RED's 4k resolution defines the properties of an edge without the need of sharpening. The keys AND EDGES are stunning.

4. Ahhh. The grain. Do we add grain to RED images to be intercut? Or rely on the output stock? We did both. Pre-grain helped. However, I might add that if I were shooting a movie entirely RED, and the delivery was film, I would forget the idea of post grain and go straight to film.

Having said all that, film has been our standard. But now, we are seeing that we might actually be able to over-sample to achieve the 'film look'."

Sounds like everything was going pretty well, so, it makes me wonder why they would have, eventually, pulled the footage if it looked so good?

Atonement

When I saw the first trailer for Atonement, I thought "Wow, there's a movie I'm not bothering with". I don't know, it just feels like I've seen SO MANY World War 1 and 2 era British love stories. Most of them tend to be long, drawn out, and boring, elliciting sympathy and romantic feelings for characters by using cliche's.

BUT, then it started getting all of these amazing reviews and garnering a bunch of advance awards, so, I became a bandwagon jumper, and bought my ticket. Well, it is safe to say that Atonement was considerably better than I thought it would be.

The story involves three primary characters - Celia Tallis (Keira Knightley), a teen/young adult from a rich family, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), one of the groundskeepers at the Tallis household, and Briony Tallis (played by multiple actors), Celia's younger sister, who has a talent for writing, and feelings for Robbie. Something has happened between Celia and Robbie, and, when Robbie tries to make it right, Briony realizes that his heart is for Celia, and not for her. Pierrot, Jackson, and Lola, the cousins of Celia and Briony, come to stay with the Tallis's, but their boredom and restlessness lead Pierrot and Jackson to run away. This leads to the evening's dinner party guests to have to break out and search the grounds for the young boys. Before they're found, though, Briony finds Lola being raped by a man who manages to get away before he can be identified. In her anger with Robbie, and his new found connection with Celia, she tells the police that she could positively identify Robbie as the rapist. 

Robbie ends up going to jail, being torn apart from Celia, and causing Briony to retreat into herself. Fast forward a few years, and we meet Robbie, Celia, and Briony in the midst of World War 2. Robbie has been let out of prison to serve England, but is MIA in France, Celia hasn't seen her family in years and is working as a nurse, and Briony is training as a nurse, and is trying to get back in touch with Celia to put things right. 

I can't really say anymore, otherwise too much of the plot would be given away, but, Atonement turned out to be a really well made, well acted film. There were several funny moments in it, which were surprising for this "sub-genre" of film, and the love story between Robbie and Celia was not completely un-original or cliche, though, the relationship between the three of them (Celia, Robbie, and Briony), can, at times, be a little cliche. The way the story is told, by telling Briony's version of certain events, and then showing a completely objective view of events was very interesting, and reiterates how subjective realities can destroy relationships and lives.

Atonement was well worth my two hours, especially at the matinee price. I'm not a huge fan of any of the actors in the film, but they all did a great job. The directing was superb, and the story, especially the last quarter of it, was very well written. Fantastic. And, you definitely want to see it on the big screen. Absolutely beautiful.