Will Smith and the Third Act Problem

An unfortunate trend seems to be present in the recent movies of box office king Will Smith: in I, Robot, I Am Legend, and now Hancock, a deliberately paced, character driven, and altogether fascinating hour of storytelling is followed by a relentlessly action-packed twenty-odd minute third act, leaving the audience to wonder what happened to the movie they were watching.  

All three of these films use a large canvas, with massive worlds and complex characters to set up, and interestingly all three also feature Smith as a more dour and less charismatic version of himself than we otherwise see.  And all three start out just great.  But by the end, I'm left feeling that twenty or thirty minutes are missing, and that a more satisfying ending most have existed at some time in the process, replaced for wider audience appeal one can only assume.  All three feel somehow compromised.

Now these three films also faced rumours of being 'troubled' productions, with last minute reshoots in response to test screenings and possibly studio interference.  But reshoots are not at all uncommon, and are certainly not always a harbinger of doom (some directors, like Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh [Traffic, Ocean's Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen] schedule reshoots into their production schedule from the start).  Further, this is one of the most bankable actors on the planet, a man whose eight previous films have all grossed more than $100 M (with the film before these, Ali, a major artistic success that garnered him an Oscar nomination), and who often is a producer on the films in which he stars - I have trouble believing that anyone would discount his opinion if he didn't want these films released as they were.

So, one must assume that this is, at least partially, Smith's doing.  And it's a shame.  I very much enjoyed I, Robot, I Am Legend, and Hancock, but I also have my fingers crossed for longer 'director's cuts' that will restore a more consistent tone and vision to these stories.  None should've been less than two hours long, yet they all clock in at around 90 minutes.  I want to see that half hour.

Canada Day Quizzical

Sorry about the lack of posts lately, been busy doing other things (like digging into the excellent 7-disc Dirty Harry box set recently put out by Warner Bros. - gotta love that remote control car chase in The Dead Pool!).

Anyway, here's a little spot of patriotism: a Canada Day Quiz!

FYI, I ended up with a sad 40%.

Indiana Jones and the Surprisingly Good Sequel

I would say the new Indiana Jones movie is better than it has any right to be, but that's wouldn't be altogether fair.  Re-teaming  Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford for a globetrotting adventure has the right to be pretty darn good: I just didn't think it would be.

Picking up in 1957, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull successfully incorporates  a storyline appropriate both for the time period and the type of movies that were coming out at the time. The series has always been a throwback to the 1930s and 40s adventure serials, but this time out there's a healthy helping of sci-fi too.  Spielberg is a master at telling his stories with slick yet meaningful camera work, and there are many great feats of lensing on display here, while Harrison Ford slips back into the role with ease.  Shia LaBeouf, so charming in the Oscar-winning masterpiece Transformers, is just as good here, too - while somewhat constrained by the period mannerisms, his comic timing remains impeccable.

I was expecting the movie to be decent but unnecessary, recycling gags from previous installments with little of the spirit intact.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find that, with the exception of some annoying CGI gophers and a head-scratcher of a sequence where LaBoeuf swings through a jungle canopy with about a hundred monkeys (both of these problematic bits bringing to mind the more cringe-inducing scenes of the Star Wars prequels), this is a wholly enjoyable and satisfying film.  I went in wondering why they would risk sullying the memory of such a great franchise, and left the theatre hoping another sequel would be on the way.  

The Star Wars

Star Wars fans may be interested in this, a 500+ page free (!) book called the Secret History of Star Wars, published by Michael Kaminski.  Thoroughly researched, this unauthorized tome tracks the development and production of all six Star Wars films through an entertaining yet academic lens.  Worth checking out for sure.

Grand Theft Free Time

Wow, it's been more than a month since my last blog post.  The reason can be distilled into four small words: Grand Theft Auto 4.  Not that times haven't been really busy otherwise, but this ridiculously fun little bit of pop culture is my current obsession.

Anyone else hooked?

In yo' face!

It's pretty technical, but here's an in-depth interview with filmmaking visionary James Cameron (writer/director of The Abyss, the Terminator films, Titanic, etc.) on using 3-D for his upcoming movie Avatar.  This is exciting stuff - not 'fake' 3-D, but real stereoscopic cameras (meaning two cameras beside each other mimicking what human eyes would see).  I'm not 100% sold on the idea that 3-D will be in most households 10-15 years from now (I think a similar claim was made during the 3-D craze in the 80s), but if James Cameron's onboard, this technology is doubtless ready for prime-time.  This is the guy who envisioned, and started filming for, the morphing 'water snake' in The Abyss when literally the technology did not exist to make it happen.   The way he dealt with that leap of faith (he hired a computer graphics company to work exclusively on this sequence, while other firms did other effects) has affected virtually every film since that has used CGI, and nearly every movie he has ever made has broken ground in one way or another.  Check it out.

The Junos Come to Calgary

Deyelle and I were at the Juno Awards last night, and had a great time.

There's quite a drastic difference between the Grammys - the broadcast of which I avoid like avian flu - and the Junos,  especially in the type of music showcased.  Over the course of the evening, we saw performances from country, pop, hard rock, opera, jazz, alt-rock, adult contemporary, and whatever you'd classify Michael Buble, and each was received with nearly equal verve by the screaming audience.  It was really much more of a celebration  of all forms of Canadian music than I was expecting.

I was most excited to see Feist, and her performance of the excellent 'Sealion' (which appears in two vastly different incarnations on The Reminder)didn't disappoint.   A funny thing came up during it: at one point, the crowd was encouraged to clap, and a woman who was doing a form of shadow puppets onstage joined in: we noticed that her clapping was half-a-beat ahead of us, which makes sense given the delay by the time the sound reaches us.  But Deyelle pointed out that, if we're all clapping to the music we're hearing, we're totally off beat with what's going on onstage, which must be pretty distracting.

Anyway, other highlights were Avril Lavigne's high energy 'Girlfriend', the Triumph tribute (although I wish they had played), and surprisingly, to me anyway, Buble - that guy can work a crowd like no one's business, and was even hyping the fans up during the commercial break from the dark stage, something no other performer attempted.

Russell Peters was decent, nothing exceptional but he didn't bomb either, and the show was wrapped up in a snappy two hours, significantly shorter than your usual awards marathon.  Apparently it was the second most watched Junos in Canadian history, so I'm glad it was a gooder.

And now, we can focus on the Flames' playoff run...