Have you heard the news? Bad things come in twos.

[thehefner]

It's rather amazing how little interest I have in the upcoming film WANTED. In fact, as of the most recent commercials--which feature Angelina Jolie firing a bullet that slows down enough for the camera to zoom in to see that it's inscribed with "Goodbye"--my levels of aversion to WANTED are inching toward SEX AND THE CITY levels.*

It doesn't help that, as a comic adaptation, it throws out everything that made the comic compelling and worth reading (supervillains have killed off all the heroes and now rule the world) in favor of a MATRIX-lite movie about assassins. And I speak as one who didn't really like the comic to begin with!

So no, fuck WANTED, I have absolutely zero interest in supporting anything even related nor aligned with this overblown bit of popcornery. No interest what...

... so...

...

Brand... new... DANNY ELFMAN song...?!?!?! Not just soundtrack, but Danny on vocals?!

... I... but it...

*faints*



*I've said it once and I'll say it again. I absolutely loved SEX AND THE CITY until I realized (right around season three) that it wasn't meant to be a brilliant, scathing satire of the shallow, self-absorbed jerks and their hollow, hollow lives.

Honestly! I told Mom that, and she went, "It's NOT meant to be satire?! Damn it, now I can't watch it anymore!"

Comments

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

I confess, I'll probably see Wanted, 'cause...James McAvoy. Sorry. :p Have you seen the russian trailer? If nothing else, it'll have great visual candy.

But Sex and the City? Every time I see even a positive review of it, I twitch. I have told anyone who mentions it to me that if they want me there they will actively have to drag my rotting corpse to the theater. All four of those women are intolerable (I knew it was not a satire before anyone sat me down for the handfull of episodes I've seen) and the fact that it's doing so well and lorded as such a great girl movie makes me ashamed of my gender.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Of course, I knew you'd feel that way, and so you are forgiven. Absolved, even! For I have that power. Go with God, my child; may the Schwartz be with you.

My god, a girl who doesn't like SEX AND THE CITY?! Have they cast you out for being an unclean heathen unworthy of their cosmos?

One of the things that baffles me: I understand the film has enough crude humor to feel pretty much like a Farrelly brothers comedy (including someone shitting their pants?), but this point--if true--will likely be lost on the target audience.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

[laughs] Oh, well that's a relief. I can now be at peace with myself again. Goodie. :p Speaking of comics to movies, though, I'm about halfway through Watchmen (I know, finally.) I do see why it keeps getting compared to Citizen Kane, but ironically (like CK) I find that while brilliant, lording it over everything else does a disservice to the rest of the genre. It's clearly one of the greats and I am loving it, and its characters and exploration of those characters is wonderful. But like Kane, I don't think it's an insurmountable bar for some of the other brilliant writers in the area.

[/sacralidge]

Some of them have, yeah. :p With Lost you often want to smack the characters and all, but they're human and well-developed, not fucking Entitlement Barbie's Adventures in the Big Apple. I like clothes and those four still make me walk out of the room if someone turns it on. Then again, from what little I've seen half their clothes suck anyway. There's a difference between creative fashion and You Just Shouldn't Be Wearing That, Stretchface.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Damn Firefox ate my lengthy response. Ugh. I'll just tell you in person when we finally get together for BATMAN BEGINS movie night.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

Yes, we need to actually figure out when that is. >.> We are closing in on July.

[fragmentedsky.livejournal.com]

...and oh my god, I have so much more appreciation for that icon now.

[cisic.livejournal.com]

Wow! There are two of us!

I remember how stupid I thought it was when I finally saw an episode. I found it poorly written, poorly acted, and Carrie's columns are asinine.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Yay, two exist!

I mean, I'll always love Sarah Jessica Parker for her role as SanDeE* in L.A. STORY, but that's not enough.

Say, resident threatre mistress, I've been meaning to ask you: have you seen the stage version of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH? Even better, do you happen to have the script? I'm toying with an idea for a future Fringe show, and based on what I know of the stage HEDWIG (I've seen the film), I'd like to see how they handled certain aspects to give me some idea to help pull my own wacky idea off.

[frumple.livejournal.com]

Damn.... now I have to go buy the soundtrack...

Curse you!!!!!

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Now, if the whole WANTED soundtrack can finally be a return to form for Danny (which is to say, a soundtrack you can easily imagine popping in your car stereo or putting on at a party), we'll be golden! I think HULK was the last time I've heard a truly memorable Elfman soundtrack.

[demonfafa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Wanted not only has an unfortunate and stupidly simple title, it just looks either boring or a lot like the Matrix. the worst part is that you KNOW Angelina Jolie is better than that. Despite the obvious silliness in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, she had great comedic timing, and has proved on several occasions, most recently with A Mighty Heart that she can fuckin' ACT! Yet this looks like yet another abonimation of a comicbook-turned-movie and she's got all this talent wasted.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've never had the Jolie-hate that others have, but I can't really recall the last time she's done a truly great film (I haven't seen A MIGHTY HEART, which doesn't really seem my taste). Oh, wait, BEOWULF was utterly awesome, but damn if I know how it'll hold up on the small screen and not in 3D. It utterly ruled in 3D, which is how it deserves to be seen.

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Skip the movie, buy the soundtrack. Simple!

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I still feel like that's money going right in Mark Millar's pocket. Would YOU want to risk that?

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Augh. Not really, but shouldn't Elfman get a royalty? Or, maybe send him an email directly and ask if he intends to make the track available via iTube or whatever, so you can buy just that and put the money in his pocket.

[nymphgalatea.livejournal.com]

Went to my local comic book shop last week & the two assistants were wearing WANTED promotional t-shirts and really depressed expressions. The Forbidden Planet chain in the UK was doing some sort of ad deal with the film. The staff were Not Happy, on the grounds that the comic was a bit crap & the film looked shit. (And these were the guys who thought Ghostrider was a work of cinematic genuis.)

Though the hotness of James McAvoy cannot be denied; I have Seasons 1 & 2 of SHAMELESS on DVD. I can appreciate him in those fine pieces of TV instead.

And while Danny Elfman doing the score to a film is always good, I'm still not tempted (BTW, have you seen the wee interview Hans Zimmer did about doing The Dark Knight soundtrack? It was quite interesting)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

I'm glad there are others that didn't "buy" the comic, as Millar seems to substitute actual storytelling depth with dick-swinging, which seems to be enough for many people (see also: THE ULTIMATES, KICK-ASS).

Not just a score! An actual song! With singing! It actually hearkens back to his solo stuff of the mid-80's, but is distinctly modern, and his voice hasn't changed at all! *splee!*

I have not seen the Hans Zimmer interview. Y'know, it's funny, one of my few major complaints with BATMAN BEGINS was Hans Zimmer's score. I thought it sounded painfully generic, lacking any distinctive Batman style. While I think Burton's Batman films have aged terribly, watching the first one again, I was taken aback by how much of it was driven by Danny Elfman's wonderful score, which I still listen to on its own. Zimmer's just sounded like something out of, I dunno, a Jack Ryan movie or something.

And yet, as I came to watch and rewatch the trailers for THE DARK KNIGHT, the theme began to sink in, so that when I revisited the BATMAN BEGINS soundtrack, it's led me to reconsider my stance. There might be something more subtle going on here than I previously suspected.

[nymphgalatea.livejournal.com]

I love my Comic Book Guys. They remove Miller/Ennis-written comics from my pile that they think are shite, they make me buy things I didn't mean to and they mock my clumsiness (small, cluttered shop + me = The Great "DOCTOR WHO" Merchandise Avalanche Disaster of 2008)

Y'know, I love the Batman score, and like Elfmans' work up until about The Nightmare Before Christmas, but after that I kept noticing that the same themes keep repeating, and while they are lovely, it becomes dull. (Plus, his Spiderman music was terribly generic, so I don't know how I feel about him working on yet another superperson movie.)

Hans Zimmer is also guilty of having the same themes repeat in his film scores. But I like the Batman Begins soundtrack. It suited the style of the movie; I don't think a big bombastic "theme" would have done it any favours. Subtle and dark and minimal worked very well, in my opinion.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

God bless the good Comic Book Guys.

I agree with the Elfman assessment, with two exceptions that come to mind: RED DRAGON (one of the few things I liked about that film, as I absolutely adore and prefer MANHUNTER in every respect) and Ang Lee's HULK.

In fairness to Elfman, though, his SPIDER-MAN music was not helped by Sam Raimi, who fought to keep from Elfman doing anything radically different for the soundtrack to SPIDER-MAN 2, essentially wanting him to just note-for-note repeat the SPIDER-MAN score. This led to a falling out between Elfman and Raimi, who had been friends for many years. In Danny's words, Raimi had become a pod person of his former self. Which might help account for SPIDER-MAN 3...?

Yeah, subtle, dark, and minimal, you just might be on to something. I'll be keeping this in mind as I rewatch BB and finally see TDK.

[nymphgalatea.livejournal.com]

There was no such film as Spiderman 3, so I dunno what you're on about. (Nor was there any such film as X-Men 3. Everything ended neatly in the second films, Jean Grey stayed dead and Harry Osborn remained alive. Also, there has never been any Batman film featuring Chris O'Donnell.)

My selective memory is awesome. I am Denial-Lass!