Yesterday movie fans across the web got their first hint of what they can expect from Michael Bay’s upcoming live action adaptation of the classic 1980’s cartoon/comic book/toy line Transformers. Although it was just a short and ultimately pointless teaser, there seems to be a general feeling of disappointment. This got me thinking… are they going to burn out this movie by overhyping it? Can it possibly live up to people’s expectations? I mean, I love the Transformers as much as the next child of the 80’s, but I don’t see it really working as a gigantic blockbuster film. Even when you go back and watch the old episodes today, there wasn’t a particularly deep story there. It’s still a year out, which means they have ample time, but there’s obviously a ton of work to be done. When you consider that all the main characters in the movie (or at least, all the characters we care about) will be digitally created, Transformers could be the most demanding effects film of all time. And if the effects don’t come through, this movie is going to fail. They’ve cast some recognizable names such as Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Rachael Taylor and Bernie Mac… but no one cares about the human characters! They’ve slated Transformers for a July 4th, 2007 release date which means they expect it to blow the box office wide open. I don’t know if this movie can appeal to enough people for that to happen. Plus Michael Bay’s last movie The Island bombed. What do you think? Am I being too cynical or is the Transformers movie doomed to be a complete disaster? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.

The Man of Steel attempts to clean up at the box office over this major long weekend, and there’s not much in the way of challengers except for the Meryl Streep fashion comedy The Devil Wears Prada. (Frankly I’m not sure which is the bigger chick flick.) In limited release this weekend we have a Leonard Cohen documentary and Michael Winterbottom’s gripping docu-drama The Road to Guantanamo.

Superman Returns
The Devil Wears Prada
The Road To Guantanamo (limited)
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (limited)

All I can say is… wow. I just caught the trailer for an upcoming French movie called Renaissance that was filmed using actual actors but then rotoscoped to create a stunning black and white film noir look. The style is reminiscent of Sin City or Richard Linklater’s Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, but it has a sci-fi story and some really cool looking imagery. It takes place in Paris in the year 2054, with a young scientist from a powerful corporation getting kidnapped, and a detective leading the search. The movie is directed by Christian Volckman, and stars Daniel Craig, Ian Holm, Jonathan Price, Catherine McCormack, and Romola Garai. I found an early review of this movie that says the story is kind of bland, but right now I’m totally geeking out over the look of this thing. Renaissance has been picked up by Miramax for release in North America; it should hit theatres in October. Check out the official site (linked below) to watch the trailer and see more images from the film.

Alright now I know what you’re probably thinking: they’re making a Reservoir Dogs video game? WHY? Unfortunately I don’t have the answer to that question. All I know is that this game has been in the works for years and has been bouncing around from publisher to publisher (it was first announced back in 2003) and a lot of people never expected it to see the light of day. EIDOS Interactive currently has plans to release the game for the PC, PS2 and X-Box this September as a budget-priced title, and all signs point towards a mediocre game with a familiar license slapped on — not unlike Jaws Unleashed or The Godfather. I mean, who really thought any of these movies would make a fun game? But now news came out last week that apparently the Reservoir Dogs game was refused a rating in Australia, thus banning it from sale down under. The game is apparently quite violent, allowing you to take hostages during a bank heist and blow their heads off, pistol whip them, cut their fingers off, or burn their eyes with a cigar. Nice! (And yes, the infamous ear cutting scene is apparently in the game as well.) Ironically, this may be just the kind of publicity the game needs. I know I’m more curious about it now… aren’t you? Visit the game’s official website for more info.

Well it wasn’t supposed to be online until July 4th, but I guess someone managed to leak a low quality version of the trailer already. So the studio caved and posted the Transformers teaser trailer over at the official site already! Hooray for internet bootleggers! Don’t get yourself too worked up though… they don’t even call it a teaser, they call it an “announcement” video. All you really get to see is 1 second of a blurry Transformer… if that. It’s too bad, I was hoping they’d give us a bigger glimpse of the computer generated Transformers in action, but that would probably be asking a bit much considering the movie’s still a year out. The effects, of course, remain the single most crucial element of this movie. Anyway, there’s not much else to say at this point. Transformers will hit theatres on July 4th, 2007, and Michael Bay is still a hack! Click below to watch the “announcement” now.

Superman Returns
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Parker Posey

A lot of people have been trying to get a new Superman movie off the ground for ages, but it wasn’t until Marvel began their reign at the box office with the X-Men and Spider-Man movies that all egos were put aside and focused on making it happen, no matter the cost.

There are probably a lot of reasons why a new Superman movie would be hard to assemble. He is a difficult character to write for because he is basically invincible, and times have changed since the previous Superman movies came out… Superman is a little more campy and idealistic than what most people want in a superhero nowadays. However, he is also considered the world’s first superhero, and one of the most enduring fictional characters of our time. WB’s Smallville series proved that the character still had appeal (even if it was cloaked in a teen soap opera setting) and it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances clicked for a new Superman movie to fly onto the big screen.

The key part of the puzzle was convincing Bryan Singer and his team to defect from the X-Men franchise to give the Man of Steel a shot. With a proven track record, it seemed like Singer would be an ideal candidate to give Superman the truly triumphant return that he deserved. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. Despite all the money and all the hype, I have to say that Superman Returns is ultimately a misfire.

One thing I was thankful about was the fact that they didn’t reboot the franchise completely. This is a new story that picks up sometime after the events of Superman II. The first two Superman movies are true classics, and it would have been extremely challenging to retell the origin story and improve on what Richard Donner did in the original. This time around, the movie opens with Superman having left Earth to explore the remnants of his home planet Krypton, and then coming back 5 years later to find some unfortunate changes. For one, Lex Luthor is out of jail, but more importantly: Lois Lane is married! With a kid!

Right off the bat I’ll say that everything to do with Lois Lane’s kid in this movie was a bad idea if you ask me. It’s like they wanted to ensure this would be a family-friendly blockbuster, so they added a cute kid. Nothing against Tristan Lake Leabu, but he borders on being so cute he’s annoying (and his horrible dialogue sure doesn’t help). We’re talking “Jonathan Lipnicki in Jerry Maguire” manufactured cuteness all around. And the kid subplot only gets worse as the movie progresses. It just seemed so contrived, I mean, why the hell was he always running around the Daily Planet offices? Doesn’t he go to school? They gave Lois and her husband have all these family scenes at work just so Clark could observe them and be involved.

Also, the rumours about Superman being a “chick flick” (Singer’s own words, believe it or not) are pretty much dead on. This movie is almost completely driven by Superman’s relationship with Lois Lane, and for a comic book movie there is surprisingly little action. Bryan Singer has opted to make it more of an art house character study, and while on the one hand, I respect the attempt, the problem is that Superman shouldn’t be so complex and conflicted. He is the ultimate moral hero, an eternal optimist, and he always puts the well-being of others above himself. I suppose having him hung up on a lost relationship humanizes the character, but that’s just it… Superman is not human. Kate Bosworth also doesn’t seem like the Lois Lane type, and she didn’t have much chemistry with Brandon Routh. The love triangle really bogged the movie down.

To be honest, there were only a couple of scenes in this movie where I really felt my blood pumping, although thinking back, I might attribute my excitement to the use of the classic John Williams theme. (It felt like they cheated a bit by using the old music.) The climactic battle between Lex Luthor and Superman was shaping up to be something great, and it was one of the few times when I actually felt anything for Superman. Unfortunately this movie has one of the worst nosedive endings since Spielberg’s A.I. in my opinion. It drags on and gets way too melodramatic for its own good (not to mention all the Christ undertones… haven’t we had enough Christian allegories on screen lately?).

Brandon Routh does an admirable job as both Superman and Clark Kent. I think it’s a lot easier to bring in a new actor for, say, a Batman movie because he wears a mask, and you associate the character with the costume. Superman, on the other hand, doesn’t hide behind a mask, and everyone associates Christopher Reeve with the character. It’s tough to overcome that bias, but Routh makes it work. Some people have claimed that he has very little dialogue… I would say it’s more a problem of him not having any good dialogue. Where were the witty one-liners Superman usually has? Routh also plays him up to be more self-absorbed, and maybe that was appropriate given the story, but again it didn’t feel to me like the Superman I know.

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with Kevin Spacey’s performance. I thought he was going to overdo Lex Luthor completely, and I was prepared to hate it, but he and Parker Posey stole the show in a lot of ways. They certainly had all the best lines in the movie.

And Superman Returns was generally pretty nice to look at. The special effects were… okay. They were able to do some things in this movie that they never could have done back in the 80’s (the plane crash scene in particular was quite impressive), but here’s the problem: they cop out and do almost everything with computer graphics. Ever since Spider-Man came out, people think it’s okay to do full action scenes with computer animation. And yeah, it gives the director a lot of freedom to make the camera swoop and rotate all over the place. But it still looks fake! Unlike Spider-man, Superman doesn’t wear a mask and he has a cape, which made it glaringly obvious when we were looking at a digital model of Brandon Routh rather than the real thing. The large scale destruction that happens as a result of Lex Luthor’s scheme (which I still don’t really understand by the way) was handled fairly well. But did we really need to see Superman in bullet time?

The bottom line here is that this movie is not nearly enough fun for a summer blockbuster. I have a hard time comprehending all the advance praise this movie received. I don’t mind character development and relationships in an action movie… in fact, I encourage it! But the pacing was off, the story did not flow nicely and in general it felt long to me (which, by the way, it is). I think Bryan Singer was so busy sitting in the middle of this beast that he couldn’t step back and see what the problems were, and where more energy or editing was needed. Superman Returns is not a complete dud, but if you’re going to compare it to the first two Superman movies, there’s really no comparison at all, and it’s a far cry from some of the better comic book movies that have been released in the past few years (Singer’s own X-Men films included). — Sean

Well I’m a little torn on this next bit of news. Ever since Peter Jackson struck gold with the Lord of the Rings trilogy a few years back, both critically and commercially, I’ve been hoping that another classic fantasy saga would finally hit the big screen. That saga is the Dragonlance series of novels, created by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. When I was younger I read the first 2 trilogies that they wrote, and found myself completely absorbed by them. Sure they are derivative of Tolkien, but what fantasy novel isn’t? A Dragonlance feature film was rumoured to be in the works a number of times over the years, but nothing ever materialized. Well now it looks like a Dragonlance movie is finally happening… but here’s the thing: it’s going to be animated! Immediately I worry that it’s going to be cartoony and kid-oriented, or a disaster on par with hopelessly flawed Lord of the Rings animated movie that Ralph Bakshi did back in 1978. Still, maybe it can work. It’s being directed by Will Meugniot (The Real Ghostbusters, Spider-Man Unlimited), and written by George Strayton (Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) based on the first Dragonlance book Dragons of Autumn Twilight. The voice cast includes Michael Rosenbaum as Tanis Half-Elven, Jason Marsden as Tasslehoff Burrfoot, and none other than Xena herself, Lucy Lawless as Goldmoon. Animation will be handled by Toonz Animation. They’re currently aiming for a fall 2007 release, stay tuned to the Dragonlance Movie Site for all the latest updates.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I think the comic book movie trend is on the verge of imploding, and these cheesy superhero parody movies are going to be the nail in the coffin. Trust me, once Tim Allen enters the picture, you know the end is nigh. He is starring in a new family-friendly comedy called Zoom, about a group of kids with super powers who are taken away to a secret training facility where they are prepped for a mission to save the world. Allen is the retired superhero Captain Zoom, who is brought in as their mentor to teach them to work as a team. Yes, this looks very similar to the movie Sky High that came out last summer. Who knows, maybe it will be a hit with the kids… but if you ask me it’s a big pile of crap! The thought did cross my mind though, that if they keep doing these kid superhero movies, someone should look into a big screen adaptation of the Marvel comic Runaways (written by Brian K. Vaughn), which would actually make a pretty cool family flick. Just my two cents. Zoom hits theatres on August 11th.

Here’s something I never thought I’d be saying, but it looks like indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is being accused of plagiarizing the script for his last film, Broken Flowers. A fellow by the name of Reed Martin, who is a freelance journalist and professor of film marketing at NYU, claims that his own movie Heart Copy shares a startling number of similarities to Jarmusch’s. He is suing for $40 million, which is how much money the film pulled in at theatres last year. Martin says his agent even gave copies of the script to Focus Features co-president David Linde, along with actresses Julie Delpy and Sharon Stone, who ended up starring in the movie. Coincidence? Jarmusch wrote in to the Boston Globe denying the allegations, insisting that “anyone who is familiar with my films and my writing process will know that his claim is ridiculous”. I don’t necessarily think this guy is making the whole thing up (if he were, why would he go after such a small-time indie flick?), but I really find it hard to believe that Jim Jarmusch would rip anything off. The guy is one of the most original filmmakers working today. Unfortunately, it seems like there’s almost nothing new that can be done in art nowadays… there’s always going to be someone out there who thought of it first.

Just yesterday I posted news about Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s next film being picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, but upon scanning his filmography I noticed that there was actually another film he has done since House of Flying Daggers. It’s called Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles, and my first thought was that it had been neglected and we’ll never see it over here in North America because it’s not a martial arts flick but rather a small character drama. It seems I was wrong, as a trailer for the movie has just popped up over at Apple. The movie is about a Japanese fisherman who travels to China to film a famous folk-opera star for his son, who is seriously ill. The movie looks like it has some stunning scenery and although it probably won’t get much attention without any well-known stars here, it’s probably worth checking out. Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles will hit select theatres on September 1st.