Dark Shadows
by Mark RamseyPublished May 14th, 2012
Does there exist a brand that Tim thinks can’t be improved by his quirky humor?
Planet of the Apes? Let’s add the comic stylings of Paul Giamatti, because lack of comic timing was certainly the problem in the original. Dark Shadows? Is that Johnny Depp at the intersection of Jack Sparrow Road, Scissorhands Lane, and Wonka Terrace? It must be time for Depp to pay another mass appeal performance toll on the Hunter S. Thompson “Who the Hell’s Gonna See This Vanity Project?” highway. Well, okay then.
Johnny is Barnabas Collins, cursed by a witch to be undead, cursed by Tim Burton to be unfunny, and by the audience simply cursed. When his beloved topples to her death off Widow’s Peak, we are reminded of the value of a good safety fence – ideally one that rings this theater.
I knew we were in trouble when the cops drew a chalk outline around the box office.
Johnny throws himself after her, but to no avail. He rises with pallid complexion and long, sharp fingernails, doomed forever to be a vampire or a Joan Rivers impersonator (in case there’s a difference).
His lady love is now a ghost. ”It’s easy to look like a ghost when a backlight acts like an x-ray,” said skeletal actress Bella Heathcote, who was fluttering in a gentle breeze at the time and pointed to the image of a Jamba Juice from 2009 still digesting in her stomach.
Watch the sea critters crawling out of her long-dead and long-hungry mouth. ”I can’t even keep seafood down,” she explains.
Cut to 1972, when Barnabas reappears just in time for an era few active moviegoers experienced firsthand and is hazy for the rest of us. Karen Carpenter would die and go to Heaven if she knew one of her songs was actually on a new soundtrack, had she not long since died and gone to Heaven, where she is crashing at a cloud with Simon & Garfunkel’s brand name on it.
Johnny returns to his ancestral home whereupon he spends an inordinate amount of time admiring the house. Okay, it’s a grand old house with a long history, I get it. Move on.
“You must put your birthing hips to good use, ‘lest they shrivel up and die,” Barnabas advises young Victoria, the reincarnation of his dearly departed whose appearance and appetite have not changed in two-hundred years.
“I was blown away by this role,” Heathcote said. ”No, literally, as I was reading the script a gust of wind carried me out an open window.”
Wherever Tim Burton goes a job for Helena Bonham Carter is sure to follow, and Dark Shadows provides another opportunity for Tim to murder his long-time gal pal on the big screen. I don’t know what kind of submerged psychology finds this sort of sadism eternally appealing, but a wild-haired creative genius acting out fantasies of killing his wife…? Sounds like a Tim Burton movie to me!
And so the man-out-of-his-time “fish out of water” jokes transition to the bland and boring plot, whereby Barnabas must resurrect the family fishing empire to defeat the witch who cursed him because revenge is a dish best served with some cocktail sauce on the side.
Look out! It’s a big party at the Barnabas estate! Nope, it has nothing to do with the plot, it’s just an excuse for an extended Alice Cooper musical sequence! Alice Cooper!? Be still the heart of moviegoers everywhere! Is he hosted by Mike Douglas? I have to get home early, Sammy Davis is on All in the Family.
Finally, the climax: Where the witch battles Barnabas’ family for control of what’s left of our measly attention spans in a scene so long I felt like I was chained in a coffin for two-hundred years.
In a sign that optimism springs eternal, Dark Shadows wraps up with a setup for a sequel.
That should earn it a special Oscar in the category of Best Supporting Wishful Thinking.
This movie is framed with the quaint notion that blood is thicker than water. Unfortunately Dark Shadows is thinner than both.
And Bella Heathcote is thinner than all.
The Avengers
by Mark RamseyPublished May 8th, 2012
This is a job for as many B-level comic book heroes as we can contractually lock in, all under the direction of Samuel L. Jackson as the aptly named “Nick Fury,” a leader with no depth perception and a tendency for the kind of colorful language that a PG-13 washes out of his mouth with a bit of soap.
Saving the world is one task – making it safe for a Scarlett Johansson performance is quite another. In The Avengers Scarlett must not only act, she must act Russian! Listen, I wouldn’t trust Scarlett to save the world if it only meant saving the world’s very last issue of Vogue.
So let’s assemble our team: Who better to defend Earth from armageddon than a guy from the ’40′s with a sturdy shield, a Dolce & Gabbana spokesmodel, a lifeguard with a really big hammer, a guy with anger issues, and “Shecky” Stark, a wise-cracking man in iron whose suit is 100% heckle-proof.
And while we’re at it, let’s include an archer, because what could be more effective against interstellar battle than a bow and arrows? “You never know when an alien invader is the Sheriff of Nottingham,” warned Jackson.
The problem begins when a cube – the doorway to the other end of space – is stolen from a presumably secure government location. Why do we need a doorway to the other end of space? ”To find a place where The Housewives of Orange County has never aired” replied Jackson.
That’s good enough for me.
The evil Loki returns from Marvel movies past to steal the cube. So Earth must face its most potent foe – a spear-carrying guy dressed like a gold antelope who seeks to free us from our freedom. Bring on the extraterrestrial petting zoo!
“My horns are huge and so I must be compensating for something,” acknowledged Loki, who was nevertheless spotted with a Kardashian and introducing his own line of girly hair products.
Warfighting ensues. Time to cue our archery team from Dolce & Gabbana.
Enter The Hulk, as played by Eric Bana…I mean, Edward Norton…I mean, Mark Ruffalo…I mean, who really cares who plays The Hulk? We’re talking about following in the big green footsteps of Lou Ferrigno, after all.
So our heroes must recover the cube because it is the secret to sustainable energy. ”The less detail I go into there, the quicker we can get to the action and sustain our international box office,” explained Sam Jackson.
But first, our heroes must battle each other and learn to get along while dodging Robert Downey Jr.’s, gamma-ray powered one-liners. “I’m the Jamie Kennedy of the Avengers,” said Downey, “and I’m here all week!”
Scarlett Johansson’s secret power is her sheer Johanssonness, and the sheerer the better. ”In my skintight catsuit, my power is to make high expectations disappear,” said Johansson, without moving a single facial muscle.
“You mewling quim!” Scarlett shouts at Loki using the kind of language that Scarlett could only have read one syllable at a time and practiced in front of the mirror when she wasn’t otherwise shooting self-pics.
“So we’re using Jeopardy-style insults are we,” replied Loki “in a movie featuring a flying aircraft carrier?! So be it, you breezy squib!”
“I have to wipe out the red in my ledger,” explained Scarlett, “although red is the new black, so assuming we mean the ledger between my butt and my thigh maybe it’s an improvement.”
Enter giant flying tadpoles from a hole in the sky! They’re set to destroy Earth – slowly and evidently one building at a time.
“At this rate we shall control this planet in two-and-a-half centuries!” said Loki. ”And that’s one century quicker than CBS can control Two and a Half Men.”
The Avengers is everything it was intended to be, which isn’t much more than a warm-weather kickoff. So check your big green troubles and your bow at the door, slip on your 3D eyepatch, slide into your catsuit, and get ready for your rimshot cue.
“Target acquired, target engaged, target angry….” Target tired.
Interview with Ti West, director of “The Innkeepers”
by Mark RamseyPublished April 23rd, 2012
It’s fun, it’s scary, and it’s on DVD and Blu-Ray now! I’m talking about The Innkeepers
Here’s the transcript of my funny interview with Ti. But for the most fun listen to the podcast at the end of this transcript!
I guess it was, I don’t know, maybe two or three years ago, I was flipping around on Netflix to try and find some another crappy horror movie, because I love crappy horror movies. and I come across this movie called The House of the Devil. And I start watching this movie and I realize, wow, this is actually kind of good. And I keep watching this movie and I finish this movie and I realized, wow, this is really good. That movie, The House of the Devil, was written and directed by a guy named Ti West. Cut to 2012 and a new movie called The Innkeepers
Ti, I love this movie.
Thank you. I’m glad you followed up with both of them since liking the first one.
Yeah, actually that was intentional on my part. It was specifically because I saw your name associated with this and I thought I got to see what he’s up to now. And honestly, I was not disappointed.
Good to hear.
Now, I can’t say the same about the movie I saw a couple of days later in the theater called Cabin in the Woods.
Which I have not seen yet. I hear mixed things about it but I haven’t seen it.
Well, let’s just say, if a movie winked anymore at the audience than that one does, it would be guilty of some kind of neurological disorder, I think.
That’s what it seems like.
Anyway, let’s talk about The Innkeepers. A really good movie starring Sara Paxton, Kelly McGillis and Pat Healy. Given me an overview, what’s it about?
Well, it’s ultimately about these two nerds that work in a haunted hotel and they want to get proof that’s it’s haunted before it goes out of business. And as they started exploring, they get in a little over their heads. So that’s the gist of it.
That’s the gist of it. A lot of happens between those lines. Now a haunted house movie, it’s an interesting choice because you know it could be argued that that’s one of the oldest genres there is. What made you think you could bring something fresh to that, why’d you choose that?
First, I hadn’t done it before, so it was sort of on my to-do list. And also when I made The House of Devil, we lived in the Yankee Pedlar Hotel because it was a cheap place to stay, and I had these kind of weird things while we were there. I didn’t think much of it and when I wanted to do a ghost story, I thought well what if I want to make another kind of low budget movie. So what if I went back to the place that I know already exists and what if I wrote about that place, and that’s what we did. We just went back to the Pedlar and I made a movie about the Pedlar.
It’s kind of a weird – like you could go there today and walk in and you feel like you just walked into the movie, like it’s our own Universal Studios ride. It’s really strange because it’s so specifically about a place.
Now, what’s funny about that though is that’s the exact same motivation that caused Stephen King to write The Shining way back when, isn’t it?
When he stayed at the hotel in, was it Colorado?
Yeah, in Colorado.
Yeah, it wasn’t so much like the scary things that happened to me when I was there, it was just for some reason – what I want to do is I want to make a charming horror movie, particularly a charming ghost story because I’ve never seen that, and I wanted to make a movie that dealt with like minimum wage jobs because I don’t have any real skills. I can either make a movie or I can be a busboy, I don’t know how to do anything else.
I wanted to make a movie that kind of encapsulated what it’s like being stuck at work, and the kind of apathy that comes with that with minimum wage jobs. It’s not digging ditches but you still are kind of hopeless, and I thought it was a good parallel to what a ghost story is like because I felt like these ghosts are stuck and so are these people in these minimum wage jobs. I wanted to play with that and play with the idea in perception. I felt it made sense to use that to get into a ghost story. I thought it was a good way for me to make relatable and funny and charming so that you cared about it, so when the ghost stuffs starts showing up, it’s much scarier than it would have been otherwise.
Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me that this is like a social commentary?
There’s definitely a personal element of social commentary to it, sure.
You know what it kind of reminded of this, just occurred to me, did you ever see that old movie called The Lady in White?
Yes.
That’s kind of another charming ghost story, isn’t it?
Yeah, a little bit. There’s not very many though.
No.
There’s not very many because they generally take on a very gothic tone which is great. I just felt like there was enough of those; I wanted to try to do something different.
Now, Sara Paxton, your lead in this thing is well-known from Shark Night 3D, Last House on the Left and some other movies. I got to say thanks to a little bit of CG, you did a great job hiding her feeding tube.
That’s right. The funny thing about Sara and what made me cast her is that – and the weird thing is we call Sara the human garbage disposal because all she does is eat.
Get out of here!
That’s all she does.
I was going to say, I looked at the screen, I knew it was horror movie cause I saw a skeleton and then realized I was looking at Sara Paxton.
She is constantly stuffing food in her face. But what’s funny about Sara is that when I first met her, I didn’t know much about her, I hadn’t seen her movies or anything. She showed up and she was like really goofy and awkward and clumsy, and it was such a curveball. I didn’t anticipate her being like that, and it was incredibly charming and incredibly fascinating because then when I went and watch movies with her in it, she plays kind of a straight character or like the bitchy character, and I was like but this girl that I just met is so far from that, I can’t believe that they would even consider her for those roles. I’m just excited that no one’s exploited this and I’m going to do it to the fullest.
Yeah, it’s interesting. It is kind of a punky, funky, fun, witty, twist on the genre which is kind of refreshing. It’s the kind of movie you can actually see mixed gender and not be embarrassed about.
Yeah.
Not that I’m mixed gender, you know what I mean.
I do understand.
Was it hard to get Sara to do those nude scenes though?
It would have been if we had had any but…
Ti, dude I’m trying to help you here. You want to sell some movies or not?
There’s one scene where she’s in the shower and she has this weird pink tube top on.
Now you had to ruin that, I cannot see the tube top. Now you just ruined it.
Yeah, your imagination ran wild with you but I remember her, the shame that she had with the goofy pink tube top on.
I love that Kelly McGillis is in this movie. You’ve worked with Kelly McGillis, you’ve worked with Dee Wallace, you’ve worked with these mommas from the ‘80s and I’m wondering who else is on your list from that era. For example, I have some suggestions for you, JoBeth Williams, any chance?
You never know, maybe.
Anne Archer, Karen Allen, Helen Slater?
Sure, as long as I’m making the next Indiana Jones movie; we’ll get Karen Allen in there.
Deborah Foreman?
Sure, she’s great. I’ll get her to dance around to some valley girl stuff.
I’m holding out for Spicoli from Fast Times, because nobody knows what he’s up to nowadays.
That’s right, and what happened to him?. Actually, Mike Damone is my favorite Fast Times character.
Now Pat Healy is in this movie. I got to tell you, I remember him not at all from anything ever before and he is just a revelation in this.
He’s great. When you see other movies and he pops up in them, you’ll be like, hey! and you’ll remember him now and he’s got great parts. He’s worked with a bunch of amazing directors, and he has had little small parts in some pretty impressive movies.
Now tell me more broadly speaking, what’s the trick to making a movie that’s actually scary without going over the top with CG. Because my observation as a critic is a lot of times these movies try and be scary and boy, Cabin in the Woods, perfect example and they just go over the top.
I think some of it is just not having the confidence to do it the normal way. I feel like there’s this feeling now that everybody has to have something clever or some really kind of mind blowing thing happening all the time. I am far too simplistic to care about that.
As far as the CG thing, this story didn’t really call for it. Also I don’t make these movies for very much money, so we don’t have the kind of money to be having Cabins floating in the woods. We just stick to the old school way of doing things.
Those limitations though, they also force you to do better work, do they not?
I don’t know, I’ve never had it the other way. I’d like to say that but at this point, give me $100 million, let me try to blow some stuff up and I’ll tell you afterwards.
Now the point you made about doing it your way is interesting because there’s one scene and I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s one scene where the camera lingers in a doorway for a very long time – I mean a very long time. Obviously you’re trying to build tension there and it works. How do you figure out how long is long enough and how long is too long?
Really what it is, this is the best way I can describe it to people, is it’s like you could tell a joke and make whole room laugh and your friend could tell the same joke and no one in the room laughs. There’s no real great reason why, it’s just there’s some intrinsic ability to have a sense of timing and a sense of feeling these things out. I can’t really explain it. It’s like you cut it together and you feel like that’s a little long, oops it’s a little short, oh, that feels right. And then you just trust your gut and then people watch the movie and you’ll find out if you’re right or wrong.
I got to ask you one question that only you are suited to answer as the director, editor, producer, writer. By the way, director, editor, producer, writer, obviously you don’t get along with people.
I just can’t find anyone else that will work for nothing.
On IMDb it said one of the taglines – there are a couple for the movie, but one of them was some guests never check out. Now tell me you didn’t actually make that up.
That was not mine. My idea for the tagline was “a ghost story for the minimum wage.” That was my contribution.
I have some others for you to consider since you’re in the process of rolling this thing out wide. Okay, are you ready?
Yup.
“The Innkeepers, bedbugs are the least of your troubles.”
Funny you should say that, I’m about to write a movie about bedbugs. Like that’s legitimate. I got a job adapting a novel about bedbugs, and I start it in two weeks.
Are these killer bedbugs?
Not really, it’s more about someone going crazy because they think they have bedbugs, which is what would happen to me because I feel like bedbugs are the worst nightmare.
Here’s another,”The Innkeepers, Sorry, the fitness center is closed while it undergoes an exorcism.”
Fair enough.
No wonder you work alone. “The Innkeepers, 200 years old and that’s just the housekeeper.”
I like the exorcism one better but we could try it out, see what other people think.
That’s a good Hollywood answer. Last one: ”The Innkeepers, GM’s alive, Bin Laden’s dead, Sara Paxton is somewhere in the middle.”
Sounds about right. You could add Dick Clark to it now.
[Mark cringes]
Too soon?
Ti, I really, really, really enjoyed this movie. It is small, it is simple, it is elegant, it is effective and it’s good. The movie is called The Innkeepers. It’s available on DVD on April 24 from MPI Dark Sky Films.
Download the Interview with Ti West [mp3]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (8.9MB)
The Cabin in the Woods
by Mark RamseyPublished April 21st, 2012
Seriously, are you kidding?
“It’s meta!” they say.
More like meh-ta.
Does it upend every horror convention? Yes, but in doing so it fails to appeal to anyone who wouldn’t be caught dead at a horror convention.
The Cabin in the Woods is overwhelmed by its far-fetched desire to be clever (not that I would know anything about that), and it includes the kinds of absurd twists that bend sense into nonsense and nonsense into meta-nonsense. At the heart of this movie is the idea of human sacrifice, and no human will sacrifice more than the one who plunks down ten bucks for this flick.
Could it be that this movie is from fanboy wunderkind Joss Whedon, he of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a variety of other shows that don’t last nearly as long and are chocked full of pretty young people delivering quirky, witty dialogue past each other because it looks great on paper or in a bikini?
Or even in a bikini on paper?
Why yes, yes it could!
Whedon routinely populates his projects with great actors alongside the truly wretched. Amber Benson, anyone? Eliza Dushku? The great Richard Jenkins opposite the guy who plays Thor? I’ve seen better acting in the audience for Judge Judy.
Normally I save my Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins movies for the Lifetime channel where they belong. But Whedon has infused this multidimensional mess with Whitford, Jenkins, and enough unemployed characters from his failed series Dollhouse to staff every Abercrombie & Fitch in Beverly Hills.
Cabin has been on the shelf for three years maturing like a cask of balsamic vinegar, and with the same bitter aftertaste. Maybe the thinking was this movie would play better in cobwebs. Well, I’m here to tell you: More cobwebs!
Cabin in the Woods has enough six-packs and hooters to earn an up-thumb from Roger Corman.
Into the cellar go the characters where they play with deadly antiques and discover an evil Latin spell, an REO Speedwagon song, and a character with a face made of teeth. ”Maybe we should have saved the teeth for the script,” said a pensive Whedon to no one in particular, which is exactly who will be in the audience for this movie.
Watch for stoner Fran Kranz who plays high like he’s Mr. Potter closing down the Bailey Building and Loan.
But high.
And Sigourney Weaver makes a cameo here proving that the desire to put food on the table can make almost any project look worthy.
This is the point where we learn this movie is all about “the ancient ones.”
“What, Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz?” asked stoner Fran.
“The very same,” said Sigourney. ”Now take off that ‘Every Time a Bell Rings, and Angel gets his Medical Marijuana Card’ tee shirt and help me cash this check before the studio changes its mind!
I have much higher hopes for Whedon’s upcoming The Avengers. But first, he evidently needed to clean this Cabin out of his closet.
Wrath of the Titans
by Mark RamseyPublished April 4th, 2012
“Common, but no less appalling a specter,” said Perseus.
Ralph Fiennes returns in his ever-to-be-typecast role as the personification of evil – Hades, ruler of the underworld and, from the looks of it, ruler of the Doobie Brothers.
“When I’m not in Hell, my band is opening a winery tour for The Amazing Kreskin,” said Fiennes.
From Hell’s heart I stab at thee! It’s Wrath of the Titans!
It’s the sequel nobody asked for to the remake nobody wanted! And it deserves the wrath of the audience if not the wrath of Khan! Bring on the tequila-strength buttered popcorn.
Wrath of the Titans is long on gratuitous CG and unruly beards and short on story and battle skirts. I was just beginning to pretend the first chapter didn’t exist when, lo and behold, Warner Bros. greenlights a third chapter.
A third chapter?!
“Actually it was more of a greenish-yellow light,” acknowledged a Warner’s spokesman, “dappled with flecks of humiliation and powered by the MacBooks of a thousand rhesus monkeys!”
The great Zeus is captured and held captive in the most dramatic rose ceremony ever. You dare chain a God?!
Flash back to the original Clash of the Titans when Laurence Olivier’s eyes were rolling so furiously they spun off into a jar that remains today on the desk of producer Michael Bay who has a taste for eyes if not material.
So Perseus must save Zeus. But first, he must mount a flying horse and gallop over the horizon, proving that aerodynamics is nothing more than a myth of the liberal media elites.
Not content to take itself or its audience seriously, Wrath of the Titans also features Wrath of the Attempted Comic Relief – occasional stabs at humor which might have been more effective if they had stabbed closer to the hearts of the filmmakers.
Look out! It’s a giant with only one eye! “Depth perception is another myth of the liberal media elites,” explains Perseus as the giant swats at him but instead slaps himself upside the head.
Enter Bill Nighy, who has never played a role he couldn’t improve by covering it with his own spit.
“Bill is Hollywood’s saliva go-to guy,” said Wrath’s casting agent. “He’s mister ‘spray it and play it.’”
“I have spit upon Hollywood’s biggest stars in Hollywood’s most overblown character roles,” said Bill, handing me a towel to wipe myself down.
This is one of those movies populated by brothers who address each other as “Brother…” as in “Brother, that is a really cute skirt.”
Thanks go to Sam Worthington, who has spent most of his career battling a blue screen and will spend most of what’s left battling a bottle.
Can Perseus stop the slow-moving giant rock monster Kronos? Or will the monster’s own incredible lack of inertia do that for us?
Either way, you’re in for a treat.
And when you find one please alert me.
Enter your own funny caption
“This is where we would kiss if I was attracted to girls”
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