Tag Archives: Tim Burton

Which Way Forward For The “Batman” Movie Franchise? Take Seventeen : Costume Survey

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

 

One of these days, I probably really should get around to playing the Batman : Arkham City video game. Of course that means buying a video game system of some sort and that will inevitably lead to getting more games and more games means less time for things like movies and comics. It could even mean less time with my wife, at which point I know I’d be well and truly beyond all help. So I think I’ll refrain.

But still — a fair amount of what we’ve been discussing in this little (okay, not so little) Bat-thread of mine seems to revolve around ideas presented in this Arkham City game, and it’s rather flabbergasting that I’m freely swiping so many concepts for my imaginary new Bat-movie-trilogy from something I really have no first-hand experience with — but hey, that’s the way it goes sometimes, I guess. All of which brings us to the above-reproduced CG menu from the game.

How does that follow, you ask? Well, we’re at the point in our first Bat-flick where, having hinted at aspects of the costume in silhouette-fashion, and having given the new Batmobile it’s so-called “full reveal,” it’s time for Batman to arrive at the Gotham City docks and crash the little party Lucchesi and his men are holding there, so now seems like as good a time as any to show the Bat-costume in all its glory, hence the picture at the top of the post — which also comes, no surprise, from Arkham City. Apparently you can actually pick which of the various Bat-suits used over the years you want your Batman character to wear in the game, and that pic represents the menu of options that you as a player have to choose from.

Let me start by saying that none of them are exactly perfect for what I have in mind for Batman’s look in this new trilogy, but one of them sure comes damn close, in my opinion. Keep in mind, we’ve already shown that this particular iteration of the Batman is wearing his Kevlar-armor bodysuit underneath his costume, so the suit serve as his armor in and of itself as it has in the Christopher Nolan and, to a lesser extent, Tim Burton Bat-films. So that rules out, going from left to right,  option three and six as pictured. So — it’s survey time! In the next, shall we say, 24 hours, should you feel so inclined, please chime in here and let me know the following :

*Which of the remaining options you  would choose for Batman to wear in the new hypothetical trilogy;

*And which one you think I have picked out.

If nobody responds — it is the weekend after all — I’ll just chime in tomorrow night with my own choice, as well as detailing the small change or two (or three) I’d make to get things exactly as I picture them. Any and all opinions are welcome, of course, but in the end, as they say, there can be only one, and being the dictator of this thread means I’ll have the final say, but if you can lay out a solid argument in favor of your selection, it may just be enough to get me to change my mind!

Until tomorrow night, then!

Which Way Forward For The “Batman” Movie Franchise ? Take Sixteen : The Batmobile!

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

This actually isn’t a diversion from where we were in the plot of our hypothetical Batman I  film. Well, okay, not too much of a diversion.

If you’ll recall, when we last left things the other day, Vincent Lucchesi, Gotham City crime “boss of all bosses,” was headed out to oversee an important shipment coming into town that his guys had neglected to find replacement “security” for once the cop-on-the-take they’d hired to fill that role, the always-crooked Lieutenant Flass, had been sent upriver by Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon. All of which means it’s time to cut to some semi-momentous shit that we’ve all been waiting for (assuming there’s a “we” out there still reading this interminably long series), namely our first scene of the Batman in costume, followed in short order by the debut of this new bat-trilogy’s version of the Batmobile.

So shouldn’t I be doing a post on the Bat-costume first, and then get to the car? Yeah, I suppose that would make sense, but bear with me while I explain how this whole little scene plays out in my mind —

We’ll cut from Lucchesi storming out of his plush penthouse office to Bruce Wayne attentively analyzing a series of shipping manifest numbers on the giant screen of his Bat-computer deep in his cave. Alfred is standing by, attentive as ever, while Bruce says something along the lines of “so if the pattern of Lucchesi’s shipments holds, his next one should be coming in tonight.”

“You intend to be there to meet it, sir?”

“That’s the plan, Alfred. Getting an entire crate of whatever it is he’s shipping in is out of the question, but if I can just get enough to fill up this vial, I’ll transmit an image through to you for analysis.”

“I shall be at the ready then, sir.”

“And speaking of ready — it’s time I got that way myself.”

At this point Wayne will press a button on a keypad control and a plexiglass case containing a Batsuit will rise up from the floor, but I’m thinking for now we should see it only from behind, and that his “dressing” scene should amount to shots of him suiting up in his kevlar under-suit, maybe snapping some gauntlets on his hands, etc. — no full view of him in costume yet, just hints of the overall picture, if you will. This will be followed up by an obscured shot of him breezing by Alfred and mouthing the word “car” into his cowl-mic, at which point a stone dais will rise from the deeper recesses of the cave revealing, in all its glory, the new Batmobile!

Now, when it comes to exactly which Batmobile we’re talking about here, I admit I hunted high and low through various online image archives to find what I felt would be the perfect model. I’m not interested in a repeat of Christopher Nolan’s “Tumbler,” nor did I want a carbon-copy version of Tim Burton’s more classically-inspired ride, although something more akin to the Burton version, based as it was on an amalgamation of several of the better comic book designs, was what I had in mind. Still, the picture-perfect model well and truly escaped me, until —

I found that image reproduced at the top of this post. It’s a conceptual CG mock-up by a guy named Danny Gardner done for the Batman : Arkham City video game. Never having played the game myself I can’t say for certain whether or not it’s the car — or, hell, one of the cars — Batman uses in it, but I think for the overall tone of this new imaginary Bat-trilogy of ours, it’s pretty well goddamn perfect. I’m sure whatever Hollywood designers were working on this film if it ever came to pas would want to tweak it here and there, obviously, but as far as a “this is the kind of thing we’re going for” blueprint goes, I think it’s great. It’s sleek, it’s modern, it’s bad-ass, and yet it’s got something of a timeless quality to it that I think would ensure it ages well along with the film itself. It would also blend into the night pretty seamlessly. What say you, dear readers?

And now, with the car out of the way, tomorrow we can finally get to the business of a “full reveal,” as the saying goes, of the Bat-costume itself!

Which Way Forward For The “Batman” Movie Franchise? Take Four : The Power Of Three

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

There are those who insist that good things come in multiples of three and there are those who will tell you that bad things tend to come in threes — both camps have a Star Wars trilogy they can point to as evidence for their pet theory, and while neither are strictly correct, on a purely rational level, neither side is technically wrong, either.

So let’s just face facts here and admit there are some good movie trilogies and some bad ones, that within the good ones some better than others, and that within the bad ones some are better than others. All of which brings us back to that rooftop scene we started this “Rebooting ‘Batman’” series with, from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween miniseries, the second page of which is reproduced above (and I apologize for its crookedness, it’s the only scan of this particular page I could find online).

Quite clearly, the latest cinematic iteration of the Dark Knight Detective, as helmed by Christopher Nolan, was a trilogy, and flaws aside, I think that by and large structuring the whole thing this way, whether by accident or design, by and large worked, story-wise. We got a beginning, middle, and end to Batman’s career, and a forth installment probably would have been pushing things a bit much (okay, fair enough, folks who didn’t like the Nolan films probably feel like three was too many, but that’s another matter for another time). I guess I’m in the minority on this, but I would have liked to see Tim Burton get a third crack at the bat-franchise, as well. It certainly would have been better than Batman Forever.

And this is the point at which attentive readers will tell me to back the fuck up for just a minute and pick up on that “all of which brings us back to the rooftop scene” bit. Your wish is my command. Quite clearly, the Harvey Dent/Commissioner Gordon/Batman triumvirate that forms the thematic core of The Long Halloween is what I’d like to see at the center of the entirely-hypothetical next Bat-trilogy I’m building in my head, even if I’d take pretty much no other cues from this particular book whatsoever. I mentioned last time around that giving Bruce Wayne and/or Batman a real life that included some actual friends apart from Alfred would be an idea that I. and a lot of fans out there, would be receptive to. And of course, we all know that the story of Harvey Dent is, ultimately, a tragic one that could translate well into a central theme spread out over three flicks. I’m still working out all the details as to how to do it in my head — like I said in a previous post, I’m very much making this up as I go along — but how about this for starters? In our new Bat-trilogy, Dent, Gordon, and Batman start as uneasy allies, and are pretty firm, honest-to-goodness friends by the end of the first flick. Perhaps even to the point where Batman decides to clue them in on his secret identity (although that’s not, strictly speaking, necessary — just something to keep in mind).

If Warner Brothers were to decide to give this hypothetical “soft reboot”‘s director a three-picture guarantee, absolutely not unheard of in the movie business, then that would seem a natural enough relationship to build a trilogy around, and we can get into Harvey’s inevitable turn for the worse as we move into discussions of (the again completely hypothetical) parts two and three. If the first flick were to be a complete and utter flop, then hey, they can always fire everybody, go back to the drawing board, and us fanboys and fangirls can endlessly debate the “great Batman trilogy that never was,” which is always a pretty fun little time-waster in and of itself, as well.

So, to recap, here’s where we are right now — the next Bat-flicks are going to have a shift in tone toward the more heroic, old-school, brains-over-bran interpretation of the character that will result in a bit less “dark” an overall tone; we’ve established Detroit at the central filming location for Gotham City; we’re going the “soft reboot” route by going back to an earlier point in Batman’s career but not obsessing over the details of his origin too explicitly; and we’re planning for a trilogy of films from the outset, one with a genuine story of friendship between Batman, DA Harvey Dent, and Police Commissioner Jim Gordon at its core.

Sound good? Sound bad? Now’s the time to chime in, and I do appreciate all your comments, both good and bad, so far. On a minor “housekeeping” note, I’ll probably be stepping away from this series for the next week or so as I attend to some business on my “main” site (trashfilmguru.wordpress.com, in case you didn’t know), but will be checking, and responding to, comments on here just the same. A guy’s only got so many hours in a day to write, and I’ve been running a series of comic reviews over there that I really want to wrap up in the next few days before showing the love of my life (yes, that would be my wife) a terrific time for her upcoming 30th birthday. Once that’s all taken care of, I’ll be back to the task at hand here with the next entry in our series, which will focus on which details I’d keep, and which I’d scrap, from the Nolan series of Bat-films. Then we can finally get into the plot of the films themselves proper, followed by arguably the most fun part of all, ideal casting choices for all the characters!

Oh, and maybe we should start bandying about some names as to who we’d like to see directing these flicks in an ideal world, as well? But I did say one thing at a time was going to be the order of the day here, didn’t I? Must try to stick with that — if at all humanly possible!

Which Way Forward For The “Batman” Movie Franchise? Take Three : Setting The Tone

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

 

They just don’t draw Batman like that anymore, do they? These days, he’s a “ripped” steroid freak in a high-tech suit of armor who’s usually either thrashing someone to within an inch of their life or brooding silently. Ever since Frank Miller’s legendary Dark Knight Returns story — which, I’ll grant you, is still probably the single-best Batman story ever — he’s been getting increasingly somber, morose, and violent. Miller himself even portrayed him, essentially, as a child-abusing psychopath in All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder. The films,  Joel Schumacher aberrations aside, have been getting increasingly darker over time, as well. People thought Tim Burton’s Batman flicks were a little too dark, so Warner went to Schumacher for a “course correction” that fell flat on its face, and then Christopher Nolan came along with the most popular, and darkest, cinematic version of Batman yet.

Then came the midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado.

I would argue that even before that tragedy, this whole “increasingly dark” thing had run its course, but now I think a change in tone is positively essential. Which is not to say that Batman should ever go back to the light-hearted goofiness of the 1960s TV series. Modern audiences like a Dark Knight who is — well, dark. But I think the right tone was struck in books like the one pictured above, by the legendary 1970s Batman creative team of writer Denny O’Neil and artist extraordinaire Neal Adams. Their Batman was a serious, determined, perhaps even obsessive guy, but he was as much a man of intellect as of action, and at the end of the day he was a hero first and foremost, and could always be counted on to do the right thing. I think modern audiences are ready for that again after seeing Bruce Wayne essentially degenerate into basket-case status by the beginning of Nolan’s third flick, only to heroically redeem himself at the end. Let’s pick any new series up from that point — not storywise, mind you, but tonally.

To be a bit more specific about what I have in mind — think maybe a little more Michael Keaton and a little less Christian Bale. I liked Keaton’s take on the character — you felt like he was a decent guy at heart who just had this fundamental inability to resolve a gaping hole left in his life by his parent’s murder and had enough money and free time to channel that pain in a really — well — weird  direction, but would give all that up for a normal life in a heartbeat if he could just, ya know, figure out how to. Keaton;s cracking of the Joker’s poison code in Batman was also one of the few instances in any of the 1989-and-onwards Bat-films where we actually saw the Caped Crusader putting to use something that his name has always been, and always should be, synonymous with, namely his detective skills. I think it would be a great step in the right direction to see the next version on Batman on the big screen be just as at home in the Batcave’s crime lab or poring over information on its super-computer as he is kicking ass in a rainy alleyway.

I don’t think there’s any need for Schumacher camp, much less 60s-style uber-camp, but by all means, you can lighten things up a bit and still give us an essentially dark and mysterious character. 1970s Batman was pretty much all about that. And any Batman that’s going to “work and play well with others” in the inevitable Justice League movie DC’s cooking up will have to be at least a little more of a “joiner” than Bale and Nolan’s take on the character was.

To that end, I propose giving Bruce Wayne some actual friends apart from Alfred, a love interest who doesn’t get murdered, and an actual social life that’s not an OTT front from his crime-fighting activities and nothing more. But I promised to stay focused, and will get a bit more into the details of that tomorrow, as I examine the relationship that I think should be at the core of the next bat-series, and how it ties back into the rooftop scene from The Long Halloween that I started this whole thing with. I’ll also be getting into why I think a trilogy should be the plan for the next series from the outset — I know, I know, I said one thing at a time, but trust me, the “two” topics really are one and the same. In the meantime, of course, if you think I’m barking up the wrong tree with those whole “tone down the darkness a notch” stuff, now’s the time to say so!

Which Way Forward For The “Batman” Movie Franchise? Take Two : Building A Better Gotham

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

 

If there’s one area (and actually I think there are several, but that’s rather beside the point and I promised to remain focused like a laser beam on each individual subtopic in this “Batman reboot” series of posts) where I think Tim Burton’s Bat-flicks had it all all over Christopher Nolan’s it’s in their depiction of Gotham City. Not only did Burton’s Gotham have a fantastic Metropolis-gone-gothic look thanks to the late Anton Furst, but it felt like an intrinsically different sort of place than a real city, a place where you could sort of actually believe guys might run around in bat costumes and Joker facepaint , while Nolan’s Gotham was just, essentially, New York only a little grimier (even if his first two films were shot in Chicago).

I understand the reasoning behind making Gotham less fantastic, of course, and those reasons do make sense — Nolan’s Batman was supposed to be a more “realistic” character, to the extent that a billionaire who dresses up like a bat can ever be called “realistic,” and Joel Schumacher’s CGI Gotham was such an over-the-top visual disaster that a back-to-basics approach to Bruce Wayne’s hometown was a predictable enough move to make.

Still, I think something was lost, and that Batman works a bit better with at least some level of the fantastic still involved in its primary geographic setting. To that end, I think  there are basically three things any self-respecting Gotham of the potential “soft reboot” of the Bat-franchise we were talking about should have —

1. It should look at least a little bit different than a garden-variety major US city. You needn’t construct anything as elaborate as Furst’s amazing two-city-block long set, but a city that has some fairly spectacular architecture in the form of bridges, tall buildings, etc. that you can focus in on would be a definite plus, especially if they’re all a bit past their prime and have seen better days, since Gotham pretty has to be a grimy place by definition. Some constructed set pieces that could stand in as fictitious local landmarks would be a plus, as well, so to that end it would be helpful if the filming location for future Batman flicks had something of an emptied-out urban core where you could build an Arkham Asylum, or a neat-looking miniature version of Wayne tower, etc. I’m thinking an ideal sort of look would combine elements of New York as depicted in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen combined with a toned-down Gothic feel at least somewhat reminiscent of furst’s Gotham, albeit scaled way the hell back.

2. There should be some ritzy neighborhoods or suburbs where you can find adequate exterior footage for Wayne Manor and its grounds. I don’t think the next Bruce Wayne needs to live in a fucking castle like Bale’s version, but certainly a “stately manor” that exudes old-school wealth and prestige and hearkens back to the city’s more prosperous days before it became Crime Capitol, USA (which Gotham pretty much always  is).

3. As alluded to in the first two points, the majority of the city should be run down, and obviously well past its prime — a city in desperate need of a champion.

Finally, for reasons that will be made more clear as I get into the nuts and bolts of the plot outline I have in mind for this whole “soft reboot” thing, I think it would be essential for the city-to-stand-in-for-Gotham to be close to some wooded and even mountainous areas, since while the focus of this flick is most assuredly not going to be on the minutiae of the Batman’s origins per se, I still think some “flashback”-style sequences that show rugged wilderness survival-type training are going to be in order.

I suppose this is all rather just moot speculation since they’ll probably just film the next flick in Vancouver and it’ll look just fine because it pretty much always does no matter what, but just for the sake of fun speculation, I have something else in mind here — a locale that combines everything we’re looking for in terms of a run-down urban core; some truly spectacular architecture of its own; essentially empty areas that might as well hang a sign up saying “will build to suit;” palatial, ultra-wealthy, “old money” suburban areas; and fairly reasonable access to densely-wooded, geographically rugged forest. Batman Begins was filmed in Iceland, the UK, and Chicago, respectively, in order to capture all these various aspects, but you can do all this in exactly one place here in the good ol’ USA, and the state government is eevn actively engaged in rolling out the red carpet to film production in recent years, seeing the economic boom it’s brought to its northerly neighbor in Toronto.

Yes, folks, I think the next principal filming location for Gotham City — the ideal place to set the geographic tone for a re-launched, re-loaded (even if it’s done “softly”) Bat-franchise — should be (drumroll please) : Detroit!

I assure you, friends, I’m not kidding. Given the kind of place I think would work best for this “sot reboot,” as outlined in my (admittedly makeshift) criteria above, I think the much-maligned Motor City would be absolutely ideal, and bringing the production there would have the added bonus of generating great publicity for the film due to the positive economic impact it would have on an area that sure could use it. A multi-million-dollar Hollywood production setting up shop in Detroit? You can bet the city fathers (and mothers) would positively roll out the red carpet for Warner Brothers, and everything you would need is  literally right there at your fingertips. Honestly, this idea’s almost too damn good. But maybe you’ve got a better one, in which case, please chime in before I move on to step three, which will concentrate on the overall tone of the film itself (now that we’ve — okay, I’ve — established a great location) tomorrow!

Trailer: Frankenweenie

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fun of Tim Burton’s and I found Dark Shadows to be a bit forgettable but I am looking forward to seeing Frankenweenie.  To be honest, I suspect that Burton’s vision is better translated in animated form and, if nothing else, it looks like this film might inspire me to shed more than a few tears. 

Here’s the 2nd trailer for Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter”

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

I’m not exactly sure what the advertising tagline is for this film — as a matter of fact, near as I can tell it doesn’t seem to actually have one — but I know what it ought to be : “Silver — It’s Not Just For Werewolves Anymore.”

Look, I don’t consider myself to be a scholar of the vampiric arts (or whatever they’re called)  by any means — I’ve never seen True Blood or any of the Twilight films, for instance — but I know what kills these guys : wooden stakes through the heart. Garlic. Holy water. Sunlight.

Silver? That’s for lycanthropes. But apparently not anymore. Or, rather, not in the 1800s. Don’t get me wrong — director Timur Bekmambetov’s Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter (based on the novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the screenplay, and produced by Tim Burton, whatever that’s worth) is a clever enough little piece of throwaway historical revisionism : vampires were responsible for the death of Honest Abe (Benjamin Walker)’s parents and so, concurrent with his rise in politics, he also undertakes a crusade, under the watchful eye of his mysterious mentor, Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper) to kill as many of them as he can in his off-hours with this kick-ass silver-bladed trick axe that he’s got. To make matters even worse, these dastardly vampires also control the slave trade (guess it’s too controversial these days to point out that it was other human beings who were responsible for shackling, buying, selling, and ultimately working to death their brethren for generations), and we know how the man in the stove pipe hat felt about that whole dastardly business.

Okay, fair enough — while I’m sure our fellow countrymen and women south of the Mason-Dixon line might take some offense at the idea that their side in the war is depicted here as being  controlled by vampires, my honest response to that is one of “tough shit, you’re getting off easy — your real ancestors (not that it’s in any way rational to hold people responsible for the actions of their forefathers) were fighting to keep people enslaved not because they were manipulated by supernatural forces but because they were just plain greedy and racist. Feel better now?,” in point of fact it’s actually a pretty clever pretense. Even clever enough to (almost) sustain an entire film.

But then we come back to this whole goddamn silver thing.  Seriously, it’s like vampire Kryptonite in this flick. There’s just no getting around how easy it makes to kill ‘em off. And that undermines what otherwise would be a pretty entertaining enough little thrill ride. The performances are perfectly decent on the whole. The costumes, sets, and effects, are all top-notch. The historicity, while complete bullshit, holds together coherently enough. And the whole thing doesn’t take itself too terribly seriously, always something this reviewer in particular appreciates. But the sheer amount of suspension of disbelief required to actually thoroughly (as opposed to in a rather half-hearted and detached “oh, that’s kinda clever” sort of way) enjoy this film becomes a bridge  just  a tad too far when we throw this annoying  new mega- wrinkle into the vampire mythos. I get why they did it, but it grates just the same, and Grahame-Smith’s story relies on it so heavily that it takes what would otherwise be an acceptable enough deus ex machina and turns it into a thick, heavy, lumbering, unyielding crutch. Think of it as the silver straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters – “Dark Shadows”

Posted on by trashfilmguru (Ryan C.)

First off, a qualification : if you’re a lifelong (or thereabouts) fan of Dan Curtis’ classic Dark Shadows TV series, I can understand why you would hate Tim Burton’s new film of the same name. It’s many things, but old-school Dark Shadows isn’t one of them. Feel free, with my full blessing (whatever that’s worth), to absolutely despise this flick right down to a molecular level if you fit into this category of viewer. But if you don’t —

— then seriously, where is all this vitriol coming from? I’m not saying it’s a tremendous or important movie by any means, but it’s brainless, entertaining, heavy-on-the-camp fun that’s pretty solidly constructed Burton-by-the-numbers.

And maybe that’s the problem. Tim Burton’s work has, indeed, become almost relentlessly formulaic by this point : de-fang horror/gothic/50s-era sci-fi concepts to make them palatable to mainstream family audiences, concentrate heavily on the visuals, strenuously avoid even the hint of any political subtext, add in a dash of blatantly-obvious-but-ultimately-respectful-to-its-source self-satire, have your admittedly talented cast skew their performances toward the knowingly pantomime, and voila! You’ve got yourself morbidity for the masses.

Apparently this is now some sort of crime. Granted, Dark Shadows is no Ed Wood or Big Fish, but it doesn’t wallow in Burtonian excess the way that the more successful (as far as the box office goes) Charlie And The Chocolate Factory or the mega-successful Alice In Wonderland did. But judging by the reaction out there on Twitter and other “social media” sites, you’d think this was somehow the nadir or Burton’s career (how quickly we seem to forget Mars Attacks!) — in fact, it seems to be generating as much overly-malignant hatred as The Avengers is generating overly-effusive praise. But hell, at least this movie is recognizably the work of a singular creative vision (albeit not one operating at its peak) rather than pure CGI assembly-line product that could have been directed by any of dozens of different self-styled “action auteurs” (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — if The Avengers had been helmed by Jon Favreau, it would essentially be no different) who are ultimately as interchangeable as the material they produce.

The cast is the usual mix of Burton way-more-than-regulars (Johnny Depp in the title role of Barnabas Collins, Helena Bonham Carter as family doctor/lush Julia Hoffman, Christopher Lee in a terrific cameo — as opposed to his pointless quick turn in The Wicker Tree — as an “old man of the sea”-type), talented, well-cast veterans (Michelle Pfeiffer as tired family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Jackie Earle Haley as the hapless Willie Loomis) and up-and-coming talents (Eva Green as Barnabas’ principal object of love/hate, Angelique Bouchard, Bella Heathcote as his principal object of love only, Victoria Winters, Jonny Lee Miller as weak-willed family weasel  Roger Collins, Chloe Grace Moretz  doing her teen-with-a-’tude thing as Carolyn Soddard), and while none are giving what could in any way be called inspired turns, all are solid and dependable.

As is the story, an uncomplicated affair about Barnabas emerging from the grave, vamped to the hilt, in the early 70s to help his fallen-on-hard-times clan rebuild their fishing and canning empire in the face of rival competition that’s equally supernatural in origin, with a little bit of reincarnation-themed romance thrown in for good measure. It’s hardly demanding stuff, of course, but it’s perfectly suited to function as precisely what it is — a distracted afternoon’s or evening’s summer lightweight entertainment. Joss Whedon does this with a team of super-heroes and we call him a genius. Tim Burton does it with harmless comic vampires and we say he’s jumped the shark. Go figure.

All of which goes to show nothing so much as the herd mentality so prevalent amongst today’s film-buff “community.” In truth, both Dark Shadows and The Avengers are cut from remarkably similar cloth — throwaway big-budget diversionary fare that demands nothing of its audience and gives you pretty much exactly what you figure to be in for when you buy your ticket. One is being praised for it because, hey, other people immediately started talking about how good it is, and one is reviled because, hey, other people immediately started talking about how stupid it was. But you know what? At least Dark Shadows has no pretense of being anything other than precisely what it is, and no army of zombies (or vampires) doing its studios’ dirty work for it and publicizing it like mad for free.

I freely admit that might be a big reason why I actually enjoyed this a little more than Marvel’s billion-dollar-bonanza, and I also freely admit that actions taking place off-screen should , by all rights, play absolutely no part in how I react to what’s taking place on-screen. But it’s not a perfect world. And Dark Shadows is far from a perfect film. But I ended up liking it it a lot more than I was honestly expecting to — and if you go into it with an open mind, who knows? Maybe you will, too.

 

Trailers For Halloween, Part 3

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy October 31st!  In honor of one of the greatest months ever, here’s part three of my special Halloween edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers.  Enjoy!

1) House of Dark Shadows (1970)

Apparently, this film is being remade by Johnny Depp and Tim Burton.

2) Night of Dark Shadows (1971)

And then, of course, there was a sequel. 

3) Children Shouldn’t Pay With Dead Things (1972)

I agree!

4) Don’t Look In The Basement (1972)

In the best grindhouse tradition, the first part of this trailer is made up of scenes from Last House On The Left.  On another note, one of the benefits of living in north Texas is that we don’t have to deal with basements and all the icky little things that tend to live in basements.

5) The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

Wow, this looks bad.  But I just love the way the guy narrating the trailer tries to convince us otherwise.

6) Phantasm (1979)

Everyone always seems to freak out when I admit that I haven’t seen this movie yet.  I do own it on DVD, however and someday, I will watch it.  Promise!

Happy Halloween!