What If Lisa Marie Was In Charge of the Golden Raspberry Awards

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re following the Awards ceremony, you know that two major events are coming up next week. On Tuesday, the Oscar nominations will be announced. But before that, on Monday, the Golden Raspberry Award nominations will be announced. For 32 years, the Golden Raspberries have been honoring the worst films of the year and they’ve always served as a nice counterpoint to the self-congratulatory nature of the Academy Awards.

Now, on Monday night, I’ll be posting what I would nominate if I was in charge of the Oscars but first, I’d like to show you what I’d nominate if I was solely responsible for making the Golden Raspberry nominations.

Now before anyone leaves me any pissy comments, these are not predictions. I know that these are not the actual nominations. I know that the actual Golden Raspberry nominations will probably look a lot different. These are just my individual picks.

(My “winners” are listed in bold print.)

Worst Picture

Anonymous

The Conspirator

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

The Rum Diary

Straw Dogs

Worst Actor

Daniel Craig in Dream House, Cowboys and Aliens, and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Aaron Eckhardt in Battle: Los Angeles

James Marsden in Straw Dogs

James McAvoy in The Conspirator

Brandon Routh in Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Worst Actress

Kate Bosworth in Straw Dogs

Anita Briem in Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Claire Foy in Season of the Witch

Brit Marling in Another Earth

Sara Paxton in Shark Night: 3-D

Worst Supporting Actor

Paul Giamatti in The Ides of March

Mel Gibson (as the Beaver) in The Beaver

Sir Derek Jacobi in Anonymous

Giovanni Ribisi in The Rum Diary

James Woods in Straw Dogs

Worst Supporting Actress

Jennifer Ehle in Contagion

Amber Heard in The Rum Diary

Willa Holland in Straw Dogs

Vanessa Redgrave in Anonymous

Oliva Wilde in Cowboys and Aliens

Worst Director

Roland Emmerich for Anonymous

Rod Lurie for Straw Dogs

Kevin Munroe for Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Robert Redford for The Conspirator

Bruce Robinson for The Rum Diary

Worst Screenplay

Anonymous, written by John Orloff.

Another Earth, written by Mike Cahill and Brit Marling

The Beaver, written by Kyle Killen

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, written by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer.

Straw Dogs, written by Rod Lurie.

(That’s right, it’s a tie.)

Worst Screen Couple

Rhys Ifans and Joeley Richardson in Anonymous

Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave in Anonymous

Brit Marling and any breathing creature in Another Earth

Mel Gibson and The Beaver in The Beaver

James Marsden and Kate Bosworth in Straw Dogs

Worst Prequel, Sequel, or Remake

Arthur

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Scream 4

Straw Dogs

Transformers 3

Lisa Marie’s 16 Worst Films of 2011

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Now that 2011 is finally over, we here at the Shattered Lens can finally get around to listing our individual picks for the best and worst of 2011. Pantsukadasai, Necromoonyeti, Leon Th3 Duke, and Dazzling Erin have already posted some of their picks for the best of 2011 and over the next five days, I’ll be risking your scorn by listing some of my own choices.

I’d like to get things started today by listening my picks for the 16 worst films of 2011. As always, these choices are mine and mine alone. So, don’t go harassing Arleigh just because you think Another Earth wasn’t a pretentious and silly film. Instead, harass me so I can harass you back. 🙂

16) Battle L.A. — It takes a special type of film to make Skyline look like a work of art.

15) Cowboys and Aliens — Meh. This should have been so much more fun than it actually was.

14) Your Highness — I still love James Franco.

13) Shark Night 3-D — Another film that should have been a lot more fun.

12) Season of the Witch — The first film I saw in 2011 was also one of the worst.

11) The Ides of March — Hey guys, did you know that politics is a dirty business!? Oh my God, consider my fragile mind blown. Thank you for clearing things up, George Clooney!

10) Another Earth — Honestly, Another Earth probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the way that so many of the toadsuckers out there get so superior and condescending whenever they’re telling me that I should love this movie. If you read the comments under my linked review of the film, you’ll find a very good defence of the film from Leon and then you’ll find a more typical response from some idiot named Naresh Raj Shrestha. Unfortunately, Naresh seems to be a fair representation of most of the people who take to the Internet to defend this film. All I can say to those people is “Fuck off, kids. I’ve got real movies to worry about.”

9) Dream House — Daniel Craig. Again.

8) Contagion — So. Boring.

7) The Beaver — So. Stupid.

6) Priest — Yeah, yeah, it’s in 3-D. Yay.

5) Dylan Dog: Dead of Night — This film sucks just as much as you think it does.

4) The Rum Diary — Is it possible to make a boring movie with one of the exciting movie stars in the world? Apparently, it is.

3) The Conspirator — Self-important drivel that was released at least four years too late.

2) Straw Dogs — Tell ’em about the Southland, Rod Lurie!

And finally, here’s the worst film of 2011…

1) Anonymous — One thing is for sure. Whoever wrote Shakespeare’s plays, he was a lot more talented than Roland Emmerich.

Coming up tomorrow: my ten favorite songs of 2011.

A Quickie Review: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (dir. by Kevin Munroe)

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, I called into work because my asthma was acting up and, in order to pass the time, I watched Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. To be honest, I probably should have just risked having another asthma attack and spent 108 minutes at work, answering the phone. It would have been a more productive use of my day.

Dylan Dog is based (quite loosely) on the same Italian comic book that inspired one of the best Italian horror films of all time, Dellamorte Dellamore. Brandon Routh gives a charisma-free performance as Dylan Dog, a New Orleans-based private investigator who is hired by a mysterious woman (Anita Briem) to investigate the circumstances of her father’s death. It turns out her father was killed by a werewolf and fortunately, Dylan is apparently an expert on New Orleans’ supernatural underground, including the decadent vampires that are led by Taye Diggs (who, seriously, deserves better than this movie.)

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night plays less like a movie and more like a greatest hits collection of other, better movies (and tv shows). We get werewolves and vampires going to war, we get an athletic blonde woman doing karate moves on a bunch of vampires, and we get a lot of casual decadence being committed by vampires who speak with Southern accents that just drip molasses. Now, I love True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the shows that gave me the strength to survive a lot of hard times, and I’ve even got a girlcrush on Kate Beckinsale as a result of Underworld. But I’ve also got all of those wonderful shows on DVD. I can see them whenever I want. I didn’t spend $5.00 to rent Dylan Dog OnDemand just so I could see Dylan become the millionth film hero to walk in slow motion while firing two guns at the same time.

By all accounts, the film’s version of Dylan Dog has very little in common with the comic book version of Dylan Dog. It’s hard for me to say for sure because, while I’ve read and heard a lot about the Dylan Dog comic, I’ve never actually read it. Even if I could get my hands on a copy, it wouldn’t be much help since I’m not exactly fluent in Italian. This is what I assume to be true, strictly based on my own research:

1) The comic book Dylan Dog is a melancholy character who, despite dealing with the supernatural on a regular basis, also suffers from several irrational phobias of his own. The movie’s Dylan Dog is a blank-faced mannequin who utters useless quips and appears, in the tradition of American movie heroes, to have no fear.

2) The comic book Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a Groucho Marx imitator. The American Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a zombie. That assistant is well-played by Sam Huntington and he actually does have a few good moments but it’s still impossible to watch him and not wish he was a Groucho Marx imitator. (In the film’s defence, it appears that the Marx estate took legal action to prevent Groucho’s likeness from being used in the film.)

3) The comic book Dylan Dog lives in London. The movie Dylan Dog lives in New Orleans for absolutely no reason other than these movies always seem to be based in New Orleans. Seriously, New Orleans is one of the most overrated cities in America.

4) Finally, the comic book Dylan Dog is one of the most popular cult heroes in Europe. The movie Dylan Dog is the subject of one of the biggest cinematic flops of 2011.

It’s really hard to know what to say about a film like Dylan Dog other than the fact that it’s really, really bad. In fact, I’m tempted to call it the worst of 2011 so far but, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided that title still belongs to The Conspirator. Unlike The Conspirator, Dylan Dog isn’t a pompous film, it’s just a very, very lazy one.

I think the best thin to say in regards to Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is that it might inspire viewers to seek out and watch Dellamorte Dellamore. Now, that’s a film.

Oh dear…Dylan Dog: Dead of Night trailer

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a comic book reader and there’s really only been four comics that I’ve ever actively made it a point to track down and/or read. One was Strangers in Paradise, which I was introduced to by my first college roommate, who told me that she was my Katchoo. Secondly, there was an old comic book series from the 70s called Tomb of Dracula that Jeff loves. The entire series has been collected in four trade paperbacks and, last Christmas, I ordered all four of them. Of course, since I ordered them all in August (patience and impulse-control not being my strong suit), I had a lot of time to read through them before wrapping them up and giving them away. (And, to my surprise, I enjoyed them in all of their platform shoed glory.) Third, there’s The Walking Dead which Arleigh introduced me to. And finally, there’s Dylan Dog.

I haven’t read a lot of Dylan Dog, largely because it’s an Italian comic and English translations aren’t easy to come across. (And apparently, when an American company did try to reprint the series in English, they ended up getting sued by the estate of Groucho Marx.) So, I can’t claim to be an expert on Dylan Dog because almost all of my information about this series comes second-hand. Honestly, if you asked me to tell you about Dylan Dog, I could probably give you the Wikipedia equivalent of an answer (i.e., that Dylan Dog is a private investigator in London who deals with super natural cases.)

Why does Dylan Dog fascinate me? Well, some of it is because of what I’ve heard about it from sources that I trust. I hate that answer because it sounds so flakey and simple-minded but luckily, that’s not the only reason. There’s also the fact that Dylan Dog’s investigative partner is a guy named Groucho who looks (and apparently acts) just like Groucho Marx. The other is that Dylan Dog was created by the same author — Tiziano Scalvi — who is responsible for inspiring one of the greatest movies ever made, Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore. In fact, Dellamorte Dellamore started off as an attempt to make a Dylan Dog film and the film’s main character had appeared — in a supporting role — in Dylan Dog. From what I’ve heard, Dellamorte Dellamore — with its use of the paranormal as a metaphor for alienation and other deeper philosophical concerns — captured the sensibility of Dylan Dog.

Finally, one of my favorite authors — Umberto Ecco — is on record as saying, “I can read the Bible, Homer, or Dylan Dog for several days without being bored.”

So, that’s why I raised an eyebrow when I came across the trailer for Dylan Dog: Dead of Night while looking up grindhouse movie trailers on youtube.

And then I watched the trailer and that eyebrow quickly went down.

Number one, no Groucho. That already indicates that this is a compromised film. Number two, I may not be able to “read” Dylan Dog but I can look at it well enough to know that Dylan Dog is not a firing-two-guns-at-once type of hero. Number three — New Orleans? Bleh. I’m officially bored with movies that try to be “colorful” by filming in New Orleans. Number four, Taye Diggs? I’m sorry but any series that could inspire Dellamorte Dellamore deserves better than New Orleans and Taye Diggs.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on April 29th, 2011.

Bleh.