With the anal-scrapping days of August almost over, 8 months have gone by, so before we get into many cool promising movies from September to the Oscar-Bait season of December, here are my Awards(so-far for the year):
BEST COMIC BOOK FILM
Nominees:
SIN CITY - Visually stunning and faithful adaptation of Frank Miller's legendary graphic novel world of the very corrupt town of Basin City and its many...interesting...characters who reside in it. Besides becoming finally the first movie I've seen that truely emotes the cornea-storytelling of comic books, its also pretty damn enjoyable in a crime pulp-ish fast food kind of cinematic experience.
BATMAN BEGINS - Christopher Nolan already has a notable rep with movie fans and critics for his already-legendary MEMENTO and the pretty good studio thriller INSOMNIA(with THREE Oscar-winning leads). However, Nolan was given the reigns to relaunch perhaps one half of DC Comics' crown jewels(other of course being SUPERMAN) over at Warner Brothers, with a really good budget reportedly from $120-150 million, and lots of pimping from websites across the internet.
What we have now is not only the best damn movie of the summer byfar, its among my top picks for the best film of the year. Superb comic book storytelling using editing, really great acting from its cast(save maybe for Katie Holmes), and to me truely created the one true origin tale for the Dark Knight(sorry Mr. Burton!)
CONSTANTINE - Unlike the others, this is the most basic studio blockbuster-formulaic action/adventure film of the nominees, yet is still finds ways to be quite enjoyable to me, and ultimately a solid movie. Based on the legendary DC/Vertigo comics title HELLBLAZER, directing rookie Francis Lawrence churns out a good movie without over-editing or over-directing, as former Music Video-helmers like Stephen Norrington and Michael Bay have been known to do. Folks, Lawrence is a man of a good visual eye with the camera that is quite promising as a director, and can't wait to see what other movies he directs for Hollywood in the future.
AND THE WINNER IS....
BATMAN BEGINS! - While SIN CITY came *this* close to taking the prize away from Warner Brothers' tent-pole movie of the summer, I ultimately gave the prize to BATMAN BEGINS simply because for overall a superior movie and because....sorry, but as a BATMAN fan as a kid, to see the character finally done right in a film with intelligence and respect, this takes home the trophy. CONSTANTINE's prize is simply to be a worthy nominee on this list.
WORST COMIC BOOK FILM
Nominees:
THE FANTASTIC FOUR - Okay, we get the long-awaited movie adaptation of the first hit-MARVEL comic, and the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Comic"....and in a year of such good movies I've just written about, this just rucks of talent-less creators making a bastard creation of several previous hit-comic book movies like SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN, except not working as well as those two did...by a long shot. "Flame On!" should be the rallying call of outraged movie audiences stuck with this turkey as they take all availble film prints and burn them in glorius bon fires.
ELEKTRA - First we got stuck with the very mediocre as friggin hell DAREDEVIL last year...and FOX still decided that the best decision now was to make a spin-off of the very lame character in that movie as acted by the very Affleck-impregnated Jennifer Garner. Unfortunately, its no better than DAREDEVIL in terms of how easily bored I was within 15 minutes of watching this film. If I want to see Garner fly around and do her martial arts nonsense, she should stay on the tube with her hit ALIAS TV series.
AND THE WINNER IS....
THE FANTASTIC FOUR - Sure, ELEKTRA bored me because it was mediocre to the capital "M". THE FANTASTIC FOUR was just plan Fantastically shitty! Really, the fact that this movie was a hit makes me wonder if the usual retarded Joe SixPack and Cindy Wonderbra white trash folks instead mistakenly saw this film instead of Michael Bay's THE ISLAND. It would explain a whole lot of questions for me!
MOVIES THAT SO-FAR ARE OSCAR CONTENDERS:
CRASH - Pretty Good film, if only I think its slightly overrated. Neverless, its real positive buzz with audiences and critics(not to mention its rated #65 already on IMDB.com's Top 250 Movies list!) makes this an early grassroots Oscar-contender. Who knows, maybe Don Cheadle will win the Best Actor Oscar this year, as he was beaten last year by STEALTH's own Jamie Foxx. POSSIBLE OSCAR NOMINATIONS - Best Picture, Acting categories, etc.
SIN CITY - Wouldn't it be sweet if this sucker kicked ass at the Oscars? Of course it wouldn't. The Academy plays safe so much these days, its pathetic. Anyway, I see SIN CITY getting many technical nominations and hell, maybe even a win. POSSIBLE OSCAR NOMINATIONS - Best Art Direction/Cinematography/Make-Up.
BIGGEST LOSERS OF THE YEAR
Nominees:
MICHAEL BAY - After directing several mega-blockbuster hit films, all of which have gained much deserved hate from many reviewers, Bay finally falls on his ass for the rest of Hollywood and the world to laugh at him. While THE ISLAND may infact make up its $120+ million budget with the suckers that live overseas, Bay's movie got outgrossed in America by a low-budget Penguin documentary from France.
ROB COHEN - Veteran hack director that while haven't directing as many hits as Bay, hes still as ruthless to moviefans. His career got huge steroid-esque boasts with the box-office hits THE FAST & THE FURIOUS and XXX(both crappy, but thats for another day). Cohen's $120 million STEALTH movie bombed not just in America, but overseas as well. Finally, Cohen will probably go back to directing small studio fluffer genre films as he did before teaming up with Vin Diesel...
THE GREAT RAID - An $80 million war movie from Miramax that was shelved for over 3 years after principal photography ended before finally released this past weekend, and like Pearl Harbor back in 1941, it got bombed. Combine an additional $20 million that Disney spent to try to promote the hell out of the film(among their last with Miramax before both companies divorced financially), and the movie only grosses $3 million. Yikes!
AND THE WINNER IS...
MICHAEL BAY - While Cohen's movie has lost more money for its studio world-wide than Bay's movie, Cohen is of sorts many of the hired-gun hacks in Hollywood that while most agree that he lacks talent, nobody ultimately gives a shit about him. But Mikey Bay, almost a billion bucks he made under Jerry Bruckheimer, is a hot dog dickhead director in Hollywood. The fact that he has a movie tank in his self-described "Middle America" means perhaps....perhaps...that people are finally tired of his crap. Besides, THE GREAT RAID now can room with another big-budget mediocre war flop in WINDTALKERS in the University of Obscurity. Nice campus it is!
More awards to come later today, like....BEST MOVIE OF THE SUMMER....
