Because of a conversation this afternoon with londonfilmgeek on Twitter, I was reminded of the brilliance that is Labyrinth. This was one of my favourite films as a kid and it still remains one of my “rainy day” or “I’m sick and want chicken soup” movies. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is one of the first movie heroines I could identify myself with (it helped that I had a younger brother named Toby too) and the movie never fails to lift my spirits. And I love the Escher inspired hallways:

So you’d think with a blog post title named ‘Return to Labyrinth’ I’d be reminiscing about the movie, going on about how much I loved it and adored it. Well, not exactly. You see, while browsing this afternoon for all things Labyrinth, I stumbled on… Return to Labyrinth. It’s an original English-language (OEL) manga based on Labyrinth. Set 13 years after the events of the movie, it centers around Toby, now a teenager, who Jareth the Goblin King still wants as the heir to his throne. The manga is supposed to be a four part series with the first two parts released in August 2006 and October 2007.

Why have I never heard of this? The first volume came out back in 2006. 2006! That’s almost 2 years ago! So why does nobody I know know about it (I’ve got some big Labyrinth fans friends)? Bad marketing or just a very bad story? I’m hoping it will be a great and worthy sequel, but if it isn’t we can always pretend it never existed (yes, Wachowski brothers, I am looking at you).

To make it better though, there’s also an online version, so you can start reading right away. I haven’t tried it out yet, so I’m not 100% sure that all of it is available, but from what I can tell it seems to be the whole thing. Three chapters are available; it’s about 60 pages from the 208. So far I’m really enjoying it and will order paperback. If you want the dead-tree version, you can get it at the TokyoPop store or Amazon.

After seeing Iron Man and the special tidbit after the end-credits, I decided to finally try and delve into the world of the comic book geek. One of the comics I picked up was The Ultimates: Volume 1 Super-Human, a re-imagining of the Marvel’s superhero team the Avengers. Why this comic? Because the Avengers movies coming out in 2010 and 2011 is rumoured to be based on it and for once I wanted to read the comic before seeing the movie.

Since the announcement of these two movies a couple weeks ago, the rumours and fan speculations on the casting have began to increase. First, we heard Matthew McConaughey was in the running for Captain America. Then that Marvel wants Brad Pitt as Thor. The Empire Blog even has a list of potential Captain America candidates. On fan sites, the theories range from Paul Walker as Captain America and Maggie Q as Wasp to Dominic Purcell as Thor. The casting of this movie has got the geek crowd reeling and it’s fun watching everybody come up with their own ideas on who should play the parts.

The casting of three characters are set already: Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Edward Norton as Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. They haven’t actually confirmed yet that they will be in those movies, but I’m being the optimist here and believing they won’t pull out of it. By the way, I love that the artists used Sam Jac’s likeness in the comic (mind you, before the movie came out) and it’s perfect he agreed to playing the movie character.

What nobody so far has mentioned though is that the characters in “The Ultimates” actually have a discussion about who should play them if there’s ever a movie! Here’s the dialogue:

Nick Fury: Hey, did you hear you’ve been optioned as a movie? Betty Ross was telling me they’re already in discussions with Brad Pitt about a three picture deal to play Captain America.

Captain America (Steve Rogers): Who’s Brad Pitt?

Giant-Man (Henry Pym): What, are you serious? My God. This might not be such a disaster after all, huh? Who do you think they could get to play you, Nick?

Nick Fury: Why, Mister Samuel L. Jackson, of course. That’s not even open to debate, Doctor Pym. And I’ll tell you the one guy who could do a convincing Tony Stark — From Hell’s Johnny Depp.

Wasp (Janet Pym): What? Depp’s too much of a pretty-boy. Stark’s a crazy kind of Howard Hughes character. I’d rather see someone with more of an eccentric range.

Nick Fury: Don’t underestimate Depp, Mrs. Pym. A lot of people tag him with that pretty-boy label, but he’s actually one of the most accomplished actors in Hollywood at the moment. Picture him doing Ed Wood in an Iron Man suit and you’ve got Tony Stark up there in celluloid, baby.

Giant-Man (Henry Pym): Yeah, I could see that. You know, you’ve actually got a real knack for this casting thing, Nick. Who do you think they could get to play me?

Nick Fury: Oh, that’s easy. Lantern-jawed Matthew McConoughey, of course.

Wasp (Janet Pym): What about me?

Nick Fury: Heck, who else but Miss Lucy Liu?

Wasp (Janet Pym): Oh, naturally. Even though she looks absolutely nothing like me, she’d be great because all Asian people are basically identical, right? Who’d be your back-up choice, General? Bruce Lee?

Captain America (Steve Rogers): Who’s Bruce Lee?

The characters then go on to make fun of Bruce Banner (the Hulk), claiming he could be played by “Woody Allen”, “the creepy, little kid from the Sixth Sense”, “Stuart Little” and “Steve Buscemi”. While I don’t think any of this casting will actually come to pass (besides the Samuel L. Jackson one of course), it’s still interesting to see this piece of dialogue.

Now a question for you, dear readers: who would you cast for these movies?

I’ve given some thought into how I want to review this movie. On the one side I want to give my normal spoiler-free review, but on the other hand I want to go a bit deeper into it, singing it’s praises and nitpicking it’s faults. So I’ve decided to actually do two reviews. One for the people who haven’t seen it yet, so without spoilers, but a quick “is it any good or not?”. And one where I don’t have to care about spoilers, where I can just speak my mind mind about certain scenes, characters, etc. The review you’re reading now is the spoiler-free one; you can expect the other one in the next couple of days.

In Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull (from now on I’m just calling it Indy 4) 20 years have past since the previous movie; the year is 1957 and the United States and the Soviet Union are approaching the height of the Cold War. The film opens at a military warehouse in the Nevada Desert, where Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is coerced into helping the Soviets find a mysterious artifact. Led by Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), the Soviets believe the Crystal Skull could grant them the ultimate power and Indy does what he can to stop them.

The opinions on Indy 4 are so mixed and I can understand why: this is not a film everybody will love or hate. While some people may be on the extremes, I think most will be caught in the big wasteland between, not completely writing it off and hating it, but also not proclaiming it as the greatest movie ever made. It’s been 15 hours ago since I saw Indy 4 (including a good night’s sleep) and I’m still analyzing and going over the movie in my mind, trying to figure out how I precisely feel about it.

The best part of the movie are the action seqeunces. Indy 4 has some fun, exciting scenes and nobody can deny the brilliance of those moments. The car chase (this is not a spoiler, it’s an Indiana Jones movie, you knew there would be a car chase) in particular is exhilarating, except for some minor monkeying around. The whole film is beautifully shot, in and outside those action scenes. Indy 4 cleverly makes use of reflections and shadows, creating a visually stunning movie.

Acting wise the film is solid. The cast are all comfortable in their roles and you can see the delight they must have had while filming this. Harrison Ford may look his age, but his Indy is still as charming and kicking ass as no other. Spielberg and Lucas weren’t lying when they said the character would stay true to its roots. Indiana Jones remains the same Indiana Jones, even though he’s now a little older and slightly slower. I was expecting the worst of Shia LaBeouf, but his character Mutt Williams fit into the movie. I’m warming up to his performances and I do think he could go on to do great things (as long as one of them isn’t an Indy spin-off). Karen Allen literally lit up the screen whenever she was on; mainly because of a big goofy grin I couldn’t fail to love (I can see though that some people might find it irritating). Cate Blanchett is lovely as the evil Soviet agent. Yeah, lovely, not really a compliment for an “evil” character. While there wasn’t anything wrong with her performance, her character missed the intensity of the “bad guy” you love to hate. But that’s got more to do with the script than anything else.

And that’s where the Indy 4 suffers: the script. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’m not going to go into detail here, but the plot feels shaky at the best of times. Especially the last act is what withholds me from truly loving this movie. What I don’t understand is that the reason Spielberg and Lucas waited so long with making Indy 4 is that they were waiting for a “good” script. If this was a good script, how the hell did the bad ones look like?

I can’t say if you will enjoy Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. This is one movie everybody must see, just to determine their own opinion on it. It goes without saying you should see it in the cinema; visually the movie is outstanding and for that alone I would recommend it. It’s a great summer movie and a worthy Indiana Jones movie, but I can’t help but wonder how will we look back at Indy 4 in 20 years time?

Episode 62: “Time’s up”

A week ago I did a guest blog post about Apple Spotting and I came across this video showing the product placement used in Independence Day. It’s part of a series by YouTuber JediMoonShyne, featuring the product placements in all different movies.

Quarantine
There haven’t been that many good horror movies lately, but Quarantine might turn that tide. It’s an American remake of the Spanish movie [Rec] and stars Jennifer Carpenter (Debra Morgan on Dexter) and Jay Hernandez (Six Degrees, Hostel). The movie’s about a hazmat team investigating a quarantined apartment complex and find there a camera depicting why and what happened during the quarantine. [Trailer]

American Teen
I’ve heard a lot of good things about this little documentary; some even claiming it might be one of the best movies this year. It follows 5 high school seniors as they finish their last year: the Jock, the Geek, the Rebel, the Princess and the Heartthrob. The film shows these kids being more than just the stereotypes they’ve been labeled with. [Trailer]

Lakeview Terrace
I love Samuel L. Jackson, but I’m not sure even he can save this movie. In Lakeview Terrace he plays a cop harassing his new neighbors (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington). Although there might be some unexpected cool plot twist, the trailer seems pretty straightforward and pretty boring. [Trailer]

The Children of Huang Shi
Not my type of movie, but for an indie film it does got an impressive cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh. It’s about a British journalist and an American nurse, who rescue a group of orphans during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937. [Trailer]

The Wackness
I’m not sure what to think of this trailer; so far it didn’t really convince me to go see the movie. Set in the 1990s, its about Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), a teenage pot dealer, trying to make the most of his summer. I’ve read good reviews though, so I’ll keep an open mind until I’ve actually seen it. [Trailer]

Space Chimps
This is the type of movie that gives animations a bad name. Thank God for Wall-E and even Kung Fu Panda for this summer! If you hadn’t gathered it from the title, Space Chimps is about a group of chimps going into space. The only fact about this movie that has got me a tad interested is that Andy Samberg (SNL) is doing one of the monkey voices. [Trailer]

Hamlet 2
How could there be a sequel to Hamlet if everybody dies at the end? Why, by using a time machine of course! This movie is actually about an actor-turned-high-school-drama-teacher (Steve Coogan) who together with his students tries to stage a politically incorrect musical sequel to Hamlet. [Trailer]

The Pixar Story
Don’t you just love Pixar’s movies? This documentary is a behind the scenes look of the company and it’s employees and associates. I don’t exactly know what the deal is though with the release date; it came out in America back in August 2007 and has even been there on TV. So far though I haven’t found anything about an international release. Till we do, this trailer will have to be enough. [Trailer]

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Still four more days till this movie hits the cinema. I liked the first movie, mainly because I had read the book and watched the very crappy TV series as a kid (compared to that everything looks good). I think Prince Caspian will continue in the same vein: a good entertaining kids movie, but nothing more. [Trailer]

College
It’s not the worst trailer around, but I don’t think this movie will be that much of a hit. But then what do you expect from a movie about three high school kids visiting a university and pretending to be freshman, just to get girls and get drunk? [Trailer]

Hancock
The previous trailer of this “Will Smith as a superhero/tramp” movie looked so horrible, I lost all faith in it. Now a bit of that faith is coming back, after having seen this extended trailer. Beware though: I think it gives too much of the plot away. [Trailer]

The Spirit
I love the look and feel of this trailer. I’m only scared people are going to think it’s a Sin City rip-off, which it isn’t. It is from the same comic book artist Frank Miller, so of course they’re going to look similar. In this case though, Miller is also actually directing the entire movie. [Trailer]

Young People Fucking
Again a movie that has had a lot of buzz and good reviews at festivals. It’s a comedy that intertwines the stories of 5 couples over the course of one sexual encounter. [Trailer]

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan
I actually enjoy Adam Sandler‘s movies most of the time. True, they’re not the funniest films, but it’s not the worst out there. Here Sandler plays an Israeli agent who wants to give up his super spy life to become a hairdresser. [Trailer]

The Babysitters
The first thing that crossed my mind when hearing the title of the movie was: “Oh no not another Babysitters Club movie”. I couldn’t be more mistaken; these babysitters are from a very different caliber. After fooling around with one of her customers, a 16 year old teenager realizes she can make money by turning her babysitting service into a call-girl service for married man. [Trailer]

Last Friday I went to see Iron Man on opening night at the Odeon on Leicester Square together with a big group of fellow geeks and bloggers, including Cristiano (of course), LJ, Sizemore, Whatleydude and a whole bunch of others. Suffice to say that it was a pretty great experience and this is one movie you must see in the cinema.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, a genius playboy millionaire and CEO of the weapon developing Stark Industries. While he is the brain behind his company inventing many of the high-tech items himself, Tony is the stereotype millionaire: a hard drinking, gambling ladies man without a care in the world. That is, until he gets captured by terrorists in Afghanistan and is forced to reproduce one of his own missiles. Stark instead secretly develops a way to free himself, which puts him on his path to become Iron Man.

As a lot of people have been saying, I do think Iron Man is one of the best comic book adaptations so far. Unlike most superhero movies it stayed true to the comic books, without trying to make it more grittier and real, yet also without making it look cheesy. That being said, the visual effects in this movie are stunning. Not once did I have the feeling I was looking at CGI; everything seemed fluent and realistic. There also weren’t any unnecessary CGI scenes in it; sometimes with other movies it seems to me as if certain battles go on forever or that certain scenes are in it, pure for the sake of doing “some cool CGI”.

I don’t think this movie would have worked with anybody other than Robert Downey Jr. in the role of Tony Stark. This is one character he was born to play and, boy, does he play that character well. Downey brings a lot of his own personality to Stark, playing the millionaire-turned-superhero pitch perfectly. With Iron Man in the cinemas and Tropic Thunder coming up, I think we’ll remember 2008 as the year Robert Downey Jr. became a movie star.

While it is Downey’s movie, the performances of the other actors are also all top-notch. Gwyneth Paltrow is cute (although perhaps a bit smiley) as Stark’s assistant Pepper Pots and makes their relationship believable. One question: was it all makeup or does Paltrow really have freckles, but always covers it up? Jeff Bridges is almost unrecognizable as Stark’s mentor Obadiah Stone, even shaving his head for the role. Then there’s Terence Howard as Stark’s military friend Rhodey. While he isn’t featured that prominently in this movie, I know we’ll be seeing that character and his alter-ego War Machine in future sequels.

My only small gripe with this movie is parts of the plot. At times it was a tad predictable and to me the science sometimes seemed a bit off (although I’m sure a true Iron Man fan will be able to explain it all to me). The largest problem I had though wasn’t with the movie at all, but with it’s trailer. Seriously, how much can you give away? Besides showing a lot of the action sequences, most of the funny moments were featured in the trailers. Then they also took a bit of a scene from the final scene in the movie! Why?!

On a personal note (please don’t hurt me now), I didn’t love this movie as much as almost everybody else I’ve heard talking about it. It’s not that I don’t like Iron Man or that I don’t find it a great movie, but for me something was missing and I can’t seem to pinpoint exactly what. Typically when I love a movie, I come out of the cinema with this childlike glee and giddiness. And with Iron Man I didn’t get that feeling. Not sure why, cause it ticked off all the right boxes (maybe I’m just more of a Batgirl).

All in all, though, Iron Man is a great blockbuster movie. It’s up there as one of the best superhero movies ever. Plans have already been announced for a sequel to be released in 2010, so Tony Stark is here to stay. Try to catch it in the cinema, cause this is one movie where you’ll want the big screen experience. One more tip: stay seated until after the end credits, there’s a brilliant little extra you can’t afford to miss.

Episode 56: “Awesometeen”

The more I hear about it, the more I can’t wait for Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. This video is a short interview Neil Patrick Harris did with EW. He not only talks about Dr Horrible, but also his role in Harold and Kumar 2 and what he thought of Jason Segal (his How I Met Your Mother costar) in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Episode 55: “Never think I need backup plans”

This video was featured on /Film yesterday and it’s too good not to repost it here. And having rewatched Raiders of the Lost Ark myself only just last night, it seemed appropriate.

Episode 54: “Cute bike, aww”

In my previous post I talked about The Dark Knight ARG event, which led to a showing of the newest trailer (which I missed) in 12 major cities. At each screening one lucky person won a reel with the trailer on it and everybody thought it was only the trailer they had just all seen. And it is. Kind of.

The reel contains the exact same trailer, only every single frame in it has been defaced by the Joker! Chris Presswell, the winner of the London reel, discovered this first and you can find photographs of almost every frame on his blog. Some of the “comments” of the Joker are pure brilliance (I had to laugh at the “Me me me” and “Boring part”).

Now some of the other reels have actually been played in a projector and for our convenience been put on YouTube. So far we’ve got the Chicago reel and Dallas reel, and I’m sure the reels from other cities will follow soon. The cool part is the defacings were all done by hand and they differ between the featured reels. I’m curious to see if there’s also something of a hidden clue in this all.

The Chicago reel:

The Dallas reel:

I’ve been following the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight ever since their first “stunt” appeared a couple of months ago. Sadly most ARG related real-world activities had been previously only arranged for the US, forgetting (as usual) there are over seas fans just as willing to participate in these crazy events. Last Saturday I discovered the Joker’s website had been updated with countdowns to special events in 12 differet cities, including London. Yeah! Finally an event I can participate in!

The timer for the London event was counting down to Monday 28th of April 9:00pm and had this message along with it:

Gather with 300 of your closest friends at this exact spot on April 28th.

You’ll need to be in contact with a partner-in-crime who has online access to relay your instructions once you’re there. These instructions will give you the TRAIL to follow, but be sure to look both ways when crossing the street; we wouldn’t want you to make an unscheduled visit to the ER now, would we?

Put on a smile and plan to spend about an hour or so bonding with your fellow clowns.

Notice the TRAIL and ER? Chances were we were going to get to see a new trailer! The coordinates on the page led to this spot, a 5 minute walk from Piccadilly Circus. So at 7pm I arrived nice and early at the meet-up point, where I met up with some of the guys from the SuperheroHype forum. I had also arranged for another member on the SHH forum to be my online oracle, who would phone me all the clues through. For two hours we waited patiently and (of course) it started raining. A couple people were hard core enough to paint their faces Joker style and convinced several others to do the same.

I guess there were about 150 people gathered together, when we got the first clues in:

Step 1: By the “ubique-itous” statue with the alien friend, face forward and count every ground floor column to your right. Beware the policemans’s black and blue stare.

Step 2: Up the stairs prepare for battle. You’ll be greeted with open arms. On the island, discover those who died in war and divide by the woman who surround them.

Step 3: Go to the place of the frilly collar and count the number of steps you see in stone and light.

The first one took some time to figure out what we were supposed to do. The “ubique-itous” statue with the alien friend was clearly the memorial where we had gathered (it had ubique engraved on of it’s pillars). If you stood in front of it and looked forward, you were facing steps leading to Nelson’s Column with The Mall stretching out on both sides before it. On the right side, you can find the Carlton House Terrace with (well, wouldn’t you know) a long line of columns. Some people counted them and we got two different tallies: 34 or 35.

The second clue took us north, past Nelson’s Column to the Crimea memorial that featured a statue of a woman with open arms. After standing there for almost 15 minutes, nobody could figure it out so we continued to the third clue. This one was easy: the frilly collar had to be the fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Once there we counted the stone steps leading up to it (9) and discovered the neon lighted musical “The 39 Steps”, leading to number 48.

By now we found out we needed three two-digit numbers to open up a (online) safe, which would lead to more clues. Together with a couple others, I decided to walk back to the Crimea memorial to try and figure the second clue out. Still no luck and I made my way back to Piccadilly Circus. I then got phoned by my online oracle, who told me the safe combination was 35-90-48 and that there was a fourth clue:

Around the bend from the Miserable People is an exotic gate. Your contact will be waiting there. He will give you your final set of instructions.

By the time I made it back to Piccadilly Circus, the big group of people were of course all gone. Now around this time I kind of started bumbling around. Remember, I had been walking/running around for 40 minutes (on too high heels) and apparently my brain doesn’t work that well under exhaustion. Looking back the clues seem so straightforward and I’m kicking myself that I could mess this up so enormously. I’ll first describe what I should have done.

I was supposed to go into Shaftesbury Avenue, where I would find the theater with Les Miserables. Two corners away from that is China Town, whose entrance is marked by two large oriental gates. There I was supposed to find two of the Joker’s henchmen who were giving out raffles, Joker cards and instructions to the final destination: the Odeon at Leicester Square. Where I would see the newest trailer.

Ehm, yeah. I didn’t do all that. Instead I blundered around Shaftesbury Avenue, having no clue where to go. I came across some others who had lost the large group too and I ran along with them. We actually did pass the gates at China Town, but I’m guessing we were already too late, cause there weren’t any clowns there. Eventually we heard we had to be at the Odeon, raced over there, got into the cinema… only to discover we were too late. It was over. We had missed the trailer.

I’m still a bit disappointed with myself that I managed to miss what the whole quest was about. Maybe I shouldn’t have walked back and tried to figure the clues out and just have followed the big large group. Maybe I should have gotten the phone number of one of those big large group people, who could have told me where I should have gone to. Maybe I could have been a bit smarter and actually figure the (stupidly simple, now I know them) clues out. I know, I know, a lot of maybes.

Was this a waste of time? No. I actually don’t think it was. I may have not seen the trailer, but it should show up online in these next couple of days, right? I haven’t really missed out on anything; I just won’t see it as soon as I had hoped. It’s mainly about the experience: meeting other fans, figuring out the clues, and the thrill of the quest. That’s something I wouldn’t have gotten to do, if I had stayed at home.

From what I heard the trailer is intense and extremely awesome. It appears the rest of us will have to wait for it till Sunday though. I mentioned before that everyone who had gotten in to see the trailer had received raffles. After the trailer there was a draw and one person won a can with the reel with the trailer. Everybody kind of assumed there must be a DVD also in it, so that it could be put online. Now I’m not that sure. The Joker site has a new page called Happy Trails, showing an advertisement for a projection system (using reels) available this Sunday. So I guess we’ll all have to wait.

Even though this didn’t go exactly as I had imagined (now that’s an understatement), I love participating in these type of games. After We Tell Stories and this event, I can only hope I’ll be seeing (and doing) more in the future. Anyone want to join me next time?

For more photos, check out my Flickr.