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Your Thursday Threes

It's the last day of April (file under "Cruelest"), tomorrow is the official start of the Summer Movie Season, and most of us are not yet dead from porcine influenza! Let's celebrate with some Threes!

Just be the first to tell me what actor appeared in all three of these films and you win the coveted homemade construction-paper medal -- special Start of Summer version.

Post your guesses in the comments section below this entry and I'll publish all the guesses tomorrow when I give you the answer.

Who was in:

Scream

Party Girl

Kate & Leopold

Gekko's Revenge?

Last fall brought a lot of buzz about plans for a sequel to Oliver Stone's 1987 ode to excess, Wall Street.  But as recently as February 12, Stone said he wanted nothing to do with the film (previously called Money Never Sleeps).  In an interview with MTV News he stated, "I didn’t want to do another ‘Wall Street’ movie. I think everything I had to stay came through.”

This week, however, it's become clear that something has changed the conspiracy-theory-loving director's tune, because he is now definitely attached to the project, as is Michael Douglas, who will reprise his role as the "Greed is good"-spouting corporate raider Gordon Gekko. (A role which won him an Oscar®, mind you.)

Last we saw of Gekko, verbal confirmation of his involvement in several market manipulation schemes was being secretly taped by his protégé Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), who was working with the Feds in order to lessen his own criminal sentence.  The assumption was that Gekko would soon be hauled off to jail.

Fast-forward twenty years for Wall Street 2 (I liked the other title much, much better...).  Gordon's up to his old tricks again, and this time his naïve underling will be played by... Shia LaBeouf.  I am of course thrilled by this unexpected development and -- because I spent over ten years working in the financial services industry -- am particularly excited for this film.  I'm hoping against hope that screenwriter Allan Loeb (21, Things We Lost in the Fire) will be able to rein in Stone's tendency to get a little preachy in his films... though since Locke felt that Oliver showed remarkable restraint with W., perhaps I have nothing to worry about.  All I know for sure is that they better come up with another catchphrase to encapsulate Gekko's attitude about our nation's current financial crisis.  "Bailouts are Beautiful," perhaps?  

Reminder: The Seven Pounds Movie Club Starts Next Monday

I hope you are enjoying (and participating) in the Slumdog Millionaire Movie Club discussion going on right now over here.

But if Slumdog wasn't your cuppa cinema, then I hope you'll join us this coming Monday, May 4 for the start of our Seven Pounds discussion. If you haven't seen the Will Smith film yet, you have four days to get to your redbox and check it out before Monday.

And remember, Monday, May 11, we'll be discussing Doubt.

After that, if Movie Club continues to attract participants, I'd like to keep it rolling with more films. Take a moment to fill out the poll below as to what upcoming movies you might like to watch and discuss in coming Movie Clubs:

Online Surveys & Market Research

Battle for Terra

Battle for Terra, the kid's 3-D sci-fi epic opening this week, feels like a demonstration of the double-edged sword in animation: It would be nice if someone other than Pixar and Dreamworks stepped up to make computer-animated films; it would also be nice if those films were, you know, actually good. It's not that I didn't like Battle for Terra -- it's got heart, and great 3-D, and it's trying to be about something, even if the entire movie boils down to pretty much the same message as the song "One Tin Soldier" that my hippie grade 6 teacher made us learn. But watching Battle for Terra felt like one of those experiences where you go to a small, locally made restaurant for breakfast and there's egg yolk on the tines of your fork and nobody can get you a refill when you want one and they're out of the special and you kinda wish you were at IHOP instead. No, it doesn't have the marketing-machine clank and corporate-gloss shallowness that the movies from the big boys do. But it doesn't have the core competencies they have, either.

Battle for Terra begins on a far-flung planet where floating flatworm-people with big eyes live in mushroom cities while sky-whales soar through the clouds; basically, if you fed someone a pot brownie and showed them old episodes of The Smurfs and a collection of Roger Dean Yes album covers, this is what they'd dream of later. Mala (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) is a plucky maverick who chafes at the slightly controlling nature of Terran society, but when a huge machine blocks the sun, the springs into action, learning that the machine's a ship full of an invading race called ... humans. Mala learns all of this when she crashes, and capture the pilot of, one of the sleek, swift ships that have taken so many of her people; its pilot, Jim (Luke Wilson) comes to know and respect Mala, even as Jim's commander General Hemmer (Brian Cox) insists that the humans get off their slowly-dying ship and seize Terra as humanity's new home to replace the shattered Earth, including changing its atmosphere to oxygen that will sustain human beings -- but kill the Terrans. ...

Something's Cookin'...

Three weeks ago I gave major props to the poster for Julie & Julia.  Today the film's first trailer hit the web, and I'm digging everything except Amy Adams' awful 'do (yes, I'm shallow).  Even if that's how Julie Powell styled her hair in real life, it's not like any of us would know; director (and producer and screenwriter) Nora Ephron should've taken some creative liberties on that front.  Take a look and see if you agree:

I'm definitely getting the sense that the Julia segments are going to be much more enjoyable and interesting than the Julie-centric vignettes, aren't you? By the end of the video I was slightly annoyed with Powell's "woe is me, I'm having a quarter-life crisis!" shtick, which doesn't bode well for how her subplot will sit with audiences over the course of a full-length movie. However, I suppose Julie's story was destined to play second fiddle to Julia's. Because let's face it, there's just no topping Meryl Streep channeling Child's plucky personality or mimicking her unique voice.  So I'm still planning to dig in to this one (insert groan here) on August 7th.

Methinks Another "Vegas Classic" is Nigh

Two things I love in this world are Las Vegas and clever marketing campaigns. So imagine my excitement when I saw the new posters for The Hangover, a buddy comedy set in Sin City.  Director Todd Phillips (the man behind one of my all-time favorite movies, Old School) brings us this tale of groomsmen out on the town for their buddy's bachelor party... and, of course, their weekend does not go as planned.  Yeah, I know, it's not the most original story line in the world, but the ads and the trailer below show great potential.

Here's the first poster, which features the unlucky trio of Zach Galifianakis (Into the Wild), Bradley Cooper (Yes Man) and Ed Helms (The Office).

And here's the trailer:

Granted, I didn't really need anything else to convince me that I absolutely need to catch this movie after it premieres June 5th, but you all know that I'm a sucker for tag team posters, and so the three spots below totally sealed the deal.

Tuesday Threes: The Answer

Quite a few of you correctly guessed this week's Tuesday Threes, but Jeff was first (with Jess and Bethany Landen placing and showing). So Jeff gets to make himself the construction-paper medal!

Want to know what film featured Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Garner, and Dan Aykroyd? You need only to suddenly and deliberately highlight the Inviso-Text below:

Yep, it was Michael Bay's 2001 misfire Pearl Harbor. Forty minutes of a really amazing and moving CGI attack scene, buttressed by a couple hours of really dull and boring melodrama. (Which reminds me, I need to get my review of From Here to Eternity up one of these days: just the opposite, not much battle footage, but lots of really great drama.)

And yes, Bay's Pearl Harbor (which starred Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, and Kate Beckinsale) came out the summer before 9/11. But I don't think you can blame the film's disappointments on the fact that the "second Pearl Harbor" took place a few months later--Pearl Harbor simply isn't a very good film. (That's right, Scott and Rochell per your guess postings--I'm one of "they" who say Pearl Harbor is a bad film!) But like I said, the actual attack sequence is impressive. I've never denied that Bay is an evil genius when it comes to action scenes, but acting and drama? Not so much his thing.

Jennifer Garner, who appears this weekend in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, played one of Beckinsale's fellow nurses. Dan Aykroyd had a bit part as Capt. Raymond Thurman, the real-life Naval Intelligence officer who accurately predicted the coming Japanese surprise attack, based on intercepted code transmissions. Alec Baldwin swooped in at the end as Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, the leader of the daring Doolittle Raid in which 16 B-25 bombers hit Japan's main island four months after Pearl Harbor. Doolittle became an instant hero as his raid acted as a sort of morale boost for the nation. Bay's version with Baldwin serves the same purpose for the film Pearl Harbor: You really can't have a summer action blockbuster that ends with the "Good Guys" suffering a staggering, shocking defeat. (Historical note: The United States and its allies did eventually win the war.)

What Doesn't Kill You

It's possibly unkind to say it, but watching What Doesn't Kill You, a crime-and-redemption saga based on the real-life experiences of director and co-writer Brian Goodman, I couldn't help but keep coming back to the observation that the simple fact a story is real doesn't make that story interesting. Starring Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke as lifelong friends on the mean streets of South Boston, What Doesn't Kill You makes it clear early on that the only reason you can't call Ruffalo and Hawke career criminals is the fact it's not much of a career. The two are always broke, always on the hustle, always worried about the next score, always kicking money up to the local crime boss who demands a piece of the action.

The film opens with a big job -- an armored car robbery - and flashes back to the events over the years that led up to it -- the petty thefts, the armed robberies, the spiral into drugs, the squabbles between Ruffalo and his long-suffering wife Amanda Peet. And the fact of the matter is that while Hawke and Ruffalo are as good as they always are (Hawke, frankly, seems to be getting more interesting as an actor the older and more beaten-up he gets), there's nothing in What Doesn't Kill You that we haven't' seen many, many times before. The plot's pure Scorsese, with a Hallmark Channel Movie-of-the-week happy ending; the South Boston setting straight out of The Departed or Gone Baby Gone or the lesser-known (but excellent) Denis Leary film Monument Ave.

Hum Along: The Star Trek Trailer Music...or Where Have All the Heroic Themes Gone?

Monday I warned you about the impending pandemic of Giant Slimy Black Cricket Things that Burrow Into Your Belly Button. Well, today I have an even more important Public Safety topic: Our Rapidly Vanishing Supply of Heroic Movie Themes.

While this crisis has been steadily building since the last Lord of the Rings film, my most recent cause for concern comes in the form of the new Star Trek trailer. Erika posted about the trailer last month, and you can read my take on the very first Trek trailer from late last fall.

In the past decade or so I've carefully developed a strong resistance to overblown summer movie expectations. These days I hold my emotions in check; I proceed with cautious optimism, not wild-eyed fanboy drooling. But lately that third Star Trek trailer, released almost two months ago and still dominating the cineplex previews, has got me in full stupidly hopeful, blindly geeked out mode. Against all my better judgment, I am giddy with foolish anticipation.

(Just in case you somehow still haven't seen it, check it out here. And yes, I'm talking about the theatrical trailer, not the Extreme Trek TV ads focusing on the fist fights, sex, and high-altitude sky diving instead of space battles in order to attract a new generation of energy-drink chugging, tattooed, X-gamers. "This is not your father's Trek." Bah.)

Some of my growing adoration of the trailer is from that All-time Great Trailer Moment when McCoy says "We've got no captain and no first officer to replace him," and Kirk steps up and says "Yeah, we do," and takes his rightful place in the Naugahyde seat of destiny. Yep, that's a full-blown 30-years-in-the-making, James T.-worshiping, galactic goose-bumpy, geek-gasm moment right there.

Plus, we finally get to see much more of the fully functional Enterprise in action. I'm not sure non-fans understand just how pure and perfect and beautiful that classic Enterprise shape is to us lifers. Star Trek may be all about Gene Roddenberry's hopeful, humanist view of the future; and about the lifelong friendship and philosophical balance between Spock (the brain), McCoy (the heart), and Kirk (the fists and, um... other parts). But it's also in large part a sea-going adventure story, Horatio Hornblower in Space, as it's often called--and at its heart is that beloved ship.

But all that aside, what really hooked me into the trailer--and the new film--is the music. Finally we get some truly stirring, inspiring, up-on-your-feet feeling it heroic music, and... it's not in the movie. In fact, unlike the trailer-friendly Children of Dune musical cues from Brian Taylor, the epic music in the Star Trek trailer is not from any movie.

Threes: Freeze Frame - The Answers

You guys are good.  Even though I intentionally picked some pretty obscure images for the second installment of Threes: Freeze Frame, we had a winner in sixty-one minutes.  And that winner is... Jason Pina!  Jason must now unwrap a roll of aluminum foil and shape it into a dazzling trophy that he can carry with him wherever he goes until we run the game again next week, or until he can no longer handle the pressure of signing autographs and dodging paparazzi 24/7.  (That's what tends to happen to a Threes champion.)  Be careful out there, Jason.  The Honorable Mention goes to Gloria, who was the only other person to rattle off the right titles.

For the rest of you, before I reveal the answers, let me tell you what the trio of movies had in common: Penélope Cruz.  Her 35th birthday is today, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® in February, and she's dated her co-stars in all three of these films.  I'd say she's lovin' life, wouldn't you?

And now, onto the flicks that Jason so easily recognized.  The first was Cameron Crowe's 2001 mind-bender, Vanilla Sky.

Cruz not only starred with Tom Cruise in this freaky remake, but she also played the same role (Sofia) in the 1997 original, Alejandro Amenábar's Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes). 

Next was Sahara, an adaptation of Clive Cussler's novel of the same name... and one of Hollywood's biggest financial disasters -- ever.  The silver lining for Penélope is that she ended up spending more than a year with Matthew McConaughey after a romance blossomed between them on set.  

The last film pictured was Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  This one landed Cruz her first Oscar and her current boyfriend, fellow Academy Award winner (for No Country for Old Men) Javier Bardem.

One thing's for sure: if I was Javier, I'd be making my presence known on the sets of all of Penélope's future films; obviously Cupid is following her around while she works...

Thanks to everyone who submitted guesses... I promise I'll make things a tad easier next time.