The Green Hornet

The whole world knows by now that if you're going to make a superhero movie, make it different. Make it stand out. Make it special. So who better to direct potentially ordinary-as-cornflakes The Green Hornet than über-barmlord Michel Gondry, of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and The Science Of Sleep fame, and director of more crackers music videos than you can shake a hammer and tongs at?

Well, probably anyone. In fact The Green Hornet feels like it was made entirely by the second unit director, except for two or three visually staggering sequences that Gondry was woken up for to justify his hiring. Apart from those, all you're left with is an adequate but entirely predictable, seen-it-all-before, non-super hero film.

It's not all bad: Christoph Waltz is massively watchable despite being saddled with the one-dimensional villain role, and Jay Chou as Kato is a laconic genius, although his ass-kicking displays occasionally get lost in amongst the FX. Still, he does possess some miraculous skillz:

Now I'm not the biggest Seth Rogen fan in the world (that would probably be Seth Rogen), but it's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that he's tragically miscast in this. His grating, growly shouting thing becomes tiresome pretty quickly, and for an action-comedy with one of the world's highest-profile comedy stars, it's a bit of a LOL-vaccuum.

As for Cameron Diaz, the world's least believable temp secretary and pretty much the only woman with a speaking part in the whole film, well, she gets the most thankless role going. She gets no action (literally) and no laffs, and even McG knows she's perfectly capable of both.

Oh and unsurprisingly the 3D is utterly pointless until the animated end credits, which are amazaboggling.

Still, ain't none of it as bad as the IMDb's The Green Hornet page which, to promote the film, has been rendered completely unreadable by the design monkeys, who've gone for a clever green-writing-on-a-green-background theme:

In short: This week's second-best film with a colour in the title. Blue Valentine doesn't have super-slo-mo smackdowns but it is funnier.

Happy New Year! (Part I)

As 2010 has been such a toilet of disappointment so far, I'm cancelling the rest of it and moving straight to 2011. I’ll allow Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Toy Story 3 in but after that it's strictly elevenses only.

So here are the first five of ten...

Films That Might Not Be Crapples In 2011!

The Green Hornet

The film of the TV series of the comic book of the radio serial about a masked vigilante and his kung-fu-fighting sidekick, directed by French barmlord Michel Gondry and featuring a spuffingly good cast - Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz and Tom Wilkinson to name but a few. Seth Rogen's in it too but you can't have everything.
Very Much Looking Forward To: Danny Elfman’s version of the theme
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Torin Sixx

Paul

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and an alien on a road trip: Easiest pitch ever. It would be lazy to say “Spaced meets District 9”, but I see this as Spaced meets District 9. Stars another cast of supreme beings, including Jason Bateman, Sigourney Weaver and Kristen Wiig. Seth Rogen's in it too but you can't have everything. Also, is this the best credit ever?

Very Much Looking Forward To: Cashing in my shares in Rejuvenique
Best Minor Cast Member Name (apart from Neil Hamburger): Jesse Plemons

Thor

The story of a Norse god and arrogant tit banished to Earth for starting a war could be awful if Marvel just use it to trail their superhero mash-up The Avengers (which The Incredible Suit predicts will never happen). And with Kenneth Branagh “lensing”, or “directing” as they used to call it, it sounds crazy but it might just work. At any rate it can’t be any worse than The Incredible Hulk. Can it?
Very Much Looking Forward To: Some hardcore Mjolnir action
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Cliff Gravel

X-Men: First Class

X-Prequel in which we discover what mutant X-Chums Professor X and Magneto had such a colossal X-Strop with each other over. I think the Prof got fed up with Mags wiping all his XXX-Videotapes every time he walked in the room. Original X-Director Bryan Singer dropped out, but was replaced by Kick-Ass’ Matthew Vaughn, so it might not stink. Again, only has to be better than Wolverine.

Very Much Looking Forward To: A young Jean Grey saying “c***”.
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Only James McAvoy has been cast so he’ll have to do.

Green Lantern

Ryan Rodney Reynolds stars as the Vauxhall Conference-level superhero in this tale of a pilot gifted with an infinitely powerful ring (fnerk) and Mark Strong embraces typecasting as the villain. To be honest I’m only interested because it’s directed by Martin 'Casino Royale' Campbell. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Very Much Looking Forward To: How they make the whole ‘all-powerful ring that doesn’t work against anything yellow or wooden’ thing not rubbish.
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Ryan Rodney Reynolds

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A Poo In A Teacup

Imagine walking into your bathroom and finding a load of toenail clippings in the sink. Pretty grim, right? But imagine if the sink was the interweb, and the toenails were actually little nuggets of noteworthy movie news. Now you’ve turned a revolting imaginary scenario into one that’s almost worth blogging about. Hooray for you! Well, hooray for me actually, I wrote the thing. All you do is sit there and read it while shovelling chocolate digestives into your face.

Here are the toenails I found in my sink today which I thought share-worthy:

Nicolas Cage won’t star in Green Hornet!
While it’s hardly news to say that somebody isn’t going to be in something, unless it’s “Shia LaBeouf will not star in anything ever again,” it’s always good to know Mr Cage and his wig of the week won’t be in a movie.

I’ve been alternately interested by and apathetic about Green Hornet since it was announced. My thought process went something like this:
Michel Gondry's making a Green Hornet movie: That sounds good. Seth Rogen’s in it: Oh. Not so interested.
Stephen Chow will play Kato: Groovy. Stephen Chow was ace in Kung Fu Hustle.
Stephen Chow won’t play Kato: Oh for heaven’s sake.
Cameron Diaz will be in it: Well that’s slightly better.
Nicolas Cage might be in it: That’s it, I’ve had it with all these Green Hornet shenanigans.
Nicolas Cage won’t be in it: Right, good, but just make the film and stop announcing who isn’t in it! This is becoming tedious.

Alex Garland is writing a new Judge Dredd movie!
I thought I was excited about this but then I realised I was just mildly curious about a new Judge Dredd film. After all a poo in a teacup would be better than the 1995 Sylvester Stallone version. I mean, hello, he takes his helmet off! Wrong, just wrong.

Alex Garland has only actually written half a good movie, The Beach. The rest have been a bit rubbish, so this particular toenail goes in the ‘Wait And See’ cupboard.

The A-Team movie has found its BA Baracus!
Liam Neeson is Hannibal. Bradley Cooper is Face. And now it appears the ludicrously named (although I probably wouldn’t say it to his face) Quinton Ramone “Rampage” Jackson is BA Baracus. I’m still looking forward to the film but I can’t help feeling like the best BA would have been Blighty’s own Matt Lucas:


And the big toenail in the sink is…
The announcement of the programme for the 2009 London Film Festival, on which I am duty-bound to report now that I run an award-winning blog*. There are about 20 films I want to see so it looks like I’ll have to resign from my job for the last fortnight in October. I’m sure they’ll cope without me, all I do is use their facilities to write my blog. Ssshh!

*Blog not actually award-winning

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