New Line Cinema… oh, New Line Cinema, why?

I can understand why you made the 180° and ate some crow to make The Hobbit deal with Peter Jackson. From every angle it’s a smart move: there’s never been a live-action version of The Hobbit, Peter Jackson’s name can be pushed in all the promotional spots even if his only technical role is to walk through the set and pass wind, and the fan base that will buy into it no matter what the result is HUGE (and yes, I’m a part of said fan base).

But what the f*ck guys?!? A Nightmare on Elm Street?

As you can probably tell, my initial reaction to the news that New Line is planning on relaunching the Elm Street franchise is an unflinching ‘You gotta be F’n kidding me!’ or in the words of the Japanese translation of Darth Vader, “Do Not Want!”

Well, whether I want it or not, it seems like it’s happening. Word is that Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form have got it in their heads to bring back Freddy Krueger with the intent of creating a whole new franchise in the vein of the recent reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

So far, there’s very little information on the Elm Street project beyond the involvement of the Bay triumvirate and that New Line won’t hire a writer until the writer’s strike ends.

The Hellboy II production site has been updated to include a feature poster and concept art for the character Johann Krauss.

John Alexander and James Dodd will play the role of Krauss, who will be voiced by Thomas Kretschmann. Krauss, a B.P.R.D. agent, is a disembodied ectoplasmic spirit psychic that resides in a containment suit.

Regarding the concept art, writer/director Guillermo del Toro said he wanted a Jules Verne approach to Krauss’s attire, which is meant to have the look of a 19th century containment suit.

See poster here at right (click for larger view); new concept art is here after the jump, along with del Toro’s full description of it.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters July 11, 2008.

Cassandra’s Dream
Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell
Rated PG-13
Release date: Jan 18, 2008

“You can’t control life. It doesn’t wind up perfectly.” —Sandy Bates from Stardust Memories

“If you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie.” —Judah Rosenthal from Crimes And Misdemeanors

“People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control.” —Christopher Wilton from Match Point

Cassandra’s Dream: Getting Away With It Again

Cassandra’s Dream can be seen as the final film in a trilogy of films that began with Crimes and Misdemeanors and continued with Match Point. The three revolve around characters getting away with terrible crimes. While not an official trilogy, the themes that Woody Allen examines in each of these films includes some of his best work. Just as the theme of vengeance linked Chan-wook Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance, there is a continuous theme that binds all three of Mr. Allen’s films together. Make no mistake about it: Cassandra’s Dream is just as unsettling as the previous films. Match Point must have felt like sweet vindication for Woody Allen — a critical and modest commercial success that reminded many of his long-time fans that he was still very much in the game. As in, Match Point, Woody Allen does not appear in the film, but like all of his films, his surrogate does. I will leave it to you to decide who his alter ego is in this film — more on that later.

Woody Allen makes one film a year; his output is incredible. He has had his share of great highs and mighty lows, but the incredible thing is that he is always able to get financing for his films. He says that financing is the hardest part of making a film; but it seems that it is not much of a problem for him. Many have been envious of his prodigious output and the relative ease he manages it. The volume of his work is too vast to analyze here and the films I have mentioned are very good in their own right. His truly great films hold up very well — Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters have only gotten better with age. His early comedies, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, But Were Afraid Ask, Sleeper, Bananas, Love And Death, and Take The Money And Run, still provide a good amount laughs decades later. Husbands And Wives was timely for its rawness and honesty — art imitating the very real lives of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. The film was a cinematic confession from Woody Allen — surely it was not the first and by no means the last confession. His films have become more honest. He has let down his guard over the years to show us what is on his mind.

Beowulf — The Game
Genre: Action/Adventure
ESRB Rating: Rated M
Developer: Ubisoft
Platform: Xbox 360
Price: $19.99; Released: Nov 2007

In the interest of full disclosure, I never saw the CGI motion-cap Beowulf flick. So I wasn’t going into this game with any expectations, good or bad. I wasn’t hoping it would live up to the movie; nor was I hoping it would be better than the movie”¦ I just wanted a fun, action-packed game that allowed me to run around and kick ass in epic style fashion. After all, this is based on the poem that pretty much inspired every epic fantasy story ever told.

Disappointment sucks.

All of the pieces should have been in place – Epic story (no real need for writing), CGI Mo-Cap created characters that should have been easy enough to model for a Next Gen system, and plenty of great 3rd person action games to pick and choose control schemes from. So how is it that the developers dropped the ball on all accounts? Is it laziness, lack of understand, or just another example of a game studio being forced to rush out another piece of crap game to try to tie into a major movie release. The answer seems obvious, doesn’t it?

The Rockford Files
Season Five
Starring James Garner
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Available Jan. 15, 2008

To me, a television show like The Rockford Files functions as a form of kryptonite in relation to contemporary network programming. In short, even a single minute of the quality, imaginativeness, humor, and soul of this series brings the crap inhabiting today’s TV airwaves to its collective knees and renders it useless.

Perhaps more importantly, the show serves as a glorious document of an infinitely cooler time and place in American history and pop culture. In The Rockford Files, men still behave like men, grown women dress like grown women, and — for some largely incomprehensible reason — characters in their twenties and thirties (who, unlike their counterparts on recent television, are balanced out by an equal, if not greater, number of forty-somethings, fifty-somethings, and beyond) actually conduct themselves like adults instead of overgrown, size-zero teen idol–wannabes with lower-back tattoos. Concerning these latter folks, their complete absence is one of the more deeply refreshing things about this show. As for other notable absences, pop in any Season Five episode, and for fifty extremely entertaining, commercial-free minutes, you also won’t see a single cell phone, BlackBerry, ATM, laptop, Williamsburg hipster, frat-guy-turned-hedge-fund-manager, or fascist elected official telling you he’s a defender of freedom. Remarkable what a difference thirty years can make!

The Rockford Files originally aired from 1974 through 1980 and centers on the life of fictional private investigator Jim Rockford (played by James Garner), whose background includes status as a former convict who receives a full pardon before the series even begins. Rockford lives in a trailer only a few dozen yards from the Pacific Ocean in Malibu. His father, Rocky (played by Noah Beery), lives in a house not too far away. The investigations for which Rockford is hired invariably place him in harm’s way, which is a problem for him, because he rarely carries or uses a gun (a circumstance which held throughout the show’s entire run). Likewise, they frequently leave him at odds with the local police precinct, where Sergeant (and later Lieutenant) Dennis Becker (played by Joe Santos) chides Rockford early on for having some “interesting ideas” about the precinct’s function within Rockford’s investigations. To add insult to injury, said investigations never seem to pay well either, despite Rockford’s high (for the time, at least) fee, which he’s never able to collect in full at the end of each episode, due to some miscellaneous swindle perpetrated unto him. Nonetheless, Rockford perseveres and consistently stands for what’s right, even though his lot in life never really improves.