Portman to Get Her Hands on a Thunder God's Hammer!

The above headline was the most entendre-ridden one I could come up with to report the news coming from Marvel Studios that Natalie Portman has signed on to play the female lead in Thor.

The Academy Award nominated actress is the latest to join director Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of the long-running Marvel Comics character. She joins Chris Hemsworth, who plays the title role, and Tom Hiddleston, who is playing Thor's evil half-brother Loki.


Portman is playing Jane Foster, a character that appeared in the early issues of the Thor comic series as a love interest for both Thor and his human alter-ego Dr. Donald Blake. In the comic, Jane Foster was a nurse but presumably this will be updated to a Doctor herself, especially as another rumour suggests that the chracter of Don Blake is not appearing in the film.


When she's not working with George Lucas, and therefore not reduced to wooden emoting while spitting out some of the worst dialogue in the history of film, she's always been great. Marvel has been pretty ambitous with their casting, going for bold, interesting choices; giving some unknowns a good break alongside some really quirky and well-cast heavy hitters. I started off being unsure about Thor working as a film, but with this director, and the cast he's creating, and the rumoured more fantasy, Lord of the Rings-like tone, I'm quickly getting sold.

Reynolds cast as Hal Jordan

So, after months of speculation about who would fill the title role in Martin Campbell's Green Lantern film, it's been reported in various news outlets that Ryan Reynolds will don the power ring for Warner Bros.

This comes after months of casting rumours, including Reynolds, Bradley Cooper and Justin Timberlake.

Personally, I think Reynolds is the best choice out of all of them. He's got charm, charisma and has carried films before. Granted none were as big as this, but he's ready now. He'll bring the wit and cockiness that needs to be there for Hal Jordan, but he's also got some hidden depths. Also, he might be the only actor who actually won't need to train to get in prime physical shape; I'm a confidently hetero guy, and even I can acknowledge that his body is totally insane. You could grade cheese on that guy's abs.

Long-time readers will recall that, a while back, I ranked Green Lantern as the number one property that should be adapted to a film, so I'm excited that Warner Bros. is moving ahead with it, and seems to be putting together a good team.

Mocking Ralph Fiennes......to his face!

Here's the first trailer for the new film called Cemetery Junction from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. If those two names sound familiar, they're the guys who created The Office and Extras, and while some may call them one-trick ponies, when the trick by said ponies will make you laugh so hard you'll pee, who gives a crap if that's the only trick they do?

Enjoy their shameless mockery of a great actor here.

Enough Already.........just...enough....

So, last night I watched a film that had been hyped to me by various sources as a masterpiece. I rented it, threw it in the DVD machine and sat down to hopefully enjoy.

It was literally one of the worst films I have ever seen.

The film was a French horror film called Martyrs. It was directed and written by Pascal Laugier , the director of Brotherhood of the Wolf, which I enjoyed even though it was maybe one act too long. Martyrs is part of that extreme sub genre of horror which has been depressingly labelled "torture porn" by the media.

I like horror movies, always have. What kind of a film geek would I be if I didn't? And not just the classy ones like The Exorcist or The Shining. I liked The Hills Have Eyes (both versions) and The Last House on the Left (the original one). I think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the best films of the 1970s. The Thing is amazing. I love the work of Argento and Fulci and Romero. I have no problem with gore or violence, even when it's being used in an exploitational way.

Of the recent crop of extreme horror there have been some films I enjoyed, too. I really liked High Tension until the last half an hour, but up until that point it was a breathtaking film. Cabin Fever was insane fun that was redeemed by how goofy it was. I even liked the first Saw, which had a killer twist and a novel approach. You could even throw Irreversible into the mix, which I enjoyed the style of more than the content. I also thought The Descent was very good.

Does this establish my horror bona fides? Yes, there's some gaps. I haven't seen the lauded Inside or the incredibly acclaimed Funny Games (the original version or the lesser remake). I haven't yet seen Audition, which is supposed to be great. It's hard to get my horror fill in when my wife won't watch it, but I'm trying.

But, back to Martyrs. Basically, what made me despise this film so completely was its pretentious aspirations to any kind of depth or worth. I won't spoil the basic premise for anyone looking to experience this godawful dreck, but suffice to say that it attempts to justify ninety minutes of brutal, gory, explicit and dehumanising torture of women by raising some ill-defined pseudo-intellectual claptrap about martyrdom and the afterlife.

But the film utterly fails in its attempts at depth, and therein lies the really enraging aspect. Hostel and its ilk are total exploitative trash, but at least that's all they're trying to do. But the pretentiousness of attempting to claim that your film is not simply about the brutalisation of young women by interjecting some ill-defined half baked philosophical point is matched only by its callousness.


Look, there's no doubt that much of it was effective. The direction was good, the performances were okay, the look of the film was good. I was even scared in parts. But there was no point to it. It just nihilism, pure and simple. It was empty and devoid of any sort of catharsis or empathy or sense of fun. It tried to partially indict the audience, but attacking an audience for watching the very type of film you are making needs to be done much more cleverly than it was here, and it takes a special brand of arrogance besides. This type of film cannot be the future of horror, for if it is, we're talking about a future with no redeeming qualities other than imaginative ways to brutalize each other.

Successfully Avoiding Transformers - Day 13

Yeah, so Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is coming up on closing out its second week in release, and it looks like it's going to make a fuckload of money. It seems this flick is going to join a very small club, namely movies that have made a billion dollars. A billion. I love movies all to hell, but even I'm not sure it's reasonable for a movie to make that much money. At least the studio should be forced to buy a few hobos a sandwich or a Rolls Royce or something.

But, even with all the box office popularity, I am avoiding this like the plague. Even though I grew up loving Transformers. Even though I'll go see pretty much anything. Even though I enjoyed Armageddon and The Rock.

The first Transformer film was some fun, though I found myself being mildly repulsed by the way it was a recruitment poster for the U.S. armed forces (I know propaganda is nothing new, but at least be a little subtle), and found my credibility strained almost every few minutes. Remember the gigantic robots sneaking around Sam's backyard and no one noticing? Stuff like that. I was also rendered nauseous by what can only be described as seizure inducing editing.

Bay's whole resume is a testament to excess in every way, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the sequel gets reviews like this, but as I saw the bad notices roll in and the money pile up, I thought to myself, are these the movies we want to make money? Let's face it, Hollywood has always been about selling a product, but do we as a culture really want our entertainment to be nothing more than a nearly three hour toy commercial sprinkled with tits and ass and delivered to us like the Lodovico technique from A Clockwork Orange?

Go see Moon instead. It's fascinating and its budget was probably equal to the catering budget of Bay's mess.

RIP - Karl Malden

I've been extremely busy and wasn't able to post this until today, but for those out there who don't know, Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden passed away yesterday at the age of 97.

Malden graduated from the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1937 and soon after moved to Manhattan to try his luck on Broadway. Soon after, he met Harold Clurman and Elia Kazan of the legendary Group Theatre and made his debut with the Group playing a boxing manager in their production of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy. In 1938, he married fellow actress Mona Graham, whom would remain by his side until his death seventy years later.

Following WWII, Malden appeared in a play called Truckline Cafe, a play that bombed but is notable for one reason; it featured the debut of a young actor named Marlon Brando. In 1947, Malden finally broke through after appearing in Arthur Miller's breakthrough play All My Sons.

He would re team with Kazan and Brando in the stage production that brought all three of them no small measure of fame; A Streetcar Named Desire. Malden played Blanche Dubois' suitor Mitch and had to hold the stage with Brando, who was giving a performance that would forever change acting and theatre. "Playing with Marlon consistently brought out the best in me," Malden wrote. "I guess, in the final analysis, it is impossible to beat genius, but it can be great fun to try to match it."

He would try to match it on stage for two years, and reprise the role in the 1951 movie version, earning an Oscar for best supporting actor. He would try to match it again in 1954 in On the Waterfront, playing a priest that inspires Brando's character and earning his second Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

Over the next five decades, Malden crafted many exceptional performances. Kazan directed him as middle-aged man with a teen aged bride in the controversial Baby Doll. He acted opposite Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess. He was directed by his friend Brando in One Eyed Jacks. As a sadistic warden, he tormented Burt Lancaster's Birdman of Alcatraz.

In 1972, he gained a whole generation of fans, as he took on the role of Lt. Mike Stone on the long-running police drama, The Streets of San Francisco. He starred opposite a young Michael Douglas, who, in a statement to the LA Times called Malden a "mentor" whom he "admired and loved" deeply. During this time, he also became the spokesperson for American Express, and his catchphrase, "Don't leave home without it" entered into the cultural lexicon.

A founding member of the legendary Actors Studio, Malden was instrumental in ensuring that Elia Kazan received his honorary Oscar in 1999 for his body of work, a controversial decision given Kazan's testimony before HUAC in the 1950s. Malden stood by his friend when many deserted the director.

Malden's final significant work was a guest starring role in the first season of The West Wing, once again playing a priest.

I leave you with a nice story about the night he won his Oscar from his LA Times Obituary:

As Malden recounted, "I had a coat because in New York you had a coat -- a topcoat -- and I walked in. Nobody knew me."

He put his coat in the adjacent seat before Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall sat down. When Malden's name was called as a winner, he asked Bogart to watch his coat.

"He said, 'Get up there kid, take your Oscar.' . . . . About a half-hour later, I see Bogart holding an Oscar for best actor in The African Queen. The first thing I said to him is, 'What did you do with my coat?' He said in nice words, 'Forget your coat, hold on to the goddamn Oscar.' "

The man was a giant of the screen, one of the last true giants, and he will be missed.

Happy Canada Day - Enjoy Some Music

Happy Canada Day everybody. Here's some toe-tapping music to use as a soundtrack to the day:

Here's Radiohead covering The Smiths from a webcast:



And here's a cool little video from Metric: