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Films LXV and LXVI
LXV: The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008)
The trouble with superhero movies is the insistence that everything has to start from scratch for fear of alienating the 95% per cent of the audience who don't read comics. Plus you can tease the fanboys by delaying the debut of the costume for as long as possible. This version of the Hulk - largely ignoring the rebooting a couple of years back by the unlikely choice of Ang Lee - sensibly does the radioactive spider/car crash/birth on alien planet in the opening titles rather forcing us to wait fifty minutes for the plot proper to start and making us endure 120 minutes.
Ed Norton is Bruce Banner, retreated to South America to work on his anger management whilst William Hurt is the Paul Newman lookalike General General Thaddeus Ross who has lost his experimental subject. Having found a clue to his whereabouts the general pounces, with the positively geriatric Tim Roth as Russian-born-but-lived-in-UK-in-case-he-doesn't-do-accents Emil Blonsky in tow. Perhaps Costa Verde wasn't secret enough.
Anyway the director tries to hide Norton as much as he can so we don't notice the rubbér shark - and Banner heads for pastures new - his ex's university - and round two. But hey - if you have an attack helicopter maybe use that first to save your tanks for a battle they're more likely to win.
We segue into KIng Kong and Beauty and the Beast territories and we have our sympathies won round. There's only one place for Banner to go but the military are tipped off. Fortunately they hold off rather than set an ambush which might had saved time all round.
This film is nowhere near as stupid as Iron Man although women are hardly any more visible - the ex and a soldier and then all blokes. The Obligatory Stan Lee Cameo is less painful than others and the Shield franchise is kept at a distance until late on - Norton is even allowed a joke or two at the expense of the character's catchphrase.
Given the ages so far of the gang - Samuel Jackson, Robert Downey jr and even Norton hardly being in the first flush of youth - it's a bit of a Silver Horde that's being set up. We'll see.
LXVI: Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 19675)
The music documentary, which, after the famous and much-imitated cue card video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues", follows Bob Dylan on his last acoustic tour of Britain, with Joan Baez and Alan Price in tow and journalists (and Donovan) to be bated. Certainly Tim Robbins's pre-George W satire Bob Roberts drew heavily on the film (and the rest of the Dylan mythos), but I'm Not There. does as well (so much so that I caught myself thinking how much like Cate Blanchett Bob Dylan looks).
I wonder what the participants thought - the duped Granada executives caught in a bidding war that wasn't, the Lady Mayoress given a harmonica, the various journalists, the ambivalent figure of Donovan, even Alan Price falling out of The Animals.
There's no commentary voiceover, with Pennebaker appearing only as cast shadows, reflections in windows and car doors, and it's not always clear which town each concert is in. The Adelphi Hotel is recognisable, in the time before Chicken Bazooka, and the Albert Hall is described as being built by Victoria for her man. It's no hagiography though, and Dylan is by turn cherubic, benign, teasing and hostile. Best line: Dylan, on reading a Daily Mirror account of events: "I'm glad I'm not me."
Totals: 66 (Cinema: 25; DVD: 39; TV: 2)
Received the new Carbunkle brochure today - seem to have seen most the films from the listing already. We don't get the David Leans, and I'm not sure I fancy Mongol. Time to catch up on DVDs.
The trouble with superhero movies is the insistence that everything has to start from scratch for fear of alienating the 95% per cent of the audience who don't read comics. Plus you can tease the fanboys by delaying the debut of the costume for as long as possible. This version of the Hulk - largely ignoring the rebooting a couple of years back by the unlikely choice of Ang Lee - sensibly does the radioactive spider/car crash/birth on alien planet in the opening titles rather forcing us to wait fifty minutes for the plot proper to start and making us endure 120 minutes.
Ed Norton is Bruce Banner, retreated to South America to work on his anger management whilst William Hurt is the Paul Newman lookalike General General Thaddeus Ross who has lost his experimental subject. Having found a clue to his whereabouts the general pounces, with the positively geriatric Tim Roth as Russian-born-but-lived-in-UK-in-case-he-doesn't-do-accents Emil Blonsky in tow. Perhaps Costa Verde wasn't secret enough.
Anyway the director tries to hide Norton as much as he can so we don't notice the rubbér shark - and Banner heads for pastures new - his ex's university - and round two. But hey - if you have an attack helicopter maybe use that first to save your tanks for a battle they're more likely to win.
We segue into KIng Kong and Beauty and the Beast territories and we have our sympathies won round. There's only one place for Banner to go but the military are tipped off. Fortunately they hold off rather than set an ambush which might had saved time all round.
This film is nowhere near as stupid as Iron Man although women are hardly any more visible - the ex and a soldier and then all blokes. The Obligatory Stan Lee Cameo is less painful than others and the Shield franchise is kept at a distance until late on - Norton is even allowed a joke or two at the expense of the character's catchphrase.
Given the ages so far of the gang - Samuel Jackson, Robert Downey jr and even Norton hardly being in the first flush of youth - it's a bit of a Silver Horde that's being set up. We'll see.
LXVI: Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 19675)
The music documentary, which, after the famous and much-imitated cue card video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues", follows Bob Dylan on his last acoustic tour of Britain, with Joan Baez and Alan Price in tow and journalists (and Donovan) to be bated. Certainly Tim Robbins's pre-George W satire Bob Roberts drew heavily on the film (and the rest of the Dylan mythos), but I'm Not There. does as well (so much so that I caught myself thinking how much like Cate Blanchett Bob Dylan looks).
I wonder what the participants thought - the duped Granada executives caught in a bidding war that wasn't, the Lady Mayoress given a harmonica, the various journalists, the ambivalent figure of Donovan, even Alan Price falling out of The Animals.
There's no commentary voiceover, with Pennebaker appearing only as cast shadows, reflections in windows and car doors, and it's not always clear which town each concert is in. The Adelphi Hotel is recognisable, in the time before Chicken Bazooka, and the Albert Hall is described as being built by Victoria for her man. It's no hagiography though, and Dylan is by turn cherubic, benign, teasing and hostile. Best line: Dylan, on reading a Daily Mirror account of events: "I'm glad I'm not me."
Totals: 66 (Cinema: 25; DVD: 39; TV: 2)
Received the new Carbunkle brochure today - seem to have seen most the films from the listing already. We don't get the David Leans, and I'm not sure I fancy Mongol. Time to catch up on DVDs.