Dave Corkery

Westerns are a funny thing. At one time in cinema history, they were a dime a dozen and were the staple of childhood heroic fantasies. You can be pretty sure that when you’re dad was a young whipper-snapper, he was swaggering his shoulders around the house and tilting his high-brimmed hat politely to imaginary ‘dames’ or drinking a bottle of cheap whiskey (milk) and challenging strangers to ‘pistols at dawn.’ Cowboys were the mindless escapist action-films of days gone by. But when the hard-hitting, gritty cops of 70s films suddenly made audiences think that ‘now’ is more happenin’ than ‘an arse-load of years ago’, the Western suffered a sudden and unfortunate demise.

After Eastwood’s Unforgiven saw a resurgence in the genre, contemporary Westerns have had to up their game to shine through and be seen; gone were ‘pistols at dawn’ in favour of gritty character realism and ‘harsh times’ seen through weary eyes.

What’s good about 3:10 to Yuma is that it finds a nice balance of both. It doesn’t shy from the good guy/bad guy shoot ‘em up cheesy movie goodness of the classic Western (it’s actually a remake of a 1957 film of the same name), but also delivers full, interesting characters lead by strong acting turns.

After speculation and spoof titles abound, the title for the fourth Indiana Jones has finally been revealed. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls is the official title of Harrison Ford’s return to the fedora and whip. The title was revealed by Shia leBeouf at the MTV Video Music Awards.

What do we make of it? It’s lengthy but fitting. Kingdom, Crystal and Skull are all totally suitable Indy words, but together, they make for one hell of an impressive title.

And what does it all mean? Well apparently there’s a modern legend claiming that there are 13 crystal skulls worldwide, of which five have actually been found, which have mystical powers and are of ancient origin. Sounds like the kind of thing Indiana Jones would have great interest in alright.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull stars Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LeBeouf, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone and John Hurt.

It will be released in the U.S. and simultaneously in most territories worldwide on Thursday, May 22, 2008. Frank Marshall returns as producer, with Kathleen Kennedy joining George Lucas as executive producer.

Dave Corkery

Championed as the sleeper-hit of the US summer, this simple story of a one-night stand turned 9 month ordeal gathered a lot of buzz overseas before the trailers even made it to Irish cinemas. In a movie summer full of sequel-crud, Knocked Up apparently shone through as an original breath of comedy fresh-air.

So here we are several months later and the small comedy that could has finally made it to UK and Irish cinemas, carrying with it not just a bun in the oven, but an immense wave of hopeful anticipation. Fearful that it may not live up to expectations, excitement was duly reigned in on our part. Fortunately, and unlike almost every other film of this year’s disappointing summer, Knocked Up lives up to its own hype.

Only Paul WS (Wank Stain) Anderson could have taken two of the most awesome creatures in movie history, put them in the same room and fuck it up. The Resident Evil director has proven himself the undoubted master of taking excellent products and turning them into big-screen shit marathons. Alien Versus Predator was so horrendously bad that it made me want to bleach my brain free of the stench of slow-motion explosions and predator-human camaraderie.

Then we received the news that a sequel was going to be made and the childhood horror fan in me died a little more. But when news arrived that Paul ‘Fuck it Up’ Anderson’s leper adaptation mitts were to be kept away from the second meeting of the acid and the infra-red, a tiny glimmer of hope emerged in the depths of my movie-loving heart.

Then I saw this trailer. Enough said.

Trailer

This comes about a week late, but for those who haven’t seen yet, an ass-load of new photos from The Dark Knight have hit the web.

There’s some nice shots in there, including some more tasty reveals of Heath Ledger’s joker and seeing Bale in a suit with that smirky smile offers flashed memories of American Psycho. For a second, I almost forgot he was Bruce Wayne.

See after the jump for all the photos.

The Escape From New York remake has finally found a director in Die Hard 4.0’s Len Wiseman. Before Die Hard, ol’ Wisey was best known for putting his wife, Kate Beckinsale in a cat-suit for the whole world to see in the Underworld films.

Wiseman is quite a competent director and as John McClane’s recent outing proved, he can more than handle big-budget action favourites from the 80s.

For those who weren’t alive/don’t have a keen awareness of 80s awesomeness, Escape from New York was a John Carpenter film set in the vast future of the year 1997, where the island of Manhattan has been turned into a prison colony. Hired to rescue the marooned President from the island is eye-patched super bad-ass Snake Plissken.

The real question is, can the new Snake Plissken Gerard Butler fill the enormous shoes left behind by Kurt Russell? It’s a tough call, but we’re saying yes. For Christ’s sake people, he was Leonidas.

Of course, the whole idea of resurrecting Plisken is just further evidence that the 80s are being slowly dragged back, kicking and screaming. Rambo, Rocky and John McClane have all made it back. The natural progression would suggest that we could be viewing McGyver: Reloaded by 2009.

Source: Variety