Billy Crudup Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We've been pretty hard around here on a certain movie with adamantium claws. Yes, whenever I'm reminded of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today, I wish I had been shot with amnesia bullets. Still, I appreciated Hugh Jackman's determined efforts to stay out of the damn costume. Whenever Wolverine has donned a uniform in the previous X-Men flicks, he looks like he can't wait to rip it off. In his natural state, as the wandering, memory-challenged Logan, he repels latex like Congress repels taxpayers.

Most actors quickly declare that the biggest challenge in superhero movies is the costume: how to avoid looking sheepish or silly while wearing a form-fitting, custom-made suit that may reveal more than most of us are willing to bare at the beach? With advanced, super-realistic, computerized special effects and ripped body / stunt doubles available as needed, though, I think the bigger challenge lies in bringing the secret identities of superheroes to life: all those moments when supposedly normal people are leading supposedly "normal" lives.

Who, then are the most convincing superheroes without costumes? What actors and actresses have made you believe that their very human characters on screen could transform into larger-than-life heroes and/or heroines with a quick dash into a phone booth? Mind you, I'm not just talking Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen ...

1. Famke Janssen as Jean Gray in X-Men
She cuts a fine figure, doesn't she? Famke Janssen is undoubtedly sexier than Wolverine when they both suit up, yet she really shines whenever she's using her brain -- which is all the time. She doesn't need the costume to be one of the smartest, most empathetic, and most lethal people, in the universe.

If you're into classic toys and cartoons, then for you G.I. Joe probably never left. But for most of us, the arrival of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra in theaters has brought the Real American Heroes back into the spotlight, which means one thing -- it's time for a little parody. Fans of Adult Swim's Robot Chicken are used to seeing their Saturday morning heroes get a little postmodern treatment, and over at Funny or Die they've gotten in on the action with The Ballad of G.I. Joe ... and just because it's a joke that's been done before doesn't mean that it isn't still pretty darn funny.

The song was written by Daniel Strange and Kevin Umbricht, and gives you a glimpse of what the Joe team is up to after a hard day of battling for the American way -- and I'll just say that ordering episodes of The Wonder Years was not what I was expecting. The video boasts an all-star cast and plenty of your favorite Joes making an appearance. I won't spoil all of the cameos for you, but some of the bigger names to pop up in the video are Billy Crudup, Zach Galifianakis, Ben Stiller, and Julianne Moore. Now if only Stephen Sommers could have gotten some of those people to appear in the actual movie, we might have been on to something.

After the jump; The Ballad of G.I. Joe...

Are you psyched to see Captain Jack Sparrow as a real-life gangster? Johnny Depp plays an infamous criminal in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, which opens tomorrow. But in a world where giant robots draw huge crowds, "do audiences want to see Depp as a fairly realistic, non-fantasy version of Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger?"

That's the question asked by Anne Thompson, a veteran industry analyst. She describes the movie as only "fitfully engaging ... often flat as a pancake." She says that Michael Mann's "biggest misstep here is the same as the Wachowskis with Speed Racer. His pursuit of what interests him formally may leave audiences behind." Like David Fincher's Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Mann's own Collateral and Miami Vice, Public Enemies was shot on high-definition video. Thompson claims: "When moviegoers watch a period film, no matter how authentically recreated, they aren't expecting it to look like this. There's something jarring about the way Public Enemies shoves us into the past."

I don't know about you, but I could use a good shove now and again. I've enjoyed Mann's last two films, and the trailers for Public Enemies have done a good job of whetting my appetite. The cast, including Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, and Billy Crudup, looks solid. I don't have any preconception about how period films should look -- I want a good, well-told story with interesting characters. How about you? Do you have certain expectations about how films set in the past should look? Do you want to see Johnny Depp as a "fairly-realistic, non-fantasy" bank robber?

Prepare to be bludgeoned. Watchmen is sledgehammer entertainment, an action epic with tremendous production values that acknowledges good and evil but is much more interested in things that go boom.

As director Zack Snyder amply demonstrated in his previous adaptations of other people's strikingly original source material (Dawn of the Dead and 300), he is more than up to the task of creating a multitude of dynamic, viscerally-exciting action sequences. As a bonus, there are small moments in Watchmen that prompt warm, unexpected laughter, skillfully-recreated scenes that inspire pure fanboy bliss, and one lengthy flashback segment that is entirely transcendent, as dazzling, thoughtful, and emotionally-stirring as anything I've seen in recent years.

And then there's the rest of the movie, which crams in a remarkably high percentage of the plot points from the original Watchmen series of comic books by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and faithfully includes tiny details, classic panels and a checklist of characters. Yet it skims over deeper reflections about masked crime fighters, superheroes, the essential nature of man, and the future of the world. It's like someone decided the alphabet was too long: most of the consonants are still there, but Watchmen is missing a couple of vowels.

The film features a bewildering assemblage of performances, with juicy turns by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley, wildly uneven, uncertain performances by Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson, and sleepy monotone pronouncements by Billy Crudup and Matthew Goode. Some of the actors sound as though they're delivering their lines for the first time, reading off cue cards.

In 2008, the biggest movies of the year were superhero movies: The Dark Knight and Iron Man. In 2009, another superhero movie looks to be equally huge, and that's Watchmen, Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel.

First published as a serial comic book in 1986, Watchmen was immediately heralded for turning the notion of a "superhero story" on its head. Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, Watchmen depicts a group of vigilantes who band together to fight crime; they have costumes, but no unusual powers ... save Doctor Manhattan, a scientist who acquires supernatural abilities after being caught in an experiment gone wrong.

There's been a lot of talk (maybe too much talk -- OK, sorry, antiquated U2 reference) about Zack Snyder's involvement in the project, which has taken eons to get off the ground. Would he be faithful to the book? Too faithful, not faithful enough? How would he handle all the side stories, and such a large ensemble cast?

Now you can get the answers straight from the horses' mouths, as Moviefone's Unscripted interview series is bringing several of the stars of Watchmen together to talk about the movie. Now's your chance to grill Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl), Billy Crudup (Dr. Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan), Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias) and Malin Akerman (Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre) about their geek knowledge of the comic book, about what it felt like to wear all that rubber or play a ginormous blue man ... or whatever else your fanboy/girl heart may desire.

Submit your question in the comments section below for Crudup, Goode, Akerman or Wilson by Tues, Feb. 17, and be sure to include your first name and the city where you live. Then check back here on March 2 to see if your question made the cut. Thanks, and good luck.

It's a Watchmen week! New photos and posters are hitting the Internet this week, presumably in anticipation of the second trailer that's attached to Quantum of Solace. Yesterday Erik posted a new Rorschach-themed poster that had popped up on Yahoo! Movies over the weekend, now we have six new ones (including an extra Rorschach) to accompany it.

Warner Bros. released the six character posters all across the Internet -- and we were able to collect most of them here in our gallery, except for the one the boys most want to see. Silk Spectre is over on your left, watermarked to MTV's Splash Page, but if you click her, you'll be taken to her full length version. I'm as straight as can be, but even I can't take my eyes off her latex. Wow.

Please give a visit and a nod to the other sites that were graced with these cool images -- my personal favorite of the bunch, The Comedian, was posted over at the always awesome Hero Complex (who will have more Watchmen images later today). Dr. Manhattan was posted in a tiny, low-res version at Entertainment Weekly. (Come on, where's the big version, guys?) The really cool Ozymandias poster, costarring Bubastis, debuted over at Wired. Nite Owl comes by way of Access Hollywood, accompanied there by an automatic video of Patrick Wilson. And everyone's favorite vigilante, Rorschach, got his second poster of the week courtesy of USA Today.

They really are pretty glorious to look upon. And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to furiously exercise in order to wake up resembling Malin Akerman.



[via Superhero Hype, who did the collecting]

I don't ask for autographs, I don't send fan letters, and I certainly don't wait around in front of hotels or press lines -- but I do get to attend some verrrrry geeky movie events, I do have a few very cool friends, and (get this) I'm a pretty friendly and sincere guy. So sometimes I get cool snapshots. Call it a hobby inspired by the time I did a (very brief) Sundance interview with the monolithic James Woods and walked away without a photo with one of my actor-heroes. (Despite the fact that I had a perfectly good camera in my pocket.) Plus I work for a cool movie blog, which means I can get photos like these and actually call it ... work! (muffled giggles)

My gracious thanks to everyone in and behind the photos. And my apologies to everyone else for my always looking so bald, sweaty, and tired. (You only see pictures of me when I'm exhausted. Plus I'm just plain old goofy looking, so save your comments.)