we are marshall Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Not despite Charlie's Angels, but because of it (the first one, anyway), I really like McG as a filmmaker. Say what you want about his undeservedly but oft-criticized nickname, but the guy has the chops – and then some – to make blockbuster spectacle look, well, spectacular. Given his existing filmography, he's only made one serious creative misstep, the disastrous Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, since the first Angels movie was an exhilarating thrill ride and 2006's We Are Marshall a heartfelt and powerful drama.

Aiming for the A-list credibility enjoyed by the likes of Christopher Nolan, McG has unleashed his muscular, bombastic creativity on Terminator Salvation, which should certainly resuscitate the franchise even if it doesn't quite distinguish the director from other fanboy punching bags like Michael Bay and Brett Ratner. As part of Cinematical's special Summer Interview Series with different directors, we sat down with McG at the film's Los Angeles press day for an exclusive chat about reimagining Terminator's beloved characters. In addition to talking about defining the director's own filmmaking style and searching through summers past to find the films that inspired him to become a director, McG drilled us a little bit about our own feelings on the film, precipitating one of the more interesting, and, well, interactive interviews we've done in a while.

I see Terminator: Salvation next week. I am really nervous about it.

It's a deplored "fanboy" habit, I know -- to whine about a geeky franchise flick before it's even released. Haven't you anything better to do than worry about a summer blockbuster? Get a life.

But the thing is that I care about movies, and the Terminator series means more to me than any other franchise that's still kicking -- more than Star Trek, more than Indiana Jones, more than any of the superhero flicks. Terminator 2 is the greatest action movie ever made, and one of the greatest films, period. The Terminator scared the crap out of me when I was a young 'un -- a "formative" film experience if ever there were one. The third film obviously had its detractors, but I thought it was a damn fine actioner that honored the story. It's true sci-fi, with a deep, interesting mythology; it even makes a genuine effort to get time paradoxes right, and gets kind of close.

But Salvation... aaaaaaaargh. McG has worked hard to make a case for himself as the right choice for the franchise, but the fact remains that he's never really made a good film. People will point to the Charlie's Angels flicks as the cause for concern, but I'd want to talk about We Are Marshall, which is about as tedious and tone-deaf as movies get. Then there's the news that the story has been written and rewritten, and not always for the best reasons -- changed endings, a bigger role for Christian Bale -- which isn't a harbinger of a confident, thought-through movie. And the trailers have not exactly inspired confidence, at least in me, though the last one was a bit more promising.

You might have thought that We Are Marshall seemed a lot like every other Inspiring Sports Drama you'd ever seen, but a pair of producers recently sought to prove in a court of law that it resembled a specific film -- one they'd made six years earlier.

That film, Ashes to Glory: The Tragedy and Triumph of Marshall Football (which IMDB has never heard of), was a documentary about the real-life events depicted in We Are Marshall. The doc's producers, Deborah Novak and John Witek, sued Warner Bros. for copyright infringement, fraud, and breach of contract, but a U.S. district court judge has ruled against them.

"Though the two works tell the story of the Nov. 14, 1970, airplane crash, that event, and the events that preceded and followed, are all matters of public record which cannot be copyrighted," the judge wrote in his decision, as reported by Variety.

Novak and Witek's claim was based on the fact that they originally negotiated with We Are Marshall's production company, Thunder Road, for rights to officially adapt their documentary into a fictional film. That deal fell through, and Thunder Road made the film anyway. The judge says that was OK, since the events were a matter of public record. So my question is, if nobody can own the rights to a historical event, why did Thunder Road bother negotiating to adapt the documentary in the first place? Just to be polite?

The judge also ruled that since Novak and Witek later tried (unsuccessfully) to sell their doc to other production companies, they obviously didn't think they had a deal with Thunder Road, so the breach of contract claim is out, too. It all seems pretty logical to me, but I'm sure the lawyers made it sound more complicated.

Ever since McG was announced as director of Terminator Salvation, he's taken on this rather endearing, apologetic, puppy-dog attitude, assuring fans that he takes the franchise seriously, and even apologizing for the absurdity of his trade name. It would have worked much better on me had I not sat through We Are Marshall, but it does make me want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, especially given how badly I want this sequel to be good.

The filmmaker's newest gambit: showing us just how seriously he takes the Terminator franchise. Just how seriously? So seriously, he says, that he distributed copies of Cormac McCarthy's arty, ultra-depressing The Road to his cast, hoping that the novel would help the actors understand the "existential detachment" that comes with living in a post-apocalyptic environment. MTV has a bit more from the director.

I wrote a column on The Road a while back; it's a powerful, upsetting novel, pretty un-Terminator-like in its depiction of an empty, decidedly cyborg-free post-apocalypse. It's hard to take seriously the notion that an entry in the Terminator franchise -- a PG-13 entry at that -- could really draw much inspiration from that book (which is, of course, getting its own bona-fide adaptation later this year), but again: it's endearing, and a bit heartening, to see McG trying so hard.

As much as I would love to see the Judd Hirsch sitcom turned into a movie, New Line's Dear John is not based on a television show. As you can see from the headline, the movie is an adaptation of the Nicolas Sparks novel. And as we told you a few months ago, it's about a doomed long-distance romance between a college student and a U.S. soldier. The actress playing the student hasn't yet been revealed, but the soldier will be played by Channing Tatum, an actor who I'd like to see become more recognized and celebrated (if you haven't seen him in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, do yourself a favor and queue the film up). As far as Sparks adaptations go, I hope Dear John is Tatum's Notebook instead of his Walk to Remember, because the former helped shoot Ryan Gosling to stardom while the latter did nothing for Shane West's career.

Dear John doesn't have a director, but producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey (The Nativity Story) have just hired a screenwriter: Jamie Linden, who penned We Are Marshall and an upcoming adaptation of Carolyn Parkhurst's novel The Dogs of Babel, which is about a man attempting to teach his dog to talk. All three stories deal with loss, although as far as I know Dear John doesn't deal with a tragedy like those dealt with in both Marshall and Dogs. It does center around 9/11, however, so I guess it doesn't need any more deaths. Of course, I do imagine the weepy irony of Sparks' novel to be that Tatum's character dies in the end, just as the student decides to retract her 'Dear John' letter. If this is what happens, don't spoil it for us. We can go into the theater prepared to cry, but that doesn't mean we want to know why we're going to cry.

Granted, McG doesn't have the best track record in holding on to projects, so until everyone signs on the dotted line we will have to chalk this up to idle chatter for now. According to Bloody-Disgusting.com McG will be taking over directing duties for the fantasy film Me and My Monster, which is about, "A young boy [who] has a friendship with a bizarre creature that changes the course of his life as he becomes an adult." This instantly brings to my mind the Phoebe Cates film Drop Dead Fred, but I tend of have a film memory that is ruled by tangents. The script for Monster was written by Matthew Huffman and Robot Chicken writer Dan Milano and originally, Jake Gyllenhaal was attached to the project as the lead, but there has been no update on that recently.

The last film we had from McG was the male weepy We Are Marshall and there had been some talk that he had been chosen to replace Peter Berg on the big-screen version of The Losers -- a DC/Vertigo series that was based on obscure DC title. But now, that project has been taken over by Tim Story. There is still the chance that McG will be producing a live-action film about Hot Wheels, but it's almost been a year and there seems to be no movement on that one. The current studio climate seems to favor nostalgia, so it could still happen -- that is if he doesn't drop out or get replaced first.

The World War II movie Days of Glory opens today on 3 screens. That's not to be confused with another movie called Days of Glory, from 1944, or the other one from 1945. Nor is it to be confused with Hope and Glory, Paths of Glory, What Price Glory, Bound for Glory, Days of Heaven, Days of Thunder, or just plain Glory.

In the past, war movies used to be about something. By the titles alone, you could go to a movie expecting to see Attacks, Battles, Bridges, Boats, The Big Red One, Bullets, Dawn Patrols, Dirty Dozens, Fighting Sullivans, Fixed Bayonets, Flying Leathernecks, Great Escapes, Guns of Navarone, Merrill's Marauders, and even Full Metal Jackets. Titles like these make you want to roar and holler and tear around the woods, ripping right through enemy cover with thunder and trumpets driving you on.

So, I'm watching some of the NFL Playoffs this weekend (which, mind you, included some of the most fantastic games the post-season has given us in quite some time), when myself and a friend of mine began debating the best football-related flicks of all time. Football has always been popular on the big screen, with at least one or two films arriving each year that use the sport as their backdrop.

Usually, our football flicks come in one of three different forms: First up we have the laffer (ie: The Longest Yard), which usually consists of a group of horrible players who bumble, fumble and, with help from their brand new coach, somehow find themselves on the opposite side of losing. Throw in a montage or two (and a guy named Harold "Sticky Fingers" Lewis), and you have comedic gold. Next up is the straight-up drama (ie: Any Given Sunday), packed full of serious football playing with serious players and a serious director out to show us the real side of the game. Finally, we have the tear-jerker (ie: We Are Marshall) ... because there's nothing like watching football that makes you cry. These films usually revolve around players (or a player) who are either trying to overcome a disability or the remnants of a horrific accident.

Personally, I've always had a weak spot for The Longest Yard (the original), Friday Night Lights and, most of all, Rudy. My friend really loves Any Given Sunday, though that film never quite found a spot in my most memorable bin.

So, I ask you: What is your favorite football flick of all time?

I don't know about you, but this holiday weekend knocked the crap out of me. Man, I woke up this morning and my body hurt ... from sitting and eating for two days. Scary. Obviously, Christmas was on the minds of everyone this past weekend, but it was also a big three days at the movies -- with pics like Night at the Museum, Rocky Balboa, We Are Marshall and The Good Shepherd all opening in time for Santa. However, it was Night at the Museum who KO'd the box office, taking home $30 million over the three-day weekend to arrive at number one.

Will Smith fell short with his pursuit of another number one weekend, though The Pursuit of Happyness did manage to beat out all the other new releases to hang onto second with $15 million. And what about Rocky? The 60-year-old Italian Stallion opened up last Wednesday with a little over $6 million, tacked on $12.5 million over the weekend (for a grand total so far of $22.1 million) and stole third place in true underdog fashion. Since the kids were all too busy opening presents, The Good Shepherd ($10 million) managed to steal fourth place from Charlotte's Web ($8 million), despite the latter's rave reviews (Kim and Scott both adored it). And even the big Harry Potter 7 announcement couldn't help Eragon hold onto a place in the top five for a second week; it dropped into sixth with $7.1 million. Poor poor dragon.

Full numbers after the jump.

Happy Holidays to all and to all a ... few good movies. I've been asked to step in and semi-resurrect our regular old Review Roundup feature, which works out pretty well considering I usually spend most Fridays (and some Wednesdays) poring through all my favorite critics, agreeing with some and questioning the basic sanity of others. But since the release date schedules get extra jumbly during the year-end holiday season, I figured I'd spend my first column covering, well, everything. Let's start with the ones that actually opened yesterday ...

The Good Shepherd

Pro: "It's not a tub-thumping anti-CIA screed, but at the same time it's not a gung-ho patriotic extravaganza about the moral certainty of our side." -- Stephen Hunter, Washington Post

Con: "This is featherweight entertainment, sans visual elation and moral consequence-like Munich for Beginners." -- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine

Pro: "The bottom line is that The Good Shepherd is engaging cinema. The length is a drawback, but not a big one since the movie earns the majority of its 165-minute running time." -- James Berardinelli, ReelViews.net

Con: "De Niro's vision seems unfocused and ill-executed. It seems as though he had a thousand good ideas about what a spy film should be that didn't quite coalesce into a singular product, but he crammed 'em all in there regardless and tossed the editing shears into the garbage." -- Phil Villareal, Arizona Daily Star

BONUS: "A truncated American tragedy, noticeably half-finished and undercooked, but often tantalizing for the promise that clearly lay buried in the material, like unbroken codes." -- Ryan Stewart, Cinematical

Night at the Museum

Pro: "Trying to get kids to go to a museum over their holiday vacations might be a little easier after seeing Night at the Museum, a family-friendly comedy that tries to entertain while educating - and often succeeds, at least with the former." -- Mack Bates, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Con: "A volley of contented cackles greeted the final third of Night at the Museum, a pea-brained fantasy-comedy with a riot of kid-pleasing special effects." -- Jan Stuart, Newsday Magazine

Pro: "What do you know, not only is this a delightful popcorn movie, Ben Stiller is actually really good in it." -- Kevin LaForest, Montreal Film Journal

Con: "The possibilities for building an intriguing and original story around this concept -- the Museum of freakin' Natural History comes alive every night! -- are endless, and they chose this. That is downright criminal." -- MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Filosopher

BONUS: "Lots of pure imagination, with an extra helping of the most fun you might have at the theater all year." -- Erik Davis, Cinematical

We Are Marshall

Pro: "Warm and big-hearted, We Are Marshall succeeds as a tribute because it respects its subjects. It succeeds as a movie because it doesn't confuse respect with lifelessness." -- Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune

Con: "Director McG, known for the whiz-bang acrobatics of his Charlie's Angels movies, applies a warm, shiny veneer to everything here which prevents any emotion from getting through." -- Christy Lemire, San Francisco Gate

Pro: "The film is injected with a refreshing energy whenever McConaughey is on-screen, balancing some of the inherent sadness of the story." -- Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

Con: "No matter how earnest the intentions are, however, the harsh truth is that We Are Marshall is shockingly empty, one-dimensionally written, and finally unconvincing." -- Dustin Putnam, TheMovieBoy.com

BONUS: "A film that walks a tightrope with tricky subject matter, and somehow makes it to the other side." -- Ryan Stewart, Cinematical

Now let's skip back over the past week or so and see how the other holiday break also-rans fared with the critics...