wow Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Right about here is where all the gushing and excitement and enthusiasm should begin, because I'll tell you right off the "bat" that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is cause for celebration indeed. But then you'll figure out -- after only one sentence -- that I pretty much loved this movie, and then you'll head off to another, more unpredictable film critic. But it's the WHY that interests me so much. What I enjoyed about Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Hellboy 2 could probably be covered in one lengthy -- and inevitably nerd-tastic -- conversation between the two of us. But The Dark Knight... Well, clearly we're approaching a whole new level here.

Several of the pre-release gushings are accurate. Some say "Scorsesian" and others reference Michael Mann. Many spend paragraphs on the (truly amazing) penultimate performance by Heath Ledger, while others will revel in the grown-up tone or epic scope of the film. What amazed me most about The Dark Knight, among several things, is that the flick's got more layers than an onion farm -- and yet it never loses touch with the idea of FUN. True that we're talking about a comic book fun that's decidedly more melancholy than the cinematic exploits of The Marvel Gang, but dang if TDK isn't supremely satisfying for about a dozen different reasons.

If you're a regular reader of this website, then you might have noticed a little something missing over the last two weeks. That missing something is ... me. So my apologies to all (five) of you who look forward to my movie reviews, horror news, and random blather -- but I'll be back in full force next week! Still, after the cinematic experience I had last night, I just had to take a break from my UK vacation and share this anecdote:

Thanks to some contacts here in England, I was able to wrangle an invite to a BAFTA screening of Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf -- and since I was assigned that title for Cinematical review, I figured it was a smart move to go see the flick now. But then I looked a little closer at the invitation: The screenings were being held the BFI London IMAX Cinema! In Hi-Def 3-D! Whoa! (Special thanks to Mr. Alan Jones and Warner UK for the invitation!)

Now, before I continue, I think it's important to share some of my opinions on filmmaker Robert Zemeckis: I think the guy's a great filmmaker, but also that his last few films (particularly The Polar Express) were more interested in technology than storytelling. But it's pretty tough to hold a grudge against the guy who gave us Used Cars, Roger Rabbit and the Back to the Future trilogy, plus I was really curious to see what screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary were going to do with the classic Beowulf story, so off we went to the cinema: Myself, UK FrightFest co-honcho Paul McEvoy, Severance screenwriter James Moran, and Guardian film critic Phellim O'Neal. We climbed inside the stunningly massive IMAX theater, the lights went down, and ...

Wow.

My full review will arrive on Tuesday, but if you've never trusted me before, you simply must trust me on this: If you plan to go see Beowulf, you MUST see it in IMAX 3-D. Suffice to say that, for me, it was a cinematic experience on par with the first time I saw Star Wars. I felt like I was just being introduced to the future of movies -- and it was staggering to behold.

Plus the flick's pretty darn good.

I posted earlier today on Joystiq that a new TV commercial for the role-playing game World of Warcraft hit the airwaves on Monday, which of course means it hit YouTube about .0815 seconds later. I'm waiting for the day that things come out on YouTube before they reach TV or the big screen. YouTube will become self-aware and telepathic and rule the world one day. You think Terminator was just a movie? SkyNet is YouTube, silly rabbit.

Oh, look ... we've veered back on-topic. This commercial features footage from Office Space with everyone's favorite cubicle-slacker Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) playing WoW while Bill Lundbergh (Gary Cole) tries to talk to him about TPS reports. Originally in the scene, Peter was playing Tetris, but they've stuck this footage in pretty seamlessly. Look how they've even littered his desk with the Warcraft box and game discs.

The ad works here because Office Space isn't generally considered a "classic", but how long until companies really screw up something that Cinemaniacs will cry sacrilege over? Come to think of it, it's already happened several times. We've had Gene Kelly selling Volkswagens, Steve McQueen pushing Mustangs, and Elton John plugging Diet Coke with Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Louis Armstrong. The recent Gap commercial starring Audrey Hepburn was funky and fun, but I found myself wondering what she'd think about it. It's hard to imagine that she would be thrilled. Will Apple use Citizen Kane to sell iPods? Matthew Broderick hawking new computers in WarGames? Okay, that last one probably wouldn't really bother me, but when does it end? At what point is too much just too much?


Check out these ads after the jump and let us know what you think.