upcoming movies that rock my world

[marbleglove]

Okay, I just recently saw Transformers 2. It was fun. Bad like whoa, but fun none the less. I pretty much went into it figuring character development was a lost cause, and plot was probably something best left alone, but pretty people, pretty cars, and action sequences were a go. And yes they were. I was only really thrown out of suspended disbelief a few times when the physics of the situation was just a bit too far off.

While I enjoyed the complete schlockiness that was Transformers 2, the best part of the movie was seeing the previews. Some of them not only looked fun, but looked good, too. So here are a couple of movies that are coming up and look awesome!

Sherlock Holmes (25 December 2009)

Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes. Let us pause just to appreciate that bit of type casting... he's brilliant at what he does, he's a complete loose canon, a drug-addict, and a bit of an ass. It's perfect.

M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender (2 July 2010)

This just looks awesome! One caveat: Avatar isn't an anime that I follow. And thinking of the anime that I do like, I'm not sure that I would appreciate them being made live action. However, I don't watch the anime, and I do trust Shyamalan, and, as I said, this preview is awesome!

Comments

Re: the last airbender

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Urgh. That's not only peculiarly white-centric for a guy named Shyamalan but also peculiarly stupid for a serious director setting a movie in a quasi-Indonesian setting. What in the world was he thinking?

Sadly, it reminds me a bit of the history of the "Kung Fu" TV series, apparently originally designed to star Bruce Lee but then given to David Carradine instead.

Re: the last airbender

[kethrua.livejournal.com]

I don't know what he was thinking. He had the opportunity to make something really significant, to give role models and representation to kids of so many different backgrounds, including Inuit, Mayan, Indian, Korean, Chinese, Pacific Islander, Arab, Japanese, Tibetan, and Ainu. He didn't even try, instead asking first and foremost for Caucasian actors in the casting calls.
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Re: the last airbender

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Someone clearly needed to slap him upside the head. Come to think of it, though, aside from the bad guy in "Unbreakable", I can't think of any non-whites he's directed. Huh.

And it's not just role models either. It's also a matter of visual distinctions. How many white Americans do you think can look at someone from east Asia and tell what ethnicity they are? A lot of people in America seriously can't tell the different between ethnic Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, etc. And given the history and cultures involved, mixing them up is certainly crass and can be dangerous. Having mass media cast them all as Caucasians certainly explains part of it but does nothing to excuse it.

A friend of a friend who is Hispanic went into the military and was trained as an Arabic interpreter because he "looked like them." That left me just a bit speechless.

Re: the last airbender

[kethrua.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I meant about representation. Even the actor they have as the bad guy is not right ethnicity for the part, and I understand that the "diverse" background characters are just sprinkled in at random. And using the non-whites for bad guys is not exactly winning him points anyways.