The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

I just watched the trailer for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Yes, the sequel to the "cult classic" The Boondock Saints.

This movie, or set of movies, now joins the list of "Why did they keep going?" franchises. I know that sounds negative but it's not completely; I would add good movies to that list along with bad. This list includes, yet is obviously not limited to: Green Street Hooligans (yes, there is a sequel), basically any horror franchise, every single superhero franchise (good and bad included, I'm looking at you Christopher Nolan's Batman movies and Fantastic Four, respectively), Lost Boys, most of the Disney Animated Classics, and loads more I can't think of right now. The point is why do studios/filmmakers/directors/etc. continue movie franchises when continuing almost certainly means devaluing the franchise of any sort of credibility?

Let me go back a little bit. The Boondock Saints is a great movie. Funny, violent, exciting, artistic, it's very entertaining to watch. While it doesn't seem to have much premise other than "two Irish residents of Boston go on a violent God-ordained rampage and kill lots of bad gangsters in their city," it makes for an interesting concept and really is more of a vehicle for how the killing goes down. Which sounds mindless but translates to a very cool movie.

So you have this movie. It was (apparently) a disaster to make, made no waves when it was released in theaters, and then became a huge hit released on DVD, thanks to the powerful effect of word-of-mouth between college kids. It's considered a cult classic. And now, ten years later, a sequel is being made. I just watched the trailer, and it looks like they've replaced the Rocco character (comic relief sidekick from the original) with another Rocco-like character, and instead of Willem Dafoe playing the FBI agent tracking the Saints down, he's been replaced with a "sexy" crime-fighter who's "really gonna give them hell." Those are not quotes from the trailer, just a way to emphasize the cliches of movie sequels, the whole "upping the ante" factor. Sounds awful doesn't it?

Here's the interesting part. It might not be. The same writer-director of the original is helming the sequel, and the whole main cast (excluding Dafoe) is returning. This means the same two Saints (who really sold the original), their same bushy-bearded dad, and the squad of Boston police officers who were Dafoe's lackeys in the original. It actually seems like it might turn into a decent movie, as far as movie sequels go.

I think I was just a little annoyed by the fact they were making a sequel at all, as good as this might be. The Boondock Saints was a great movie, why can't it be left at that? People sacrifice their art and continue to make something after the creative well has dried and it cheapens whatever of the original was good.

So unless I hear that it really is awesome, I probably won't see this movie. Because honestly, how many people do you remember saying "Man Home Alone 3 is really where the series took off. I'm so glad they got rid of Macaulay Culkin"?

-Jon

whatever works.

great news. the trailer is finally out for whatever works, a new comedy written and directed by woody allen. that's not the great news. the great news is that it stars larry david. for the uninitiated, larry david co-created seinfeld along with jerry seinfeld and currently stars in curb your enthusiasm on hbo. i wasn't allowed to watch seinfeld growing up, so i never really got into it when i was younger, and i've only recently started to watch it more often, and it's funny. but it's definitely no curb your enthusiasm. the character of george was based on larry david, but nobody plays that character better than larry david himself, and that's why curb is funnier to me.

can't get off track. i just watched the trailer and while it's clearly no annie hall, it looks like the funniest woody allen movie i've seen in a while. and finally, FINALLY, a woody allen movie that doesn't star the insufferable scarlett johansson. gosh i hate that woman. larry david is just a funny guy. he has funny mannerisms, his cadence is funny to me, his face just makes me laugh. and while the supporting cast isn't full of any of my favorites, it still looks solid enough to make for a very good woody allen yarn. now i just hope it will be released somewhere around cedar falls. doubtful.

-jon

annie hall.

i'm not sure really how i feel about woody allen. as far as i know i think i've only seen like one and a half of his movies, the one being annie hall and the half being scoop during which i fell asleep. he seems like a very smart comedian, if a little too something else. what that something else is i haven't nailed yet.

i'd say annie hall is a good movie. i'd even go so far as to say a really good movie. allen makes really insightful and funny observations on relationships and how men think. the whole movie is metafiction; weaved through the whole thing are plot devices where allen breaks the "fourth wall" and talks to the camera, where he blends well with his own fictional world but keeps referencing the real world outside of the camera. it's really the pre-cursor movie to high fidelity, without all the music savvy and hilarious supporting characters.

i watched it for the first time when i was younger; i say younger but really it was only like two years ago max. i didn't really get it then. i watched it again about a month ago and i understood it a lot better. and i realized that it's a really good movie, yet mildly inaccessible, in a weird way. in a basic way, it's just allen's thoughts on life and love and women and sex and relationships, and nearly everybody can relate to that, but if you listen to half the movie's dialogue, it's all references. and obscure references too, references to literature or weird psychoanalysts and 70s culture. tons of references that i had no hope of understanding. and you know what it reminded me of? freakin' juno. that awful movie about the pregnant teen. i bet when annie hall was released in '77, it was really popular with loads of college douchebags who were really into the latest kurt vonnegut book and who voted for carter. it was the juno of the late 70s. except much smarter and better overall.

it is pretty slow though. there's a good laugh about every 10 minutes or so, and there are some really long takes. at one point annie has a long monologue which is like 5 minutes with no camera cuts, just one long take. so it feels a lot slower than current movies. another reason those freakin' hipsters love it so much. it's feels "artsy".

even though it was probably popular with the indie hipsters of the 70s and nowadays it's so hipster to say it's one of your favorite movies, i still liked it, because it is a really good movie. here's woody's summation of his relationship with annie.

after that, it got pretty late and we both had to go, but it was great seeing annie again, and i realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and i thought of that old joke, you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says "doc, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." and the doctor says "well why don't you turn him in?" and the guy says, "i would, but i need the eggs." well, i guess that's pretty much now how i feel about relationships. you know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but i guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.

perfect. i should watch more woody allen movies.

-jon

some pre-dark knight thoughts.

we are just days away from the release of the dark knight, the second installment in director chris nolan's batman franchise. there have been very few times where i've been this excited for some new kind of media coming out in the last few years: seeing the extended edition of return of the king for the first time and reading the last harry potter book are the two i remember right off the top of my head. seeing this movie is more than just being excited to see a cool new film coming out, like i'm excited to see prince caspian or iron man when i get to it.

the dark knight is different because it has a special element that is so rare to find nowadays. it tells an incredible story. stories run our lives; underneath everything important, everything that matters in life, there's some kind of story. stories take us somewhere else, somewhere different and new. a good story has the ability to transport me to a completely different mindset, it can take me out of myself completely and make me feel the most foreign things. i'm not a huge fan of knights, wizards, magic, that whole fantasy genre, but when i first read the lord of the rings when i was younger, it spoke to me on a completely different level than any book i'd ever read before. it sucked me into this universe and told me an incredibly dense and vivid story that swept me up.

the best stories sweep you up. even now, reading lord of the rings wraps me into the story so much that i forget that i'm reading a fantasy story. i thinkvreal stories, stories that ring true even if they're fiction, do so because they present us with ideas and concepts that are so foreign to us in our culture. i feel like bravery is hard to find nowadays. not just hard to find in our culture but hard to find in myself. reading good stories makes me believe in those things like bravery. like courage and love and hope and redemption.

other than the fact that i know the dark knight is going to be an all around great movie, another reason i'm so excited about it is that there have been two instances i can think of where i've been conscious that i was about to take part in an incredible story experience. i wasn't aware of what i was reading when i started lord of the rings, and only after having reread it bunches of times have i realized how wonderful those books are and what a great story the whole thing is. going into it i didn't know though. the last harry potter was the first time when i really realized that it was such an incredible story and i was about to immerse myself in the final chapter of the whole tale. that i was about to read the conclusion to one of the best epic stories i'd ever read for the very first time. it's like there have really only been like less than ten albums where i knew going into it that it was potentially life changing music that i was about to listen to for the first time. it's an exciting thing for me to realize what i'm going into, how important what i'm going into really is to me, and to go into it and just experience it and enjoy it. the dark knight is really the second time that's ever happened in my life.

and it's about a superhero. childish but heroes are so important today. there is so much more i want to write about this movie but for now this is it. it's already in my Top 5 Movies list and i've only yet seen the trailer.

-jon

cloverfield.

one bad thing about studying abroad is missing all the great american stuff that gets released while you're gone. so far, i've missed the release of albums like gnarls the odd couple and movies like rambo. ok rambo's a joke, but i'm missing the latest episodes of lost, 30 rock (a new fav.), and the office. and in may, there are loads of movies coming out that i would love to see: iron man, speed racer, prince caspian, and indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull. i definitely want to see at least all of these in the theaters because they're epic adventure movies. you can't see these on a laptop or a crappy tv set. you gotta watch them in style, with killer sound and a gigantic screen in your face.

this is the way i wish i had've seen cloverfield. i watched it last night on my laptop, and although i was still blown away, i can only imagine how intense it must've been in the theaters. if you haven't seen it, i think it's out on dvd now so i definitely recommend it. it was incredible; a super sweet monster movie. if you don't know anything about it, the whole thing is shot from the perspective of a handheld camera, captured by a guy who was originally supposed to document a going-away party held for a friend. it starts at this party, and then everyone hears a huge explosion, a monster comes storming through the city, and all hell breaks loose after that. basically the whole movie is this group of a few friends running and screaming. and oh man is it scary. never once is the illusion broken that all these events are happening while you are watching; everything seems so incredibly real. the camera is jerked around, it points towards the ground at times, it always seems shaky; it's an incredibly visceral experience. i was dreading what was coming next the whole time because there is such a feeling of outright panic and confusion throughout the whole movie. i was as in the dark as the people running from the monster, i was struggling to keep up with what was going on, just like everyone else in the movie. usually not knowing what's going on is obnoxious in a film, but here it just makes you feel like you're so much more involved. you get a little frustrated when the camera doesn't show you things you want, but so is everybody else because they have no idea what's going on either or if they will be ok or anything. so awesome.

the makers of this movie (i love you j.j. abrams) know exactly how much to give the audience to keep them hooked. there is only one real money shot of the monster, and it is crazy. up until then all you see are glimpses, and never the whole thing. visually, it just traps you and you can't look away. the actors do a great job too; there wasn't a minute where i wasn't involved with them. hud, the cameraman, at times is a bit too dumb, but as far as reviews that said the characters weren't developed or were all 1-dimensional? of course they aren't developed, and it doesn't take away from the film at all. it's a monster movie in real time, of course the characters are trying to survive by getting away from this unseen danger, not grow in their relationships with one another.

it's also a cool commentary on our culture, that a person would actually attempt to keep a camera rolling the whole time this disaster is occurring. when the head of the statue of liberty comes crashing through a street and lands in front of everyone, you can actually see people taking out their camera phones and taking pictures of it. our culture is so obsessed with capturing moments and the movie nails that really well. very cool.

there has been some talk of a sequel, which, if done in an uncheesy way, could be potentially awesome. they've talked about making another movie from the point of view of another camera, another group of people. that would be great, as long as totally new narratives are given concerning the monster. maybe it could go on longer than the first one did; follow-up the story a bit. i don't know. whatever they do, it's gonna have to be killer to top this one. watch it.

-jon