Assemblog: July 27, 2012

Jack and Diane, 2012

New this week on Popshifter: Jemiah explains why Laetitia Sadier’s Silencio is worth your time; I take critics to task on The Dark Knight Rises (again!); Chelsea chats with Glenn di Benedetto of Boston’s Parlour Bells; and Paul recommends The Very Best of Wes Montgomery.

Bloody Disgusting has posted a stellar review of the film Midnight Son, calling it “Martin-esque,” by which they’re referring to George Romero’s 1976 quasi-vampire film Martin. Although I thought parts of Romero’s film dragged a bit, on the whole, it was compelling, particularly the opening scenes and the ending. The trailer for Midnight Son looks quite similar and also reminds me a bit of another quasi-vampire film, Ganja & Hess. I do love movies about supernatural beings that don’t rely on clichéd canon, particularly in dialogue and imagery. Check it out and see what you think. Midnight Son is available on DVD.

Another trailer for a non-canon type of supernatural creature is Jack and Diane. It seems a bit like My Summer of Love but then gets really weird towards the end. The film stars Juno Temple (The Dark Knight Rises) and Riley Keogh (Magic Mike) as two young women falling in love against a background of parents who don’t seem to understand. H/T to Film School Rejects for the trailer. The movie will be out on VOD September 28 and in theaters November 2.

The new film from the Wachowskis, Cloud Atlas, is premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in a couple of months and looks and sounds bizarre and fascinating. Entertainment Weekly has posted some images while /Film lists the cast as including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, and Ben Whishaw (who will be playing Q in the upcoming Bond movie Skyfall).

Vulture interviewed Whishaw last year and he had this to say about the movie:

One of your co-stars, Hugo Weaving, said he was playing six parts. Who are your characters?
Everyone in the cast [which also includes Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, and Jim Broadbent] is playing at least three parts, some big and some small. I’m doing three: Frobisher in the thirties; a female American in the seventies, in the Luisa Rey section; and a smallish role, where I’m basically an extra, in a modern-day nursing home, in the Timothy Cavendish section. Everybody’s swapping race and gender, so it’s very ambitious and quite fun. I’ll really love playing a woman!

Race and gender swapping sounds amazing! I’m totally in. I also recently watched the Wachowski’s Bound for the first time and to be honest, I’d kind of forgotten how cool their movies are. I’m definitely looking forward to Cloud Atlas.

Another upcoming movie that I just heard about is the big-screen adaptation of ’80s TV series The Equalizer, with Denzel Washington. I don’t know about you guys, but OH. MY. GOD. I am so excited about this!

The Equalizer was a show I got into because I was flipping channels one night and got wrapped up in some crime drama featuring Adam Ant as a suave pimp. (I was and still am a huge Adam Ant fan.) It turned out to be the first episode of the show. Here’s a good overview of the show’s premise from someone named Mark Limvere-Robinson on IMDB:

Robert McCall, one of the best covert operatives in the business became disenchanted with his work in a CIA-like organization known only as “the Company.” Seeking redemption for some of his darker exploits, McCall resigned, and offered his services through newspaper ads to people in trouble, who were beyond the help of official channels, like the police. McCall used his skills in espionage and frequently enlisted the help of former colleagues still in the Company to get the job done. He also continued to maintain contact with his friend and former boss, a man known only as Control.

One thing that was great about The Equalizer was that McCall was played by suave, fifty-something actor Edward Woodward. I think casting Washington as McCall is a good move because (1) he’s older, not some inexperienced, pretty boy stud and (2) he’s freakin’ Denzel Washington!

Speaking of which, a while back everyone was going nuts about the trailer for Flight, the upcoming Robert Zemeckis movie starring Denzel Washington. Pajiba, upon seeing it, said, “If the film is half as good as the trailer is, then we need to take away all of Zemeckis’ motion capture technology, burn it on his front lawn, and follow him around twenty four hours a day to prevent him from ever disappearing down that hole again.”

I saw the trailer when I went to see Prometheus in June and I have to agree wholeheartedly with their assessment. It was invigorating to say the least. You can check it out below, but damn, it is so much better on the big screen.

Even though I’m annoyed with NBC for their recent treatment of Community and other shows (not to mention this recent disheartening statement from NBC entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt), I am curious to see how their upcoming Dracula series will turn out.

Bloody Disgusting reports that “NBC has given a 10-episode straight-to-series order to Dracula, with The Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers set to play the iconic vampire.” The description of the show goes on to mention that the count “falls hopelessly in love with a woman who seems to be a reincarnation of his dead wife.” Hrrmm, this sounds a lot like the Coppola movie. As a fan of both Stoker’s original novel and the Coppola movie, I am interested but I seriously hope that Rhys Meyers can get his act together, literally. I was never able to catch The Tudors as it aired on a channel I didn’t get, but I did love him in Velvet Goldmine, B.Monkey, Titus, and Elvis. However, his behavior as of late has been depressing and offensive. I will stay tuned.

—Less Lee Moore, Managing Editor