What a year it has been for animated films. So far in 2010 we have had three great films from three rival studios. DreamWorks kicked things off with the surprise sleeper hit How to Train Your Dragon and animation juggernaut Pixar countered with the hotly anticipatedToy Story 3. Now Universal’s Illumination Entertainment has released the audaciously titled Despicable Me and while it may be the “worst” of the trio, it is certainly the most purely entertaining.
I figured I’d unearth an article I wrote about Fight Club from my old blogging days. Consider this one in a twice yearly series on modern classics and standout films.
Enjoy.
Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher.
Based on the cult book of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, it was an edgy and unusual tale that was equally anti-consumerist and sadomasochistic about a male revolution of embracing masculinity and eschewing the corporate world that molds them into worker bees and consumption targets. The film’s final act and opening scene take place in the same situation. Edward Norton has a gun barrel in his mouth, held by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) asking him for his last words. Norton’s character tells us that this is all happening now because he knows Tyler, and it’s all because of Marla Singer. But we’ll have to learn why and how this came to play later.
We see the narrator now being held in the massive male mammary set of Meatloaf, but we are cut away from there to make sense of the situation.
All you’re required to do is predict which five movies will place in the top five of this weekend’s U.S. domestic box office chart. Simple enough, right? I will make my own predictions here and explain them to you each week to give you some sort of reference point. It’s then your job to enter a comment with your top five.
This week on Player Affinity we flip our “Good, Bad, Ugly” segment on its head and run down movie supervillains, from those that impart absolute fear in their enemies to those who your grandma could beat to death with her purse. Our inspiration is taken from the newest animated supervillain, Gru, from Universal’s Despicable Me, who probably falls in the “good” category.
Seeing that Hollywood has been rebooting a number of franchises from the 80’s (e.g. Die Hard and Indiana Jones), it surprising that it took so long for the Predator series to be revisited (excluding the Alien vs. Predator movies). But this time Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal are taking a stab at his popular material in the producer and director‘s chairs.
After a slight lull, today brings three new cast updates for Matthew Vaughn’s upcoming film X-Men: First Class. Brit Nicholas Hoult and Americans Aaron Johnson and Caleb Landry Jones are the latest mutant recruits on a list that includes James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Alice Eve.
That’s right: moviegoers will get a chance to revisit Pandora when Avatar hits theaters again on August 27 . Eight minutes of “never before seen footage” will accompany this re-release that will be shown only in 3-D and IMAX 3-D. The film will re-appear in 10 other countries besides the U.S. on or after the 26th and 27th.
