Sunday, January 11, 2009

Things to Look Forward to this 2009 (1)

This is long overdue, but I can't think of anything else to write about. My creative juices are at an all-time low. It must be the cold weather, my blood is having difficulty in reaching my brain.

Anyway. Now that the Metro Manila Film Festival is (finally) over, the backlog of foreign movies are now trickling in. Not that I am not fond of homegrown films. But this year's MMFF offerings are as uninteresting as the offerings for the last several years.

I have noticed theaters are now showing The Curious Case of Button Benjamin Button, starring Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. Loosely based on the 1921 short story by Scott Fitzgerald, the film has a premise that should draw hordes of moviegoers. It actually did. Benjamin (Pitt) is born with the appearance of an old man, as his years go by, he "grows younger" until he becomes a baby. Along the way he meets Hildegarde Moncrief (Oscar winner Cate Blanchett), the daughter of a Civil War veteran, with whom he falls in love and eventually marries.

Benjamin Button boasts of being the product of two talents known for being great in adapting books into movies: Director David Finch (Fight Club) and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, 1994; Munich, 2005), who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump.

This years seems to be a rematch for Oscar laureates, because Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet of the Titanic fame are back in Revolutionary Road, a movie about the a couple with differing dispositions and apirations. Sam Mendes of American Beauty is at the helm of this long-awaited reunion of two of Hollywood's box office darlings. Man Booker Prize nominee Justin Haythe (The Honeymoon) wrote the screenplay.

There is also Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July. Steven Kloves, who wrote the first Potter films, returns as screenwriter for this sixth installment of the Potter saga. When I first saw the trailers, I instantly noticed the beautiful black-and-blue themed cinematography. Then I found out the movie's cinematographer is Oscar-nominated Bruno Delbonnel of Amelie. No surprise there. David Yates of the fifth film also returns as director.

Angels and Demons also conquers theaters this year, with Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) as director again. The Da Vinci Code was a bore and a disappointment, but hey Ewan McGregor is the camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, so I will see this film and watch Tom Hanks humiliate himself.

There is also another attempt to redeem the X-Men franchise from complete waste with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which traces the early life of Logan who will eventually become Wolverine. To obviously pander to comic geeks, this installment also promises cameos of future X-Men.

For those who pine for Heath Ledger, there's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a movie about a traveling theater troupe who made a truce with the devil. Heath's death prompted director Terry Gilliam to recast Heath's role with Johnny Depp (oh), Jude Law (oh), and Colin Farrell (oh) playing Heath's character's many transformations. Terry Gilliam is a member of the phenomenal Monty Python comedy troupe.

A fan of Alice Sebold? There's a film adaptation of the 2002 book The Lovely Bones, a tragic story about a girl who was raped and murdered by a local serial killer. BAFTA winner and Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan stars as Alice Sebold. Susan Sarandon and Rachel Weisz also star in this much-awaited film by LOTR god Peter Jackson.

So many films to see. So little time. So little dough.

PS. I'm going to see Benjamin Button on Friday, with someone which I wish to be the One who shall finally break my long-cherished singlehood. Yeeha!

3 comments:

jamie da vinci! said...

what a fantastic date movie to pick!!! :)

VICTOR said...

i know, right? LOL.

Anonymous said...

i think i already love this guy.well researched!