The Dark Tower, Ghostbusters, and News Around the Net!
So, it looks like the long-gestating film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is finally, actually happening! I am thrilled by the casting of Idris Elba as Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black. (And extra points to Mr. Elba for his great Dark Tower joke on twitter, confirming his casting!) Those two are both perfectly cast. (And if Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul actually gets cast as Eddie Dean — a part he was BORN to play — this film will have absolute perfect casting.) I am concerned, though, by the rumors that the Dark Tower film is not going to be a direct adaptation of Mr. King’s first Dark Tower novel, The Gunslinger, but rather some sort of mishmash of several later books in the series. Dark Tower fan Quint at aintitcoolnews has posted an in-detail look at the direction in which it looks like this Dark Tower film’s script is going to go. I can understand why the filmmakers might want to make these changes, but in a world in which we’ve gotten such faithful book-by-book adaptations of the Harry Potter and Hunger Games novels, I am disappointed that the Dark Tower films aren’t taking that same approach. So, for now, consider me excited but nervous. A bad Dark Tower film would be heartbreaking.
The first trailer for Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters film was released last week:
As many others on the internet have already commented, it’s not a great trailer. I like the visual “look” of what we see here, but this trailer didn’t make me laugh once. I’m also confused as to whether this film is a sequel to the previous two Ghostbusters films, or a reboot? I’d assumed it was a reboot, but the text in the opening of the trailer seems to suggest otherwise. Is that just the studio’s marketing department trying to remind audiences of this franchise’s legacy? The rest of the trailer certainly looks like the story has been rebooted from scratch, but we don’t see enough to tell for sure. So I am confused. (Personally, I would LOVE for this film to be a sequel rather than a reboot. But I suspect that’s not the case.)
Meanwhile, an enterprising fan re-cut a far snappier version of this trailer that is worth checking out:
In other news…
One of my friends sent me this great article that expresses an idea that has been a theme of my writing about movies: that a major criteria for evaluating the success or failure of a film should be its rewatchability. This is a terrific article and I wholeheartedly agree with this notion.
Holy cow, SNL’s Jay Pharaoh demonstrates his invincible array of impersonations in this incredible clip. That is pretty spectacular.
Steve Martin recently performed his first stand-up set in 35 years?? Holy cow, I wish there was video of this somewhere! Here’s a little more on this story from Rolling Stone. Bv the way, if anyone reading this hasn’t read Mr. Martin’s incredible memoir of his stand-up days, Born Standing Up, then you owe it to yourself to remedy that immediately. Mr. Martin opened for Jerry Seinfeld at the Beacon Theatre in New York, and here’s a great write-up of the start of Mr. Seinfeld’s year-long “residency” there.
With the release of Captain America: Civil War fast approaching, we’re starting to get some fascinating looks at the film. This is a fascinating in-depth interview with the film’s directors, Joe and Anthony Russo. Here are two interesting set reports from the film, one from aintitcoolnews and one from birthmoviesdeath. I’m also intrigued by reports that the film’s run-time will be 146 minutes, making it the longest Marvel Studios film so far. With so many characters in the film I am glad that they’re not trying to cram everything into under two hours, though of course the risk is Spider0Man 3 type bloat. This film has the potential to be epic. I hope they can pull it off. I can’t wait.
I’ll leave you all with this delicious teaser trailer for season six of Game of Thrones. Is it April 24 yet???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuH3tJPiP-U