A Knight to remember?

PREVIEW REVIEW: By the pricking of Christopher Nolan's thumbs ...

LINKS: Watch the official teaser for The Dark Knight Rises; Daily Herald reviews of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight

Yo, A-S: This "Cherry Burst" business isn't fooling anyone.

Nobody drinks Alka-Seltzer for the flavor. Nobody drinks it at all, really. You take Alka-Seltzer by dissolving it in water and, yes, pouring that water down your throat, but that's just ingestion. The way I see it, when you actually drink something — whether it's a glass of lemonade after mowing the lawn, or a Big Gulp of your favorite soda at the movie theater — the act of drinking itself is pleasurable. My point is that I've never seen Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin, but I know that almost everyone who did see it hated it. And that's why I tend to think that people get confused in their estimation of Batman Begins, the film with which writer and director Christopher Nolan assumed the Batmantle. For everyone whose innards were aflame with the heartburn of Batman & Robin, Batman Begins was a hearty swig of Alka-Seltzer. Soothing. Calming. Healing. But a great movie? Come on.

For starters, the screenplay was only co-written by Nolan, with David S. Goyer, from a story by Goyer. Goyer's left his mark on the good, the bad and the ugly of cinema, but when he's bad, he's really bad. You had an uninspired performance of a weak central villain, a stilted revisitation of the death of Batman's parents, and probably the most problematic action direction Nolan has ever done. Batman Begins isn't terrible, but at its best, it's boilerplate. Perfectly adequate if what you need is some sweet relief from the awful taste of Batman & Robin, but hardly a bold reinvention of a worn-thin franchise. Nolan had a better idea of what he wanted to do with The Dark Knight, got a world-class performance from Heath Ledger, didn't waste any time on backstory, and basically delivered a superhero movie grand slam.

So which Nolan is coming to the plate for The Dark Knight Rises next summer? Now that we've been given our first real indication of what's to come, I think it's safe to say that there's another home run in the works. The teaser is essentially a conversation between Batman, who's off camera, and Commissioner Gordon, who looks like he's either recuperating from an Adam Sandler movie marathon, or just got hit by a truck. Gary Oldman has been aces as Gordon from the start, so it's fitting to have him lead us into the next chapter in the story. There's a brief glimpse of Tom Hardy as Bane, once from the front, and a second time from behind. The rear-angle view,  with a wobbly Batman in the foregound while Bane comes to get him, rising up to fill the entire frame, is sheer brilliance. Bane is slightly out of focus, but his movement is direct and purposeful. I'm going to break that Bat-guy in half. It's a mesmerizing and mesmerizingly simple cut. The effect is to leave you almost more worried for Batman than for Gordon, who's only on life support in a hospital bed. There's a lot of opinion from fans of the comic books that Bane is a minor Batman villain, but this teaser definitely gives him some punch.

There's already a ridiculous roster of talent in the mix, with Oldman and Bale backed up by Morgan Freeman (Batman's tech guru) and Michael Caine (Alfred the butler), but The Dark Knight Rises is certainly raising the bar on casting. Hardy is one of three actors to come over from Nolan's Inception — the director also found room for Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and all three are strong performers. To say nothing of the fact that just about anything that got borrowed from Inception would be fine by me. The casting question mark, and it's a big one, is Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Do we really even need Catwoman? I admit that I'm intrigued to see what the more serious-minded Nolan has in store for a character who's always been more goofy than grim. But if you're going to go there, why make her a second-class citizen? She's obviously not the lead villain. And I'd guess that Cotillard is the clear successor to Katie Holmes (from Batman Begins) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Dark Knight), so Catwoman isn't even Batman's main squeeze here. It's nothing against the inarguably gifted Hathaway, but the whole thing just feels extraneous. I'd be just as happy to see as much of Catwoman in the movie as there is of her in the teaser. That is to say, nothing at all. Less is more, Mr. Nolan.

Lost weekend

THAT AND MY TWO CENTS WILL GET YOU: This is all there is?

LINKS: The world's best Boss; a movie with Kevin James that's a whole lot worse than Zookeeper

Crack open a bottle of Heinz, folks, it's a ketchup weekend at your local multiplex. There are a lot of movies that get released during the summer season, and it's tough to keep track of them all. If you missed seeing Super 8 or Kung Fu Panda 2, or even Thor or X-Men: First Class, then this is your big chance to catch up. (See what I did there?) If you haven't gotten around to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides or Cars 2, eh, read a book or mow the lawn. And if you haven't gotten around to seeing Transformers: Dark of the Moon, um, take all of the four-fifths empty bottles of (wait for it) ketchup out of the fridge, stand them upside down and see which one drains all the way to the top of the bottle first. I promise you'll be much more entertained than if you wind up languishing in a darkened auditorium with Optimus Prime and the fellas, wondering whether your brain cells are dying faster than they would if you were stuck above 26,000 feet on Mt. Everest.

Summer is traditionally Hollywood's golden goose, so who knows how it happens, but once in a while you get a prime weekend in the middle of June of July when there's just nothing new that's worth anyone's moviegoing dollar. This weekend, we've got Horrible Bosses and Zookeeper. No, really, that's it. I checked. Anyone remember the scene in Better Off Dead where John Cusack winds up in the back of a garbage truck that's passing a couple of tree trimmers? One of them says to the other, "Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that." What gives, movie studios? I say it's a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good weekend in July.

Horrible Bosses looks bad in a garden-variety sort of way. Three dudes have rotten managers at work and decide that the only way of making their office hours bearable is to kill the jerks lording it over them. Ho, ho. The movie's rep is that it's the latest film to equate boundary-breaking vulgarity, crudity, obsenity, etc., with humor, which means that it's merely the next in a very long line of films to go for the gross-out gold. There's a scene, for example, involving Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd — an entirely respectable sort whose performance in the excellent historical drama Amazing Grace is absolutely worth digging up on DVD — that's basically a joke about how his character makes a living by getting paid to urinate on people. Don't you sometimes wish that you hadn't lived to see the all-bets-are-off, anything-goes era of movie comedy?

As for Zookeeper, well, Kevin James is fat, which is always good for a laugh, and he plays a guy at a zoo who discovers that he can talk to the animals, which is like throwing a bucket of water on the comedy flame. A "bucket of gasoline" is what some of you are thinking that I meant to say. Trust me, I've had plenty of experience not laughing at live-action films where a doofus interacts with all creatures great and small. Maybe there's some catsup in the fridge.

Dwarves ahoy!

GET A LOAD OF THIS: First-look photos from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

LINKS: Follow The Hobbit on Facebook; watch the first teaser trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

If there's one thing that we know about hobbits, it's that they don't really kick a lot of (butt), you know? If you need someone to host an unexpected party, or crave a basket of mushrooms, or check out an awesome map with secret writing, or live in a hole in the ground (though not a nasty, dirty wet hole, or a dry, bare, sandy hole), then a hobbit is probably pretty close to the top of the list. A hobbit would never miss a nuncheon, but he probably couldn't make heads or tails of a truncheon. Hey, hobbits are lovers, not fighters. So it's no surprise, really, that Peter Jackson's "get the word out" approach to his two-film adaptation of The Hobbit is light on Bilbo Baggins — who's only, like, the guy in the title of movie — and heavy on dudes who look like they're ready to cleave some orcs in two, ideally in a rainstorm and preferably with lots of seething CGI hordes in the rear of the frame. Hey, world, there's a bunch of awesome battles in this one, too. I mean, only one, really, and it's way at the end of the second movie. And, technically, it doesn't have any oliphaunt-surfing, dwarf-tossing, or Nazgul-baiting. It's going to be rad, though.

OK, fine the dwarves are important to the movie. Only a couple of them get a lot of face time in Tolkien's book, but Thorin has a strong character arc and his companions as a collective presence are essential to Bilbo's growth. Let's have a look at the gang. That's Thorin up above, by the way:

L-R: Nori, Ori and Dori

L-R: Oin and Gloin

L-R: Fili and Kili

L-R: Bombur, Bofur and Bifur

L-R: Balin and Dwalin

I dig most of the costume and makeup work that's been done here. I never really pictured Dwalin as being the heavily tattooed, Conan-sized, war-hammer-wielding enforcer of the bunch, but I wouldn't get between him and his morning coffee, or whatever dwarves use to snap out of that 5 a.m. haze. All of the armor and gear of war, much as it panders to a certain segment of Jackson's Lord of the Rings viewership, does at least seem appropriate to the mission the Dirty Dwarvish (Baker's) Dozen has appointed itself. You don't set off intending to mess with a treasure-hoarding dragon in your feast day frock and lace-trimmed knickers. The hairstyles are fun, too, even though Bifur could probably use a trim and Fili and Kili are maybe a bit too ready for a starring role in a shampoo commercial. And Nori maybe gets some help from Dori and Ori rockin' the old starfish 'do every morning? (Do dwarves take along their scissors, combs and hairpins when they go on a quest?) The posed, GQ magazine look of the whole thing suggests that sets and locations aren't in the mix yet. Or maybe those are greenscreens (grayscreens?) and the Middle-earth environs will be added in post. There's still plenty of time to fix and fiddle with things before Christmas 2012 ... at least as long as the ancient Mayans were wrong about this.

French Kiss-off

PREVIEW REVIEW: The Three Musketeers for Dummies — or is that Dumas-es?

LINKS: See for yourself: Fireballs, zeppelins and Orlando Bloom with big hair (Note: Trailer 1 is silly, but this post draws on the more richly ridiculous Trailer 2)

What was my first clue that The Three Musketeers by Paul W.S. Anderson is going to (intake) like a Hoover after it comes swashbuckling into theaters Oct. 21? To be honest, if I'd known that the movie had anything to do with our good buddy Weak Sauce before seeing its ridiculous trailer, then I'd probably have gone in expecting to see about what I got. Instead, I just saw the title and poster art before clicking the link. A new 'Three Musketeers,' eh? Could be fun. So then there's some urgent orchestral stuff with VO by British actor Matthew Macfadyen, who could totally have been a Deep Voice Trailer Guy if the acting thing hadn't panned out. Anyway, the camera swoops over a palace courtyard with uniformed soldiers, which looks a little generic, but so far, so good. And then there's the second shot of anything at all, at the 12-second mark, which is a ninja warrior rising up from some sort of river or lake (turns out it's a river, probably the Seine) and — wait, wait, wait. Huh? A ninja? Does France have ninjas? Did the producers hire a real life ninja, maybe, who just forgot to go to wardrobe before filming the scene where he takes a dip in the river? Maybe it's a guy who got lost and wandered over from the set of the Jackie Chan movie on Lot B? No such luck. It's a for reals ninja, in a Three Musketeers movie, who promptly takes out a couple of guards with his wicked awesome ninja warrior gun/umbrella/crossbow thingies, and aaaaall righteee then.

I mean, suppose that Alexandre Dumas was alive today. Would he even take a royalty check for this kind of nonsense? There are literally dozens of movie versions of The Three Musketeers already, so I suppose, as a filmmaker, you only sign up for something like this if there's some sort of agreement in place that you can do you own "thing" — whatever that may be — with the material. Wimp Sack's "thing" is apparently to make everything more gnarly and video game-ish. One of the credited screenwriters is Alex Litvak of Predators (no other screenwriting credits), so no surprise that the trailer is packed with numbskull-level mumbo-jumbo like when Macfadyen (who plays mopey Athos) blathers that, "We're warriors. It's who we are. It's what we do." (Wait, wait, didn't you already cover both of those points? Like, two seconds ago? If I were a dentist and someone asked about my job, would I ever say, "I'm a dentist. It's who I am. It's what I do.") The other screenwriter, however, is Andrew Davies, who only wrote the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, for the love of William Goldman. See here, Mr. Davies, what are you even doing within 1,000 feet of a movie where Orlando Bloom (as the Duke of Buckingham) actually says, "My war machines will readdress the balance." Oh, will they, Bucky Boy? Is that because somebody sent the balance to Charing Cross Road when it should have gone to Chatterly Court? (I believe the word you're looking for is "redress," your grace.)

Some of you who've read the novel are trying to remember when Buckingham ever had or used any "war machines." The trailer clears that up with shots of zeppelins gliding above gay Pah-ree. And not just any zeppelins, mind you: These are hot lead zeppelins. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Each airship is fully equipped with cannons and heavy ordnance. OK, so I can roll with a steampunk Three Musketeers. And it's great to see that good ol' Orlie is still getting work now that he's all done making Pirates of the Caribbean movies. On the other hand, how is he not murdering his agent that he got cast in The Three Musketeers and he's not a musketeer?! Did it not even occur to him to say, "I am freaking Orlando Bloom. I'm d'Artagnan, or I'm not in the movie." Or maybe he defers to the kid, the American, the can't-believe-my-luck Logan Lerman for d'Artagnan, but doesn't he then insist on being Athos, the meatiest of the musketeers? Even Oliver Platt got to be Porthos in that Disney thing from a few years back. Milla Jovovich is married to the director, so no suprise that she gets to be Milady de Winter. And Christoph Waltz probably nabbed Richelieu when was he was still white hot from Inglourious Basterds. But even if Macwhatshispants gets Athos, who are Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans that they get to be musketeers and FREAKING. LEGOLAS. has to be Buckingham?!!

Actually, Stevenson (the salt-and-pepper bruiser who plays Porthos) is kind of fun in the trailer. And Evans, as Aramis, looks like he could be the next, um, Orlando Bloom. Lerman has better hair for his role (d'Artagnan) than Chris O'Donnell did back in the Disney thing, and that's about the scope of the difference between them, as far as I can tell. (Lerman certainly wasn't picked for his riveting delivery.) What's with getting all these American pretty boys to play d'Artagnan anyway? Come on French people, stand up for yourselves. Your four musketeers are three Brits and a Yank. Isn't that even more insulting than when Disney used four Yanks? People with accents got three of the four main roles, and none of them is any more French than French toast or French fries. The rest of my gripes about the trailer are that it's heavy on the phony-baloney action crap that's in everything these days. Milady does the swan dive from the skyscrape — ah, palace roof move, and then tops it with the old "slide beneath the crossfire while ducking bullets with my face" maneuver. d'Artagnan hangs onto a swinging rope with one arm and sword battles with the other. Athos torches some bad guys with a flamethrower. A gorilla leaps off the Golden Gate Bridge and takes down a helipcopter. Streeeee-etch. Yaaaawn. Does anybody else hear those crickets? The money shot? d'Artagnan makes one of those sprinting, straining, hurtling leaps to escape an expanding fireball. Uh-huh. Macfadyen seems almost to be hinting at something when he puts the ol' "Hasta la vista, baby" growl into a moment where Athos says, "Round two." Settle down, champ. You gotta sell me on round one before we can talk sequel.

Full Moon fever

REVIEW, TAKE TWO: Further reflections on Transformers: Dark of the Moon

LINKS: Daily Herald reviews of TF 1.0, TF 2.0 and TF 3.0

So, yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of these Transformers things — let's not sully the word "movies" by referring to them as such — that keep showing up, like a magazine that you never subscribed to that somehow sneaks into the mailbox every month with your name on the mailing label. It seems obvious to me that these, um, things are worthless — and I apologize for sullying the word "worthless" by referring to them as such. And yet, among the sizeable contingent of people who appear to admire them are a surprising number of actors who really should have better things to do with their precious time. Dark of the Moon brings Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Alan Tudyk and (the horror!) Leonard Nimoy into the fold, while continuing to cling to John Turturro like a toilet paper streamer stuck to the heel of his shoe. Although maybe Turturro should be written off at this point: "I am beneath the enemy scrotum" (from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) isn't even the most demeaning thing he's ever managed to make himself say in a movie. (Anyone know what Turturro utterance holds the booby prize?) Some directors are like the Sun, imparting life-sustaining energy to the careers of almost every actor they work with. Michael Bay, to extend the metaphor, is like the back-porch light bulb, or maybe even the bug zapper at the corner of the back deck. A new 'Transformers' (thing) eh? Maybe I should have my agent get me the script. I've heard those (things) are popular. Could be good for my caree — BZZZT!! Other observations:

(Un)Fox-y lady: Congratulations, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, you're an actor now. The former Victoria's Secret "angel" inherited the role of Mr. LaBeouf's Cheesecake from Megan Fox after Fox allegedly wore out her welcome by being "difficult" while working on the first two films. Ms. Huntington-Whiteley's first appearance, in the first frame of Dark of the Moon to follow its cheesy prologue, lets you know more or less exactly where Bay stands on the bothersome issue of needing to have women in his movies. If they're conventionally attractive women, then he stands wherever he must to get a creepily lusting "money shot" that will fire up the Internets after the fanboys have a peep. Somewhat amusingly, in most of the frames in the movie where Huntington-Whiteley stands within arm's length of LaBeouf, she appears to loom over him. They're actually the same height ... but Huntington-Whiteley is wearing four-inch heels in every scene.

A most un-Spock-tacular anomaly: I mean, it's not as though William Shatner hasn't occasionally collected a paycheck. (Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous?! Oh Captain, my Captain ... ) And at least Leonard Nimoy had the good sense to not actually show his face in Dark of the Moon. On the other hand, there's no mistaking the, ahem, fascinating vocal register of "Sentinel Prime," the Autobot who turns up on the Moon. Nimoy is 80, so it's at least possible that he didn't entirely realize where he was, or what he was doing.

Get me to the MacGuffin on time: Dark of the Moon is no different from other (things) of its ilk in that there's a tipping point in the big climactic battle that wraps everything up: Once Thing X is accomplished, the fate of humanity will be sealed. It's up to the good guys to prevent Thing X and save the world, but they have to be careful not to do it too soon, or the audience won't be in suspense about the outcome. The reality is that audiences haven't had a moment's doubt of the outcome since sometime back before the Great Depression, but movies still insist on the waiting game. The sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest is loaded with great moments, but one of the best involves Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver shutting down a self-destruct mechanism on their spaceship moments before it can blow everyone to Kingdom Come. They finish all of the steps to shut it off with about 15 seconds to go, but the countdown to detonation doesn't actually stop until it gets to 00:01. The joke is that the ship they're aboard was designed by an alien race that patterned its entire function after their observations of a Star Trek-like TV show that originated on Earth. Weaver's character gets it first: "It always stops at one on the show." On that show and every other one remotely like it, really.