Monster-of-the-Week: …this week’s honoree, this impolite dragon...
…breathing in the face of star Jeff Bridges.
Showing posts with label DRAGON. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DRAGON. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Thursday, July 31, 2014
FLEECED RESISTANCE
With the new movie version of Hercules now in theaters…
Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s acknowledge a monster from an earlier Hercules movie, this cool dragon from the enjoyable 1958 Italian spectacle starring Steve Reeves…
The beast, which rather resembles a cranky ceratosaurus, is roused from what appears to have been a pretty long slumber beneath the Golden Fleece—he’s covered with leaves which scatter when he gets up—when Jason climbs up to filch it.
You can get a glimpse of him in action here.
Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s acknowledge a monster from an earlier Hercules movie, this cool dragon from the enjoyable 1958 Italian spectacle starring Steve Reeves…
The beast, which rather resembles a cranky ceratosaurus, is roused from what appears to have been a pretty long slumber beneath the Golden Fleece—he’s covered with leaves which scatter when he gets up—when Jason climbs up to filch it.
You can get a glimpse of him in action here.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
KEANU WORLD ORDER
Happy Boxing Day!
Hope everybody had a great Christmas. It was a busy opening day at the multiplexes, and among other offerings was 47 Ronin…
…a fantasy adventure featuring Keanu Reeves and a cool dragon that I became aware of too late to include in my Topless Robot list of cool pop-culture dragons. But that’s no reason…
Monster-of-the-Week: …he can’t be this week’s honoree…
Hope everybody had a great Christmas. It was a busy opening day at the multiplexes, and among other offerings was 47 Ronin…
…a fantasy adventure featuring Keanu Reeves and a cool dragon that I became aware of too late to include in my Topless Robot list of cool pop-culture dragons. But that’s no reason…
Monster-of-the-Week: …he can’t be this week’s honoree…
Friday, December 13, 2013
LAIR RAID
Part Two of Peter Jackson’s three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit opens today. This episode is called The Desolation of Smaug, and it can be dealt with briefly: It’s a much more exciting couple of hours than last year’s An Unexpected Journey, good as that film was.
No doubt this is because the first film, like the first film in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, was concerned in a rather deliberate way with delivering backstory and carefully setting up the reasons for the adventure to come. There was a lot of feasting and singing and portentous flashbacks and solemn declarations, and it seemed to take a while to get to the chases and battles.
The Desolation starts with a quick recap of Part One and ends with an infuriating—and highly effective—cliffhanger, and in between it’s very nearly non-stop action. Our hero, as before, is the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who along with his full-sized pal, the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), is accompanying a band of Dwarves on a quest across Tolkien’s mythic Middle Earth to recover a treasure in Dwarf-forged gold from inside a mountain.
The difficulty with getting this ancestral treasure back is that it’s guarded by Smaug, a gargantuan fire-breathing dragon who exhibits unmistakable hoarding tendencies. Bilbo is the expedition’s designated “burglar,” tasked with sneaking into Smaug’s lair and finding a McGuffin called “The Arkenstone,” a magical rock that will somehow give the Dwarves clear title to the treasure.
I think. As is so often the case for me with high fantasy stories, I got a little lost in the exposition, and was a bit unclear on the Arkenstone’s value. But it doesn’t matter much more than “the microfilm” or whatever does in a Hitchcock thriller; I just accepted that it was important that Bilbo find the thing, and that when it came to giving it up, Smaug would be a dangerously reluctant dragon.
Anyway, as no particular Tolkien buff, I can still say that I found The Hobbit: TDOS a rollicking time. It’s one showcase scene after another. We follow the lads as they encounter a giant bear who shape-shifts at times into a giant man (or maybe it’s the other way around), or escape a nest of giant spiders, or hurtle down white water rapids in empty wine casks chased by hideous Orcs—that last sequence looks ready-made for a theme park somewhere. There’s an escape from the palaces of the Elves, and a yearning between one of the Dwarves and a quite adorable She-Elf (Evangeline Lilly). And all this comes before Bilbo ever even creeps into Smaug’s lair.
When he does, Jackson gives us the most spectacular movie dragon since, at least, the terrifying monster in the splendid 1982 fantasy Dragonslayer. Voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, Smaug is a more or less traditional dragon in design, but Jackson stages an entrance for him, gradually rising from under his drifts of gold, that is nearly as good as the original King Kong’s.
A part of what makes Smaug’s introduction so hair-raising is the slyly underscaled comic takes of Martin Freeman. As Bilbo realizes the colossal monster is aware of him and he’s been caught with his hand in the ultimate cookie jar, he reacts with bemused, almost mild irritation, like somebody who’s failed to avoid a boring colleague or a tiresome neighbor.
A couple of other notes for the weekend: Those here in the Valley who might want to do the young dinosaur buffs of their acquaintance a solid might consider taking them to the Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D event tomorrow afternoon at Arizona Museum of Natural History.
Also, somebody forwarded me this year’s necrology from Turner Classic Movies. You can check it out here, it seems comprehensive compared to the one on the Oscars.
No doubt this is because the first film, like the first film in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, was concerned in a rather deliberate way with delivering backstory and carefully setting up the reasons for the adventure to come. There was a lot of feasting and singing and portentous flashbacks and solemn declarations, and it seemed to take a while to get to the chases and battles.
The Desolation starts with a quick recap of Part One and ends with an infuriating—and highly effective—cliffhanger, and in between it’s very nearly non-stop action. Our hero, as before, is the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who along with his full-sized pal, the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), is accompanying a band of Dwarves on a quest across Tolkien’s mythic Middle Earth to recover a treasure in Dwarf-forged gold from inside a mountain.
The difficulty with getting this ancestral treasure back is that it’s guarded by Smaug, a gargantuan fire-breathing dragon who exhibits unmistakable hoarding tendencies. Bilbo is the expedition’s designated “burglar,” tasked with sneaking into Smaug’s lair and finding a McGuffin called “The Arkenstone,” a magical rock that will somehow give the Dwarves clear title to the treasure.
I think. As is so often the case for me with high fantasy stories, I got a little lost in the exposition, and was a bit unclear on the Arkenstone’s value. But it doesn’t matter much more than “the microfilm” or whatever does in a Hitchcock thriller; I just accepted that it was important that Bilbo find the thing, and that when it came to giving it up, Smaug would be a dangerously reluctant dragon.
Anyway, as no particular Tolkien buff, I can still say that I found The Hobbit: TDOS a rollicking time. It’s one showcase scene after another. We follow the lads as they encounter a giant bear who shape-shifts at times into a giant man (or maybe it’s the other way around), or escape a nest of giant spiders, or hurtle down white water rapids in empty wine casks chased by hideous Orcs—that last sequence looks ready-made for a theme park somewhere. There’s an escape from the palaces of the Elves, and a yearning between one of the Dwarves and a quite adorable She-Elf (Evangeline Lilly). And all this comes before Bilbo ever even creeps into Smaug’s lair.
When he does, Jackson gives us the most spectacular movie dragon since, at least, the terrifying monster in the splendid 1982 fantasy Dragonslayer. Voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, Smaug is a more or less traditional dragon in design, but Jackson stages an entrance for him, gradually rising from under his drifts of gold, that is nearly as good as the original King Kong’s.
A part of what makes Smaug’s introduction so hair-raising is the slyly underscaled comic takes of Martin Freeman. As Bilbo realizes the colossal monster is aware of him and he’s been caught with his hand in the ultimate cookie jar, he reacts with bemused, almost mild irritation, like somebody who’s failed to avoid a boring colleague or a tiresome neighbor.
A couple of other notes for the weekend: Those here in the Valley who might want to do the young dinosaur buffs of their acquaintance a solid might consider taking them to the Walking With Dinosaurs 3-D event tomorrow afternoon at Arizona Museum of Natural History.
Also, somebody forwarded me this year’s necrology from Turner Classic Movies. You can check it out here, it seems comprehensive compared to the one on the Oscars.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
SMAUG ALERT
Phoenix Film Critics Society, of which I am always proud to note myself a founding member, has announced its 2013 Award Nominations. As always, some of them reflect my nominating and some do not, but there are plenty of good movies on the list. The winners will be announced next week; my Top Ten list will appear here after the New Year.
In theaters this week is the next chapter in Peter Jackson’s multi-movie adaptation of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, with its grand new incarnation of the title dragon, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. So…
In theaters this week is the next chapter in Peter Jackson’s multi-movie adaptation of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, with its grand new incarnation of the title dragon, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. So…
Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s look back to an earlier version of Smaug, from the 1977 Rankin-Bass version of The Hobbit…
…in which he was gruffly voiced by Western fixture Richard Boone.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
DRAGON IT OUT
A bunch of departures over the last few days: RIP, first of all, to the great Nicol Williamson, passed on at 75. I like his Hamlet, in Tony Richardson’s stark 1969 film; get a taste here.
RIP also to James Farentino, at 73, to Dick Tufeld, the “Danger, Will Robinson” voice of the fretful Robot on Lost in Space, at 85, & to difficult but intriguing Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, accidently killed at 76.
Here’s one more entry in our January dragon fest…
Monster-of-the-Week: …another splendid stop-motion specimen, animated by Jim Danforth for 1962’s The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm…
This enjoyable film remains frustratingly unreleased on DVD, but you get the briefest glimpse of the dragon in action toward the end of this trailer.
RIP also to James Farentino, at 73, to Dick Tufeld, the “Danger, Will Robinson” voice of the fretful Robot on Lost in Space, at 85, & to difficult but intriguing Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, accidently killed at 76.
Here’s one more entry in our January dragon fest…
Monster-of-the-Week: …another splendid stop-motion specimen, animated by Jim Danforth for 1962’s The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm…
Thursday, January 19, 2012
CLICK & DRAGON
Happy Chinese New Year next Monday!
You may have noticed that all the Monsters-of-the-Week so far this month have been dragons, so to continue our welcome to the Year of the Dragon...
Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's give the nod to one of my favorite movie dragons, this beauty...
...animated by Ray Harryhausen from one of my favorite movies, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. This beast, who guards the lair of the wizard Sokura, always struck me as having a sweetly canine manner; check the climactic scene here (spoilers!) & see if you agree.
You may have noticed that all the Monsters-of-the-Week so far this month have been dragons, so to continue our welcome to the Year of the Dragon...
Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's give the nod to one of my favorite movie dragons, this beauty...
...animated by Ray Harryhausen from one of my favorite movies, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. This beast, who guards the lair of the wizard Sokura, always struck me as having a sweetly canine manner; check the climactic scene here (spoilers!) & see if you agree.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
