There was a time when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were everywhere.
Stars of movies, comic books, television and video games, they even had action figures and breakfast cereals as part of their reptilian empire. They were 20th Century pop culture icons, which ain’t too bad for four hard-shelled crime fighters named after Renaissance artists.
But, like all pop culture fads, eventually Turtle mania played itself out, and the action figures, the TMNT PJs and coloring books became passé. This weekend producer Michael Bay is hoping to give Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello a new lease on life at the movies.
The release of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is timed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first TMNT comic book.
Megan Fox plays April O’Neill, reporter and friend-of-the-turtles, who help the fearless four protect New York City from its greatest threat, Shredder and his evil Foot Clan. “Together,” says Turtles’ mentor Splinter, “you are stronger than he could ever be!”
Turtle groupies have been following the development of the reboot with great interest. They spoke up when it was announced that Bay wanted to streamline the title to Ninja Turtles but an even bigger controversy struck in 2012.
“These turtles are from an alien race,” said Bay, “and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny, and completely lovable.” Seems benign enough, but fans were incensed that the Transformers producer would take liberties with the origin story. Tough and lovable are OK, but alien? Not so much. According to the canon the heroes on the half shell where transformed when they came into contact with toxic ooze.
One internet firestorm later—Robbie Rist, who voiced Michelangelo in the original movies, went so far as to accuse Bay of “sodomizing” the franchise—Bay amended the statement, reassuring fans he would stick to the official origin story. They even poke fun at the controversy in the movie.
“So,” says Vernon (Will Arnett), “they’re aliens?”
“No,” replies reporter O’Neil, “that’s stupid.”
No spoilers here. Whether the Turtles rise from the ooze or not Bay (and director Jonathan Liebesman) have a cinematic legacy to live up to. The TMNT first came to the big screen in 1990, followed quickly by TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze, 1991 and TMNT III, 1993.
Then, after a decade break the green fighting machines came back in the computer animated TMNT, but was written off as feeling “as stale as one of Mikey’s half-eaten pizzas,” by the New York Daily News.
Can Bay top all the other films? Writer Sean Patrick said, “I can see no good reason why Bay can’t make by far the best Ninja Turtles movie ever. The bar hasn’t exactly been set high.”
SYNOPSIS: Chris Pratt is Peter Quill, a cosmic Indiana Jones style adventurer. After stealing a mysterious metal orb that containing an “infinity chip,” he becomes the target of Ronan (Lee Pace in full-on wrestling bad guy mode), an intergalactic Genghis Khan with ambitions to destroy his mortal enemies, the Xandarians. To avoid capture Quill forms an uneasy alliance with a genetically engineered raccoon and bounty hunter Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), Groot (Vin Diesel), a plant-based humanoid, the deadly assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and a revenge hungry warrior named Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista). As the chip’s power becomes obvious, the band of misfits slowly bond, becoming the Guardians of the Galaxy as they battle to keep the orb from Ronan.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 4 Stars
Mark: 4 Stars
Richard: Mark, summer blockbusters haven’t been much fun this year. Sure, we’ve had giant robots, action galore and some edge of our seat moments, but from the xenophobia of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to the daddy issues and nuclear nightmares of Godzilla the season’s tent pole movies have been a bit gloomy. Guardians of the Galaxy is a tonic for the troops. An old-fashioned space opera, it’s a wild ride and the most pure fun blockbuster since the first Iron Man movie. Did you have as much fun at it as I did?
Mark: Richard, I generally don’t care for space operas, but this one’s a game-changer. It’s debt to Star Wars is enormous, with Chris Pratt as Luke Skywalker, Zoe Saldana in the Carrie Fisher role, and the raccoon and the tree as R2D2 and CP3O. But then its originality takes flight—literally—and the movie becomes its own unique creation. Unlike Star Wars, it has a great sense of humour about itself, and if you don’t fall in love with the talking raccoon with the Brooklyn accent, you’re as villainous as the bad guys in the movie.
RC: Totally, it’s filled with one-liners, sight gags and funny moments that play off the more standard blockbuster-style action and battle scenes. Pratt has an offhand delivery that recalls Harrison Ford in Han Solo mode, Cooper does wisecracks like a skilled Catskills comic and (ALMOST A SPOILER) there’s Baby Groot to up the cute factor. They supply the light moments, but despite Cooper’s presence, this isn’t The Hangover in space, it’s an all out action movie with a blithe spirit. The only bits that dragged for me were the set-up scenes. Did you find the exposition got in the way occasionally?
MB: I don’t think you watch this movie for the plot anyways. But the very first scene, a waaaay too serious deathbed scene between a boy and his mother, left me with a bad taste and it took me awhile to recover from it and enjoy the movie. It isn’t all that far from the old Flash Gordon serials, except that every piece of technology is beyond state of the art and the makeup is wonderfully imaginative. My biggest beef? The bad guys have bad dialogue. And they deliver their lines in the standard three octaves lower register of villains in hackier flicks.
RC: By the time the end credits roll, however, none of our gripes matter much because the movie is so much fun.
MB: The movie is so much fun it actually enjoys itself.
The Guardians of the Galaxy, who made their first appearance in print in 1969, bear very little resemblance to the team of superheroes who will grace the big screen this weekend.
Conspiculous by his absence in the original book is Rocket Raccoon, the heroic character voiced by Bradley Cooper in the film. The feisty raccoon appeared years later, created by writer Bill Mantlo and illustrator Keith Giffen, who named the masked creature in tribute to the Beatles’ tune Rocky Raccoon.
They confirmed the Beatle’s influence in 1982 with a story that paraphrased John and Paul’s lyrics for the title. Called Now Somewhere In the Black Holes of Sirius Major There Lived a Young Boy Named Rocket Raccoon, the book saw the Hulk and Rocket Raccoon stop a villain from stealing Gideon’s Bible.
Rocket is latest raccoon, but not the only, to become a mammalian movie star.
Recently Liam Neeson starred in the animated movie The Nut Job, playing the imaginatively named Raccoon, the patriarch of a park, who might not have the best interests of the other animals top of mind.
The sixty-two year old Irish actor says he had never seen a raccoon until he was in his thirties, shooting an episode of Miami Vice in Florida. “Seeing this thing use his little paws and actually lifting a lid of a garbage can, peering in,” he says, “was quite sinister because it almost had a human quality to it, quite sneaky. I just had never seen a raccoon in my life before and the impression stayed with me.”
Other animated raccoons have worked steadily. Meeko, the raccoon from Disney’s Pocahontas and Pocahontas ll: Journey to a New World cartoon also makes appearances in Mickey’s Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse and in the Pocahontas video game. Then there’s RJ from Over the Hedge, a lovable raccoon voiced by Bruce Willis. “The rascally charm Bruce Willis brought to Moonlighting makes RJ a lovable rogue, or at least a likable one,” said director Karey Kirkpatrick.
Real-life raccoons are also getting work—in films like Rascal and The Details—but according to director Steve Carr they can present some problems. Tough guy actor Michael Rappaport voiced Joey, the consigliere raccoon, in Dr. Dolittle 2. The film featured over-250 four-legged cast members—including wolves, giraffes, bears, possums, raccoons, dogs, and owls—so Carr says, “A huge percentage of our work was waiting for the animals to do what they’re trained to do. And the patience that was needed well, it felt at times as if it were Herculean.”
Synopsis: Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) begins the story “just like you: vulnerable, uncertain, frightened of death,” but when the bag of drugs some very bad people “slipped into her lower tummy” bursts, her life is changed forever. She doesn’t overdose. Instead the drug expands her mind to 10 times the usual capacity. She becomes a turbocharged human who can change her appearance and move objects with her mind. She contacts a world-famous neuroscientist (Morgan Freeman) to pass along her newfound knowledge, but not before unleashing the power of her mind on the baddies who got her into this mess.
Richard: 3/5 Mark: 3/5
Richard: Mark, Lucy is a different style of movie, the philosophical action movie. The philosophy is all mumbo-jumbo but that doesn’t matter because the film is filled with many enjoyable scenes. Imagine a mix of Limitless, La Femme Nikita and The Matrix run through Luc Besson’s absurd style of moviemaking and you get the idea of what this movie is all about. What did you make of it?
Mark: The movie is great when it remembers it’s a thriller but when the pseudoscience and dime-store spirituality takes over, it becomes oppressive. I always can depend on Besson for brisk pacing but he slows it all down for a series of lectures — literally, with Morgan Freeman narrating his part as seems to be his custom now.
RC: Freeman is one of two top-billed stars in this movie, but his part could have been played by almost anyone. The movie really belongs to Scarlett Johansson, who starts off as a bubbly party girl and ends the movie as the keeper of the secrets of the universe. It’s a bit of a stretch, but if you can wade through the silly scientific theories, there are some great scenes that are more fun than a barrel of neuroscientists. In one fight scene, all the bad guys have knives and guns while Johansson taps into her inner Jedi Knight to defeat them without raising her hand. That sequence alone is worth sitting through the entire 80-minute running time.
MB: I liked lots of scenes in the movie, especially at the beginning when Johansson realizes how much trouble she’s in. Afterward she’s a bit of an automaton but a very hot one. And what did you think of the trippy psychedelic visuals and time travel revelations toward the end?
RC: You mean the Terrence-Malick-by-way-of-Stanley-Kubrick tribute? I don’t want to give away anything, but with a movie as loopy as this one, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there is some wild time travel back to the beginning of time. I guess it’s an attempt to add some profundity to the story, but it plays more like a Philosophy 101 student on an acid trip.
MB: Loopy is right, Richard, maybe even crazy. But at least Besson cribs from the best.
Pam Grier walks into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the setup for one of the great fight scenes of the 1970s.
Grier played the title character in 1974’s Foxy Brown, a woman who poses as a high-end escort to get revenge on the gangsters who killed her G-Man boyfriend. When her undercover work brings her to a seedy bar, she confronts Bobbie, a tough-talking patron (played by Jeannie Epper who was also Lynda Carter’s stunt double on Wonder Woman).
“Listen, skinny,” says Bobbie, “before you start talking tough, I better warn you. I got a black belt in karate. So why don’t you get out of here quietly, while you still have some teeth left in that ugly face?”
Before you can say, “You go, girl,” Foxy clobbers Bobbie with a wooden stool, slamming her in the face then shattering it across her back.
“And I got my black belt in bar stools!” says Foxy.
Grier could deliver a line and a punch, attributes that allowed her to cut a swathe in the male-dominated action movie market of the 1970s.
This weekend Scarlett Johansson adds to Grier’s kick- butt legacy on the big screen with Lucy, an all-out actioner about a woman who becomes a superhuman when a drug allows her to use 100 per cent of her brain capacity. “I’m able to do things I’ve never done before,” she says. “I feel everything and can control the elements around me.”
Johansson joins a list of dangerous distaff action stars like Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Jenette Goldstein (Aliens), Angelina Jolie (Wanted, Salt, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) and Uma Thurman (Kill Bill, Parts 1 & 2) who have given Schwarzenegger and Stallone a run for their money.
Perhaps the wildest female action movie of all time is 1965’s “ode to female violence,” Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! starring Tura Satana as the thrill-seeking go-go dancer Varla.
Experienced in martial arts, Satana did her own stunts and brought her unique style — black leather gloves, Germaine Monteil eyeliner and layers of Max Factor pancake makeup — to the film. She even supplied some of the movie’s most memorable lines.
When a gas station attendant ogles her cleavage while extolling the virtues of being on the open road and seeing America, Satana ad libbed, “You won’t find it down there, Columbus!”
Time critic Richard Corliss called Satana’s performance “the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the [director Russ] Meyer canon and certainly the scariest.”
“I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside of me for many years and let it loose,” Satana said of her most famous role.
“I helped to create the character Varla and helped to make her someone that many women would love to be like.”
Diane Keaton’s latest film, the romance And So It Goes, brings the star back to her roots.
As a beginner, long before she won an Academy Award for Annie Hall, or starred in the controversial Looking for Mr. Goodbar or inspired romantic rivalry between her Reds leading men, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, Keaton dreamed of being a singer.
“I had a fantasy of being a nightclub singer that I carried through even into my early 20s,” she says.
“I sang a couple of gigs, as they call them, but I was not very good. I began to understand that I was not going to be a singer. I’ve always loved to sing but I’m aware of the limitations of my voice. It was always a disappointing voice. I took singing lessons for years, but it was a very small voice. It’s worse than it ever was. It’s smaller than ever. But I have this love of it. I love music. I love singing ballads and sad songs, it’s just so much fun.”
And sing she does in the new film, a romance co-starring Michael Douglas — “He couldn’t be any more charming,” she says — about Leah, a woman who gets a second chance at a career and love.
“I never thought I’d ever sing again. I had some songs intermittently in some movies but to have it come up again and have the possibility of singing four songs and one song all the way through was a dream come true.”
Keaton describes Leah, a lounge singer who bursts into tears at the mere thought of her late husband, as a woman, “who has had a lovely life but has lost the love of her life. She’s my age, in her late 60s.”
The 68-year-old Oscar winner says playing Leah was “a joy,” but adds, “getting old is a great levelling experience. You really do see the truth, which is that your expression and your goals don’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things.
“With that in mind you start seeing life in a different way. You don’t see it so much as the goals for the future; it’s just now. You live in the moment, in the present. This is what you have.
“So I really feel you’re more grateful, you’re more filled with awe, you’re more amazed because it is a huge, giant question mark this life we live in.
“It’s a huge gift and you need to see yourself for what you are and appreciate what you have while you have it now.”
Dwayne Johnson’s first exposure to legendary strongman Hercules didn’t come from mythology class, but from a legendary bodybuilder-turned-actor who played the divine Greek hero on screen twice.
“When I was a kid I remember being visually captivated by the Steve Reeves poster,” says Johnson.
“He’s breaking free of this pillar and chains. I didn’t know the mythology back then but I knew the image. That image captivated me.
“When I was a kid I was always drawn to men who were able to accomplish things, whether they were big things or little things, but men who took care of business physically.”
Years later as Johnson, then better known as wrestling superstar The Rock, was transitioning from the ring to the screen he thought his bulked up physique would make him the new Steve Reeves.
“When I got to Hollywood I spoke to executives and I brought up Hercules. Didn’t have the clout to make anything happen back then. I have a little bit more these days though and I was able to make it happen.”
The result of Johnson’s lifelong dream is Hercules, an action adventure based on the graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars and co-starring John Hurt, Ian McShane and model-turned-actress Irina Shayk.
“There’s been so many iterations of Hercules over the years I wanted to create something different,” he says.
“Hopefully epic and hopefully redefine him for our generation.”
In the film, Hercules rejects his own mythology in an attempt to stay grounded, something Johnson understands.
“I have enjoyed a good amount of success and I’m very grateful for everything that I have,” the bulky actor says.
“Like Hercules not buying into the myth, not buying into the story but just being aware of it, I’m very grateful for being who I am and making sure that I continue to approach every project and everything that I do as if it is going to be my last.
“There was a time when I was in Canada, playing for the CFL and sleeping on a mattress that I got from the garbage of a sex motel. I’ll never forget it. True story. So, for me, those times are kind of in the forefront of my mind.
“The wolf is always scratching at the door. It’s good to remember that. It’s important.”
Years before Kim Cattrall found international stardom as Samantha Jones, the brash best friend of Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte on Sex and the City, she learned a valuable lesson from a Hollywood legend. The 24-year-old actress was starring opposite Jack Lemmon in Tribute, a film version of the Broadway show that earned Lemmon a Tony nomination.
Lemmon had dozens of credits, including classics like Some like It Hot and The Apartment under his belt and two Oscars on his mantelpiece at home.
“How do you have longevity?” she asked the veteran actor.
“Take things that scare the pants off you,” he replied.
It’s advice she took to heart, particularly when approaching her new project, Sensitive Skin for HBO Canada.
“I think for me to bring this story to North America was the scariest thing,” she says. “Hanging in there and really trusting my instincts because I doubted them sometimes. I put it on the shelf and I walked away but I kept coming back and I think the thing that kept me coming back was the fear of it.
“I could go on playing Samantha for the rest of my life but I wouldn’t be very happy. I wouldn’t be advancing in any way. This was really hard sometimes and it did scare me daily on the set. I never had children but I can imagine it’s like having a child, or going through the gestation period. Instead of nine months it was almost nine years and you go through periods of real doubt and self-doubt.”
Returning to television for the first time since Sex and the City, Cattrall plays Davina, a woman on the verge of a mid-life crisis who, along with her husband Al (Don McKellar), shakes the cobwebs off her suburban life by moving downtown.
“It’s the change of the guard, isn’t it? I’m starting to play characters who are of a certain age and it is a feeling of, ‘Am I really ready for this?’ Holding onto yesterday instead of embracing whatever this is,” she says.
The show not only focuses on Davina and Al — “One of the things I’m most proud of is that you really believe Don and I are a couple,” she says. — but also Toronto, the city they call home. She credits McKellar, who also directed the series, with capturing the look and feel of Hogtown.
“He’s made Toronto look like the city it is,” she says. “Which is very difficult to capture. Because he has lived there his whole life, we were shooting in neighbourhoods the crew didn’t even know about. It’s so diverse. The city is almost a character as well. We’ve really given Toronto a midlife crisis too.”
Sensitive Skin premieres Sunday on HBO Canada at 8 p.m. ET/MT.
SYNOPSIS: Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves working through the Joy of Sex page by page. All goes well until Jay forgets to delete the video and mistakenly posts their three-hour amateur porntacular on the cloud. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!” With BFFs Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), the embarrassed couple try and retrieve each of the “infected” iPads, especially the one in the hands of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the family-first CEO of the company that publishes Annie’s G-rated mommy blog.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 2 Stars
Mark: 2 Stars
Richard: Mark, any movie with the word sex in the title and Cameron Diaz in her underwear and a newly slim Jason Segel in the all-together should be a lot sexier than Sex Tape is. The first twenty minutes plays more like an attempt to break the world record for using the word “sex” in a movie than an actual story. Diaz and Segel talk about sex, have sex, then talk about it some more, but rather than being racy or slap-your-thigh funny it becomes tiresome. The only word used more often is “iPad,” which is even less provocative.
Mark: Richard, this movie is one of the best Apple commercials I’ve seen in years. But it does have some laughs. I couldn’t decide, though, if it was original yet flimsy or flimsy yet original. I was glad the running time clocked in at a neat 90 min as it was wearing out its welcome fast. That’s mostly because Cameron Diaz’ smokin’ hot bod is naked only in the first half of the picture. She has a pretty good chemistry with Jason Segal, but Rob Lowe steals the show. Considering his own past, it’s a neat bit of stunt casting.
RC: The Robs are the best part of the movie. The iPad retrieval from Rosenbaum’s mansion gives Rob Lowe (who knows a thing or two about sex tapes) a chance for some off-the-wall fun as the straight-laced executive with a wild side. Rob Corddry’s wide-eyed interest in his best friend’s sex tape was amusing and felt like the most genuine thing in the movie. I thought Diaz and Segel were OK, but I didn’t buy into the movie’s main joke for a second.
MB: Yes, well, talk about a manufactured crisis! There’s lots to pick apart here, especially the subplot involving Corddry’s blackmailing teenage son. But there’s some nifty dialogue, especially at the beginning of the movie, and a scene I liked at the porn server’s with a cameo by a Famous Comic Actor. By the way, all those porn website titles they spiel off are real ones, or, umm, so I was told by the guy sitting next to me.
RC: Hey! I was sitting next to you. I take the fifth. Unlike you, I hated the first section of the movie. I thought the least interesting part of the movie was the sex and the sex talk.
MB: No one will mistake this movie for the classic comedies of Preston Sturges. The movie aims low and thereby exceeds expectations. Not very demanding, but it is summer.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
