Let’s just get this out in the open right now: The Hulk is one of the most boring superheroes in the history of comic books.

Let’s detail what makes him so undeniably incredible:

• 1. He gets mad.
• 2. He grows large, turns green, and magically acquires purple pants.
• 3. He smashes shit.
• 4. Rinse and repeat.

Folks, this is not the depth of material upon which to base an entire franchise. I mean, the Green Lantern makes more sense. Aquaman might have a better backstory and purpose in fighting crime. In fact, I’d even take The Wonder Twins over this nonsense.

Despite the obvious problems inherent in the “story” of the Hulk, director Ang Lee gamely attempted to bring some depth and humanity to his plight with his 2003 adaptation. While the film had an interesting visual motif, the limp lack of a proper foil for our “hero” and all of the psycho-babble Daddy subplots angered the fanboys. All two of them.

Marvel, knowing full well that they have managed to successfully market Hulk comic books over the years, decided to give their big green moneymaker another cinematic chance by rebooting the franchise a mere four years after the first film.

Of course the buzz flowing freely from the set of the new movie, cleverly titled The Incredible Hulk, has been less than confidence-building. Then the first trailers were released, which inspired a collective yawn from a geeky fanbase already saturated by the splendors of better trailers from better summer blockbusters (i.e. anything else out there).

So now, in a desperate move, Marvel has released another trailer in the hopes of starting some sort of positive buzz. Here it is:

My thoughts:

From watching the first trailer, I had a distinct feeling that the film would contain one action scene in the streets of a city, preceded by two hours of whining. This trailer addresses that palpable concern by showing that there are possibly two action scenes in the movie, punctuated by the same whining we saw in the first trailer.

Does Liv Tyler need to look like she just finished crying in EVERY SINGLE ROLE SHE EVER PLAYS? I have had enough of the pouty-faced, doe-eyed routine that she wore out in Armageddon and The Lord of the Rings.

Edward Norton is the absolute wrong person to play the role of Bruce Banner/The Hulk. I understand the premise - Bruce is a science nerd and a drip. Great. And Norton is undeniably a terrific actor. But Norton’s appeal comes from playing aggressive, unstable outsiders as in American History X. And while he here plays an outsider with obvious problems with aggression, Norton is a fairly cold presence onscreen; this is exactly why some of his roles have that edge to them. He is the wrong guy to pull off a comic book creation, especially the hero of one that is expected to garner the enthusiasm of an audience. Norton is too slouchy, too schlubby, too vacant.

They have whipped up some sort of villain for the Hulk in this movie, but he obviously comes in very late in the film (shades of the Venom mistake from Spidey 3). Besides that, the confrontation looks fairly standard and poorly rendered from this trailer. Where’s the one money-shot that is supposed to bolster trailers like these??

All in all, I think this will prove to be one of the great failures of 2008. Yes, it will make money, but I think the limitations of the character, in addition to a failed translation, equal box office poison.

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Directed by: Franck Khalfoun

Written by: Franck Khalfoun (screenplay), Alexandre Aja (screenplay/story), Gregory Levasseur (screenplay/story)

Starring: Rachel Nichols, Wes Bentley, Philip Atkin, Stephanie Moore, Miranda Edwards

Distributed by Tartan Distribution

Film will be released in the U.K. on May 2nd 2008

Review by Michael Edwards

What could be scarier than being locked in a dark car-park with nobody around? How about if you were in the boot of a car in the carpark? Sound freaky? Well, I guess it does. How about if it was Christmas too, and you were a sexy rich businessperson of some sort? And you were being pursued by a lonely car park attendant and his dog? Last question before I start making statements: ever wonder why some films just take stuff a bit too far and end up being a bit crap?

So, here we are again, another tacky horror film. Just as I was beginning to feel spoilt with such great chillers as The Orphanage (review HERE) and [Rec] (review HERE) it all gets smashed to pieces by P2 and that disastrously poor remake of The Eye (review HERE). The premise of this film, which I’ve touched on above, is that Angela, a beautiful high-flying businesswoman (she might be a lawyer or an insurance salesperson or something), sets off to go home after a long, hard day. She reaches her car on the second level of the car park under her swanky office building and realises it won’t start. She calls a cab but the porter has disappeared so she can’t get out. Suddenly we jump cut to her being wrestled to the ground, her mouth covered in a chloroform-soaked cloth. The next thing we know she is being held prisoner by a lonely and mildly psychotic security guard. From here the tale becomes one of the captive trying to flee the captor. Oh and it’s Christmas (why give it a May release date?!)

It’s really quite a simple concept but it just doesn’t quite work, and I think the crux of why this film has taken a plausible (if uninspired) horror concept and gotten a bit lost somewhere is the decision to mess up the working relationship between Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja. Khalfoun was a great actor in SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE (US: HIGH TENSION), on which Aja was co-writer and director, but joining Aja and Levasseur on the writing side and having a stab at the directing appears to have taken what is a palatable slasher plot and mutated it into some bumbling psychological horror that fails to live up to its potential. Psychotic security guard Thomas is meant to be scary because he’s just an ordinary guy, but Wes Bentley is too good-looking to be convincingly ordinary and lonely, and too bad an actor to pull of an scenes of insanity without the audience bursting out into spontaneous laughter. What’s more the film is riddled with cliches: there is nothing I hate more than a moment of silence before ‘BANG!’ A dog barks, or someone walks round a corner from the dark. The psychological cliches are even worse as the film plays on the most overused and outdated cinematic tool of the ‘masculine gaze’ which relies so heavily on all us guys loving to see Rachel Nichols inexplicably doused with water and running around in a clingy dress being pursued by a guy who is watching her on CCTV. The predictable moment when she subverts this male control fantasy not only undermines the reliance of this movie on it, but also fails to provide any excitement as the blundering Thomas was a weak and useless villain from the start.

On the positive side, a rottweiler does get its head bashed in with a tyre iron, and there are plenty of ridiculous chase and fight scenes which will make you provide a few laughs, but as a horror film P2 sucks, pure and simple. If you enjoy inadvertent pastiche to the back-to-basics horrors that offer little more than loud noises and ridiculous acts of violence perpetrated by poorly devised two-dimensional characters then P2 is an hour and a half well spent, otherwise I’d save your hard-earned cash for something better.

P2 is released in UK cinemas on 2nd of May.

For more background on the movie straight from the horse’s mouth, I had a phone chat with Alexandre Aja which can be read HERE.

Before I start, loyal readers, let me just announce to those of you who watched my Kit Ryan interview that this happened before it and will thus not contain a GREMLINS reference. I did, however, interview Franck Khalfoun soon after and that will be up soon for you to peruse to see if I rose to the challenge…

Here, however, we can enjoy a candid chat with a man deep in the bowels of Hollywood’s gore machine - Alexandra Aja!

How’s work going on PIRANHA?

The script is almost finished now and hopefully we’ll be shooting after we finish with MIRROR in December.

I’ve read a lot of fanboy comments recently that’re concerned that you’re doing a lot of remakes- is that a direction you’ve actively chosen?

This is like my worst nightmare that you’re expressing, I don’t want to be the remake person because it’s really not me. I made HIGH TENSION [SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE] was like an original story, then I accepted and I did THE HILSS HAVE EYES which was a real remake with the same story, same character and we just added the new background, but then we went to P2 and that is a completely original story. Now MIRRORS is NOT a remake of the Korean movie, it’s based on the concept that was in that movie, and the only reason why I accepted to make it was because the studio, Fox, let me take the concept and create a completely new story with new characters, a new story and everything. So besides maybe with the exception of one scene MIRRORS is not the same sort of remake. Now PIRANHA - it’s completely different again, I mean it’s really a completely different idea of what a remake is. You can hear from the sound of my voice that I don’t believe I’m just remaking a film. If I was on the other side and on the internet looking at the projects I’d say “why is he remaking everything?” but I’m not remaking everything, I’m telling you I’m also like them [presumably us indignant commentators who hate remakes], you won’t believe the titles that they want to remake here in Hollywood and I think it’s stupid, I love these movies they’re talking about remaking. I mean when Wes Craven approached me and was talking about remaking THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and I said basically no because that was one of the best movies ever made, it can not get better and THE HILLS HAVE EYES that wasn’t the case, it was kind of dated and needed a new vision: so basically there is a good reason to make remakes, it is when you can really improve them and can make them much better so I’m not totally against remakes.

What about Michael Haneke remaking FUNNY GAMES, what do you make of that?

Well you know, I saw the original, and the remake was done shot by shot the same so I don’t know. I have to see the new one I haven’t had time yet, but I was told it’s exactly the same so I don’t really understand the purpose of redoing the same movie shot by shot… but I don’t know.

Back to your work then! Where did the idea for P2 come from?

After HIGH TENSION we were with my crew and looking for ways that we could push the envelope even further, and maybe an idea where we could work within one location. The underground parking garage came in a very obvious way, we all have a relationship to the underground parking garage, we have all in life been walking alone and had the feeling that there is someone with us. Even if there is CCTV cameras or nice music it’s not safe, you feel like something very strange and very dark could happen. Growing up in France during the 80’s I remember that the parking garage was always the place where women were raped or attacked or killed, it was really something we all had in our subconscious so it became that making a movie in a parking garage was obvious and we were even wondering how it’s possible that such a movie was not made before. So basically what we started with was the idea of doing something more in the slasher way, like William Lustig’s MANIAC kind of movie with not a lot of dialogue and a lot of gruesome scenes where the guy was killing people in the garage and working with Franck Khalfoun on the script we developed it and moved to something much better which was the twisted fucked up love story and I really think that made the movie much more interesting.

I read a quote from you saying that Europe can’t do horrors, has your opinion changed after seeing some of the recent Spanish efforts?

It’s very very very hard in France to make these things, I mean last year we’ve seen things like FRONTIERES but still it’s very hard to make things like that in France. It’s the opposite here in the States where the genre is so successful that you can do what you want, the studio will give you the budget and the toys you need so it’s a great time here in the States where on my scale I can do what I want.

You know, that surprises me. It looks to me like Europe seems to be producing all of the small budget, innovative stuff and all Hollywood wants to do is remake them.

Yeah, that’s the lazy way of Hollywood we’re trying to avoid. We’re trying to find our own concept and the studio are scared to go on the big market with an original plot, most of the time what they want to do is find something that already exists and just change the language, the action and keep the title and I think that can be a mistake. I mean I’m not going to hide, I mean MIRRORS is based on the Korean movie even if it’s rebased far away but I think there’s many good scripts and the evolution in the genre is the key element - we need to be building the genre al the time and remakes aren’t the only solution to produce good movies. I know a lot of people who have made these interesting low-budget movies in Europe that are now coming the the US so it’ll be interesting to see what happens with these new waves arriving every year. We’re growing and growing and going to take power!

Let’s hope that happens! You seem to have a good working relationship with Franck, can I ask was it difficult for you to take a back seat and let him direct P2?

Yeah, of course it was very hard, it was the first time I produced a movie! Of course every time he was taking a decision a had my own ideas but it was my work to stand back and let him do it. I was still there to give him tips and ideas and stuff and we were all together though, we were really making the movie as a bunch of friends. I’ve known Franck for 15 years, I knew Greg[ory Levasseur] for like 20 years and we are all together making the movie together. It wasn’t really about who is directing or who is producing it was just trying to make the best movie possible and get out of that parking garage!

So there were no moments you look back on and think ‘that was definitely their decision’?

No, the opposite. I think if it was me directing I would’ve made a straightforward slasher - very gruesome, very violent. But Franck he brought that other dimension and when we realised it was good we wanted to push it even further in that direction, and I think the movie works much better like that so I’m really happy it happened in such a way.

How did you and Franck meet?

Franck was a PA on one of my father’s movies, so I met him when I was still a kid in fact. So he became like a big brother, we have a very brotherly relationship.

What’s the scariest place you can imagine being locked in?

A trunk, in a parking garage! You’re locked in twice so you have such a small chance to be found.

P2 is out on Friday, distributed by Tartan Films.

The crime/thriller Indie comic book series Pencilneck has been bought by Lionsgate with Chris Bender (American Pie) and J.C. Spink (A History of Violence) setup to produce at their Benderspink shingle say Variety.

“Pencilneck” centers on a mild-mannered banker who, in order to save his criminal brother, is forced by the mob to help them rob his employer. When the heist goes awry and the banker is taken hostage, he snaps and goes on a rampage.

That’s the same production guys who are behind the Y: The Last Man adaptation at the now Warner’s run New Line Cinema.

I haven’t read this series but it sounds pretty cool and from the stills below I would love to see this adapted into a very stylised black and white movie…

The first couple of issues can be purchased from the publisher’s online store HERE.

Wonder which bald actor could play the lead, any suggestions?

Filmmaker Damien Lichtenstein (3000 Miles to Graceland) has been mentored over the last year by the great James Cameron during the shoot of his latest epic Avatar and according to Variety, he wants to put what he has learnt to some good use for the medium he calls “the future of filmmaking”.

They say Lichtenstein will direct Relentless, a live action 3-D movie that is being budgeted at $25 million by Baldwin Entertainment and will shoot this September in Puerto Rico with Karl Urban set to star.

It’s the story of four extreme sports professionals who survive a plane crash in the Amazon jungle, and must use all their survival instincts as they are hunted by a group of homicidal natives.

It’s kind of like Lost but with a crew that are very much already acquainted with each other and instead of anything mystical like “The Others” - these are vicious homicidal natives.

Jungle/Lost movies seem to be all the rage recently and Karl Urban has been attached to several action movies in the last 12 months for none of them to really work out. I would like to see this one actually make it into production, if nothing else to see exactly what this filmmaker has learned from Cameron.

I’ve often wondered if movies could be made today with the same distinct colour scheme and style of by-gone era’s.

David Fincher’s brilliant Zodiac is one such movie which almost feels like it could have been made in the 70’s. I remember watching David Lynch’s best work The Elephant Man many years ago and believing it WAS made in the 40’s alongside the Universal horror monsters.

And now we get proof from the legendary Martin Scorsese that it is indeed possible to make shoot footage not only in the same style but most definitly the tone and colour scheme of Alfred Hitchcock.

I love this little vid, no doubt in some part because North by Northwest is one of my favourite films of all time.

Don’t get too caught up on whether Scorsese sold out with this sequence, it’s just a bit none serious fun. It’s a complete homage short - and no don’t believe for a second that this was a unfinished Hitchcock film.

I would LOVE to see Tarantino do something similar with Sergio Leone!

DAILY VID - which has no connection to /Film’s VOTD or Moriarty’s ONE THING I LOVE TODAY from AICN… (honest) is a brand new feature where we showcase one video I have found cool, humorous, insightful or all of the above!

If you have any suggestions for the feature then e-mail us directly at editor @ obsessedwithfilm.com (remove the spaces).

I’m just a few short hours away now from seeing Iron Man tonight - really can’t wait. The reviews have been universally positive, it looks like Marvel have created and financed a movie on their own which stands up with the extremely high quality that was set with the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises.

It’s claimed to be the best superhero film since Batman Begins and the one movie that is giving people massive hope of the future of Marvel’s portion of the genre.

But enough of Iron Man, my review will come late tonight.

For now this is what is of interest. The longest trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which will play alongside prints of the latest Marvel blockbuster

Nicole Kidman’s best performance of her career was her Oscar winning turn in The Hours six years ago and it’s unsurprising to me that today the news has leaked of a possible reunion between Kidman and the film’s writer Michael Cunningham.

Cunningham has told the New York Mag that his Fox 2000 biopic of 60’s British pop icon Dusty Springfield that he is currently writing will star Kidman in the lead role.

“She was a great artist who no one knew what to do with,” Cunningham said. “She was coming into her full powers at the same time the Beatles were,” he said, adding that she suddenly found herself the purveyor of a dying torchy genre. “But she is clearly going into history with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.”

Cunningham said the film would include the lonely years in exile from the U.K. in Hollywood, the drinking and the drugging, and the tortured bisexual/lesbian feelings that wove through her checkered career, which ended when she died of cancer in 1999.

Of course one could easily say OSCAR HUNT for Kidman because we all know biopics are the Academy’s darling genre but to be fair she has very much chosen to do whatever projects she has wanted to do recently. Small movies like Birth, Margot at the Wedding and Fur, next to bigger pictures like The Golden Compass and Bewitched - not easily been pigeon-holed to a certain sized project.

Still, she ain’t exactly the actress who would come to mind for a Dusty biopic is she, especially tonally?

source - coming soon 

So, I saw the hilarious Forgetting Sarah Marshall last week (which I think is the funniest film in at least three years) and the moment Jonah Hill popped up for his supporting role, my girlfriend goes - “that guy is in everything… is he like the American version of Russell Brand - does he just play himself on screen, is he famous?”.

Which I think does sum up Jonah Hill’s career thus far. He has pigeon-holed himself with a certain character which he does play very well it has to be said but the more he will do this type of role, the less easy it will be for him to break out in the future.

But the money from this film will keep him going for a while.

EW say Jonah Hill is in early talks to join the Michael Bay sequel to his Transformers movie. It’s said he will provide the comic relief as a sidekick to Shia LaBeouf’s character… possibly as a college roommate. In the first movie LaBeouf kinda did both roles himself, so now he can give some of the comedic lines to Hill.

The Dreamworks/Paramount movie will begin filming this summer, probably June - for a release next June.

Martin Campbell has his second new project in consecutive days, this time one setup at U.A and Lakeshore Entertainment according to Variety.

Joel Surnow and Michael Loceff - two writers and producers on 24 have been plucked by Tom Cruise to come up with a contemporary spy thriller which very much mirrors what the actor did with J.J. Abrams and his feature directorial debut, Mission Impossible III.

There’s no word yet on the title but it’s said that the concept is original and it should have an impact creatively and commercially.

Again it’s another nail in the coffin of The Birds remake - at least for Campbell’s involvement anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind Campbell as a director, his movies have never particularly insulted me and I have found them entertaining but they are often kinda one-note and flat. He’s not a hack but he’s very much a safe guarded director who does his job perfectly fine.

But his remake of The Birds I could imagine being horrible.