Day: January 20, 2011

Kevin Smith Apparently Has No Plans to ‘Tone Down the Rhetoric’ with Red State

By Jason Apuzzo. Apparently Kevin Smith hasn’t gotten the message about how we’re all supposed to ‘tone down our political rhetoric’ in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Take a deep breath and check out the new teaser trailer for Red State above.

Since Smith is going forward with his forthcoming Red State debut at Sundance, I can only assume he didn’t catch President Obama’s recent speech in Tucson during which the President made the following remarks:

[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds …

We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

The Red State trailer wallows in exceptionally ugly, inflammatory and hateful stereotypes at the worst possible moment. I hope Smith understands what he’s unleashing here. The sad thing is that he probably does, and doesn’t care.

[UPDATE: Red State is currently expected to have its distribution rights sold by Sunday night – the evening of its debut – for around $4 million. Meanwhile, Joel Surnow’s The Kennedys currently has no distributor whatsoever.]

Posted on January 20th, 2011 at 1:48pm.

LFM Review: Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance

By Joe Bendel. In the future, child labor laws will be loosened in Japan. It will be for a good cause though: the salvation of humanity. Only pre-teens can fit into the cockpit of the Evangelions, the huge cyborg-like fighting machines created to protect the earth from the otherworldly peril it faces. It is a grueling task that extracts a costly toll from the young pilots in Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, the second film in screenwriter and “chief director” Hideaki Anno’s big-screen “rebuild” of the popular Japanese anime, which opens this Friday in New York and San Francisco.

As 2.0 opens, the Earth is once again under attack by “Angels,” hulking robotic extraterrestrial beings apparently impervious to all conventional weaponry. Shinji Ikari still flies his Eva unit in hopes of winning the approval of his severe father, who oversees NERV’s Evangelion program. His feelings for Rei, the emotionally fragile lead Eva pilot, continue to percolate. Into their midst comes a new pilot, Asuka, a Euro hotshot who arrives on the scene like Maverick at the Miramar TOPGUN school. Unfortunately, none of them expect the radical transformations in store for the Evas, nor the resulting implications for their own humanity.

Also crediting co-directors Masayuki and Kazuya Tsurumaki, 2.0 shrewdly incorporates proven elements from popular film and television, like the shadowy cabals of The X-Files and armored behemoths pounding each other silly, a la The Transformers. However, Anno’s anime utilizes strangely inverted Christian imagery, like the killer “Angels” that often explode into crosses when they are destroyed and “Lilith,” the life-giving angel, preserved beneath NERV central command disturbingly crucified on her cross. In fact, the original anime was somewhat notorious for its dense mythology, which has reportedly been streamlined for the rebuild. While its symbolism has the potential to become deeply troubling in future installments, for now it earns the first two Evangelions credit for ambition and novelty.

Frankly, elements of the meta-conspiracy revealed in 2.0 might even confuse those who saw 1.0, but most viewers going in cold will pick up enough to appreciate the rock-em-sock-em action sequences. Anime fanboys though might be disappointed by the lack of “fan service” aside from an Austin Powers shot of Asuka. Yet as animation, Evangelion represents the high-end of anime, featuring some rather striking imagery.

For those who sparingly partake of anime, the Evangelion series is one to check out. Smarter and more neurotic than the industry standard, it is an oddly compelling excursion into apocalyptic science fiction. Many theaters, including the Manhattan Big Cinemas (1/20) and the Viz Theater at New People (1/20) are screening 1.0 prior to 2.0’s opening (on the 21st both in New York and in San Francisco).

Posted on January 20th, 2011 at 1:08pm.