by Shane “hates goblin bums” Hnetka
Frank Miller’s Sin City sequel has been bumped! Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For had its release date moved from October to August, 2014. Strangely this isn’t the first Frank Miller comic book movie to get booted out of 2013. The unnecessary sequel 300: Rise of an Empire was also just moved from its August release date to next March. Another weird point is that Casino Royale’s Eva Green stars in both. The lesson here: comic book movies rule the screens right now. Unless they’re Frank Miller’s. Or star Eva Green.
STRONGER THAN STEEL
If you were to tell me a couple of months ago that the indulgent-looking Seth Rogan, James Franco, Jay Baruchel ’n’ pals stoner comedy This Is the End would get better reviews than Man of Steel, I would’ve laughed at you. But that’s what’s happened. With Metacritic scores of 68 versus 55, and Rotten Tomatoes ”fresh” ratings of 84 per cent over 56, the End — in which the actors play unflattering versions of themselves as biblical Armageddon unfolds — critically clobbered Superman’s return to the big screen.
None of this stopped audiences from going to, and enjoying, Man of Steel — it had the biggest June opening ever — but it’s sure weird. Kind of makes me want to see This Is The End now.
THE NAKED EXTENSION
Because nobody demanded it, Peter Jackson is releasing an extended cut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (it’ll be out around Christmas). The fact that Jackson has already “extended” a 310-page story into three three-hour movies is beside the point, I guess. Anyway. The extended cut was re-rated by the Motion Picture Association of America and a terrifying thing has occurred.
The original movie was rated PG-13 for “extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence and frightening images.” The new cut is rated PG-13 for “extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, frightening images and fleeting nudity.”
Fleeting nudity?
The Hobbit is a children’s story and there’s not a lot scenes with nudity, fleeting or otherwise. There aren’t any scenes of dwarves and hobbits taking baths in the part of the book covered by the first film, so that’s easily ruled out. Surely it couldn’t be an up-loincloth shot of Gollum? No, it’s gotta be either trolls or goblins. Since this is Peter “Meet the Feebles” Jackson we’re talking about, I guess there’s a possibility of dangling bits (suddenly having horrifying flashbacks to giant troll scrotums in Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga comics) but that seems unlikely, since the rating is only PG-13. That leaves the possibility of troll or goblin buttocks.
Let’s face it: there are some things that don’t need to be extended, and this already way-too-long movie is one of them. And I, for one, think we as viewers do NOT need extended “fleeting glimpses” of troll asses. It’s unnecessary to the plot and could traumatize audiences.
And more importantly, it would traumatize me.
Read Shane’s Sunday Matinee column every week at www.prairiedogmag.com
