slashfilmcast550

9poster1In this week’s /Filmcast, Dave Chen, Devindra Hardawar and Adam Quigley, get blown away by the trailer for Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, reflect on the creative bankruptcy of the first Hancock, and share a few remembrances of the great Patrick Swayze.

You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us next Monday at 9 PM EST / 6 PM PST at Slashfilm’s live page as we review Jennifer’s Body.

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Shownotes

Introduction

What We’ve Been Watching

  • Devindra (3:58): Avatar, Swingers
  • Christopher Stipp (9:19): Triumph of the Will, Kids in the Hall, Wilco
  • Adam (12:58): Whiteout

News Discussion

Featured Review

  • (55:35) 9

Credits

  • drchicago
    It is kind of a downward spiral for that director of Whiteout, he did do that pretty good thriller with Brad Pitt named Kalifornia. So its a shame how bad his career has gotten.
    Also, I think you guys were way too hard on 9. All your complaints could perfectly be applied to say Star Trek. Paper thin story, underdeveloped characters only known by one characteristic (the comic relief Scotsman and wise cracking doctor)- if you weren't Kirk or Spock then you had no development, plot holes, and some hammy dialogue. I'm sure this comment on Trek will be blasted, I actually really enjoy it but it seems like that movie gets a pass for a lot of stuff. I actually found 9 to be pretty good- I liked the voice acting, the action was great- took full advantage of animation the same way Kung Fu Panda's action sequences did, and yes it had a great style.
  • You could honestly boil down many films like you just did. Star Trek was a *fun* blockbuster that certainly had flaws, but they were never big enough to distract from my overall enjoyment of the film.

    9 never really knows what it wants to be, and it ends up being a frustrating experience. If we're harder on this than other bad films, it's probably because it's so easy to see how it could have been great, especially with Acker's eye for visuals. That sense of missed opportunity is often more painful to me than a movie that just plain sucks.
  • drchicago
    Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the hell out of Trek. I guess it just kind of bothers me where there's a film I like but it gets crapped on by others for reasons that they give other films a pass for. But yeah you're definitely in the right if you found 9 frustrating. The problems that you guys brought up with 9 I think were pretty much my exact problems with Trek- its a better movie than 9 but I think they're both pretty similar when it comes to their faults. I honestly was impressed with a good part of 9 to really enjoy it. The story is definitely murky and I won't excuse it. It definitely could have been great instead of simply good, but I just didn't share the same problems with you guys- most notably the voice casting.
  • 9 looked horribly pretentious and obligatorily dark and tacky
  • And totally lol'd at the Neal Stephenson ref
  • jank
    you guys ever wonder why the machine didn't start becoming good after it started consuming the souls? I mean the scientist did say the reason why it was evil was because it lacked a soul. so now that it sucked up 5, wouldn't it only need the remaining 4 for it to become good, and POSSIBLY rebuild the world's beauty. in that logic, 9 and the remaining numbers should have sacrificed themselves. sure, there would still be no human life, but at least we wouldn't be subjected to believe the ending we were given.
  • icko
    i think im one of the minorities that 9 is a terrible movie. it was bad and annoying (specially the sounds of rusty metal), i was falling asleep and the only things that prevented me too is the loud noises and the orchestra score which is out of place for me.
  • Frederik
    No.

    Check the Rotten Tomatoes rating.
  • Frederik
    Can you guys link to the podcast with Christoph Waltz?
  • nickperusse
    Is there any chance you guys could have an rss feed with just the main podcasts? I love the after dark and extra stuff, but I just don't have the time for them, and I'd rather just have the main episodes appear in my client.

    Keep up the great work!
  • Doing so would mess with iTunes and our rankings all over the place, so it's unlikely we'll be able to do that. I recommend using Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/) to filter out the stuff from our feeds you don't want to hear, then subscribe to that Pipe as a podcast :)
  • Weyland_Yutani
    Sorry to break out the geek dictionary, but Snow Crash is most definitely NOT steampunk (but cyberpunk). You could argue that Stephenson uses the Victorian idealism of steampunk in The Diamond Age, however, that flips the idea around a bit by placing that story in the future.

    C'mon guys, get your "punks" cleared up. :)

    oh, and "9" most definitely had no idea what it was or wanted to be. Agree with you on all points. Really they just should have abandoned the whole idea of it being a post apocolyptic story and just resolved to tell a fairy tale from stitch world. Stitch Men vs. the Rogue Sewing Machines. Maybe they could have found a simple, weird-but-clever story out of that. Maybe they could have been in a fierce struggle for the last spool of thread....err...something....with a thimble king and a needle gun.

    Also, Kerry Conran deserved a second chance. He's the only director that has ever truly had a pulse for the pulp adventure genre. Just too bad they expected so much from that first foray into green screen filmmaking. A future installment could have been tighter, better, and cheaper. Sadly, we'll never see it.
  • David Kovacs
    My friend works for Jerry Bruckheimer, and says that the new Pirates movie is based on the book and everyone in the building was reading the book over summer. He also said he doesn't know how much it's based on the book.
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