From Ant-Man To Mascara-Man

I like Edgar Wright. He puts a unique stamp on movies. And, not doing 'Ant-Man' is probably a good idea. The concept just reeks.

Let's forget for a moment (it shouldn't be difficult) that Ant-Man never existed as a comic book character and pretend you're hearing the idea for the first time as a movie pitch. It goes something like this: "See. There's this scientist who discovers a way to shrink himself down to the size of an ant and...he does stuff."

Yeah. Got it. Next.

Besides, Wright looks to have been shown the door. (Who rewrites a script without telling the director that's been signed on for years unless you're willing to see him walk)?

Now, word is out Wright wants to spin a feature film version of 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker'. Great. Used to be good creepy fun, a rare bright spot on TV. Loved that show. Darren McGavin was perfect as the disheveled, goofy supernatural sleuth who stumbled his way into 'solving' cases. A movie version would rock. But, with Johnny Depp? Can Depp play a regular guy? Would Depp's Kolchak wear mascara?

The last movie Depp was in which wasn't a dress-up-play-act thing that I can remember as being any good was 'Secret Window'. I like that movie -- have watched it a few times -- but, that was a long time ago.

I don't want to watch Kolchak and be thinking he forgot to put on mascara and funny hat and pretend to be drunk.

Mr. Wright, if you make the movie with someone else, I'll be first in line. If you make it with Depp, I'll have to wait and see what the reviews are like (assuming the movie opens wide and stays in theaters more than a week).

That can't be a good thing.

'Transcendance' Clip

The clip is the first 20 seconds of this featurette. (The rest is fairly boiler-plate hard-sell). Not getting too much from 'Transcendance' -- coming off like a rent-sometime -- but this scene is good.

Morgan Freeman, as always, lends credibility, believability. Hell, in this clip, even Johnny Depp seems like a real person -- he's always so long in the face, which I understand is a needed thing for a lot of movie roles, what with all that drama sloshing around, but... 

The performances, a killer slick set, and the fact we already have voice-recognition and synthesized speech, makes the artificial intelligence go over better, gives the scene more resonance than you'd expect, and makes suspension of disbelief go down easier. A needed thing, cause the premise makes me choke. I feel like they've broken some basic tenet of science fiction story structure.

All that said, if the whole movie makes me feel the way this clip does I'll dig 'Transcendance'.