Nature Abhors A Superhero Vacuum (But Apparently Abhors Wolverine Even More)
After last year's crunch of The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Hancock (and you could arguably throw in Speed Racer in there, as well), this summer was remarkably clear of superheroes, if you ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine (as most who've seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine are probably prone to do). But, even as Hollywood collectively recovered from last year's superpowered orgy and looked around the nostalgiascape to see if there were alternatives, we couldn't help but notice that some of the movies this summer seemed like superhero movies anyway. GI Joe, with your battlesuits and superhero team dynamic, we're looking at you.

It didn't hurt that Joe, like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and Star Trek, had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, as well as larger than life stakes and days to be saved - oh, and action set pieces during which the day-saving takes place. Yes, none of these films featured people with actual superpowers (aside from Spock's mind-melding, but come on), but in almost every other respect, they were superhero movies... and all the more successful for it.

Moral Ambiguity Isn't What We're Looking For, After All?
And what of Wolverine? Or pre-summer release Watchmen, for that matter...? Why weren't they Dark Knight-style colossuses (colossi?), striding across the box office landscape? Possibly for the same reason that Terminator Salvation disappointed: Because they were ill-considered, non-sensical pieces of filmmaking that considered style more important than substa - No, wait, I mean, "because neither offered any comfort to the viewer" (Okay, maybe a little of the former, too). Yes, Wolverine "won" at the end of his movie, but it was a shitty victory that still made him look like an easy dupe who'd been used and abused by The Powers That Be. Watchmen's (and, for that matter, Terminator Salvation's) victory was even more ambiguous. And maybe, Dark Knight aside - and who's to say that that movie won't continue to seem more and more like a fluke in terms of hyper-popularity as time goes on - that's just not what audiences are looking for from their blockbusters?

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reviews
GI Joe wasn't screened for mainstream critics ahead of its release - which, considering the harshness of some of the reviews, seems like a sensible plan - and had a more successful opening than most expected. In interviews, Joe director Stephen Sommers cited the success of the badly-reviewed Transformers 2 as the reason why some movies don't need reviews any more:

I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant here, they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. `Transformers 2' got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?

There is no way that the people behind other blockbuster movies - especially the ones that know that they're unlikely to get good reviews - aren't going to look at this and consider doing the same thing. It's not that critics have "criticized themselves into irrelevancy," but that studios are finally realizing that mass audiences have never, really, cared that much about them.

(Re)Birth Of The Alternative Mainstream
That said, what are we to make of critical darlings District 9, Cold Souls and Moon? Clearly, the great reviews mattered here - although, in D9's case, possibly not as much as Peter Jackson's name and an advertising campaign that's been going on for more than a year - drawing attention to smaller films that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Some are using these movies as a case for SF cinema "rediscover[ing] its brains, heart and soul," and there's definitely an argument to be made there... but there's an equally strong one to be made, I think, for these movies to be used as evidence for the need for SF cinema to be used as a vehicle for new voices wanting to exercise their imaginations and engage audiences before they get ground down by industry politics and pretention. It's not that big a step from Being John Malkovich to the rest of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze's movie careers, after all.

By the end of this summer movie season, it feels as if cinema has fragmented: There are the critic-proof (and unnecessarily-reviewed) blockbusters that fit into our nostalgic take on what stories should be, with good guys and bad guys and evil losing in the end, there are the intellectual, playful, indie darlings, and then there're movies that try and straddle the two and fail at the box office (Although, as ever, "failure" is a moving target; Watchmen must have easily made its money back by now, and if not, will do so with the "Ultimate Edition" DVD at the end of the year). Maybe next year, Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 will shake things up a little. Here's hoping.

Paul Giamatti plays a fictionalized version of himself, that we're supposed to understand as a composite of his more neurotic film characters. He's a successful actor, but anxious, deeply emotional — and he suffers. In what way Paul suffers, we never actually see; we're simply told flat-out that he does.

Paul's emotions have become an obstacle to his work. He's been cast in Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya, but Paul is somehow unable to separate himself from his character mentally, and rehearsals have not been going well. His director is sympathetic, but tells Paul that he's taking the role too seriously.

A possible answer comes one afternoon while Paul is screening his phone calls. His agent leaves him a message, mentioning an article in this week's New Yorker that could be the solution to all his problems. Paul digs out the magazine and spots an article about a company that extracts and stores human souls, subtitled "Are New Yorkers tired of carrying around their souls?" Paul hardly reads the article, but immediately and impulsively calls the facility and makes an appointment. After a remarkably awkward conversation with soullessness advocate Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), Paul enters the soul extractor (a retrofuturistic MRI that looks like it was stolen from a James Bond film) and soon has his chick pea-shaped soul (or rather, 95 percent of it; five percent of his soul is still in there) in a jar.

Cold Souls is practically begging to be compared to the sorts of films Charlie Kaufman writes. There is the actor playing himself, just as John Malkovich does in Being John Malkovich. Paul impulsively submits to a shocking medical procedure that fundamentally alters his being, much like Jim Carrey's character does in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Even Lauren Ambrose as Dr. Flintstein's pretty, unquestioning assistant seems to close a match for Kirsten Dunst's similar role in Eternal Sunshine. But it's an unfortunate comparison, as Sophie Barthes, who wrote and directed the film, has failed to channel Kaufman's gift for storytelling or Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry's visuals and sense of timing.

Barthes has the challenge of explaining what the consequences of losing one's soul are, a concept that isn't as straightforward and readily understood as erasing a person from your memory. We could have used a dose of Woody Allen here, with Paul hearing about the procedure at dinner parties with a measure of scandal and intrigue; rumors could fly that certain actors had enjoyed success after their souls had been removed; soul extraction could be the hot topic on NPR. But Paul submits to the extraction so early on in the movie that we must rely on Giamatti's not inconsiderable acting skills to convey the meaning of soullessness. Paul stages tests to figure out what's changed. He sniffs perfume, weighs himself, takes photos of himself and compares them obsessively to existing photographs. Eventually, it becomes apparent that, without a soul, Paul is disconnected from himself and from other people. It transforms him into a potential Tao master (an idea I get the sense Barthes longed to explore further), but it also makes him a sociopath, unconcerned with his friends, distant from his wife (a strangely underutilized Emily Watson), and incapable of imbuing Uncle Vanya with the proper emotion.

All this time, we've been seeing a second character as well, although her role in the story has not been apparent. She is Nina, a trafficker in human souls. Nina purchases souls from poor, dying, and emotionally overburdened Russians, and then functions as a mule, carrying the souls within her body to America (souls, we are told, are too volatile at high altitudes to travel outside a human host). Once in the US, she sells the souls to Flintstein's practice so that his clients can rent the souls. But, since we see Nina at work long before we learn that it's possible to rent a soul, it's not clear what she's up to, and Barthes doesn't make it clear when Nina is in Russia and when she is in the US.

The soul-renting portion of the plot, which we get to in the second act when Paul realizes he can't do Vanya without a soul, is the strongest bit of the entire film. Paul winds up renting a Russian soul, which changes him. It's a nice inversion of Dollhouse, examining what happens when you absorb the essence of a person without his or her memories, while looking at the exploitation of the foreign workers by affluent Americans. Are souls, after all, really that much more shocking than sweatshop handbags and shoes? And Paul finds that having access to a Russian soul can come in very handy when performing a Russian play.

Unfortunately, we get little of this notion of trying out other people's souls, before the pesky plot pushes us hastily along to the third act along to the third act, where there's soul stealing, a Russian mobster, and a beautiful but talentless soap opera star who wants to own an American actor's soul.

Cold Souls is a strangely linear film for one so bursting of ideas, with little in the way of subplot or texture. Paul is the only client of Dr. Flintstein whom we see more than in passing, and because the entire film is crammed with Paul's experiences with souls, there isn't room for anything else. We have no sense of what Paul's home life is like, who his friends are, what he's like when he does have his soul. At some point, Nina tells Paul that he needs more levity in his life. We can choose to believe that it's true, because Paul went through this soul extracting business in the first place, but we wouldn't really know; since we never see him in his own skin (or rather, his soul in his own skin), we don't know if he needs levity or not. Barthes tries to compensate for this thinness by adding small, self-consciously quirky moments, but the attempts come off as awkward attempts at Kaufman-esque eccentricity, wedged into a universe where they simply don't fit.

This isn't to say that Cold Souls is a boring movie, or that it doesn't show a lot of promise for Barthes as a filmmaker. Barthes' ideas are interesting, even if her insistence at squeezing every notion she has into the movie comes at the expense of the story, and there are a few moments that are genuinely and uniquely weird. And, when one character takes Paul's soul from Flintstein's storage facility, we see a reversal of the same shot we saw of Paul when he went to the facility in the first place — a brand of visual cue I would have liked to have seen more. But anyone hoping that Barthes has already revealed herself as the heir to Charlie Kaufman will be ultimately disappointed. Barthes has a voice in there somewhere, for explaining her strange ideas, but trying to borrow Kaufman's only keeps Cold Souls from heating up.

Symbol
The writer and director of Big Man Japan will be showing his latest work Symbol at the Toronto Film Festival, and Hitoshi Matsumoto's latest work really has me scratching my head with wonder. The latest teaser shows... well, I'm not really sure what, but some poor fella is obviously getting attack by tiny naked CG cherubs. I'm still not sure what to make of the dog reference. Creeeepy.

Here's the full synopsis... sounds like a trip:

In the central tale, a Japanese man (Matsumoto) wakes up alone in a brightly illuminated white room with no windows or doors. When he presses a mysteriously phallic protuberance that appears on one wall, a pink toothbrush materializes from nowhere, clattering to the floor and setting in motion a genuinely bizarre chain of events. Soon the imprisoned man is engaged in absurd and hilarious attempts to escape the gleaming room, releasing random objects from the walls, creating a life-sized Mouse Trap game in which a rope, a toilet plunger and an earthenware jug full of sushi might just be the keys to his escape.

Meanwhile, in a dusty town, a green-masked Mexican wrestler known as Escargot Man prepares for an important match. His family gathers around him, worried about his seeming impassivity before battle. As the nameless prisoner appears closer to escape and Escargot Man steps into the ring, Matsumoto amplifies the baffling yet suspenseful atmosphere to a crescendo of ridiculous excess.

Bio-Slime

Aaaah, a new evil, gooey bio-killer. Here's the trailer for small budget slick Bio-Slime, which is your basic alien species monster flick. A bunch of strangers are trapped in an isolated area and one by one they get picked off until one clever member devises a plan to get back at the beast... Check it out.

Kung Fu Cyborg:
The latest Kung Fu Cyborg trailer is out, offering more Kung Fu Robots, but also showing off the movie's love story a little bit more. I mean, it's not called "metallic attraction" for nothing. We need more robots in love that don't look like Wall-E and an ipod. Jeffrey Lau's latest work should be out within the month, we'll see how long it takes to reach little old me.

Cold Souls
The funny little flick about soul extraction, starring Paul Giamatti as himself, is getting a limited release in New York and LA on August 7th. So to celebrate, check out this new clip. The film follows the saddened actor who looks to release a little stress by removing his soul from his body. But when his soul is mistaken for Al Pacino's soul and swiped by the Russian mob, the actor is sent on a journey to reclaim what is rightfully his.

New Cold Souls Clip:

Cold Souls Trailer:

In the above clip, Dr. Flintstein explains to Giamatti, who's playing an actor named Paul Giamatti, that we have no clue what the soul is or what it does — but we can remove it, with a patented new technology. I love the part where he offers Giamatti the soul-visualizing goggles. (Incidentally, I think half of this movie's problem of appearing to be a Charlie Kaufman knock-off would have gone away if writer/director Sophie Barthes had named Giamatti's character something else.)

And then in this second clip, Giamatti's apparently had his soul removed, and now they're testing to see how much of it remains, using a "soul stimulator."

Giamatti has a fight with his wife, over his insensitive behavior and celery-munching. I'm just guessing this scene happens after his soul has been taken out.

So Giamatti goes back to Dr. Flintstein and (I'm guessing) finds out his soul has been misplaced. But he can rent a different soul, including one imported from Russia.

So when Giamatti finally comes clean and tells his wife about having his soul removed, he's borrowing the soul of a Russian poet.

Giamatti finally tracks down Nina, who tells him where his missing soul has actually gone.

And unfortunately the Russian gangster's wife who's "borrowing" Giamatti's soul doesn't want to give it back, leading to a debate about soul adultery. The wife thinks she's actually being inhabited by the soul of Al Pacino, and she needs it to act in a Russian soap opera.

This sort of movie is always a bit contrived, taking a ridiculous concept and seeing how far the film-maker can run with it. But it does create an opportunity to ask some of the same questions Dollhouse has been asking about what makes us who we are, only from a different angle — instead of the memories and skills being swapped out, it's the much more nebulous "soul" — and it looks like Barthes and Giamatti take full advantage of this thematic richness. Honestly, a lot probably depends on how much we believe in Giamatti's reasons for wanting to give up his soul in the first place. It seems like such a patently bad idea to begin with, let's hope his initial decision is set up well.

We'll all find out soon enough. Cold Souls hits theaters (in New York and L.A., anyway) on August 7. [Sci Fi Cool]

As derivative as Cold Souls is — and it looks very derivative, so far — it still may be awesome. For one thing, Giamatti is one of those actors who was born to do Kaufman-esque surreal anomie. I'd way rather watch a Kaufman clone starring Giamatti than one starring Will Ferrell, pretty much any day.

And Cold Souls, from writer-director Sophie Barthes, is clearly about something: At least, the trailer makes it clear that the "soul removal" thing is a blatant metaphor for anti-depressants, and our fixation with chemical solutions to psychological problems generally. And then it takes that fun right turn with the "soul trafficking" thing, before going fully surreal. So I'm pretty much down. And maybe having a better class of imitators will spur Kaufman to new heights?

(According to someone at IMDB, mentioning the similarities between this film and Kaufman's work is a good way to get Barthes annoyed. Sorry about that.)

Cold Souls comes out in "limited release" in the United States on August 7.

Souls stars Paul Giamatti as an actor called Paul Giamatti, who discovers a company that offers to transplant or store human souls, only to give his own soul up in favor of someone else's. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie — written and directed by Sophie Barthes — has "drawn comparisons to the work of Charlie Kaufman," which may be a polite way of saying that it sounds very like a couple of Kaufman's earlier movies.

The movie's US rights were purchased by Samuel Goldwyn; no release date has been announced.

Samuel Goldwyn warms to 'Cold Souls' [Hollywood Reporter]

Cold Souls:
Paul Giamatti plays himself — a famous actor, but struggling with an internal crisis. Looking for sweet relief, Giamatti checks out a New York soul extraction facility. But after he has his ever loving soul removed, angsty calamity ensues.

Cinematical on Cold Souls:

Here, though, he [Giamatti] gives what may be his best performance, stretching to play several variations of himself, and manages several seemingly incompatible things — investing real heart into what's essentially a character defined by a science-fiction device, finding real emotion in surreal inventions and yet giving his everyday moments a deft, askew energy.... Cold Souls looks and feels like a Charlie Kaufman film, but it's somehow slipperier and yet simpler, more complex and yet more direct. Part of the pleasure of Cold Souls is that as we watch Paul Giamatti struggle to understand his soul, we can't help but cast a glance towards our own.

Variety on Cold Souls:

An amusing slice of existential whimsy with an Eastern European bent, Cold Souls posits a world in which humans can have their souls extracted and implanted in each others' bodies. It's the sort of idea one can imagine Charlie Kaufman running wild with, but Sophie Barthes' writing-helming debut is too well-behaved and conventional, stylistically and metaphysically, to achieve the desired levels of creative lunacy. Marketing will need to emphasize the pic's goofy premise and Paul Giamatti's enjoyable performance to overcome cool but respectful critical response.

Moon: Lonely and anger management-challenged space miner Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) lives by himself on a far-away moon, harvesting resources. Comforted only by Kevin Spacey's voice as the home robot, the miner awaits the end of his contract, until space madness and the company's ulterior motives force Sam to come face to face with a scary reality. But what did the critics think?

Film School Rejects On Moon:

While not perfect by any means, Moon is yet another impressive work of independent science fiction. In which we have a young director with an ambitious vision, a perfectly cast lead and the creativity to bring it to life without having to work on a Michael Bay-sized budget... if there is any reason to see this movie, it is that you should once again behold the brilliance that is Sam Rockwell. The man gives a remarkable performance, taking the film from a well-executed indie to a potentially very memorable entry into the sci-fi genre

Slashfilm on Moon:

Produced on a low budget by first time filmmaker Duncan Jones, Moon makes great use of realitic sets, a remote control robot, old school miniature work, and even some CG. Like last year’s Sleep Dealer, I’m convinced that Moon is at the beginning of a new renaissance of indie sci-fi feature films which will challenge Hollywood’s big budget
computer generated spectacles.

Grace: A young pregnant woman loses her baby while still in her womb. She insists on carrying the stillborn child to term. After the birth, little Grace comes back to life — but with a taste for blood. Paul Solet's deeply disturbing film is already making waves when audience members passed out at the Egyptian screening.

Dread Central On Grace:

Grace is very much the antidote to what plagues most of the horror genre today. For those who are tired of the endless remakes and reincarnations of overseas films, Grace very well could be the movie you need to see to restore your faith in the idea that there is still an artistic vision within the horror genre. I know it has restored mine.

Bloody Disgusting On Grace:

At the Sundance screening I attended, the audience whooped, hollered, and screamed, and two men reportedly fainted during the show. It’s true that Solet takes the audience on a twisted ride down a very dark birth canal, but is it dark and twisted enough? Sundance audiences may scream and faint at the likes of Grace, but the die-hard horror fan will be merely amused by Solet’s bloodthirsty baby shenanigans. Without much of a plot driving the action, the film’s success depends solely on mood and tone, and Grace, although diverting, isn’t quite haunting enough to make a lasting impact.

Dead Snow: Bring on the undead Nazi zombies! This Norwegian flick follows a group of vacationing snow bunnies to the mountains, where their crazy partying awakens a pack of undead Nazis. Blood, blood and more blood. And snow.
Fearnet on Dead Snow:

Although not exactly all that scary, Dead Snow earns big points for enthusiasm, creativity, and a powerful devotion to all things ultra-splattery...Dead Snow is little more than a 90-minute excuse for some wintry wildness and subzero slaughter, but most of the highlights are spot-on amusing, and the finest moments of gore 'n' gristle go down surprisingly well.

Movieblog on Dead Snow:

The filmmakers used over 450 litres of blood to create a horror film that harkens back to the feel of those created in the 1980s: little substance and a lot of slashing. The film is spiced with a number of great moments of homage to other horror films.

The Clone Returns Home: An astronaut dies on a mission, but never fear — he's got a clone, who can be imprinted with his memories. Unfortunately his clone replacement malfunctions, and is stuck on a tragic memory from the dead astronaut's youth. The clone escapes to find answers and solace from his burdened memories, much to the dismay of the ailing widow and the clone company.

Variety on Clone:

Bewitchingly intense low-budgeter has few special effects but achieves a glossy sheen, thanks to excellent lensing and well-chosen architectural backdrops. Attachment of Wim Wenders as exec producer will act as pic's passport to fests. Deliberate pace may deter those not already discouraged by the bland title, but careful handling may reap commercial prospects, especially from Asia buffs.

Additional reporting from Julia Carusillo

If character actor-extraordinaire Paul Giamatti playing himself in Cold Souls didn't convince you to check out this film, these pictures certainly will. This incredibly interesting indie film features Giamatti struggling with a crisis and seeking solace in a New York soul extraction facility, where he's encouraged to lay down the burden of his soul. These pictures are stunning and I can not wait to hear more about the obvious buzz this flick will generate over at Sundance.

Meanwhile, a haunting still showing a clone standing over the body of its original astronaut body is from The Clone Returns Home, a new Japanese movie whose trailer we posted a while back. The story starts with the death of an astronaut, which leads to the activation of his clone. But faulty memory programming startles the clone and his memories immediately revert back to childhood, when the original's brother died. The clone panics and escapes on a journey back to his childhood home (or at least the original astronaut's home).

For more information about the festival explore the Sundance site.

The Clone Returns to the Homeland or (Kuron wa kokyo wo mezasu) is a Japanese film about an astronaut who dies but is brought back as a clone. Variety called it a, "bewitchingly intense low-budgeter" that looks better than it should thanks to smart cinematography. A grieving widow is shocked when the government replaces her deceased husband with a memory-implanted clone. Unfortunately, the clone can't get over a tragic memory from the original astronaut's life, where he blames himself for the accidental drowning of his twin brother. After being returned by the wife for being faulty, the clone escapes and journeys out, searching for the answers to his troubled memories.

The second film, titled Cold Souls has Paul Giamatti famous actor dealing with an internal crisis who stumbles upon a soul stealing workshop in New York City. It is written and directed by Sophie Barthes and also stars Emily Watson and Lauren Ambrose. I'm absolutely dying for more information about this diabolical little film.

The press release doesn't mention space convicts movie Stingray Sam, allegedly because it's appearing in a non-competitive section.

Besides these movies, Sundance will be holding a New Frontier exhibition which will house all sorts of movies, installations and other forms of art that have been influenced by "evolving media landscapes." More details on that soon I hope!

[Sundance Festival]