2.18.2005

Constantine
There hasn't been much of anything to come out in a while, which makes my anticipation of Constantine more of hope than desire. While the storyline is admittedly intriguing to my preferences (about an anti-hero type who sees demons and fights, etc.), I've had doubts about whether the filmmakers could pull off a faithful adaptation from the graphic novels.

As with all things, the answer will be subjective. Walter Chaw skewers the film most deliciously, but delivers a sad portent of things to come:
    Chewed-up and swallowed, the film seems to constantly be a minute behind the cool stuff--lowering hopes, again, that Neil Gaiman's important "Sandman" run, a title that ran concurrent with the Garth Ennis/Jamie Delano "Hellblazer" arc, will ever find its way to the screen in an incarnation that doesn't suck balls.
Contrasting night-and-day is reviewer Victoria Alexander, whose sees the film as a validation of her beliefs:
    The complicated hagiography of CONSTANTINE is based on the DC/Vertigo comic book Hellblazer and is written by Kevin Brodbin, Mark Bomback and Frank Capello. I have an entire section of my library devoted to Satan and demon possession. (I’ll recommend merely three from my vast “DP” collection: “Demon Possession” by John L. Nevius, “Possession and Exorcism, Among Primitive Races, in Antiquity, The Middle Ages, and Modern Times” by Traugott K. Oesterreich, and “Hostage to the Devil, The Possession and Exorcism of Five Lining Americans” by Malachi Martin.)
She goes on for another two paragraphs before, hello, stopping her diatribe to review the movie. Victoria must have been salivating in buckets for this movie to come out.

In any event, being a devotee of all things dark and religious (not mutally exclusive), I'll spend my nine bucks this weekend.

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