I
had the pleasure of attending the Witchblade movie premiere on Friday night.
(Thanks to Jim Valentino for giving me the tickets.) Like what happened
with San Diego, however, they gave out ten times as many tickets as they
had seats. This time, however, I was prepared and got there an hour ahead
of time. So I got a seat this time. It was held at a small theater, which
seated about 2000.
The
film was projected onto the screen off of a VHS copy of the movie. I hope
it was SVHS, at the least, but who knows? In the end, I didn't really matter.
Picture quality was still pretty impressive.
Marc
Silvestri was in attendance and introduced the movie. The movie's star,
Yancy Butler, was there as well. It's true - the television or movie screen
adds ten pounds to you. She looked almost painfully skinny in person, but
looked healthy on the
screen.
Director Ralph Hemecker also attended.
The
movie itself is a two-hour music video. It also gets incredibly loud in
spots. Keep the volume button on your remote control handy. Trust me.
There
are a couple of big staged action scenes, which are done with a ton of
ARMAGEDDON-style quick-cutting, some MATRIX "bullet cam" special effects,
and a lot of special lighting. The "bullet cam" is only used once or twice,
and gets used to neat effect the first time. The frame pauses each time
a bullet is fired, then the camera starts circling around until the next
bullet stops it. My description doesn't do it justice, but look for that
when the movie airs at the end of this month.
I've
never read the WITCHBLADE comic before in my life. I can't vouch for the
authenticity of what appears on the screen versus what shows up in the
comic. The costume is obviously gone. It may be cable, but it's not quite
that daring. The witchblade itself is seen as a simple glove attached to
Sara Pezzinni's arm when in use. With all the quick cutting, and a certain
amount of CGI, it doesn't look as bad as many of the still shots led me
to believe it might.
The
story itself is easy to follow, although there are a couple of rough moments.
There's one major bit of character info that gets added in for no purpose
to the plot whatsoever. Sure, I can see it being important for future episodes
of an on-going series, but for the sake of simplicity, I don't see its
purpose in the movie. I'm not going to spoiler it here for you just yet,
but it's a scene a little more than halfway through the movie between Sara
and the police chief.
Overall,
however, the acting, the special effects, and the rock music soundtrack
are all pretty high quality. Whatever money they spent on this, it all
ended up on the screen. It's not laughable. It's not campy. It's played
straight and serious. Thank goodness for that. When it airs, give it a
chance. Then, as Marc Silvestri suggested, write TNT lots of letters to
suggest a series. I think it deserves that.
