We all have our little traditions on holidays. Me, I love to get naked and loaded up on spearmint scope every Arbor Day, but I digress. Anywho, we here at your favorite dinosaur themed film blog decided to get into the Thanksgiving spirit and talk about the movies we love to watch this time of year. So enjoy, and then get the hell off of our land! Don't you infringe on our Manifest Destiny or we will genocide you! Right in the face! Ahem...sorry...
Jackson Bishop
It's a little sappy and obvious, but my absolute favorite movie to watch over Thanksgiving is E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. The story of a young boy and a lost alien that form a strong bond is timeless and cemented for good Steven Spielberg's rep as a sentimental filmmaker as well as an awesome one. Everything about it just makes me feel warm and fuzzy as I sit there after over-eating like Wilson Fisk at a buffet. It used to be on tv every Thanksgiving, and I would watch it with my dad every year after coming back from dinner at my aunt's house, so I just identify it with the holiday now. Long story short, any movie in which a rubber puppet that looks alot like poop can make you cry by saying a boy's name, that's some good stuff.
Nicola Balkind
The Addam's Family Values. Okay, so I'm not an American. Or even Canadian. So perhaps I've vastly misjudged the wonder of Thanksgiving. I don't strictly celebrate it either; but being an unemployed graduate, enjoying the "holiday" is all the same, right?! Thanksgiving is even seeping into UK culture… unfortunately it's not all turkeys and stuffing, but more of a, "Maybe we, the whiningest country in the world, should give thanks for something once in awhile."So, America, I give thanks to you. Not for Thanksgiving, per se, but certainly for this belter of a movie. I am, of course, referring to the scene of the Camp Chippawa Thanksgiving play; wherein Pugsley sings and dances in a magnificent turkey outfit, and Wednesday's sardonic Pocahontas leads her tribe of loyal and wacky followers in a reverse-genocide. It's witty, it's hilarious, and it is stuffed with intentionally terrible and overindulgent sentiment.It also contains the infamous line, which I think sums up every Thanksgiving:"I am a turkey. Kill me!"
Happy turkey day, all!
Steven Ray Morris
Jurassic Park
Nothing makes me more thankful knowing that dinosaurs could and should exist. And of course for the classic line, "That doesn't very scary, it looks more like a six-foot turkey." Indeed.
Evan Koehne
1. "Thanksgiving" Trailer
2. "Smoke Signals"
3. "The New World"
4. "Sleepy Hollow"
5. "The Village"
Arlin Golden
Every year for thanksgiving my friends from high school and I eat an unhealthy amount of fried chicken and watch a basketball movie. Freshman year was Hoop Dreams (considered by most cinephiles to be the greatest film ever made) then came Space Jam, which held up far better than anyone expected, largely due to the supporting cast like Bill Murray, Charles Barkley and Mugsey Bogues. Last year we watched White Men Can't Jump and reveled in the Rosie Perez-ness of it all. This year, possibly being the last of this tradition as I know it, we plan to watch an Italian film called "The Minis" which is about a team of little people who recruit Dennis Rodman to be their center. Gotta say, I don't see how this can't be one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
We All Got A Little Zombie in Us...(Part 1)
When it comes to monsters, gore, mayhem, and general other horror exploration, my personal love of a certain reanimated cannibalistic horde is second to none. Whether they run fast, lurk slow, desire flesh or just brains; whether they feast on novelties of being midgets, clowns, sumo-wrestlers, or CEO's, Zombies equal life's playing field and demolish social order. The Zombie is, as George A. Romero affectionately states, the blue collar monster.
As a fact, it is perfectly okay to shoot zombies in the head, as we deem them abominations because they practice cannibalism. Loss of humanity aside, they are still of the human race, correct? Is it murder to kill a human who is now an undead flesh-eating mob member? You could assume that not much separates a zombie from a hungry jungle cat (or at least those man-eating tigers in Siberia).
However, the paradox of the zombie film resides in the stipend of, in a word, bloodlust. The audience, paying their share to go see a film promising zombie mayhem, desire the same blood, gore, and dismemberment that the zombies of the film kill to obtain. The motivations of the horde mirror the motivations of the audience to see the film. While we sit in our comfy theatre chairs, mildly understanding that the survivalists need to be identified with to move the story of the film, what we really want is exactly what the zombies want.
In the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake, we all sat, begging for the douche bag with the boat (and the death wish) to get devoured. Who did not cheer when the father from Night of the Living Dead (1968) got bit by his own daughter? What self-respecting audience member goes into a zombie film saying "Gee, Tina, I hope this isn't too gory!"
Too bad Tina's friend is so squeamish.
So, for the 90 minute road trip into the worst kind of apocalypse, the zombie motivations are kindred to the audience members. Harking back to the 1984 classic Return of the Living Dead, we reminisce the Undead's declaration for "Brains!" echoing our own desire for more: more brains, more guts, more red corn syrup laden cow intestines.
Not to violate our aesthetic distance, we consent that there will be survivalists. It is by dramatic law to have sympathetic characters with whom we travel on a journey. Their surprise and instinct push through a populous of Zombies who threaten to wipe out the human race by insatiable hunger alone. They map a journey to safe-ground. They hide out. They run. Inevitably, they find some weapon to bludgeon, blast, or blow-up the amassed throng to reach some impossible goal of survival. And, again, it is by a dramatic code that the film appeals to this survival by endurance.
The other side, the reason the film's have a strong impact, is the empathetic nature of the Zombies themselves, though this disrupts the norms of an "empathetic character." Zombies have no apparent character arc. Their linear characterization separates them from any leading role potential. Retrospectively, however, a Zombie proper follows the most simplistic rule of dramatic structure. During a zombie apocalypse based out of a virus, chemical spill, or space junk falling to earth (premise), a man or woman finds him or her self undead and craving human flesh (complication). Based on the tenants of Classical Hollywood structure, the action continues because we want to see what happens next. However, zombies have traditionally taken a backseat role to the survivors despite the pessimistic outcome of many films: Day of the Dead (Romero), Zombi 2 (Fulci), Dead Snow (Wirkola), Astro-Zombies (Mikels), Undead (Spierig), etc.
Rather than indulging any characterization, most zombie films maintain the rabble as a singular character of mass destruction, thus creating a schemata which dissolves any possible leading man, or woman, potential in the solitary zombie. Introduce exhibit A: Colin.
Colin (Price 2008) carries a reputation of the aforementioned type: the character with whom we sympathize, whose motives unapologetically captivate the audience, is the zombie himself. From bitten to biting, the story humanizes the title character, evolving the very type of drama which draws viewer to film. The sympathetic zombie has been more prevalent, in films such as Fido (2006) and I, Zombie (1998) in which a Zombie is given more humanity than the horde.
In this evolution, we have the chameleon that is the Zombie schemata. With its origins in horror, its conventions rooted in a primalism and loss of humanity, the Zombie has transcended its genesis and carried into comedy, drama, road-movies, and even romance (Boy Eats Girl (2005)). And with that, the lust is the same: the audience and the zombies desire blood - and no matter the genre - that is what they are going to get.
As a fact, it is perfectly okay to shoot zombies in the head, as we deem them abominations because they practice cannibalism. Loss of humanity aside, they are still of the human race, correct? Is it murder to kill a human who is now an undead flesh-eating mob member? You could assume that not much separates a zombie from a hungry jungle cat (or at least those man-eating tigers in Siberia).
However, the paradox of the zombie film resides in the stipend of, in a word, bloodlust. The audience, paying their share to go see a film promising zombie mayhem, desire the same blood, gore, and dismemberment that the zombies of the film kill to obtain. The motivations of the horde mirror the motivations of the audience to see the film. While we sit in our comfy theatre chairs, mildly understanding that the survivalists need to be identified with to move the story of the film, what we really want is exactly what the zombies want.
In the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake, we all sat, begging for the douche bag with the boat (and the death wish) to get devoured. Who did not cheer when the father from Night of the Living Dead (1968) got bit by his own daughter? What self-respecting audience member goes into a zombie film saying "Gee, Tina, I hope this isn't too gory!"
Too bad Tina's friend is so squeamish.
So, for the 90 minute road trip into the worst kind of apocalypse, the zombie motivations are kindred to the audience members. Harking back to the 1984 classic Return of the Living Dead, we reminisce the Undead's declaration for "Brains!" echoing our own desire for more: more brains, more guts, more red corn syrup laden cow intestines.
Not to violate our aesthetic distance, we consent that there will be survivalists. It is by dramatic law to have sympathetic characters with whom we travel on a journey. Their surprise and instinct push through a populous of Zombies who threaten to wipe out the human race by insatiable hunger alone. They map a journey to safe-ground. They hide out. They run. Inevitably, they find some weapon to bludgeon, blast, or blow-up the amassed throng to reach some impossible goal of survival. And, again, it is by a dramatic code that the film appeals to this survival by endurance.
The other side, the reason the film's have a strong impact, is the empathetic nature of the Zombies themselves, though this disrupts the norms of an "empathetic character." Zombies have no apparent character arc. Their linear characterization separates them from any leading role potential. Retrospectively, however, a Zombie proper follows the most simplistic rule of dramatic structure. During a zombie apocalypse based out of a virus, chemical spill, or space junk falling to earth (premise), a man or woman finds him or her self undead and craving human flesh (complication). Based on the tenants of Classical Hollywood structure, the action continues because we want to see what happens next. However, zombies have traditionally taken a backseat role to the survivors despite the pessimistic outcome of many films: Day of the Dead (Romero), Zombi 2 (Fulci), Dead Snow (Wirkola), Astro-Zombies (Mikels), Undead (Spierig), etc.
Rather than indulging any characterization, most zombie films maintain the rabble as a singular character of mass destruction, thus creating a schemata which dissolves any possible leading man, or woman, potential in the solitary zombie. Introduce exhibit A: Colin.
Colin (Price 2008) carries a reputation of the aforementioned type: the character with whom we sympathize, whose motives unapologetically captivate the audience, is the zombie himself. From bitten to biting, the story humanizes the title character, evolving the very type of drama which draws viewer to film. The sympathetic zombie has been more prevalent, in films such as Fido (2006) and I, Zombie (1998) in which a Zombie is given more humanity than the horde.In this evolution, we have the chameleon that is the Zombie schemata. With its origins in horror, its conventions rooted in a primalism and loss of humanity, the Zombie has transcended its genesis and carried into comedy, drama, road-movies, and even romance (Boy Eats Girl (2005)). And with that, the lust is the same: the audience and the zombies desire blood - and no matter the genre - that is what they are going to get.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
5 Reasons Why GREEN LANTERN Will Kick Your Ass
I'm going to take this opportunity to come out of the closet as it were and admit to you all that I am a massive comic book fan. The kind of fan that cheers when a character I love gets treated with respect (The Dark Knight), and grabs my torch and pitchfork when a studio drops trow and pisses all over one of them (I'm looking at you, Fox). All that being said, I'm the type of comic book fan that gets very optimistic when it looks like a film adaptation of a great character is going in a positive direction. Enter the Green Lantern; test pilot Hal Jordan is inducted into an intergalactic peacekeeping corps after an accident of chance saddles him with the most powerful weapon in the universe, a ring empowered by will to bring to life anything its bearer can imagine. With that premise in mind, let's take a look at 5 reasons Green Lantern will kick your ass in 2011.
1. Ryan Reynolds
Hal Jordan has been cast, and his name is Ryan Reynolds. He's been building a fan base for years but has yet to make the jump to full fledged movie star status, this could be it for him. This guy has charm and charisma coming out his ass as well as being a solid actor with gallons of leading man potential, and while I would prefer it if he actually got to play Deadpool (if you say he did in Wolverine, I will kick you in the shins), he seems just as right to bring the cocky pilot who overcomes great fear to life. Plus, I'm just gonna go ahead and say he's a good looking dude, and that always helps movies.
2. Martin Campbell
Pretty much every franchise this guy touches turns to gold. He's rebooted Bond twice, for Christ sake, and created the two greatest Bond films of the modern era as a result. He's a director that knows how to handle action and character, and he'll definitely give Green Lantern the polished, professional sheen it deserves. It's questionable whether or not he'll be able to handle the CGI effects the story will demand, but at this point there's no reason to doubt him. After all, Jon Favreau had absolutely no action or effects experience other than Space Jumanji (Zathura) when he made Iron Man.
3. The Script
I was luck enough to get my hands on an early draft of Greg Berlanti's screenplay a few months back and it was pretty pitch perfect. It touched on all the right beats and in my opinion tells the perfect introductory story for the Green Lantern and sets up enough threads that any sequels will have a lot of meat to them. At a lean 105 pages, it could stand to be a bit longer and flesh out a few of the characters, but for an early draft it was fantastic and definitely lets us know that the filmmakers are on the right track.
4. Special Effects Potential
We live in an age where anything you can think of can be done with a computer, and done well if you have the money and ingenuity. These days, to excite an audience, you have to give them something they've never seen before, and that's exactly what Green Lantern has the potential to do. Epic space battles, supersonic flight, catching F-22's in giant green fists, this movie is in the position to deliver stunning visuals and action to audiences that will blow away cars turning into robots and shooting each other. If done well, Green Lantern can be our generation's Star Wars.
5. Warner Brothers.
Sure, they're a major studio, a tiny part of a massive conglomerate out to make as much money as they can by reaching as many demographics as they can like any other studio. However, WB has shown over the last few years that they are prepared to take risks with comic book properties that few others would. Just look at Dark Knight compared with Wolverine, and think of the chances the former took that made it so superior in every single imaginable way to the latter. Hell, look at Watchmen. Whether you liked the movie or not, you have to admit it took balls to release an R rated, 3 hour comic book movie. WB has the wherewithal to release comic book films that are true to their characters and treat the source with respect.
All this I point out to you out there in the series of tubes we call the interwebs, so you will have the awareness and spread the hype. Green Lantern will kick all of our asses come 2011, or I will...probably just be really upset.
1. Ryan Reynolds
Hal Jordan has been cast, and his name is Ryan Reynolds. He's been building a fan base for years but has yet to make the jump to full fledged movie star status, this could be it for him. This guy has charm and charisma coming out his ass as well as being a solid actor with gallons of leading man potential, and while I would prefer it if he actually got to play Deadpool (if you say he did in Wolverine, I will kick you in the shins), he seems just as right to bring the cocky pilot who overcomes great fear to life. Plus, I'm just gonna go ahead and say he's a good looking dude, and that always helps movies.
2. Martin Campbell
Pretty much every franchise this guy touches turns to gold. He's rebooted Bond twice, for Christ sake, and created the two greatest Bond films of the modern era as a result. He's a director that knows how to handle action and character, and he'll definitely give Green Lantern the polished, professional sheen it deserves. It's questionable whether or not he'll be able to handle the CGI effects the story will demand, but at this point there's no reason to doubt him. After all, Jon Favreau had absolutely no action or effects experience other than Space Jumanji (Zathura) when he made Iron Man.
3. The Script
I was luck enough to get my hands on an early draft of Greg Berlanti's screenplay a few months back and it was pretty pitch perfect. It touched on all the right beats and in my opinion tells the perfect introductory story for the Green Lantern and sets up enough threads that any sequels will have a lot of meat to them. At a lean 105 pages, it could stand to be a bit longer and flesh out a few of the characters, but for an early draft it was fantastic and definitely lets us know that the filmmakers are on the right track.
4. Special Effects Potential
We live in an age where anything you can think of can be done with a computer, and done well if you have the money and ingenuity. These days, to excite an audience, you have to give them something they've never seen before, and that's exactly what Green Lantern has the potential to do. Epic space battles, supersonic flight, catching F-22's in giant green fists, this movie is in the position to deliver stunning visuals and action to audiences that will blow away cars turning into robots and shooting each other. If done well, Green Lantern can be our generation's Star Wars.
5. Warner Brothers.
Sure, they're a major studio, a tiny part of a massive conglomerate out to make as much money as they can by reaching as many demographics as they can like any other studio. However, WB has shown over the last few years that they are prepared to take risks with comic book properties that few others would. Just look at Dark Knight compared with Wolverine, and think of the chances the former took that made it so superior in every single imaginable way to the latter. Hell, look at Watchmen. Whether you liked the movie or not, you have to admit it took balls to release an R rated, 3 hour comic book movie. WB has the wherewithal to release comic book films that are true to their characters and treat the source with respect.
All this I point out to you out there in the series of tubes we call the interwebs, so you will have the awareness and spread the hype. Green Lantern will kick all of our asses come 2011, or I will...probably just be really upset.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Hand Drawn Whaaa?
*For the record: I consider Pixar and Disney very different entities, with very different work ethics.
It seems like for the last X number of years, traditional animation has slowly been dying in feature films. There have been great exceptions like Persepolis, Triplets of Bellevue (both French films, hmmm...), and various work from Japan (I'm looking at you Ghibli), but for the most part CG has taken over. Personally, I'm tired of it and only Pixar ever seems to consistently get it right (and Dreamworks on occasion). Every (non-Pixar) Disney attempt at it, like Meet the Robinsons, just leaves me wondering "why?"
With that said, I am REALLY hoping that this turns out the way I hope it's going to.
Princess and the Frog is my hope of redemption for a Disney gone wrong since my childhood. At Comic Con this year, I had the great privilege of seeing scenes and material from this film. We watched the scene where the "Prince" meets the bad guy, a musical number composed by Randy Newman.
Watching this sequence made me feel like I was 5 again.
It wasn't just the animation, which in high def looks stunning; some of the best hand drawn work in years! It was also the general "feel" of the film. Randy Newman has actually done a good job (from what I can tell) and composed an appropriate score for this. It was kind of a mix of the deal-with-the-devil qualities of Little Mermaid's "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and the spectacularly magical visual elements of "A Friend Like Me" from Aladdin. I couldn't have been happier with the way it was turning out, and although it will likely be sticking to the classic 90s formula of Disney... I'M FREAKIN' OK WITH THAT! Anything but the stupid Jonas Brothers/G-Force/CG Tinkerbell/Prince of Persia/Bad TV Movies crap that Disney has obsessed itself with for the past decade. If you're going to make films aimed at family audiences, pleeeaaaase return some of the qualities that actually enchanted me with Disney during my childhood. I can only hope, pray, and shake a decent sized fist at Disney to make sure that Princess and the Frog becomes what it should, a pure shot of childhood nostalgia and a resurgence of the medium for the industry.
A big thanks to John Lasseter, who has been pushing Disney to do this kind of stuff again for quite some time now.
Please go out and support this movie. Whether we like it or not, animation has a lot riding on this one.
P.S. I'm pissed at my friend, who gets to see an advanced screening of this film Wednesday. I hope she'll at least tell me how it is.
(A fun game: Take a shot for every time the word "hope" or hope related words are used in this article.)
It seems like for the last X number of years, traditional animation has slowly been dying in feature films. There have been great exceptions like Persepolis, Triplets of Bellevue (both French films, hmmm...), and various work from Japan (I'm looking at you Ghibli), but for the most part CG has taken over. Personally, I'm tired of it and only Pixar ever seems to consistently get it right (and Dreamworks on occasion). Every (non-Pixar) Disney attempt at it, like Meet the Robinsons, just leaves me wondering "why?"
With that said, I am REALLY hoping that this turns out the way I hope it's going to.
Princess and the Frog is my hope of redemption for a Disney gone wrong since my childhood. At Comic Con this year, I had the great privilege of seeing scenes and material from this film. We watched the scene where the "Prince" meets the bad guy, a musical number composed by Randy Newman.
Watching this sequence made me feel like I was 5 again.
It wasn't just the animation, which in high def looks stunning; some of the best hand drawn work in years! It was also the general "feel" of the film. Randy Newman has actually done a good job (from what I can tell) and composed an appropriate score for this. It was kind of a mix of the deal-with-the-devil qualities of Little Mermaid's "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and the spectacularly magical visual elements of "A Friend Like Me" from Aladdin. I couldn't have been happier with the way it was turning out, and although it will likely be sticking to the classic 90s formula of Disney... I'M FREAKIN' OK WITH THAT! Anything but the stupid Jonas Brothers/G-Force/CG Tinkerbell/Prince of Persia/Bad TV Movies crap that Disney has obsessed itself with for the past decade. If you're going to make films aimed at family audiences, pleeeaaaase return some of the qualities that actually enchanted me with Disney during my childhood. I can only hope, pray, and shake a decent sized fist at Disney to make sure that Princess and the Frog becomes what it should, a pure shot of childhood nostalgia and a resurgence of the medium for the industry.
A big thanks to John Lasseter, who has been pushing Disney to do this kind of stuff again for quite some time now.
Please go out and support this movie. Whether we like it or not, animation has a lot riding on this one.
P.S. I'm pissed at my friend, who gets to see an advanced screening of this film Wednesday. I hope she'll at least tell me how it is.
(A fun game: Take a shot for every time the word "hope" or hope related words are used in this article.)
Friday, November 13, 2009
Why Didn't They... (featuring Jurassic Park)
If you're like me, you often rewatch a film, over and over, until you've memorized every line, until you can tell whether Will Smith's dick hangs to the left or to the right, until you can blurt out how many people the T1000 transforms into without a moment's thought. I often rewatch films, somehow expecting that I might change the course of events. Watch out, Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, motherfucker's got a gun! No, Oldboy, don't touch dat ho, she be your daughter! No, fellowship of the ring, don't go into the mines of Moria or Gandalf shall be Balrog-killed! I'm not a fan of conflict, so in almost any film that I watch more than once, I find myself wishing to jump into the film and alter its outcome. Which is what I'm going to do....riiiight....abooooouuuutttt.....now.
Let us begin this first installment of Why Didn't They? with Jurassic Park, everyone's favorite film.
Why didn't they just clone peaceful herbivores? Were deadly, man-eating raptors and T-rexes really necessary? Morons.
Why did no one but Dr. Grant know that frogs could spontaneously change sex? Where did those fucking scientists get their degrees, University of Phoenix? DeVry? Jesus.
Why didn't Dr. Grant just ride in the fucking car with Timmy? Is talking about your area of expertise with an eager young dinosaur enthusiast really that bad? What an asshole. No wonder he didn't have any fucking kids and Ellie left his grumpy ass.
Why didn't they make Geoffrey the gatekeeper white? Then he wouldn't have died.
Why did everyone laugh at Dr. Grant when he presented his theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs? Do any of those people know the first thing about evolution? Who the fuck are those bystanders, anyway? A bunch of seventh day adventists on a field trip? Who just drives out into the middle of a vast, hot desert to see what the local paleontologists are up to? And what's the fucking deal with that little shit's attitude? I'm kind of glad Dr. Grant pretended to slit his belly open. AND WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE GUY WITH THE LONG CURLY HAIR AND THE DENIM BOOTY SHORTS?
Why didn't Timmy and Dr. Grant just move to the other side of the tree? Trees are cylindrical, you know. If a jeep is going to crush you, it is possible to like....climb to the other side.
Why didn't they make Sam Jackson the star of Jurassic Park 3, with a new superhuman, spear-chucking bionic arm (he's a scientist. work it out, mate), footlong hair, a loin cloth, and a deadly mission to seek vengeance against the raptor that took his limb all those years ago? Obviously he has been killing his way to the truth ever since. Maybe at the end he could find out that it was Dennis Nedry, who actually wasn't killed by the dilophosaurus and just really wanted a snack...a black, arm-shaped snack. OH SHIT, SURPRISE ENDING.
Why didn't Tim just climb down from the fence? What a selfish little shit. Is it too late to give a 12 year old shaken baby syndrome?
Why didn't they have pulled pork over coconut rice on the menu at the restaurant? Hmmm, Mr. Hammond? I THOUGHT YOU SPARED NO EXPENSE.
Why didn't they hire more Asian lab techs? BD Wong can only do so much. Maybe with some real experts they could have prevented this whole mess from happening.
Let us begin this first installment of Why Didn't They? with Jurassic Park, everyone's favorite film.
Why didn't they just clone peaceful herbivores? Were deadly, man-eating raptors and T-rexes really necessary? Morons.
Why did no one but Dr. Grant know that frogs could spontaneously change sex? Where did those fucking scientists get their degrees, University of Phoenix? DeVry? Jesus.
Why didn't Dr. Grant just ride in the fucking car with Timmy? Is talking about your area of expertise with an eager young dinosaur enthusiast really that bad? What an asshole. No wonder he didn't have any fucking kids and Ellie left his grumpy ass.
Why didn't they make Geoffrey the gatekeeper white? Then he wouldn't have died.
Why did everyone laugh at Dr. Grant when he presented his theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs? Do any of those people know the first thing about evolution? Who the fuck are those bystanders, anyway? A bunch of seventh day adventists on a field trip? Who just drives out into the middle of a vast, hot desert to see what the local paleontologists are up to? And what's the fucking deal with that little shit's attitude? I'm kind of glad Dr. Grant pretended to slit his belly open. AND WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE GUY WITH THE LONG CURLY HAIR AND THE DENIM BOOTY SHORTS?
Why didn't Timmy and Dr. Grant just move to the other side of the tree? Trees are cylindrical, you know. If a jeep is going to crush you, it is possible to like....climb to the other side.
Why didn't they make Sam Jackson the star of Jurassic Park 3, with a new superhuman, spear-chucking bionic arm (he's a scientist. work it out, mate), footlong hair, a loin cloth, and a deadly mission to seek vengeance against the raptor that took his limb all those years ago? Obviously he has been killing his way to the truth ever since. Maybe at the end he could find out that it was Dennis Nedry, who actually wasn't killed by the dilophosaurus and just really wanted a snack...a black, arm-shaped snack. OH SHIT, SURPRISE ENDING.
Why didn't Tim just climb down from the fence? What a selfish little shit. Is it too late to give a 12 year old shaken baby syndrome?
Why didn't they have pulled pork over coconut rice on the menu at the restaurant? Hmmm, Mr. Hammond? I THOUGHT YOU SPARED NO EXPENSE.
Why didn't they hire more Asian lab techs? BD Wong can only do so much. Maybe with some real experts they could have prevented this whole mess from happening.
Diversity, and Not Drawing Attention to it.
I'm quite certain that many of you saw Pixar's movie Up this year, which just came out on DVD and BluRay this week.
The recent DVD release of this film reminded me of some of the wonderful qualities that will no doubt give Pixar yet another best animated picture. I could go on and on about how this movie made me cry during the first 10 minutes, or how the animation is "Up" and above (pun) every other CG movie out there, or how it elevates animation storytelling to at least that of any live action film..., but I am more concerned about something else.
Up has Russel.
One joking description I had for others who wanted to know more about the movie was: "It's kinda like Gran Torino, but with balloons." Indeed, the racial qualities and ages of the two main characters are the same (White/Asian, old/young), but the movies couldn't be more different in every other regard. Where as Eastwood's work is devastatingly concerned with racism and social class, Up ignores the fact that a main character is Asian. He just is. There's no need to bring attention to it, like the most recent Die Hard movie and its Femme fatale Asian bad girl played by Maggie Q. I forget exactly what he says, but Bruce Willis makes some condescending remarks about her racial qualities that seemed completely unneeded and somewhat offensive. I could bring up countless shows that paint Asian women as dragon ladies (Grey's Anatomy) or where males are just naturally good at martial arts (Do I really have to back this one up?).
In Up, we are given a character that is simply a young child and not ONCE is a single comment made about the fact that he is Asian. This is how it's done people, you don't have to bang your audience over the head with racism to change prejudice (*cough* Crash *cough*). You show that, a lot of the time, people aren't really that different from one another. Subtlety is one of the best methods for making us see things a certain way, because outright opposition of our beliefs will invade our space and make us defensive. If one is presented with a very unobjectionable, cute child showing no signs of stereotype whatsoever...people just might think differently about it. Maybe Up alone isn't enough to make this happen, but if more movies start employing this logic, then the film world might be a more harmonious place.
Russel may very well be, one of the only mainstream instances of truly colorblind casting for Asian figures in all of American cinema.
What are your thoughts on minority (or even female) portrayals in popular media? Do there seem to be any other instances as genuine as this one out there?
Also, kudos to Disney/Pixar for finally creating packaging that makes sense. The BluRay of Up comes with the DVD version as well. I'm tired of knowing that the movies I'm still buying are already out of date, at least this way I can safely pick one package (stupid format wars). Disney is doing this for all of its new releases apparently.
I will probably be doing more posts about animation later on, since everyone else seems to be covering...everything else.
The recent DVD release of this film reminded me of some of the wonderful qualities that will no doubt give Pixar yet another best animated picture. I could go on and on about how this movie made me cry during the first 10 minutes, or how the animation is "Up" and above (pun) every other CG movie out there, or how it elevates animation storytelling to at least that of any live action film..., but I am more concerned about something else.
Up has Russel.
One joking description I had for others who wanted to know more about the movie was: "It's kinda like Gran Torino, but with balloons." Indeed, the racial qualities and ages of the two main characters are the same (White/Asian, old/young), but the movies couldn't be more different in every other regard. Where as Eastwood's work is devastatingly concerned with racism and social class, Up ignores the fact that a main character is Asian. He just is. There's no need to bring attention to it, like the most recent Die Hard movie and its Femme fatale Asian bad girl played by Maggie Q. I forget exactly what he says, but Bruce Willis makes some condescending remarks about her racial qualities that seemed completely unneeded and somewhat offensive. I could bring up countless shows that paint Asian women as dragon ladies (Grey's Anatomy) or where males are just naturally good at martial arts (Do I really have to back this one up?).
In Up, we are given a character that is simply a young child and not ONCE is a single comment made about the fact that he is Asian. This is how it's done people, you don't have to bang your audience over the head with racism to change prejudice (*cough* Crash *cough*). You show that, a lot of the time, people aren't really that different from one another. Subtlety is one of the best methods for making us see things a certain way, because outright opposition of our beliefs will invade our space and make us defensive. If one is presented with a very unobjectionable, cute child showing no signs of stereotype whatsoever...people just might think differently about it. Maybe Up alone isn't enough to make this happen, but if more movies start employing this logic, then the film world might be a more harmonious place.
Russel may very well be, one of the only mainstream instances of truly colorblind casting for Asian figures in all of American cinema.
What are your thoughts on minority (or even female) portrayals in popular media? Do there seem to be any other instances as genuine as this one out there?
Also, kudos to Disney/Pixar for finally creating packaging that makes sense. The BluRay of Up comes with the DVD version as well. I'm tired of knowing that the movies I'm still buying are already out of date, at least this way I can safely pick one package (stupid format wars). Disney is doing this for all of its new releases apparently.
I will probably be doing more posts about animation later on, since everyone else seems to be covering...everything else.
Trailer Comment Weekly, Clash Of The Titans
This week we take a peek at Louis Leterrier’s remake of Clash Of The Titans.
Now onto the peanut gallery!
Annie Wilkes:
As a preview Clash of the Titans 2010 does everything it needs to get thirteen year boys in the theater. I know the Hydra will be a great fight and the flash of Athenian bikini tells me the sex scene between Persius and Andromeda will no doubt be equivalent to the USA Network broadcast of Lena Headey. The visuals effectively build with the music, then as soon as Titans.Will.Clash flashes across the screen I remember this is clash of the fucking titans. A film with iconic animation and imagery has turned in to a big budget knock off of Hercules the Legendary Journeys. Not to undermine the hard working animators, keyers and cg artist who made this effort in money possible, but the scorpion creatures that tease us in the first shot of the trailer might as well be the spider robot from wild wild west. When we combine generic cg creatures with the lack of attempt to develop a lead past, we know he’s a guy who is going to do something, most likely about “this",the trailer ,and what I can only assume the film is going to be, is just as derivative and uninspired as the commercially metal instrumental that scores it.
Arlin Golden:
How long before they make a $100 mil remake of Xanadu? I can see this conversation happening alot when this comes out "Man that movie sucked" "I dunno man, that part with scorpion was sooooo siiiick"
Evan Koehne:
I thought we had gotten over mixing hard rock music, slow-motion action and buff, angry, homosexual Greco-Romans. That was a bad cocktail last time and it gave us all hangovers.
I'd see this for the novelty of Liam Neeson and giant scorpions occupying the same screen time.
Steven Ray Morris:
I haven’t heard the generic metal music over a historical epic since before Lord of the Rings. I realize it is something I missed. Giant Scorpions? Sign me up!
Omar Najam:
First of all, I had no idea they were remaking this movie. And by "this movie" I obviously mean 300. Second of all, I think technology has finally caught up for them to remake "Clash of the Titans" where the claymation looks good enough to pass as CGI, we really have made progress. And lastly, I was hesitant, I'm going to be honest, I thought "I don't think they can capture the essence of the original" but the trailer reassured me that "TITANS. WILL. CLASH" and you know... I was really in need of more titan clashing in my filmic life.
The release is set for March 26, 2010.
Clash Of The Titans on IMDB
Now onto the peanut gallery!
Annie Wilkes:
As a preview Clash of the Titans 2010 does everything it needs to get thirteen year boys in the theater. I know the Hydra will be a great fight and the flash of Athenian bikini tells me the sex scene between Persius and Andromeda will no doubt be equivalent to the USA Network broadcast of Lena Headey. The visuals effectively build with the music, then as soon as Titans.Will.Clash flashes across the screen I remember this is clash of the fucking titans. A film with iconic animation and imagery has turned in to a big budget knock off of Hercules the Legendary Journeys. Not to undermine the hard working animators, keyers and cg artist who made this effort in money possible, but the scorpion creatures that tease us in the first shot of the trailer might as well be the spider robot from wild wild west. When we combine generic cg creatures with the lack of attempt to develop a lead past, we know he’s a guy who is going to do something, most likely about “this",the trailer ,and what I can only assume the film is going to be, is just as derivative and uninspired as the commercially metal instrumental that scores it.
Arlin Golden:
How long before they make a $100 mil remake of Xanadu? I can see this conversation happening alot when this comes out "Man that movie sucked" "I dunno man, that part with scorpion was sooooo siiiick"
Evan Koehne:
I thought we had gotten over mixing hard rock music, slow-motion action and buff, angry, homosexual Greco-Romans. That was a bad cocktail last time and it gave us all hangovers.
I'd see this for the novelty of Liam Neeson and giant scorpions occupying the same screen time.
Steven Ray Morris:
I haven’t heard the generic metal music over a historical epic since before Lord of the Rings. I realize it is something I missed. Giant Scorpions? Sign me up!
Omar Najam:
First of all, I had no idea they were remaking this movie. And by "this movie" I obviously mean 300. Second of all, I think technology has finally caught up for them to remake "Clash of the Titans" where the claymation looks good enough to pass as CGI, we really have made progress. And lastly, I was hesitant, I'm going to be honest, I thought "I don't think they can capture the essence of the original" but the trailer reassured me that "TITANS. WILL. CLASH" and you know... I was really in need of more titan clashing in my filmic life.
The release is set for March 26, 2010.
Clash Of The Titans on IMDB
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
A Letter to Michael
Dear Michael Cera,
Why are you suddenly (and without my permission) being cast as all my favorite quasi-heroes?
[WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]
My good friend Kyle was the first to point out this stunning fact to me (and to create that amazingly accurate descriptor of the roles you are playing). I am a huge fan of both the "Scott Pilgrim" comic book series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, as well as the adolescent masterpiece novel "Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp" by C.D. Payne. Both of these works speak to me in different ways. "Youth in Revolt" felt like a novel getting inside my head, a novel that grasped the very essence of what it was like to be a young, sad, nerdy and unbelievably horny teenage boy. And "Scott Pilgrim" has given me a taste of what life as a twenty-something, filled with all it's sorrows and maddening frustrations and tender, slightly adult moments can be like, while also taking into account my love of arcade-style violence. Both characters have an innate humor towards life that seems completely unsolicited from the environment and people around them.
I read "Youth in Revolt" when I was 16, and I am reading "Scott Pilgrim" now that I am 22. Nick Twisp and Scott Pilgrim are 14 and 23, respectively. They are not only heroes, but role models, and I consider their stories a little look into my own personal life if it was just a bit more fantastical (I, for instance, have never had the opportunity to try to fake my own death and hide out in the woods dressed in women's clothing to be near my one true love, but I don't think it's very far off from something I am capable of doing).
And now you, Michael Cera, are going to be playing both of these roles.There is very little I can do (if I could) about your performances anymore, as both of these films are in post-production as we speak. However, Michael, I really just want to illuminate some of my own thoughts on the characters of Nick Twisp, Scott Pilgrim, and your acting career, if you don't mind me being a little personal with you. Call it a collection of musings… from an unknown film scholar hooligan… commenting on your work with no precedent… let's get started!
Nick Twisp, to me, is the perfect anti-model for young men. He is overly intelligent, keeps his heated hatred seething under a mask of wit and sarcasm, is incredibly obsessive over anything with a vagina and breasts, and has no concept of personal boundaries (his own or others'). And yet he is who we, as young males (or at least, all of my friends) wanted to be, because he gets away with murder (literally, kind of).
Now from your acting career, we have seen you play smart, confidently awkward, awkwardly confident and… well, that's about it. And don't get me wrong, because I'm not trying to bash you. You play that type very, very well. You have a natural knack for it, as anyone who has ever seen an episode of The Greatest Show Of All Time can attest to. But that's not enough to play Nick Twisp, who, like Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes fame), has a brain that is 3 times older than his body. Nick isn't just awkward, he's wry, he is actually confident, because he actually believes the crazy shit he is doing is okay. Casting worried-yet-sweet-puppy-dog faces to the female lead will not sell Nick Twisp, not in all of his evil genius mastermind mentality.
Scott Pilgrim, on the other hand, I have hope for. Admittedly, Scott has a penchant for being a lot happier than I think you have ever portrayed yourself to be on screen.
But, just as many of us were surprised and delighted how you grew up from kissing-cousin scenes in Arrested Development to taking-the-hot-girl's-clothes-off scenes in Superbad, I actually have confidence that you will wow us again with your burgeoning adulthood, that somehow that first scene with you and Ramona in bed can come off just as sweetly and intimately and grown up as it did in the comic book.
This weblog gives me a lot of promise. Giant weapons, fight scenes, and pitch-perfect costume design.
I have a lot more faith in you moving forward than I do for you regressing. Playing a young adolescent with Dr. Evil's brain is a tough thing to do, because it requires your body to act young and lascivious while your head acts like a mad scientist. I don't think that the trailer does much to quell my concerns.
In conclusion, Michael, I think you are developing (slowly) into a very well-rounded actor, but heed this: you have to work at it. If you keep taking the roles that Hollywood wants to market you in, you will become a character-type, and when the youthful charm runs out, you won't have much to go on. No one wants to watch an absurdly awkward older male make a fool of himself. (Oh wait.)
Keep 'em coming, Michael, you have hope yet.
But if you ruin my quasi-heroes for me I'ma break yah kneecaps.
Bryan Lee O'Malley On The Set Could Be A Good Sign.
http://www.scottpilgrim.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_Revolt
P.S. Is there any way you could tell me if you are actually signed on to the Arrested Development movie? "ShowBizBoyToyz.com" doesn't have any updates.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Best Adaptations
Pre-sold properties, studios love 'em because they come with a built in audience. Best selling book? A good chunk of the people who read will go see the movie. Classic cartoon show? Folks who grew up loving it will see it for the nostalgia, and will probably bring their kids too. Comic book character? Well, you get the idea. Hollywood loves to adapt preexisting properties, but they don't always love to do it well, so I feel it should be celebrated when they do. Here's a list of adaptations that got it right, crafting entertaining, original stories that both honor and enrich the source material.
1. The Godfather
Just to get this one out of the way because we all know it has to be on here. Young filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola takes Mario Puzo's stunning and engrossing novel and adapts it into one of the greatest films of all time. Perfect casting, a smart script that knew what to keep and what to cut from the story of the book, and brilliant editing- the baptism scene intercut with the murders commissioned by Michael Corleone is still talked about to this day- make this the great film that it is. The key, though, is the exact replication of the tone of Puzo's book on screen, and that's what makes it a stellar adaptation.
2. American Psycho (2000)
Writer/director Mary Harron does the impossible and maintains the humor and satire in Brett Easton Ellis' masterpiece, without losing the shock and horror of the actions of the main character. While Batman-to-be, Christian Bale, brings Patrick Bateman to life flawlessly, capturing both the terrifying and pathetic traits of the character. Every scene in the movie is in the book, sometimes wildly out of order, but this seems to elevate the book by serving as an examination into its themes as a commentary on the 1980's and yuppie culture. Don't just stare at it, eat it.
3. The Dark Knight (2008)
The brothers Nolan take the Batman mythos and transport it into a world that is very much like our own, maintaining the core themes of the mythology and adding the impact of verisimilitude. What makes this such a great translation of the Batman universe, over everything else the movie gets right, is the relationship between Batman and The Joker. Two opposite sides of the same dark coin (yeah, that's a Two Face jab for those paying attention), one representing order by extraordinary mean, the other representing chaos by extraordinary means. The two can't exist without eachother, which is the tragedy for Batman, and pure joy for the Joker.
4. The Adams Family (1991)
That's right, the creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky family that started as a series of illustrations by cartoonist Charles Addams, and was brought to life in a 1964 live action sitcom, got their first big screen treatment in Orion Pictures' The Addams Family, starring the always great Raul Julia as Gomez Addams, and the always oddly attracting Angelica Huston as his wife, Morticia. The film did what very, very, few tv to film adaptations manage to do and presented a faithful (in my opinion superior to pre-existing media) depiction of the characters in an original story that just felt right. The tone and humor the series was popular for gets elevated through the macabre wit of the film, and also has the added bonus of making guys everywhere who stare at Christina Ricci's amazing rack nowadays feel really guilty.
5. High Fidelity (2000)
One of my personal favorite books and movies, this John Cusack vehicle has the distinction of being one of the few works that manages to successfully translate its story across the pond, with novel taking place mostly in London and the film being set in Chicago. With that in mind, it's astounding how well the film, directed by Stephen Frears and written by Cusack and his frequent collaborators, captures the soul of the book so well. It's like an uncomfortable look in the mirror for any man who may favor his record (or ahem DVD) collection over the women in his life. It's also a love letter to music and the effect it has on us, and the movie translates that perfectly.
1. The Godfather
Just to get this one out of the way because we all know it has to be on here. Young filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola takes Mario Puzo's stunning and engrossing novel and adapts it into one of the greatest films of all time. Perfect casting, a smart script that knew what to keep and what to cut from the story of the book, and brilliant editing- the baptism scene intercut with the murders commissioned by Michael Corleone is still talked about to this day- make this the great film that it is. The key, though, is the exact replication of the tone of Puzo's book on screen, and that's what makes it a stellar adaptation.
2. American Psycho (2000)
Writer/director Mary Harron does the impossible and maintains the humor and satire in Brett Easton Ellis' masterpiece, without losing the shock and horror of the actions of the main character. While Batman-to-be, Christian Bale, brings Patrick Bateman to life flawlessly, capturing both the terrifying and pathetic traits of the character. Every scene in the movie is in the book, sometimes wildly out of order, but this seems to elevate the book by serving as an examination into its themes as a commentary on the 1980's and yuppie culture. Don't just stare at it, eat it.
3. The Dark Knight (2008)
The brothers Nolan take the Batman mythos and transport it into a world that is very much like our own, maintaining the core themes of the mythology and adding the impact of verisimilitude. What makes this such a great translation of the Batman universe, over everything else the movie gets right, is the relationship between Batman and The Joker. Two opposite sides of the same dark coin (yeah, that's a Two Face jab for those paying attention), one representing order by extraordinary mean, the other representing chaos by extraordinary means. The two can't exist without eachother, which is the tragedy for Batman, and pure joy for the Joker.
4. The Adams Family (1991)
That's right, the creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky family that started as a series of illustrations by cartoonist Charles Addams, and was brought to life in a 1964 live action sitcom, got their first big screen treatment in Orion Pictures' The Addams Family, starring the always great Raul Julia as Gomez Addams, and the always oddly attracting Angelica Huston as his wife, Morticia. The film did what very, very, few tv to film adaptations manage to do and presented a faithful (in my opinion superior to pre-existing media) depiction of the characters in an original story that just felt right. The tone and humor the series was popular for gets elevated through the macabre wit of the film, and also has the added bonus of making guys everywhere who stare at Christina Ricci's amazing rack nowadays feel really guilty.
5. High Fidelity (2000)
One of my personal favorite books and movies, this John Cusack vehicle has the distinction of being one of the few works that manages to successfully translate its story across the pond, with novel taking place mostly in London and the film being set in Chicago. With that in mind, it's astounding how well the film, directed by Stephen Frears and written by Cusack and his frequent collaborators, captures the soul of the book so well. It's like an uncomfortable look in the mirror for any man who may favor his record (or ahem DVD) collection over the women in his life. It's also a love letter to music and the effect it has on us, and the movie translates that perfectly.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
I Love You, but Please Don't.
Two years after the film came out, inspiring young boys everywhere to rename their blood-brother broods to "Project Mayhem", I read Fight Club. In my intellectual infancy, the book was like nothing I had every read before (mostly because before I had always been forced to read). As I so pretentiously beamed: it read as my mind worked and thus made sense to me. I then did what every inflated ego would do in this situation and saw the film, expecting little on my investment. To my ultimate surprise, it passed muster.
Now, obviously, the greatness of the film is a manifest of all the pieces: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, Jim Uhls, and, of course, the Dust Brothers; I do not feel I need to defend of it. Then comes 2008. Then comes Choke. The novel appeared in 2001, the same year I was timidly flipping the pages of Fight Club, and received stunning reviews. In 2005, I read the 293 work and and still amazed that it only took Palahniuk 293 pages to capture every aspect of every character he wanted to capture. I still attribute one of the most defining character moments in any work of art I have ever seen or read is the vision of Victor's mother switching brunette hair dye into a blond box.
I may be missing the point.
Choke was not a bad film. It included everything that needed to be included in the story. It was true to the book, with some revisions. It was humorous. Cathartic. Spiritual. Messy. Yahda Yahda.
See, though, it wasn't the novel.
There is something intrinsic about the novel that was lost in the film.
It's no secret that Chuck's books are going to continue to be adapted. According to imdb.com, Rant, Survivor, and Invisible Monsters are already in development. Go see for yourself, and you'll note that I have left one out.
Haunted.
Haunted is my favorite novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. Featuring 23 stories ranging from insanity to espionage, the novel is wonderfully intercut with the 19 authors' tale of imminent demise. Their pervasive plots to sabotage their "writer's retreat" trap them in a cage of their own making, and we learn that these crafty authors are more experienced in tragedy than we originally realized.
Of course, that's not even the half of it. His longest work, totaling 411 pages paperback, and donning a brilliant glow-in-the-dark cover, is a spine-tingling, vomit-inducing heart attack of prose. Not to sound like a sound-bite or radio plug, this book will fuck you up. And here it sits, begging for at least an "R" rating, in development.
The film has been fast-tracked by Brian Levy's new company, New School Media, and has already acquired a writer/director in Belgium filmmaker Koen Mortier, who's building his resume with films such as Ex Drummer (2007) and A Hard Day's Work (1997). His work has a knack for grunge appeal, augmenting audience perception with intense and frantic camerawork that heightens tension and, sometimes, anxiety. As happy as I am to see that Hollywood will not get the chance to contaminate the adaptation, I still make the plea:
Please Dont!
Before, I mentioned an intrinsic quality that a Palahniuk novel has that cannot translate to the audio-visual realm.
And that's it, Palahniuk is unafraid to offend. His raunchy and raw descriptions, which actually read as well-described observations, are left on the page with no apologies. And that's okay, because it's a novel, and there are different rules. Play on a theme hard enough, and you may get lucky in translation (again, look at Fight Club).
But Haunted is like the "7 words you can't say on television" of novels. And I will plead, just one more time. Please, Please Don't.
I can already see the corn and peanuts.
Now, obviously, the greatness of the film is a manifest of all the pieces: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, Jim Uhls, and, of course, the Dust Brothers; I do not feel I need to defend of it. Then comes 2008. Then comes Choke. The novel appeared in 2001, the same year I was timidly flipping the pages of Fight Club, and received stunning reviews. In 2005, I read the 293 work and and still amazed that it only took Palahniuk 293 pages to capture every aspect of every character he wanted to capture. I still attribute one of the most defining character moments in any work of art I have ever seen or read is the vision of Victor's mother switching brunette hair dye into a blond box.
I may be missing the point.
Choke was not a bad film. It included everything that needed to be included in the story. It was true to the book, with some revisions. It was humorous. Cathartic. Spiritual. Messy. Yahda Yahda.
See, though, it wasn't the novel.
There is something intrinsic about the novel that was lost in the film.
It's no secret that Chuck's books are going to continue to be adapted. According to imdb.com, Rant, Survivor, and Invisible Monsters are already in development. Go see for yourself, and you'll note that I have left one out.
Haunted.
Haunted is my favorite novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. Featuring 23 stories ranging from insanity to espionage, the novel is wonderfully intercut with the 19 authors' tale of imminent demise. Their pervasive plots to sabotage their "writer's retreat" trap them in a cage of their own making, and we learn that these crafty authors are more experienced in tragedy than we originally realized.
Of course, that's not even the half of it. His longest work, totaling 411 pages paperback, and donning a brilliant glow-in-the-dark cover, is a spine-tingling, vomit-inducing heart attack of prose. Not to sound like a sound-bite or radio plug, this book will fuck you up. And here it sits, begging for at least an "R" rating, in development.
The film has been fast-tracked by Brian Levy's new company, New School Media, and has already acquired a writer/director in Belgium filmmaker Koen Mortier, who's building his resume with films such as Ex Drummer (2007) and A Hard Day's Work (1997). His work has a knack for grunge appeal, augmenting audience perception with intense and frantic camerawork that heightens tension and, sometimes, anxiety. As happy as I am to see that Hollywood will not get the chance to contaminate the adaptation, I still make the plea:
Please Dont!
Before, I mentioned an intrinsic quality that a Palahniuk novel has that cannot translate to the audio-visual realm.
And that's it, Palahniuk is unafraid to offend. His raunchy and raw descriptions, which actually read as well-described observations, are left on the page with no apologies. And that's okay, because it's a novel, and there are different rules. Play on a theme hard enough, and you may get lucky in translation (again, look at Fight Club).
But Haunted is like the "7 words you can't say on television" of novels. And I will plead, just one more time. Please, Please Don't.
I can already see the corn and peanuts.
Inspiring Failures
Sometimes it is just more interesting to see the movies that go for broke and fail. The movies that just try too hard and drop the ball or have moments of brilliance among mediocrity are in these author’s eyes (20/20 I might add) often more inspiring than any so called “cinema classics.”
So below I will present five inspiring films treading the line between brilliant and awful.
I Am Legend
I love me some Will Smith and what better than a whole two-hour epic featuring essentially Will Smith alone for us to oogle at. The sad thing about this film is that the first two-thirds of the film is a brilliant and tense journey following a man’s deteriorating sanity. Once the third act kicks in it shits all over the film and basically reduces the film to a brainless schlocky action picture with cheap special effects and a protagonist that unlearns everything they have known up until that point.
There has never been a turn so disappointing and disheartening. This could have been a new classic.
I Am Legend on IMDB
Revolutionary Road
Essentially this film is a pseudo-sequel to Titanic, if Jack had lived. It is a cynical and bleak film that puts Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio back together again. They basically scream at each other and yell despicable things for two hours and work with loads of clunky dialogue, but it works for me.
A wonderful score by Thomas Newman, excellent production design and the sheer visceral feel of two top actors redeem Sam Mendes's lack of direction and the terribly structured script. A feel good movie this is not, but when you feel like those characters do, it’s bliss.
Revolutionary Road on IMDB
my review of the film
The Fourth Kind
Fresh from viewing this, I found it perfectly in line with these inspiring, but faltering films. That it tries way too hard to sell its premise as fact is the biggest misstep here. My crush Milla Jovivich does a serviceable job, but is horribly miscast. The “real” Dr. Tyler in the film and many of the “real” footage elements are more thoroughly convincing than any of the reenactments.
The interplay between the “real” footage and the reenactment is the most fascinating element, using various mediums (tape recordings, session videos, environmental time-lapse) and editing them together in a frenetic and thrilling way. I hope filmmakers take note of that element and expand upon it.
The Fourth Kind
Cloverfield
The biggest flaw in this film is the discord between the content and the form. Telling a traditional dramatic story cannot work if viewing it is based on your annoying best friend holding a video camera. Why would your bud keep the camera on as your friends are dying and people are crying, etc. etc.?
The film completely fails as a narrative, but visually, it shines. The integration of such wonderful special effects with handheld cameras is a feast to behold. And the plotting of seeds into a potential Cloverfield-universe works well because they aren’t clues forced onto the audience. They are merely hidden in the background for us to discover. Not even the characters know.
Cloverfield on IMDB
Southland Tales
This is the granddaddy of all trainwrecks. It fails on every level as a satire, a piece of entertainment and as a narrative. What should have been a three-hour epic mind-bender with comics, viral campaigns and political bite, this film was reedited so many times it is literally incomprehensible.
I find it inspiring because I know what Richard Kelly was aiming for, and it was supposed to be fucking epic. It was supposed to be Dr. Strangelove with a sci-fi setting. The Apocalypse (with a capitol “A”), Nuclear Bombs, cloning, conspiracy theories, Neo-Marxists played by SNL cast members, Sarah Michelle Geller and Justin Timberlake giving fantastically delicious performances, references to T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost, music by The Pixies, the list goes on and on of all the wonderful things contained in this film. It is confounding that the film is nearly unwatchable, but at the same time one of the most ambitious films made in the last twenty years.
Southland Tales on IMDB
It is easy to play it safe and do what you know, but as Godard apparently said (I can’t find the quote anymore), “Do what you don’t know.”
So as much as some of these films fall flat on their face, I find this imperfectness refreshing, inspiring and real.
So below I will present five inspiring films treading the line between brilliant and awful.
I Am Legend
I love me some Will Smith and what better than a whole two-hour epic featuring essentially Will Smith alone for us to oogle at. The sad thing about this film is that the first two-thirds of the film is a brilliant and tense journey following a man’s deteriorating sanity. Once the third act kicks in it shits all over the film and basically reduces the film to a brainless schlocky action picture with cheap special effects and a protagonist that unlearns everything they have known up until that point.
There has never been a turn so disappointing and disheartening. This could have been a new classic.
I Am Legend on IMDB
Revolutionary Road
Essentially this film is a pseudo-sequel to Titanic, if Jack had lived. It is a cynical and bleak film that puts Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio back together again. They basically scream at each other and yell despicable things for two hours and work with loads of clunky dialogue, but it works for me.
A wonderful score by Thomas Newman, excellent production design and the sheer visceral feel of two top actors redeem Sam Mendes's lack of direction and the terribly structured script. A feel good movie this is not, but when you feel like those characters do, it’s bliss.
Revolutionary Road on IMDB
my review of the film
The Fourth Kind
Fresh from viewing this, I found it perfectly in line with these inspiring, but faltering films. That it tries way too hard to sell its premise as fact is the biggest misstep here. My crush Milla Jovivich does a serviceable job, but is horribly miscast. The “real” Dr. Tyler in the film and many of the “real” footage elements are more thoroughly convincing than any of the reenactments.
The interplay between the “real” footage and the reenactment is the most fascinating element, using various mediums (tape recordings, session videos, environmental time-lapse) and editing them together in a frenetic and thrilling way. I hope filmmakers take note of that element and expand upon it.
The Fourth Kind
Cloverfield
The biggest flaw in this film is the discord between the content and the form. Telling a traditional dramatic story cannot work if viewing it is based on your annoying best friend holding a video camera. Why would your bud keep the camera on as your friends are dying and people are crying, etc. etc.?
The film completely fails as a narrative, but visually, it shines. The integration of such wonderful special effects with handheld cameras is a feast to behold. And the plotting of seeds into a potential Cloverfield-universe works well because they aren’t clues forced onto the audience. They are merely hidden in the background for us to discover. Not even the characters know.
Cloverfield on IMDB
Southland Tales
This is the granddaddy of all trainwrecks. It fails on every level as a satire, a piece of entertainment and as a narrative. What should have been a three-hour epic mind-bender with comics, viral campaigns and political bite, this film was reedited so many times it is literally incomprehensible.
I find it inspiring because I know what Richard Kelly was aiming for, and it was supposed to be fucking epic. It was supposed to be Dr. Strangelove with a sci-fi setting. The Apocalypse (with a capitol “A”), Nuclear Bombs, cloning, conspiracy theories, Neo-Marxists played by SNL cast members, Sarah Michelle Geller and Justin Timberlake giving fantastically delicious performances, references to T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost, music by The Pixies, the list goes on and on of all the wonderful things contained in this film. It is confounding that the film is nearly unwatchable, but at the same time one of the most ambitious films made in the last twenty years.
Southland Tales on IMDB
It is easy to play it safe and do what you know, but as Godard apparently said (I can’t find the quote anymore), “Do what you don’t know.”
So as much as some of these films fall flat on their face, I find this imperfectness refreshing, inspiring and real.
A Letter to George
Dear George Lucas,
You know I love you. Well, perhaps you don't. In fact, I'm almost certain you know nothing about me, Evan Orion Koehne, self-proclaimed Star Wars fan. But let me paint you a picture: a young boy, seven years old. No television, hippie parents who won't let him have a coca-cola, home-schooled and playing in his backyard. And no friends, unless you count his sister. Life is simple and good for him. He loves life, loves his family, and likes to watch movies.
Then one day he watches Star Wars: A New Hope. And it changes his life.
Suddenly space isn't just something he doesn't have much of in his room, it's a place where spaceship chases and smuggling rings and intergalactic intrigue take place. Suddenly words like "Millennium" and "Falcon," uninteresting words at best, have been transformed into something that conjures up adventure, excitement, and daring-do. Suddenly, Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and Threepio and R2 aren't just names. They are friends. And suddenly, movies aren't just something he likes anymore. They are something he loves, something he cherishes, something he spends waking moments thinking about and planning and developing and shooting. Suddenly, this boy realizes that life can have a purpose, and this boy realizes what he wants to do for the rest of his: Make movies.
That boy was me, if you haven't figured it out. It's hard to get much past you, George.
Flash-forward 15 years. That boy (me) is now the recent recipient of a Film & Media Studies bachelor degree from the University of California. He writes scripts, he edits, he makes movies. Many things have changed about life goals and ideals (I still have not found a reasonable way to make Legos talk to me, and I'm betting I will never walk on the moon and shoot fireworks off of it), but at the core, I am still as excited, as elated, as passionate about that one thing I knew I wanted to do when I was seven years old: Making and admiring movies. I find it hard to admit how easy it is to pinpoint where my love of movies comes from, but you, Mr. Lucas, are almost single-handedly responsible for taking me down this path that I love so much.
So George, now you know, I really do love you. Anything I say to you can't be filled with malice, or hatred, or ill-intent. So it is with all honesty and earnestness, and a strain in my voice bordering on a begging plea: STOP MAKING MOVIES WHERE PEOPLE HAVE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER.
My thinking is this: you are excellent at crafting visuals. You are one of "Kurosawa's children," after all. You know when to hit beats in a story to keep it interesting. You can direct action and action sequences with seeming ease, and you, like many men who haven't quite learned to stop being boys, know when a good explosion is needed. I could go on about the way you are a genius at composing shots that use incredibly sparse visuals to convey all the story we need as well as crafting moving canvasses that skillfully paint epic crowds of far-away lands. So why not start making silent movies, where the visuals do all the talking?
Because, let's face it George, you are terrible with anything that has to do with dialogue. From writing unreadable lines (Harrison Ford once said, "You can read it but you sure as hell can't say it,") to not giving two shits about your actors (Your most common comment from behind the camera: "Good, but do it faster."), and even creating characters that seem to have speech impediments (coincidentally the most hated thing you have ever created), you are horrendous in all facets of creating dialogue-driven material of any kind on the screen. Is it a wonder that The Empire Strikes Back, universally hailed by many as the best film in the Star Wars canon, was co-written by Lawrence Kasdan, the man responsible for movies like The Big Chill, Grand Canyon, and Dreamcatcher? (Okay, we can ignore that last one.) All in all, I believe that there is absolutely no reason you should continue making movies that rely at all on words, written or spoken, in any form; and that the practices you maintain to this day are only detrimental to your image, your abilities as a story-teller and perhaps most importantly, your movies.
Shall I site precedent? I think so.
In the Episode II documentary "State of the Art: The Pre-visualization of Episode II," you yourself have said, "The kinds of movies I make… are very action-oriented, very visually complicated." So it's good that you recognize this about yourself. You are incredibly intricate, precise, and scholarly when you describe your ideas of motion, and how to create motion on the screen. It's actually quite inspiring. Everyone of your pre-viz and animatics staff says you have very specific motion directions, and because of that pre-visualization is obviously a large part of your process.
Now, you talk about the way that your new digital process is creating "a new way to create a movies… it's more like cooking," where you can take elements of a shot, almost years apart, and create the shot you see in your head. According to Producer Rick McCallum, all you wrote out for the elaborate 10-minute "Clone War" sequence in the film was "And all hell breaks loose." This is a testament to your skills as a visual and computer-savvy director, it also points to your lack of skills as a writer. Did you really have no ideas as to how to put this down on the page? With all the emphasis you put on pre-visualization, it's a surprise to me that you don't have a pre-writing department to keep you on track. It would more than likely be the equivalent to a college-level Intro to Creative Writing class.
In the Episode III Documentary "Within A Minute," how far into pre-production are you when you unfalteringly remark "Gee, I should start working on the script?" 5 months. Yes, that's right. This goes beyond mere thoughtlessness, this is almost intentional disregard for screenwriting and movie-making criteria. George, this hurts me.
I honestly can't always get behind flimsy arguments about the prequels, by so-called "fans" who are really only bitching about the movie they wanted to see, not the one you made. It's your story, you have a right to make it the way you want. However, what we all learn from making movies and what you seem to be adamant about ignoring, is that if you have a story you should try to tell it well. Ignoring the process of creating a script and then filming it robs you of the opportunity to have structure. Before you know it the set pieces and chase sequences are no longer beats in your story, they are your story. And honestly, those are some of the best parts of your films anyway, so why even bother putting in long, tedious sections of horrendous dialogue?
My point, George, is you need to play to your strengths. Writing is not amongst them. Even your plots are derived from other places (Many of us know about the "Hidden Fortress" plot structure rip-off), so why not start making movies where dialogue just… isn't that important? Wall-E has proven it can be done. You seem to be the perfect candidate for the job. I was actually quite excited when I heard about Red Tails, your WWII fighter pilot dogfight movie. I'm sad now to see that the imdb page lists you only as a writer and a producer.
I appreciate the way you like to tinker with your movies to tweak them in just the right way. It is that perfectionist attitude that in fact endeared me to you in the first place. But the fact is you have to have a story to be tinkering with. A story is something to hone, not something to blindly throw bits around inside until something in the end is assembled. And between love scenes that merely ring comical in their back-and-forth, almost Abbot & Costello-esque repartee, exposition scenes where human actors are stiffer than the CGI characters, and heated moments when you can't even get Samuel L. Jackson to play "angry," I'm tired of watching this all go down the whole. All I'm saying is, yes, play. But write a script first, and the next time, please make sure no one has to talk. George, stop making the Star Wars franchise your lifes work as a director and start making silent movies (or, "non-conventional dialogue" movies, if you prefer). I'm begging you.
Sincerely yours,
Evan K.
P.S. If I sent you my original 1982 Boba Fett 12" Action Doll, would you autograph it? I bet it'll be worth a fortune one day.
You know I love you. Well, perhaps you don't. In fact, I'm almost certain you know nothing about me, Evan Orion Koehne, self-proclaimed Star Wars fan. But let me paint you a picture: a young boy, seven years old. No television, hippie parents who won't let him have a coca-cola, home-schooled and playing in his backyard. And no friends, unless you count his sister. Life is simple and good for him. He loves life, loves his family, and likes to watch movies.
Then one day he watches Star Wars: A New Hope. And it changes his life.
Suddenly space isn't just something he doesn't have much of in his room, it's a place where spaceship chases and smuggling rings and intergalactic intrigue take place. Suddenly words like "Millennium" and "Falcon," uninteresting words at best, have been transformed into something that conjures up adventure, excitement, and daring-do. Suddenly, Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and Threepio and R2 aren't just names. They are friends. And suddenly, movies aren't just something he likes anymore. They are something he loves, something he cherishes, something he spends waking moments thinking about and planning and developing and shooting. Suddenly, this boy realizes that life can have a purpose, and this boy realizes what he wants to do for the rest of his: Make movies.
That boy was me, if you haven't figured it out. It's hard to get much past you, George.
Flash-forward 15 years. That boy (me) is now the recent recipient of a Film & Media Studies bachelor degree from the University of California. He writes scripts, he edits, he makes movies. Many things have changed about life goals and ideals (I still have not found a reasonable way to make Legos talk to me, and I'm betting I will never walk on the moon and shoot fireworks off of it), but at the core, I am still as excited, as elated, as passionate about that one thing I knew I wanted to do when I was seven years old: Making and admiring movies. I find it hard to admit how easy it is to pinpoint where my love of movies comes from, but you, Mr. Lucas, are almost single-handedly responsible for taking me down this path that I love so much.
So George, now you know, I really do love you. Anything I say to you can't be filled with malice, or hatred, or ill-intent. So it is with all honesty and earnestness, and a strain in my voice bordering on a begging plea: STOP MAKING MOVIES WHERE PEOPLE HAVE TO TALK TO EACH OTHER.
My thinking is this: you are excellent at crafting visuals. You are one of "Kurosawa's children," after all. You know when to hit beats in a story to keep it interesting. You can direct action and action sequences with seeming ease, and you, like many men who haven't quite learned to stop being boys, know when a good explosion is needed. I could go on about the way you are a genius at composing shots that use incredibly sparse visuals to convey all the story we need as well as crafting moving canvasses that skillfully paint epic crowds of far-away lands. So why not start making silent movies, where the visuals do all the talking?
Because, let's face it George, you are terrible with anything that has to do with dialogue. From writing unreadable lines (Harrison Ford once said, "You can read it but you sure as hell can't say it,") to not giving two shits about your actors (Your most common comment from behind the camera: "Good, but do it faster."), and even creating characters that seem to have speech impediments (coincidentally the most hated thing you have ever created), you are horrendous in all facets of creating dialogue-driven material of any kind on the screen. Is it a wonder that The Empire Strikes Back, universally hailed by many as the best film in the Star Wars canon, was co-written by Lawrence Kasdan, the man responsible for movies like The Big Chill, Grand Canyon, and Dreamcatcher? (Okay, we can ignore that last one.) All in all, I believe that there is absolutely no reason you should continue making movies that rely at all on words, written or spoken, in any form; and that the practices you maintain to this day are only detrimental to your image, your abilities as a story-teller and perhaps most importantly, your movies.
Shall I site precedent? I think so.
In the Episode II documentary "State of the Art: The Pre-visualization of Episode II," you yourself have said, "The kinds of movies I make… are very action-oriented, very visually complicated." So it's good that you recognize this about yourself. You are incredibly intricate, precise, and scholarly when you describe your ideas of motion, and how to create motion on the screen. It's actually quite inspiring. Everyone of your pre-viz and animatics staff says you have very specific motion directions, and because of that pre-visualization is obviously a large part of your process.
Now, you talk about the way that your new digital process is creating "a new way to create a movies… it's more like cooking," where you can take elements of a shot, almost years apart, and create the shot you see in your head. According to Producer Rick McCallum, all you wrote out for the elaborate 10-minute "Clone War" sequence in the film was "And all hell breaks loose." This is a testament to your skills as a visual and computer-savvy director, it also points to your lack of skills as a writer. Did you really have no ideas as to how to put this down on the page? With all the emphasis you put on pre-visualization, it's a surprise to me that you don't have a pre-writing department to keep you on track. It would more than likely be the equivalent to a college-level Intro to Creative Writing class.
In the Episode III Documentary "Within A Minute," how far into pre-production are you when you unfalteringly remark "Gee, I should start working on the script?" 5 months. Yes, that's right. This goes beyond mere thoughtlessness, this is almost intentional disregard for screenwriting and movie-making criteria. George, this hurts me.
I honestly can't always get behind flimsy arguments about the prequels, by so-called "fans" who are really only bitching about the movie they wanted to see, not the one you made. It's your story, you have a right to make it the way you want. However, what we all learn from making movies and what you seem to be adamant about ignoring, is that if you have a story you should try to tell it well. Ignoring the process of creating a script and then filming it robs you of the opportunity to have structure. Before you know it the set pieces and chase sequences are no longer beats in your story, they are your story. And honestly, those are some of the best parts of your films anyway, so why even bother putting in long, tedious sections of horrendous dialogue?
My point, George, is you need to play to your strengths. Writing is not amongst them. Even your plots are derived from other places (Many of us know about the "Hidden Fortress" plot structure rip-off), so why not start making movies where dialogue just… isn't that important? Wall-E has proven it can be done. You seem to be the perfect candidate for the job. I was actually quite excited when I heard about Red Tails, your WWII fighter pilot dogfight movie. I'm sad now to see that the imdb page lists you only as a writer and a producer.
I appreciate the way you like to tinker with your movies to tweak them in just the right way. It is that perfectionist attitude that in fact endeared me to you in the first place. But the fact is you have to have a story to be tinkering with. A story is something to hone, not something to blindly throw bits around inside until something in the end is assembled. And between love scenes that merely ring comical in their back-and-forth, almost Abbot & Costello-esque repartee, exposition scenes where human actors are stiffer than the CGI characters, and heated moments when you can't even get Samuel L. Jackson to play "angry," I'm tired of watching this all go down the whole. All I'm saying is, yes, play. But write a script first, and the next time, please make sure no one has to talk. George, stop making the Star Wars franchise your lifes work as a director and start making silent movies (or, "non-conventional dialogue" movies, if you prefer). I'm begging you.
Sincerely yours,
Evan K.
P.S. If I sent you my original 1982 Boba Fett 12" Action Doll, would you autograph it? I bet it'll be worth a fortune one day.
Friday, November 6, 2009
2009: Bringin' Sci Fi Back?
It's pretty much fact that science fiction cinema had its heyday back in the 1970's and to a lesser extent the 1980's, with the genre stretched from thought provoking parables like Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odessy, to fantasy space operas like Star Wars, to gritty visions of humanity's future like Blade Runner. After that strong 20-ish year run, Sci Fi has occupied a place of neglected bastard-childism, with it's strong entries more thoroughly entrenched within larger genres like horror and action. However, after slight glimpses of the genre reaching back up from the ashes, with films like Danny Boyle's Sunshine and arguably the new Battlestar Galactica showing us what the genre could be. With those films as the exception, Sci Fi has been relegated to a minor role in the cinematic landscape, often the foundation for the most egregious direct-to-dvd schlock and George Lucas' psycho-sexual little man fantasies called the prequel trilogy...until now.
2009 has become the official year of Science Fiction, with the genre making its triumphant return over the course of a summer that most thought would be lackluster at best. Starting with May's release of JJ Abrams' Star Trek, movie that brought back the fun action fantasy of the orginal Star Wars trilogy, with an exciting, hero's journey-based adventure story, great special effects, extremely likeable characters and kickass action. Sure, some old-school Trek fans were a bit put off by this entry in the series' turn toward a more crowd pleasing tone and its closeness to the Star Wars franchise, but a higher quality, more fun science fiction flick can't be found within the last decade.
Next up, in June, would come a successor to the deeply thoughtful, intense practical and model effects put forth by films like Blade Runner in Duncan Jones' Moon. For all intents and purposes, the film features Sam Rockwell by himself for the entire runtime, reminding us once again of his way under-appreciated talent. The atmosphere the film manages to create is also impressive, instilling a sense of loneliness and isolation with relative ease, and spreading a palpable sense of paranoia over the audience. The effects are also amazing, making use of practical sets and models to an extent that's not seen very often these days. The film establishes itself as a modern Sci Fi classic and Jones as a filmmaker to keep an eye on.
The slow lead up to the next film that would further establish 2009 as the year of Sci Fi's triumphant return only helped it's surprising critical and financial success. The story of aliens stuck on Earth and enduring the prejudices and poor treatment that the human race is capable of that grounds Neill Blomkamp's District 9 was also what made many people doubt the film's possible success. However, the Peter Jackson-produced film keenly mixed its humanist message with jaw-dropping digital effects and astonishing action to create a memorable cinematic experience, that went much farther than simply being the Planet of the Apes of our time.
We've yet to see James Cameron's return to the Science Fiction genre, Avatar, but promises to cap off the year and and seal 2009 as the year that brought Sci fi back. Here's hoping it lives up to half the hype it's generated for itself.
2009 has become the official year of Science Fiction, with the genre making its triumphant return over the course of a summer that most thought would be lackluster at best. Starting with May's release of JJ Abrams' Star Trek, movie that brought back the fun action fantasy of the orginal Star Wars trilogy, with an exciting, hero's journey-based adventure story, great special effects, extremely likeable characters and kickass action. Sure, some old-school Trek fans were a bit put off by this entry in the series' turn toward a more crowd pleasing tone and its closeness to the Star Wars franchise, but a higher quality, more fun science fiction flick can't be found within the last decade.
Next up, in June, would come a successor to the deeply thoughtful, intense practical and model effects put forth by films like Blade Runner in Duncan Jones' Moon. For all intents and purposes, the film features Sam Rockwell by himself for the entire runtime, reminding us once again of his way under-appreciated talent. The atmosphere the film manages to create is also impressive, instilling a sense of loneliness and isolation with relative ease, and spreading a palpable sense of paranoia over the audience. The effects are also amazing, making use of practical sets and models to an extent that's not seen very often these days. The film establishes itself as a modern Sci Fi classic and Jones as a filmmaker to keep an eye on.
The slow lead up to the next film that would further establish 2009 as the year of Sci Fi's triumphant return only helped it's surprising critical and financial success. The story of aliens stuck on Earth and enduring the prejudices and poor treatment that the human race is capable of that grounds Neill Blomkamp's District 9 was also what made many people doubt the film's possible success. However, the Peter Jackson-produced film keenly mixed its humanist message with jaw-dropping digital effects and astonishing action to create a memorable cinematic experience, that went much farther than simply being the Planet of the Apes of our time.
We've yet to see James Cameron's return to the Science Fiction genre, Avatar, but promises to cap off the year and and seal 2009 as the year that brought Sci fi back. Here's hoping it lives up to half the hype it's generated for itself.
Trailer Comment Weekly, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Welcome to the first installment of Trailer Comment Weekly, the first in a series of communal posts. This column will focus on a recently released trailer that we watch and then all our writers will give their two cents. Enjoy!
This week we focus on the Mike Newell directed, Jerry Bruckheimer produced, sure-to-be-a-next-summer-blockbuster Prince of Persia: Sands of Time starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Now on the opinions (in the order they were received):
Evan Koehne:
First of all: BEN KINGSLEY? The mighty have fallen.
Prince of Persia will look stunning, have awesome battle sequences, and more bad British accents than a re-make of Mary Poppins. Aside from that, it won't be much we haven't seen already. Being a fan of the video game, I am glad there will be some wall-jumping segments. But why does Hollywood think that every great action video game should be turned into a mediocre action movie? I remember a time when action movies had stories, like... Predator?
Catie Moyer:
I can't help but think I am watching a live action sequel to Aladdin, and would like the thank Jerry Bruckheimer for yet again putting his money into an action-packed hero's tale with adorable romantic asides, annoying but not quite evil villains, and relentless PG humor. As always, Disney has done Joseph Campbell proud.
Jackson Bishop:
Can anyone tell me what about Jake Gyllenhaal screams "Prince of PERSIA"? Is it just me? Am I crazy? Anywho, I've never played the game, but this looks like a really lazy attempt by Disney to replace the Pirates series. On the plus side, Gemma Arterton is really hot.
Steven Ray Morris:
Could be a fun ride, Gyllenhaal is always a solid actor. Although I thought we had gotten past this idea that only white people could play lead roles.
Mia Resella:
Gotta love that Disney budget! You can definitely see Pirates all over it, which was far from lacking in fun and charm, and they might even get lucky and pull it off again. But it's hard to be excited for yet another formula-film adapting an old video game/cartoon/amusement park ride. I think they have a giant mad lib somewhere for the treatment, where they replace nouns with a pop culture piece of media, preferably from the 90's. Why can't they just start hiring real writers with original ideas? Didn't they get my resume??
Kelsey Brannan:
Prince of Persia is where Aladdin meets Lord of the Rings and Lord of the Rings meets Transformers.
"A desert is a place without expectation" (Nadine Gordimer). But in this desert, the audience expects everything...
I feel as if this Disney movie is relying on the special FX to tell the story. Jake Gyllenhaal, dressed in "orientalized costumes" is not flying through a desert, but a in-front of a "green-screen."
Michael Anthony Lopez:
For me, this trailer was a roller coaster of up and downs. While I liked it one moment, the next I did not. I don't know, Prince of Persia looks like another heap of Bruckheimer. Pirates was cool but I'd like to see him try something not so epic...and possibly NOT through Disney.
I feel that the trailer would have been much better had they taken out the dialogue (corny one liners) and possibly toned down the Michael Bay orgasm of special effects. I'm sure the film will have its moments...as most all films do.
Omar Najam:
Hahahahahaha. Really?! They really made a Prince of Persia movie? Is there some underground P of P movement that I don't know about cause it's not like Halo or Mortal Kombat or Smash Brothers where there's a thick nostalgic value. You don't see shirts at Hot Topic that read "No no no, that's not the way it happened. Shall I start again?". The whole gimmick of the game is that at any point you could die so you'd have to use sand to go back in time and... not fall from the chandelier or something. But I mean... unless they Psycho it up, I don't think the main character is gonna die until the end so... not too concerned about that time travel business. I think the producers were just playing this on Gamecube one day and went "wait a second... screenwriter, DP and storyboard... check! Let's just cast anyone who needs money, shoot, make some merch in time for Christmas".
All in all, it's one notch up from a Nick Cage film cause it has Gyllenhaal and it's great to see Kingsley in anything but The Love Guru but if I want a swashbuckling live action adventure about magical ancient artifacts, sexual tension between the protagonists and lots of sand, I've got The Mummy on VHS, ta.
But it'll be nice to have a movie with Persians that's slightly less racist than 300 :) Progress!
Kira Martins:
First impression:
whoa its like Indian Jones without Indian Jones and newer more digitalized special effects and hopefully not an "it was aliens all along" 'surprise' ending
as I continue to watch it:
hmmm Jake Gyllenhaal (I almost didn't recognize his voice)? as a Persian? Were there no actual Persian actors around to play the part? well I guess they made Jake get a tan... does that make the movie racist? I don't know if I'd take it that far but it certainly seems limiting.
Will I watch this movie when it hits the theaters?
Hell yes! did you SEE that crazy ass back flip? That's what I loved about the game. And the failed continuity of character background and accents (Do Persians speak English with British accents?) is probably going to make me laugh in theaters
Hunter M. Daniels:
Why does Donnie Darko seem to have a British accent in this? I can't wait to see this film, but there is a precisely zero percent chance that I will see it sober.
To be released on May 28th, 2009.
Stay tuned next week...for another trailer!
Link:
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
This week we focus on the Mike Newell directed, Jerry Bruckheimer produced, sure-to-be-a-next-summer-blockbuster Prince of Persia: Sands of Time starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Now on the opinions (in the order they were received):
Evan Koehne:
First of all: BEN KINGSLEY? The mighty have fallen.
Prince of Persia will look stunning, have awesome battle sequences, and more bad British accents than a re-make of Mary Poppins. Aside from that, it won't be much we haven't seen already. Being a fan of the video game, I am glad there will be some wall-jumping segments. But why does Hollywood think that every great action video game should be turned into a mediocre action movie? I remember a time when action movies had stories, like... Predator?
Catie Moyer:
I can't help but think I am watching a live action sequel to Aladdin, and would like the thank Jerry Bruckheimer for yet again putting his money into an action-packed hero's tale with adorable romantic asides, annoying but not quite evil villains, and relentless PG humor. As always, Disney has done Joseph Campbell proud.
Jackson Bishop:
Can anyone tell me what about Jake Gyllenhaal screams "Prince of PERSIA"? Is it just me? Am I crazy? Anywho, I've never played the game, but this looks like a really lazy attempt by Disney to replace the Pirates series. On the plus side, Gemma Arterton is really hot.
Steven Ray Morris:
Could be a fun ride, Gyllenhaal is always a solid actor. Although I thought we had gotten past this idea that only white people could play lead roles.
Mia Resella:
Gotta love that Disney budget! You can definitely see Pirates all over it, which was far from lacking in fun and charm, and they might even get lucky and pull it off again. But it's hard to be excited for yet another formula-film adapting an old video game/cartoon/amusement park ride. I think they have a giant mad lib somewhere for the treatment, where they replace nouns with a pop culture piece of media, preferably from the 90's. Why can't they just start hiring real writers with original ideas? Didn't they get my resume??
Kelsey Brannan:
Prince of Persia is where Aladdin meets Lord of the Rings and Lord of the Rings meets Transformers.
"A desert is a place without expectation" (Nadine Gordimer). But in this desert, the audience expects everything...
I feel as if this Disney movie is relying on the special FX to tell the story. Jake Gyllenhaal, dressed in "orientalized costumes" is not flying through a desert, but a in-front of a "green-screen."
Michael Anthony Lopez:
For me, this trailer was a roller coaster of up and downs. While I liked it one moment, the next I did not. I don't know, Prince of Persia looks like another heap of Bruckheimer. Pirates was cool but I'd like to see him try something not so epic...and possibly NOT through Disney.
I feel that the trailer would have been much better had they taken out the dialogue (corny one liners) and possibly toned down the Michael Bay orgasm of special effects. I'm sure the film will have its moments...as most all films do.
Omar Najam:
Hahahahahaha. Really?! They really made a Prince of Persia movie? Is there some underground P of P movement that I don't know about cause it's not like Halo or Mortal Kombat or Smash Brothers where there's a thick nostalgic value. You don't see shirts at Hot Topic that read "No no no, that's not the way it happened. Shall I start again?". The whole gimmick of the game is that at any point you could die so you'd have to use sand to go back in time and... not fall from the chandelier or something. But I mean... unless they Psycho it up, I don't think the main character is gonna die until the end so... not too concerned about that time travel business. I think the producers were just playing this on Gamecube one day and went "wait a second... screenwriter, DP and storyboard... check! Let's just cast anyone who needs money, shoot, make some merch in time for Christmas".
All in all, it's one notch up from a Nick Cage film cause it has Gyllenhaal and it's great to see Kingsley in anything but The Love Guru but if I want a swashbuckling live action adventure about magical ancient artifacts, sexual tension between the protagonists and lots of sand, I've got The Mummy on VHS, ta.
But it'll be nice to have a movie with Persians that's slightly less racist than 300 :) Progress!
Kira Martins:
First impression:
whoa its like Indian Jones without Indian Jones and newer more digitalized special effects and hopefully not an "it was aliens all along" 'surprise' ending
as I continue to watch it:
hmmm Jake Gyllenhaal (I almost didn't recognize his voice)? as a Persian? Were there no actual Persian actors around to play the part? well I guess they made Jake get a tan... does that make the movie racist? I don't know if I'd take it that far but it certainly seems limiting.
Will I watch this movie when it hits the theaters?
Hell yes! did you SEE that crazy ass back flip? That's what I loved about the game. And the failed continuity of character background and accents (Do Persians speak English with British accents?) is probably going to make me laugh in theaters
Hunter M. Daniels:
Why does Donnie Darko seem to have a British accent in this? I can't wait to see this film, but there is a precisely zero percent chance that I will see it sober.
To be released on May 28th, 2009.
Stay tuned next week...for another trailer!
Link:
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Thursday, November 5, 2009
A New Kind of Cult Classic
Boasting the indelible tagline "Gobble, gobble, motherfu%#@r!", Thankskilling is a project of love, devotion, and Jim Hensen-like puppet skills. Not since The Gingerdead Man (2005) has such an inconspicuous, as well as delicious, murderer been conceived for a straight to DVD-release. Thankskilling follows a group of archetypal college students heading home for Thanksgiving break. When their car breaks down on the way, and the legend of a cursed, bloodthirsty turkey is recounted around a campfire, the bird is out of the bag.
Filmmakers Jordan Downey and Kevin Stewart made the film in 11 days while still in school with a budget under $3,500. Understanding what they were really trying to accomplish, Downey and Stewart worked hard not just at making a film, but making a cult experience that could match the morbidly hilarious massacres of Herschell Gordon Lewis, on about the same budget.
While Thankskilling is a comical romp through slasher conventions, it delves into the phenomenon of the "cult," jamming itself into publications like Fangoria, Horror Hound, and SCARS magazines. Most cult films get their start as sleeper sensations, moving silently through art houses and exclusive venues, cultivating the games, costumes, and rituals that expand its status. However, Thankskilling has started forming its congregation prior to its official DVD-release. The independent project has already found itself on Amazon, Netflix, IMDB.com, twitter, mypace, and facebook (where 1,445 fans have already declared their appreciation by friending the film).
The most impressive cult aspect of Thankskilling could be the eccentric turkey puppetry, but its own website offers so much more. Downey and Stewart embrace the camp of their film and encourage web surfers and film enthusiasts participation privileges. The webpage extras include downloadable materials used to make the film such as shooting scripts, photoshop files, and scripts, giving all potential filmmakers a sense of ease as they embark on their own works. Also, the fan contests open the door for musicians to write Thankskilling-inspired songs and artists to submit their own fan art. Not stopping there, the contests can be anything a fan could dream of, as long at it's an original idea and is Thankskilling-oriented (so your brand new turkey hairstyle could get you some sweet swag from the the crew).
My personal favorite feature draws on a committed bootleg bastardization of the original director's cut. Compassionately called the "Non-Director's Cut Contest," Downey and Stewart ask fans to recut the film themselves, whether it be a short, trailer, or feature length edit, and submit it for the chance to win a prop used in the film. It befits the mania that the turkey-slasher has his very own slashing contest, calling on fan devotion and creativity to be a part of the film's history and inevitable cult following*.
It's no secret that low-budget horror is a formulaic, and often futile, excursion. Films like Evil Bong (2006) and Return of the Living Dead (1985), appreciate the quirk of the killer without taking themselves too seriously (mostly likely why Blockbuster still carries them). Thankskilling holds tribute to those that came before, and embraces the horror in horrible, which catapults it directly into the must-see category for all fans of the cult classic because, yes, it will be a classic. There is no doubt that if you find yourself rolling your eyes at Native American curses, neon red corn syrup, and incompetent police officers, then keep your turkey stuffed and served with cranberries. But if you do enjoy "who dies next?" drinking games and offbeat fowl-mouthed poultry (pun intended), then you can pre-order the region-free disc at http://thankskillingmovie.com/, pending its release on November 17th.
*Contest ends November 15th.
Filmmakers Jordan Downey and Kevin Stewart made the film in 11 days while still in school with a budget under $3,500. Understanding what they were really trying to accomplish, Downey and Stewart worked hard not just at making a film, but making a cult experience that could match the morbidly hilarious massacres of Herschell Gordon Lewis, on about the same budget.
While Thankskilling is a comical romp through slasher conventions, it delves into the phenomenon of the "cult," jamming itself into publications like Fangoria, Horror Hound, and SCARS magazines. Most cult films get their start as sleeper sensations, moving silently through art houses and exclusive venues, cultivating the games, costumes, and rituals that expand its status. However, Thankskilling has started forming its congregation prior to its official DVD-release. The independent project has already found itself on Amazon, Netflix, IMDB.com, twitter, mypace, and facebook (where 1,445 fans have already declared their appreciation by friending the film).
The most impressive cult aspect of Thankskilling could be the eccentric turkey puppetry, but its own website offers so much more. Downey and Stewart embrace the camp of their film and encourage web surfers and film enthusiasts participation privileges. The webpage extras include downloadable materials used to make the film such as shooting scripts, photoshop files, and scripts, giving all potential filmmakers a sense of ease as they embark on their own works. Also, the fan contests open the door for musicians to write Thankskilling-inspired songs and artists to submit their own fan art. Not stopping there, the contests can be anything a fan could dream of, as long at it's an original idea and is Thankskilling-oriented (so your brand new turkey hairstyle could get you some sweet swag from the the crew).
My personal favorite feature draws on a committed bootleg bastardization of the original director's cut. Compassionately called the "Non-Director's Cut Contest," Downey and Stewart ask fans to recut the film themselves, whether it be a short, trailer, or feature length edit, and submit it for the chance to win a prop used in the film. It befits the mania that the turkey-slasher has his very own slashing contest, calling on fan devotion and creativity to be a part of the film's history and inevitable cult following*.
It's no secret that low-budget horror is a formulaic, and often futile, excursion. Films like Evil Bong (2006) and Return of the Living Dead (1985), appreciate the quirk of the killer without taking themselves too seriously (mostly likely why Blockbuster still carries them). Thankskilling holds tribute to those that came before, and embraces the horror in horrible, which catapults it directly into the must-see category for all fans of the cult classic because, yes, it will be a classic. There is no doubt that if you find yourself rolling your eyes at Native American curses, neon red corn syrup, and incompetent police officers, then keep your turkey stuffed and served with cranberries. But if you do enjoy "who dies next?" drinking games and offbeat fowl-mouthed poultry (pun intended), then you can pre-order the region-free disc at http://thankskillingmovie.com/, pending its release on November 17th.
*Contest ends November 15th.
What the Hell Are They Doing in This?!
So a few weeks ago I saw a movie by Crank writers and directors Neveldine/Taylor called Gamer. Despite Gerard Butler, Terry Crews acting like a complete nutbar, and a fairly interesting premise involving using living people in "Sims" and "Halo" type games, this movie amounts to little more than an hour and a half of bullshit. With incomprehensible action, zero likable characters, and dialogue so bad it's like Stephanie Meyer wrote it, it's pretty much a waste of time for everyone involved. Especially for Michael C. Hall, Dexter himself, who plays the villain of the film with so much over-the-top enthusiasm, leaving nothing but thoroughly chewed scenery in his wake. As I sat there watching Hall hold down every scene he was in and have his way with it, I thought about his excellent roles in both "Six Feet Under" and "Dexter" and couldn't help but wonder; What the the hell is he doing in this?
This got me thinking about a time honored cinematic tradition that's really become a phenomenon since the 1980's; great actors appearing in really shitty movies and taking camp to a whole new level while still being entertaining as all get out. I like to call it Raul Julia syndrome. It's one of those things that make terrible movies all the more entertaining, like seeing Dennis Hopper play King Koopah in Super Mario Bros., Joseph Gordon Levitt play Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe, or as the name I've given this phenomenon suggests, Raul Julia in most of his filmography, but especially his last major role as General M. Bison in Street Fighter, a role that doesn't quite save the film, but makes it about a thousand times more watchable. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss this time honored tradition, and the best examples of it. So, here it is, my top five "What the Hell are They Doing in This?!" list.5. Sir Michael Cain in Jaws IV: The Revenge
Sure, the Jaws franchise took a staggering nose dive to awful after the untouchable first film, with the fourth and final film truly being rock bottom. I shit you not, the movie is all about a family of sharks with a grudge against a family of humans, and even features a shot with a great white shark leaping out of the water and ROARING LIKE A LION before biting a guys arm off. That said, Cain still manages to be both charming and hilarious in the movie, and you can't help but love the scenes he's in. You also have to respect that whenever an interviewer brings this film up, he responds that he's never seen it, but has seen the house it paid for.
4. Louis Jourdan in The Return of Swamp Thing
Dick Durock is cool and everything, but there is only one man that elevates this sequel to Wes Craven's lackluster adaption of the awesome DC comics hero, Swamp Thing, and that man is Louis Jourdan playing Anton Arcane, the arch nemesis of our photosynthetic hero. Jourdan is just so cool, and classy, and French that his presence in these proceedings is just plain hard to understand, let alone why he came back for this sequel. But he makes the absolute best of it, playing his role with extra cheese and loving it. He also gives the best delivery of one of the best lines I've ever heard in my 21 years.
3. Frank Langella in Masters of the Universe
There's no doubt that Masters of the Universe is a god awful movie that manages to take the He-Man character and turn him into even more of a walking gay-joke than he already was. The acting, directing, special effects, everything about this movie sucks. Except, of course, the character of Skeletor, master of snake mountain, because he is played by the always classy Frank Langella, who is obviously having so much fun with the role that he can barely contain himself. He also manages to pull off one of the best villains from a comic or cartoon adaption ever.
2. Raul Julia in Street Fighter
I know I've already mentioned this one, and he's even inspired the name of the phenomenon, but this movie is just so damn bad and he's just so damn awesome in it, that it couldn't go without a ranking on the list. Everything about this movie is a misstep, from the ever-changing tone from cartoonish to painfully serious, to the casting of a famous Belgian gymnast as a bad-ass American soldier. The only thing this movie got right was casting Julia, who acts nothing like the character from the game but, honestly, if the character in the game was more like this, I would've been a bigger fan...Of course!
1. Orson Welles in Transformers: The Movie
I'm going to come out and say that this animated movie from 1986 is actually a huge guilty pleasure for me, I love to watch and consider it better than any 3 hour, CG-laden Micahel Bay dick measuring festival. That being said, this is not a good movie, it's actually quite bad, with even the awesome parts, like the final battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron, dilluted by nerve-grating eighties soundtrack additions. So it's all the more bizarre that this fucked up and strange animated movie is THE LAST PERFORMANCE OF ORSON WELLES. That's right, Welles lends his rather distinctive voice to the planet-sized transformer god, Unicron. Nuff said.
So that's my list, I know that there are plenty of reasons for an actor to take a role in a film that is really beneath them. Whether it be the desire to break into television from film, or maybe they liked a script that ended up butchered during production, or just needed the paycheck. I say thank the movie god for that, because it has given us some damn fine entertainment.
AFI Fest Hollywood: The Fantastic Mr. Fox
So I just finished a 5 day stint at the AFI Film Festival in Hollywood, and as such, saw about 15 films in that span, when I wasn't stalking Billy Murray on Hollywood Boulevard. One of those flicks was Wes Anderson's newest opus, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, starring George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Scwartzman, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson, and based on the story by the classic children's author, Roald Dahl. The film centers on the story of the titular Mr. Fox, as he's coming to a turning point in his life. As much as he the thrill of stealing chickens from local farmers, it's time to settle down and raise his family, but only after he takes on the meanest farmers around for one last score.
The story, as with most of Anderson's films, is negligible because what really matters are the characters and the world Anderson creates. He's kinda like Tim Burton in that sense, only without becoming a caricature of himself. The characters and world on Fantastic Mr. Fox are unforgettably perfect for the film, and help to set that which Wes Anderson is a master of, tone. Like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Anderson sets a quirky, comedic tone that makes watching the film feel like a trip to that wierd part of the city that your parents never want you to go to, but you do and they have awesome by-the-slice pizzarias.
The acting in the film, both voice and puppet, is also incredibly strong. You get the feeling that these creepy little creatures are really alive. The voice talent is obvious, there's not a single miscast actor here, and I kinda want George Clooney to start doing audio books or at least narrating documentaries about penguins because his voice is awesome. But the stop motion animation is also a key factor here. Anyone who saw Coraline earlier this year knows that stop motion has advanced to a place where it's almost indistinguishable from CGI, and that's great and incredibly impressive, but it lacks a certain flawed charm. The real joy in the stop motion for Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it's not perfect. It's reminiscient of Rankin Bass animation, or the Willis O'Brien King Kong stuff where you see the fingerprints of teh animators on the fur. The movie has a built in sense of nostalgia due to this that makes you feel almost like you're rediscovering it rather than seeing it for the first time.
So anyone that's already a fan of Anderson will have lots to love here. It's not his best film, but it ranks up there, and it's a Wes Anderson film you can show kids, which I find to be delightful and a bit disturbing. People who aren't fans of Anderson should check this out too, if only for the hilarious characcters and nostalgic animation.
The story, as with most of Anderson's films, is negligible because what really matters are the characters and the world Anderson creates. He's kinda like Tim Burton in that sense, only without becoming a caricature of himself. The characters and world on Fantastic Mr. Fox are unforgettably perfect for the film, and help to set that which Wes Anderson is a master of, tone. Like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Anderson sets a quirky, comedic tone that makes watching the film feel like a trip to that wierd part of the city that your parents never want you to go to, but you do and they have awesome by-the-slice pizzarias.
The acting in the film, both voice and puppet, is also incredibly strong. You get the feeling that these creepy little creatures are really alive. The voice talent is obvious, there's not a single miscast actor here, and I kinda want George Clooney to start doing audio books or at least narrating documentaries about penguins because his voice is awesome. But the stop motion animation is also a key factor here. Anyone who saw Coraline earlier this year knows that stop motion has advanced to a place where it's almost indistinguishable from CGI, and that's great and incredibly impressive, but it lacks a certain flawed charm. The real joy in the stop motion for Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it's not perfect. It's reminiscient of Rankin Bass animation, or the Willis O'Brien King Kong stuff where you see the fingerprints of teh animators on the fur. The movie has a built in sense of nostalgia due to this that makes you feel almost like you're rediscovering it rather than seeing it for the first time.
So anyone that's already a fan of Anderson will have lots to love here. It's not his best film, but it ranks up there, and it's a Wes Anderson film you can show kids, which I find to be delightful and a bit disturbing. People who aren't fans of Anderson should check this out too, if only for the hilarious characcters and nostalgic animation.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Top Five Reasons Why FernGully Is Noteworthy
FernGully: The Last Rainforest was released back in 1992 when Disney wasn’t the only animation company in the US. It follows a young precocious fairy (with a dash of 90s ‘tude) named Crysta (Samantha Mathis) as she becomes the defender of her jungle home from the likes of an evil ooze demon named Hexxus (Tim Curry). Along the way she receives help from a lab-tested bat named Batty (Robin Williams), Christian Slater as a fairy as himself and a construction worker turned environmentalist, Zack (John Ward).
Receiving mixed reviews at the time, FernGully is mostly remembered for its intense environmental themes. However, I believe there are five reasons why we should acknowledge this film as a seminal piece of animation, or at the very least something that we can watch with a couple of beers and enjoy.
1. Robin Williams’ vocal workout as Batty
Released only eight months before Robin Williams’ classic voicing of the Genie it’s obvious that Batty was an experiment and a precursor of what was to come.
He had the best lines such as, “Human tails? Humans don't have tails. They have big, big bottoms that they wear with bad shorts. They walk around going, ‘Hi, Helen’,” and his manic behavior is disturbing in a wonderfully hilarious way.
2. Tim Curry as sexy scary Hexxus
If Dr. Frank-N-Furter and Pennywise had a deliriously evil child it would be Hexxus, the oily villain that takes the time to sing one of the freakiest and funkiest animated songs of all time, “Toxic Love.” Never has black oil turned me on so much.
3. Environmentalism has never been so Fascist
And we thought Al Gore was preachy. Its “All humans are bad and nature is good mantra,” is quite overdone today, but the imagery of disastrous human treatment towards the environment is still shocking even by today’s standards.
4. It’s timelessness...oh wait Tone Loc’s in this?
Unlike many classic Disney 2D films and Pixar, FernGully had a few instances of shameless modern references: a sequence where the human Zak teaches the fairies about rock ‘n’ roll and 90s lingo like “bodacious” and the aforementioned Tone Loc appearance as a lizard that raps before he eats his prey.
And yet these references seem very light compared to any current animated film and even the highly regarded Shrek series (Fairbucks…really?).
5. Great preparation for Cameron’s Avatar this winter
Incase you weren’t blown away by a giant blue Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, the nearly wordless and senseless teaser and the anticipation of James Cameron’s first fiction film since Titanic watch FernGully to get a better idea of what the plot might resemble. Yeah.
Yes, FernGully: The Last Rainforest isn’t a perfect film. It is overly sentimental and incredibly predictable, but it holds up as an entertaining, potent and quirky film that stands out amongst the sanitized kids films of today.
Oh yeah if these reasons didn’t convince you I have two words: Knife fight. Oh yeah.
Link:
FernGully: The Last Rainforest on IMDB
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Remind me to thank John for a lovely weekend.
Hello one and all!
Welcome to Casual Tie Friday For Raptors a film blog written by eternal students of the cinema. We come from various tastes, backgrounds and hairstyles to bring you rants, raves and self-proclaimed thoughtful essays about cinema and anything we could relate to those 24 frames.
The goal is not to create another endless news blog that simply copies and pastes from all the various news sources. Our goal is to give our two cents and try and make sense of the mind-boggling universe of make believe land that we all hope to make a living in someday real soon.
My name is Steven Ray Morris a recent graduate of the UC Santa Barbara Film & Media Studies program. I am currently pouring over MFA apps so I can once again be a student. My comrades will soon be joining the fray, but I’ll post a brief article after this intro.
Enjoy!
Welcome to Casual Tie Friday For Raptors a film blog written by eternal students of the cinema. We come from various tastes, backgrounds and hairstyles to bring you rants, raves and self-proclaimed thoughtful essays about cinema and anything we could relate to those 24 frames.
The goal is not to create another endless news blog that simply copies and pastes from all the various news sources. Our goal is to give our two cents and try and make sense of the mind-boggling universe of make believe land that we all hope to make a living in someday real soon.
My name is Steven Ray Morris a recent graduate of the UC Santa Barbara Film & Media Studies program. I am currently pouring over MFA apps so I can once again be a student. My comrades will soon be joining the fray, but I’ll post a brief article after this intro.
Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)