Odds & Ends
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Up Trailer UpHere's the new trailer for Pixar's Up:
I like this a lot. As many others have noted - as early as the appearance of the first concept art - this whole project has a strong Miyazaki vibe. Again, Pixar seem willing to nudge their material in a slightly more whimsical direction: perhaps they did, in fact, learn something from their excursion into formulaic mediocrity with Cars. For an intriguing comparison, compare it to the much more conventional looking Bolt, from the Disney side of the merged Disney / Pixar hybrid: Bolt was started before the merger of the two studios; there was some gorgeous early art and test footage released when the film was known as American Dog, before the original director Chris Sanders was booted from the project (read Cartoon Brew's report about that here; and some of the concept art can be seen here). Now it looks much less interesting, and in fact much of the character design - particualrly Bolt himself - is downright ugly. Who knows what to make of this (or the similar removal of Glen Keane off the helm of Rapunzel Unbraided); certainly some seem to have had trouble reconciling such apparently hard-headed corporate behaviour with John Lasseter's carefully cultivated nice guy image. I can buy the idea that scrapping everything and starting over might become necessary, even if they need to fire the director. But the Bolt trailer makes it look very much of a piece with every other animals-on-an-adventure animated film we've seen in the last few years. Meanwhile, the Pixar films seem to be gaining some licence to do some slightly different things. Perhaps the head honchos at Disney / Pixar see Disney as being the kids label and want to differentiate Pixar as the more boutique / adult / risk-taking brand? Of course, that's a lot more speculation than two brief trailers can sensibly stand. We'll have to wait and see. Labels: animation, commentary, disney, pixar, rumours, trailers Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, October 04, 2008
Back Again
When I uploaded my review of WALL-E a couple of days a go, I was surprised to see it was more than a month since I posted something. Surprised, because I'm doing lots of film-related writing at the moment, so it seems like the page should be ticking over. But it's all been for things outside the page, notably my Masters. Over the long term this should generate some interesting content for the page, but there are also going to be times where I disappear for a few weeks to write things. You may also have noticed that the Wall-E has a comments facility; this will be the norm on new reviews from here on. To get consistency across the site, I've switched the Odds and Ends comments over to the same system. I am a little uneasy about handing my comments over to a third party provider, in case they disappear one day, but the positives of improved interaction and consistency across the site were too attractive to ignore. I've copied the old comments across, but had to do it manually (thank goodness my site isn't more popular) due to eccentricities of the integration of the blog into my site, so the dates on all comments have been reset to October this year. Otherwise they should be unchanged. As is often the case after such disappearances, there are a few things I'm interested in sharing. There's the new Bond song, for one, by Alicia Keys and Most people seem to hate it (and particularly, the wailing vocals): I actually like it, in a weird way. Certainly it made a better first impression than Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name," from Casino Royale. I didn't really like that at all, until I saw it in the movie with that awesome opening credit sequence by Daniel Kleinman. (Incidentally, Kleinman has been dumped from Quantum of Solace, replaced by design group MK12, who worked on director Marc Forster's previous films.) I could just be strange though, as I also enjoyed Madonna's "Die Another Day." Incidentally, the new trailer for Quantum of Solace is up over at 007.com and is even better than the teaser. I'm pumped for this, no matter how bad the title is. Speaking of the Quantum of Solace theme song, here's another fake one, I believe from the same radio team that came up with the last one I posted. The YouTube video for this one isn't as much fun, but the "big bags of solace" line in the lyrics kills me. There's also a trailer out for Oliver Stone's W., which suggests Stone is back to his rabble-rousing best. You Tube below, or go here. If this is what he does with George W, imagine what he could achieve if Sarah Palin makes the White House? Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, July 05, 2008
Coolest Movie News Since.... Ever?
You've probably seen this already, since it's one of those rare pieces of news about film restoration that was so earth-shattering it made the mainstream media: a near-complete version of Metropolis has turned up. Ain't It Cool have images here.  I love Metropolis: I'm a fan of city movies, and silent movies, and big epic special effects movies, and science fiction movies, so it really does have everything for me. Everything except, of course, about a quarter of its footage: the previous best-available version used intertitles to give a sense of what was missing. That DVD was released by Kino overseas, and seems to be the basis of the version released by Madman in Australia. Kino were already planning a re-release (with a Blu-Ray version) in 2009; that has been hastily revised to include the rediscovered footage. Obviously the new footage is likely to be in poor shape, visually, but its historical importance is extraordinary. What could possibly be next: the ten hour version of Greed? Labels: commentary, rumours, silent film Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, June 30, 2008
Quantum of Solace Trailer
Here's the new trailer for Quantum of Solace (aka the Bond movie with the title that makes everyone snicker but which has actually kind of grown on me). High definition version, which as always is worth it if you can, here.
I've said way to much about Bond over the years for it to be worth any detailed comment, but it is kind of cool. I love that finally we have some linkage between the films, in a way we haven't had since the sixties. This looks like it could be the Bond revenge story that should have, but didn't, follow the best Bond movie of all, On Her Majesties Secret Service. You also have to love that Bourne-ish shot following the motorcycle jump. Also - the first review I've seen anywhere of Baz Luhrmann's Australia, is here, from some random mallgoer in America. As such, the word "review" is used loosely but it's interesting to see such an early word on a film about which I am now increasingly curious - no matter who the source. Tha trailer for that one is here. Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Casting of Tintin
The Age, via The Guardian, have the news that Thomas Sangster has been cast as Tintin in the upcoming Steven Spielberg / Peter Jackson mega-series.  Sangster's best known as Liam Neeson's stepson from Love Actually. I liked him in that film; he was sweet without being saccharine, and he seems like as good a choice as anybody. But the casting of this part really underlines the difficulty that still confronts the Tintin movies. By casting the 17 year old Sangster, the Spielberg and Jackson have acknowledged the popular description of Tintin as a "boy reporter." But in the comics Tintin's age is deliberately ambiguous; indeed, the intriguing thing about Tintin is that he's such a "blank" character. We can read almost anything into Tintin - his age, background, job and so on are left almost completely unexplored. (Even his gender is soft-pedalled; while he's definitely a boy, he's a fairly androgynous one). But maybe Sangster will also become a cypher: we don't yet know quite how much the final film Tintin will look like Sangster, or whether his performance will be translated to a computer generated character who looks like the comic book character. I remain very curious about the proposed technique to be used for the film (and I talked about the difficulties of a computer-generated Tintin here); this could be either a breakthrough film for the medium or a Beowulf-esque testament to its shortcomings. The other interesting news is that Andy Serkis is cast as Captain Haddock. I have previously expressed my admiration for Serkis' collaboration with the Weta people, but perhaps it's time to call "enough!" on the idea that Serkis can play anything or anyone through computer animation. I'm surprised they didn't go with John Rhys-Davies; while Serkis was obviously a comfortable choice for Peter Jackson in particular, I'd have thought Rhys-Davies would have been even more of a natural selection. After all, his two most famous roles are in Spielberg's Indiana Jones films and Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, and he has the bellicose bluster to make a good Haddock. And whenever we mention Rhys-Davies, we have to mention his sort-of double: Brian Blessed. Perhaps he missed the casting call.  Labels: animation, peter jackson, rumours, spielberg, tintin Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Friday, March 14, 2008
Round-Up of the Frivolous Things
The site has had, until yesterday, another quiet few weeks, what with one thing another. Whenever I go through one of these periods where I don't have time to get something substantial up (or where, as was the was the case over the last week or so, I'm labouring over something that starts as a short post and ends as a great big one) the temptation is always to keep the page ticking over by posting the various silly things and rumours on this page. But then I get self-conscious about how lightweight some of this stuff is. After I've just published a "proper" article or post, though, I've got no such qualms. So on the coat-tails of my piece on Film Theory, it's time to catch up on the frivolous stuff from the internet. Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees! This one came from Jaime J. Weinman's Something Old, Nothing New, where Weinman was taking about Irwin Allen's The Swarm. A very dumb clip, but it gets me every time: as a commenter over at Weinman's blog put it, the way the guys says "Millions of bees!" makes it sound like he's selling them, not getting killed by them. Bosko Says What? Everyone loves it when a cartoon character swears. Via Cartoon Brew. Clampett Update There's been some good stuff on the internet about Bob Clampett over the last few eeeks: this post by Kristin Thompson looks at some freeze frames from his work and Michael Barrier talks about the cult of Clampett. The latter follows a debate that had played out following Barrier's earlier comments about the merits of Clampett's Buckaroo Bugs; you can follow that earlier debate through links from the more recent piece. If you're not that familiar with Clampett, I would humbly point you towards my earlier essay on him, which was intended as introduction for the uninitiated.  Wall-E.T. The main trailer for Pixar's Wall-E is out. YouTube below, but the much nicer HD version is here. People are really flipping out over this movie. I don't know - I don't find the trailer as completely convincing as others do, and Pixar have lost that aura of invincibility. But here's hoping. Speed Racer Trailer Now here's one that redefines the term "garish." YouTube below but this one you really need to see in HD (here). Who knows what to make of this. It kind of looks hideous and badly shot, but then I've commented just recently on what good action directors the Wachowskis are. Harry Potter and the Multiple Films And apparently Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is to be two movies. Given the really good bits of the last book are in the second half (see here for my comments when the book came out) this strikes me as unwise. Perhaps they can give the first half of the book, where the kinds are wandering the country, an epic Lord of the Rings-ish scope. But I think they risk getting a real dud out of this. Labels: animation, bordwell, clampett, harry potter, humour, pixar, rumours, trailers Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, January 26, 2008
Franchising
This year is shaping up as a particularly big year for what you might call the "mega-franchises": the really big, big franchises that are particularly prestigious and long-running: there are new installments scheduled in the Batman, Indiana Jones, Star Trek and James Bond series. The last few days have seen interesting developments on all of these properties, so I thought I'd do a quick run down on all of them. The Dark Knight Heath Ledger's tragic death death was immensely sad, obviously on its own terms but also for film fans: to take just a single example, Brokeback Mountain is one of the best films I've seen in recent years, and Ledger was vital to that success. But nerds (not to mention Hollywood execs) are a ruthless bunch, and the attention of the online film sites very quickly turned to what this meant for the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight. (The Digital Bits also had a thought for Terry Gilliam, who was making The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with Ledger: "Man, Terry Gilliam just can't catch a break.") The answer is it won't appreciably affect the movie: Ledger's role was complete. But it creates some trickiness in the marketing. In one sense, its a plus... there was already a lot of buzz about Ledger's performance, and if it is indeed a good one, the fact that they are releasing it posthumously just makes it more iconic. I don't think the trailer we've seen so far will be seen as in poor taste; it shows the Joker but it doesn't seem "wrong" in any way. If you haven't seen it already, it's in YouTube form below (and in much better quality here). But as some have noted, it's going to seem in poor taste if we start having Ledger's face grinning down from bus stops. My hunch is that the solution will be to run with the more oblique approach of the early posters, which still highlight the Joker (the film's main drawcard, after all) but don't hit us over the head with Ledger's presence.   Indiana Jones The trailer's coming on the 15th of February, and Ain't It Cool have a totally unverified but fairly convincing description of it here. Spoiler alerts apply. I'm excited about this... but I don't know. The pulp science fiction elements (to put it delicately for the spoiler shy) of the plot sort of make sense given the 50s setting, but still don't feel right for Indiana Jones. But we'll see. Star Trek Here's the trailer for the re-launched Star Trek: (Clearer and in the correct proportions here). For those who haven't been following this, this is a re-launch by J.J. Abrams that gives us young Kirk and Spock - hence the Enterprise being built in the trailer (why are they building it on Earth, not in orbit?). I could be wrong, but that doesn't quite look like the original series' version of the ship in the trailer; perhaps the venerable design has again been given a subtle reworking? (The lines generally seem a little closer to the first re-jigged version from the movies, but then the warp nacelles look like more like the TV series version). James Bond The new Bond film has been confirmed to be called Quantum of Solace. Along with Risico and The Property of a Lady (both popular rumoured titles for the new movie) it's one of the few unused Fleming titles left. You can see why they kept away from it - you don;t want a three word title where many people will struggle with two of the words - but it has grown on me and certainly seems thematically apt given it will apparently centre on the fall out from the events of the last film. (Semi-serialized Bond films, just like the 60s. Awesome). The reaction to it has generally been pretty ignorant, largely ignoring the fact that the title has its roots in Fleming and misrepresenting the generally positive fan reaction. For a spirited defense of the title, see CommanderBond.Net here. Here's the official plot summary, also courtesy CommanderBond.Net: QUANTUM OF SOLACE continues the high octane adventures of James Bond (DANIEL CRAIG) in CASINO ROYALE. Sounds good to me. Labels: batman, indiana jones, rumours, spielberg, star trek, superheroes, trailers Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, September 17, 2007
Indiana Jones and the Endless Jokes About Harrison Ford's AgeThe title and logo for the new Indiana Jones movie are out. Wait for it:
 It's pretty hard to get excited about this. It's a very cumbersome title, for a start (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Skull would be better). And according to a quick Wikipedia search - surely the definitive source for information about bullshit mythology - the Crystal Skull ties into folklore about both Atlantis and the Knights Templar. Atlantis is not a promising concept (all films involving scenes set underwater suck) and the Knights Templar link raises too many other links to both Last Crusade and The Da Vinci Code. The rumour is we'll see the first trailer in front of Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf in November. Labels: indiana jones, rumours, spielberg Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Triumph of Hope Over Sense
Sorry for the paucity of posts lately. I've taken on a role as co-editor of a magazine related to my day job, and it's been keeping me occupied a little more than I'd like. Hopefully once I settle into the role it won't take too much away from my time for film related things, but for the moment - as we try to get out our first issue - I'm afraid Cinephobia has had to take a backseat. Hopefully there'll be something substantial up during the week. In the meantime, though, I did just want to post this. Indiana Jones.com has posted our first image of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones from the set of the fourth movie in the series. Every rational part of me knows this movie probably won't be much good, but I have to say, it feels pretty special to see Ford back in the Jones gear:  Labels: indiana jones, rumours, spielberg Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Sunday, May 20, 2007
Tintin!
If you've been anywhere near the film geek webpages during the week you'll have seen this news: Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are making movies of Herge's comic book series The Adventure of Tintin. Spielberg in particular has been mentioned in relation to this property before, but it really seems to be moving forward now. Courtesy of Variety:
I have mixed feelings about this whole thing, but I'm certainly very interested. Tintin was a staple of my childhood; as I got a bit older, I cast them aside, deciding that the other big comic book series, Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's Asterix was a bit hipper. Yet I came full circle when I revisited the Tintin books as an adult. They might superficially be pitched a little younger than the jokey Asterix books, but Herge was clearly the superior artist. His beautifully simple graphical style and grasp of the comic book form really sets the Tintin books apart. He also showed remarkable facility at different genres: the Tintin books range from the full-blown adventure of sending Tintin to the moon (in Explorers on the Moon) to the minimalist house-bound mystery of The Castafiore Emerald, a comic drama where the ultimate joke is that Herge generates a whole book around nothing of consequence. A lot of the books would work really well as films (and several versions already exist in both live action and animation, as you can read here), and both Spielberg and Jackson make sense as directors for the project. Spielberg's Indiana Jones films, for example, are not too far from the spirit of the most adventure-based of the Tintin books, while Peter Jackson, with King Kong particularly, also ventured in something of a similar direction. And who wouldn't like to see the two in a semi-collaboration? Jackson is the George Lucas of the new millennium, and you could imagine him bringing out the best in Spielberg in much the way Lucas did back in the early 1980s with Raiders of the Lost Ark. What worries me a little bit is the references to the animation technology to be used for the project. Peter Jackson's effects house Weta have apparently produced a 20 minute test reel of computer animated motion capture footage. Variety again: Jackson's New Zealand-based WETA Digital, the f/x house behind "The Lord of the Rings" franchise, produced a 20-minute test reel bringing to life the characters created by Remi, who wrote under the pen name of Herge.I would love to see that test footage, and I have enormous respect for the Weta people, who are far and away the best effects house at the moment and who did amazing work in the Lord of the Rings series and King Kong. But it doesn't quite sound right. Herge's signature style is based on simple linework, little shading and flat areas of colour: it is, apparently, one of the definitive examples of what has become known as the ligne clair ("clear line") style. So, for example, here's a classic image of Tintin and Snowy:  The obvious way to film this style is in conventional hand-drawn animation: while not all comic-strip drawing styles can be translated into animation, there's nothing terribly difficult about translating Herge's style. Yet Jackson and Spielberg are avoiding this option, presumably for a combination of reasons. Firstly, neither has a close relationship with a traditional animation shop (since Dreamworks Animation, which Spielberg helped establish, has gotten out of that business). Secondly, it would be harder to distinguish a traditionally animated feature from the earlier Tintin features that have already been made, and computer animation is seen as more marketable anyway. And finally, neither director has the skills to direct a hand-drawn feature themselves, since there's really very little common ground between the process of directing live-action and animation. Motion capture on the Robert Zemeckis / Polar Express model seemingly bridges that gap. It's an illusion, though. As I said when whinging about George Miller's direction of Happy Feet, the idea that live-action directors can capably direct computer-animation is something of a misconception: to date, there has been little evidence that those who have done so have understood the particular qualities of the medium in which they've worked. But perhaps more to the point, it is difficult to see how Herge's style would translate to computer animation. Simple, clean styles like Herge's work well in comic strip or traditional animation, but computer animation doesn't do that kind of thing well. Think of Mickey Mouse: the pure black circles of his ears work really well as a graphical shorthand when drawn, but in computer animation - which is more literal, and makes us resolve shapes into actual volumes - those circles quickly look very strange, like giant bowling balls. It's hard to see how Tintin would be any different. If kept simple, the characters features would quickly become grotesque (Tintin's head would end up looking like a melon), but I can't imagine how the more photo-realistic style Jackson evokes ("the pores of their skin and each individual hair") would reconcile with Herge's style. So I'm just hoping that demo reel really pulled a rabbit out of a hat. One other thing: the Variety story says that Jackson and Spielberg have three stories in mind, but doesn't say which ones. The obvious puzzle is which ones they've chosen. Here are my picks: Tintin in Tibet I think this one's the most certain. It's often cited as Herge's masterpiece, and certainly its beautiful visuals (with its stark white mountain environments) should look great on film. It also has the strongest emotional centre of any of the books, with the adventure being compelled by Tintin's search for his missing friend Chang. Put this down for Jackson. The Seven Crystal Balls / Prisoners of the Sun These two have everything: some occult elements, interesting locations (ranging from Captain Haddock's home at Marlinspike to South America), good stuff for supporting characters like the Thomson twins and Calculus, and lots of big action set-pieces. As long as they fix the silly ending (in which the characters are saved by an eclipse) it should work really well. I'm very confident on these as well, and could see either Jackson, Spielberg, or another director doing them. The Calculus Affair The third one's a bit of a roughie. I could imagine either of the other double volumes (Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham's Treasure or Destination Moon / Explorers on the Moon) being tempting, but looking at them, I'm not sure either would film specially well. So my pick is The Calculus Affair; after Tintin in Tibet it's the one I'd make if I were Jackson or Spielberg. If I'm right about the other two, then I think it becomes particularly likely: its espionage thriller style would make a great change from the more swashbuckling tone of the others. The central plot (about the fight for control of a cold war superweapon) is kind of retro but still compelling. And it has some awesome action sequences, including a helicopter / boat chase and another in a tank. Put this down for Spielberg. So there are my guesses. You read it here first. Labels: animation, peter jackson, rumours, spielberg, tintin Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Harry Potter and the Adults Who Read Children's Books
For those who are keeping track of such things, here's the latest trailer for the new Harry Potter. (It's available in much better quality here). The fifth Harry Potter book is easily the weakest so far, but it may well make the best film. The other films have been too crammed with plot to be very satisfying; J.K. Rowling's plots generally don't condense very well. Yet Order of the Phoenix, the book, was different in that it was very light on plot for a book of its length. The most interesting thing about it was its vision of Hogwarts' conversion to a repressive fascist institution under a government in denial, but this element felt lost in a book that was much too long. With everything shrunk down to two hour length, however, it could make a very strong through-line indeed. I also like the bold new long-haired look for Draco Malfoy.  Oh, wait: that's Luna Lovegood. Labels: harry potter, rumours, trailers Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Sunday, April 01, 2007
April Fools Day Declared Redundant: Real Movie News is Too Strange
For years I've had the same gripe with the news media's fondness for April Fool's Day stories: there are too many true stories floating around that strain belief as it is. When real life has become completely absurd, how are we to spot the jokes? This is doubly so in the world of online movie rumour reporting, where a) Hollywood is particularly crazy; and b) so many of the stories run as genuine aren't true anyway. A case in point: Ain't It Cool is running a story today that Pixar has picked up the rights to the cult property John Carter of Mars, and that the great Brad Bird (currently finishing Ratatouille) will direct. In live-action. With Pixar acting as an effects house, rather than an animation studio. I immediately assumed that it's a practical joke, and I'm still inclined to think so (particularly when the source blog's reputed transition to official Disney mouthpiece also happened on April 1). But the fine, upstanding journalists of Ain't It Cool have made it clear (here) that they have run it believing it to be genuine. Whichever way it goes (and again, I'm pretty sure it's bogus) it kind of bears out my reservations about April Fool's Day. Update: Confirmed bogus, by the source himself, in the comments. Labels: commentary, rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Sunday, February 25, 2007
And Now James Cameron Presents the Body of Jesus. No, Really
Strangest movie rumour ever? How about that James Cameron thinks he's found the body of Jesus and is going to present it at a press conference? From the Time magazine Middle East blog: ...film-makers Cameron and Jacobovici claim to have amassed evidence through DNA tests, archeological evidence and Biblical studies, that the 10 coffins belong to Jesus and his family... Cameron is holding a New York press conference on Monday at which he will reveal three coffins, supposedly those of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. The thing is, James Cameron could have the real Jesus, and he'd still think he was the most important thing in the room. What's the King of Kings to the King of the World?  Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, February 10, 2007
Hot Fuzz
I was a latecomer to the whole Shaun of the Dead phenomenon, but having loved it on DVD I'm looking forward to Simon Pegg's follow up vehicle, Hot Fuzz. There's a new internet only trailer up; you can find the official high quality version here, or in lower quality below. Like the internet trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it's something of a meta-trailer, working as a piss-take of trailer in general. Hopefully that's where the similarity ends, given that the Hitchhiker's trailer was so much better than the film. By comparison, here's the more conventional full trailer: The whole conceit seems somewhat similar to Tony Martin's Bad Eggs, a film I enjoyed a great deal but which was generally poorly received. Pegg and his colleagues should have more luck: Shaun of the Dead worked so well because the zombie elements were done lovingly, rather than just for cheap laughs, and I think this approach should work well for a cop movie. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, February 03, 2007
Run for Your Life, MaximusSo apparently Roman Polanski is doing a costume epic / disaster movie, Pompeii. Variety's account is here. Seems an odd fit, but Polanski is nothing if not surprising.
What threw me a bit about the story was Variety's potted biography of Polanksi. I mean I know Variety is written for people who know full well who Polanski is, but who summarises his career like this? Polanski, who won an Oscar for "The Pianist," last directed "Oliver Twist." He also played a supporting role in the Brett Ratner-directed "Rush Hour 3" for New Line.I wonder if he gets to fight Jackie Chan. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, June 24, 2006
Star Trek: Rebooted
Ain't It Cool brought my attention to this post by writer Bryce Zabel about the treatment he wrote with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski to "re-boot" Star Trek. You should read the treatment yourself, if you're interested, but basically it involved starting from scratch, and doing a new television series about the original characters (Kirk, Spock, et al) on their five year voyage. Effectively, it's giving Star Trek the Batman Begins treatment, which seems all the rage these days (what with Superman Returns and Casino Royale both on the way). As described by Straczynski and Zabel, it's a fascinating idea. What really struck me was that whereas very other Trek incarnation has based the franchise around the universe (so that each new series covers different periods and events in a consistent chronology), this one bases everything around the original series characters and throws everything else out. In other words, the key to Trek is defined as being Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest, just as other franchises rotate around - and occasionally recast and reimagine - their lead characters (Superman, Batman, James Bond, etc). As interesting as it would have been to see this, at the end of the day I don't really buy it. Firstly, Kirk is William Shatner and Spock is Leonard Nimoy and Bones is DeForest Kelley. Those characters were defined by the actors who played them - often because the writing was pretty thin, frankly - and I don't think it would be a very productive exercise recasting them. (I think J.J. Abrams' mooted "young Kirk" project is a doomed exercise for much the same reason). The other thing is that for all Straczynski and Zabel's optimism about a "fresh take" on the format, I'm just not sure there's much more that can be done with the "starship cruising the universe" format. There have been an incredible twenty-nine series of Trek all up (including the animated series), which have picked over a lot of narrative ground. If you've watched a series or two of Trek, you've seen a lot of variations on pretty much every kind of story you can build into that format. As I alluded to in my review of Star Trek: Nemesis, I think the future of Trek lies in taking a break, letting demand build, and then returning with a decently budgeted feature film that had some real scope to it. Given the series some real grandeur and mystique, rather than having it constantly accessible in multiple versions that retread the original format, would be a much better way to "reboot." ...While I'm on Star Trek, there is one other thing I wanted to post - with a quick disclaimer. Below is a link to Master Replica's reproduction of the original Enterprise model, which you can click for more details. The disclaimer is that yes, this is obviously an ad. But I only get money if you buy it, not just for clicking through, and given the obscene cost (too horrific to repeat here) I wouldn't advocate you doing so. But if you're a Trek fan you should click it and salivate a little. I'm in nerd nirvana when I look at that thing. While I'm not a huge fan of the original series of Trek, I love the design of the original Enterprise. One of my fondest memories of my trip to Washington DC in 2002 was coming across the original TV model in a glass case at the back of the Air and Space Museum gift shop. It really is an amazing site, and was - embarrassingly - the highlight of the museum for me. (Wright Flyer? Bah!) So when is Lego going to sign a Star Trek licence? A Lego Starship Enterprise would go beautifully with their Imperial Star Destroyer. There is this thing:   But unfortunately it's actually made from Megablocks, the Lego for parents who don't love their children. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, May 22, 2006
World Trade Centre
The trailer for Oliver Stone's World Trade Centre is online here. Could this possibly feel any less like an Oliver Stone movie? In order to go near this subject matter - which I don't think they should at this point - Paramount must have felt they needed a respectable director with some kudos behind him. Even with all the left-wing / paranoia baggage he brings, Stone was the right sort of choice. But to judge by this trailer he's produced a movie-of-the-week version of the remarkable documentary 9/11. Stone was probably afraid of doing anything offensive, but if he's got nothing important to say, then he shouldn't have made a film at all, and focussed on a life-affirming drama that didn't raise so many other issues. It looks sappy, and it looks distasteful. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Trailer Watch
The Casino Royale Trailer is now in English here and the Superman Returns Trailer is here. Geeks are supposed to be so excited about Superman, but it just isn't happening for me. The trailer, it must be said, ends with a really nice joke: but I have a hunch they've just given away the best moment in the film. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, March 18, 2006
Get This to the Boys in MarketingThis is old news, around on the net for ages, but Ain't it Cool just ran a link to a pseudo-trailer for Samuel L. Jackson's upcoming thriller, and I just had to mention it, because this film may have the best title ever. (Even better than Werner Herzog's Even Dwarves Started Small).
 The concept of the film is that an assassin lets loose hundreds of snakes on a plane to kill a witness in a trial, causing the usual disaster movie thriller havoc. The title? Wait for it...  The studio, apparently, nearly chickened out, opting instead for Pacific Air 121(see here), but it was changed back to the elegantly forthright insanity of Snakes on a Plane. Samuel L Jackson may have played some role in this decision: he told an interviewer who queried the Pacifc Air title "we're totally changing that back. That's the only reason I took the job: I read the title." Meanwhile, folks on the internet have been inspired by the title to help the studio out with their marketing, coming up with appropriately themed Snakes on a Plane promotional material, such as this poster:  But of course, Snakes on a Plane sells itself really. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Is Kong Is Good
Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong has certain quarters of the internet abuzz with anticipation. Which is only natural: Jackson is coming off an epic project that won both critical and audience acclaim, and moving on to a reworking of a much-loved classic. Sources such as Ain't It Cool have been at their most openly slavering. (Here's an Ain't It Cool quote for the poster: "I am bonerized.") This is the kind of "this is going to be huge" internet buzz that most other productions can only dream of. The producers of the remade Poseidon Adventure, for example, have engaged in an elaborate process of set visits for the biggest on-line movie sites that has resulted in series of dutifully impressed articles, but little of the genuine excitement that some of the fan community show for Kong.  This excitement, however, has derived almost entirely from the match of director and project: the actual material that has been released publicly so far was not terribly impressive. The initial teaser trailer (here) was big on Jurassic Park style dinosaurs, but left many (including myself) relatively unimpressed. The second trailer, which hit the internet last week (here), unveiled a redesigned Kong (much older and more grizzled than in the teaser, and without the goofy looking projecting tooth), and was considerably better. However, it still raised the issue: how on earth does anyone make this material fresh? The problem derives from the influential material: we have seen a flood of Kong derivatives over the last decade. This is actually an unusual situation, in a historical sense: the original 1933 King Kong is a primary source for modern special effects cinema, but for many years there were relatively few imitations of it. In particular, the stop-motion animation techniques used to realise its creatures remained so fiddly and unrealistic that they remained used in only a small number of films. The list of notable stop motion artists is very short: Willis O'Brien (who did the original Kong, as well as 1925's The Lost World and 1949's Mighty Joe Young); Ray Harryhausen (Jason & The Argonauts and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad); and Phil Tippett (the original Star Wars films, Dragonslayer, and Jurassic Park) are really the only notable figures, and these three between them provided effects for most of the really notable animated creature movies before the 1990s. By that decade, stop-motion had largely been abandoned by Hollywood productions: the inherent limitations of the technique did not yield a realistic enough approach. (Even the first remake of King Kong, in 1976, spurned stop-motion in favour of simple man-in-suit effects). In 1993, however, Jurassic Park opened the floodgates. Phil Tippett was hired for that production, with the intent of producing the dinosaurs through an advanced variant of stop-motion (nicknamed "go-motion") that he had pioneered on The Empire Strikes Back. However, advances in computer graphics meant that go-motion was abandoned early in the production, and the resulting breakthroughs in computer animation completely revolutionised the field. The Jurassic Park computer-generated dinosaurs were a leap ahead not only for their improved realism, but for their much more seamless integration into live action footage. This made fully animated creatures much more feasible, and the cinemas have been full of creature heavy films ever since, with The Lost World, Starship Troopers, Godzilla, Attack of the Clones, and all of the The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films, amongst many others. The 1933 King Kong was a crucial inspiration for all these films, with some building on it very directly. The structure of Spielberg's The Lost World, for example, is a straight steal from Kong, with two thirds of both films spent on an island filled with exotic dinosaurs, followed by a final sequence in which one of these creatures wreaks havoc in a city. This debt to Kong is central to the appeal of the remake, but it is also a problem: we have seen an awful lot of films featuring people running around being chased by computer generated monsters recently. I think this explains why, despite the in-principle excitement about the new King Kong, the reaction to the trailers themselves has been so lukewarm. Perhaps it is for this reason that the distributors wanted to show off some of the footage from the new movie to critics and exhibitors. The centrepiece of the presentation was a fifteen minute sequence form the central portion of the movie, when Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) has been captured by Kong, and flees from him into the jungle. The sequence is a classic exercise in escalation: Darrow encounters a series of increasingly oversized beasts as she tries to escape, starting with mosquitoes the size of her hand, followed by metre-long centipedes and a pair of lizard-like dinosaurs (or possibly just giant lizards - if you can tell the difference, please let me know). Finally, she stumbles into the path of three T-Rexes, from which she is rescued by Kong in a considerably enhanced version of a similar showdown in the original film.  The sequence was still pretty unfinished, with some scenes (particularly at the start and end of the sequence) still barely more than animatics. However, enough of the key shots were there to show that technically the effects look to be top notch. This is not something to be taken for granted: the sheer quantity of computer-generated effects being produced lately has meant that the both the quality of animation and realism of shots in many of these films has suffered. (The new Star Wars films, for example, have been particularly notable offenders in this regard). While I suspect any project as large as Kong will end up with a few ropey shots, the material shown suggests that the key sequences at least should generally look pretty good. Certainly Jackson is using the best people: the people at Weta Digital who are working on Kong also did the work on Gollum in The Two Towers and Return of the King, which is far and away the most impressive animated character in the current cycle of computer animated films. Perhaps more impressive, however, is that in this sequence Jackson manages to beat the law of diminishing returns. As we have seen more and more of this kind of movie, each of which tries to top the last, we have seen the effects become increasingly elaborate. The stampedes of creatures become grander and the action becomes more hyperbolic, even as audiences become progressively more jaded. The Kong vs T-Rex sequence responds to this kind of escalation by revelling in its own sheer outrageousness. The climax of the sequence shows Kong, the dinosaurs and Darrow falling over a cliff and becoming entangled in a series of hanging vines. The fight then continues mid-air as the dinosaurs try to swing and catch Darrow, with Kong fighting them off. It is, frankly, a ridiculous notion. Jackson gets away with it, however, because he recognises that the sequence's outlandishness brings its own inherent humour. As computer effects sequences become ever more over-the-top, such a lightness of touch is vital. The other small detail that I liked was a very direct reference to the 1933 King Kong. The sequence finishes with a one-on-one fight, with Kong and one T-Rex falling to the ground and facing each other off for Darrow. (This is the moment shown prominently in both trailers, which I had wrongly assumed comes from the start of the sequence. In fact, it is near the end, with Kong dropping to the ground after hanging from the vines: this is why Kong appears so dramatically from the top of screen in the trailer). This final stage of the fight is a very close recreation of the equivalent scene in the original, and it finishes with Kong quizzically opening and closing the now-limp jaws of the slain T-Rex. It's a nice little moment of animation, adding crucial personality to Kong, but it's also an acknowledgement of Willis O'Brien's work on the original: Kong did exactly the same thing in 1933. So while I won't say that I'm "bonerized," I can say that I now look forward to Jackson's King Kong with considerably expanded expectations. This piece appears here courtesy of In Film Australia, where it first appeared. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, October 24, 2005
Craig, Daniel Craig
The news that Daniel Craig will take over the role of James Bond in the upcoming Casino Royale has been greeted with a brief flurry of perfunctory publicity, but what seems to be general apathy. It's not hard to see why: as Jaime J. Weinman put it, "The Bond movies are basically the big-budget equivalent of an endlessly-running TV adventure show, and replacing Bond doesn't mean much more than replacing Dr. Who." Which, as a Bond fan, is sad but indisputably accurate.
 What interests me most about the decision to axe Brosnan and use Craig is both its perversity and its eerie echoes of the handover from Sean Connery to George Lazenby for 1969's On Her Majesties Secret Service (hereafter OHMSS). Perverse, because Brosnan had been agitating for ages that he wanted to do a tougher, grittier, more Fleming-inspired take on Bond, and Quentin Tarantino has been advocating a "straight" adaptation of Casino Royale for a couple of years. Brosnan has been the best thing the Bond series has had going for it recently - he has been an excellent Bond in generally indifferent movies. Tarantino, of course, could have been just the shot in the arm the series needed. As I argued here when the Casino Royale idea was first floated, the Tarantino Bond film could have been done as a one-off "art Bond" project without upsetting the whole series, possibly as a farewell film for Brosnan. Instead, the producers have spurned Brosnan, rejected Tarantino... and then gone with the mediocre action director Martin Campbell, and Daniel Craig as Bond, to do a version of Casino Royale that is reportedly - you guessed it - a return to Fleming's source, including making it an origin story a la Batman Begins. It seems to be all downside with no upside: they are taking the risk of "rebooting" the series, but not choosing to take advantage of the talents who had advocated taking that chance in the first place. The parallels with the situation in 1969 are interesting. For those who haven't read the books, Casino Royale is, like OHMSS, one of the key novels in terms of defining the character. In the case of OHMSS, this carried through to the film series. (I'm going to move into some spoilers here: while I'll tread lightly on the events of Casino Royale, I'm going to reveal the end to OHMSS, on the grounds that it's much more familiar to most filmgoers). In OHMSS, you'll recall, Bond marries, but has his wife slain by Blofeld on his wedding day: it's an event that is referred to occasionally in the subsequent films (most explicitly in The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, and Licence to Kill, but obliquely elsewhere) and which provides a tragic undertone that has forever informed the understanding of who Bond is. The entire arc of the 1960s Bond films (which work as a serial in a way the later films don't) works up to this event, and OHMSS is one of a very short list of Bonds that stands as a film classic in its own right. The irony of all this is that the series took this dramatic turn after Sean Connery had quit the series out of frustration. Connery was concerned about typecasting and wanted to branch out, and he announced that he was quitting during the filming of You Only Live Twice (1967), which was the film that defined what would become the worst aspects of the Bond series. The first of the series to completely discard Fleming's source novel, it's overlong, flabbily directed, and represents the start of the treatment of Bond as purely a fantasy figure (rather than a real character who enters borderline fantasy scenarios). Watching it, it is easy to see why Connery grew disenchanted - but as soon as he left, the producers went back to basics for the truly excellent OHMSS. The only weakness of that film is Lazenby, and watching it, you can't help but wonder how Connery would have responded to the acting challenge of giving us a real, vulnerable Bond in love. For the next film they got Connery back - but made Diamonds Are Forever, a dreadful mishmash that totally ignored the events of the preceding film and built to a climactic scene of death rays from space. And Connery quit again. It's unlikely that Daniel Craig will be another Lazenby - while we won't know for sure until the film comes out, he seems to have been chosen to put a "proper actor" in the role, a la Timothy Dalton in 1987. And that's a promising sign going into Casino Royale, which turns on Bond's relationship with a fellow intelligence worker named Vesper Lynd. In the novels, she is the other love of Bond's life, and the conclusion of their relationship is another key moment in Bond's history. I hope the producers do have the courage not to jazz it up too much (the later portions of the novel give way almost entirely to character based drama), and look forward to seeing Craig's take on Bond. But just like Connery back in 1969, Brosnan deserved a shot at it. Unlike Connery, Brosnan was ready and willing, which just makes it more puzzling. It has been rumoured that he asked for too much money, but it's difficult to believe he wasn't worth it. Brosnan isn't an actor of the calibre of Connery (who was spectacularly good in the first few Bonds, before he got bored of the role) but he had managed the difficult task of being fully accepted by the public as Bond. That's a tricky thing to do, and being good in the role isn't enough: Timothy Dalton was an excellent actor, but he never caught the public's imagination. That kind of identification between actor and role is a rare thing, and the series hasn't enjoyed it since Connery. (Despite the length of tenure in the part, Roger Moore always violently divided opinion, and simply isn't Bond to many: he's just Roger Moore doing Bond schtick). Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, and something tells me that Bond fans will be left dreaming of the Brosnan Casino Royale in much the same way that they rue the missed chance of the Connery OHMSS. For more on my views on the decision to adapt Casino Royale as the next Bond film, see this earlier post. Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, October 17, 2005
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Honest Director
iFMagazine has a really interesting update - brought to my attention by Dark Horizons - on the status of the sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean. It's interesting not because I care about the sequels (I enjoyed the first film, but it screamed "fluke" to me and I always expected any sequels to resemble Cutthroat Island), but for what an overly candid director can let slip about the production process for Hollywood movies today: Although the movies are shot back-to-back, Verbinski reveals they're shooting both films simultaneously with both scripts constantly in flux.
This says a lot about how Hollywood blockbusters can go off the rails. As my hypothetical longtime readers will know, I'm not one who says that Hollywood is going downhill (see here), but when films are produced like this, it does seem kind of miraculous that the big studios do manage to produce any decent films at all. Firstly, the Pirates sequels have been put into production before the scripts are complete. It should be obvious that a lack of a script is going to be a recipe for disaster, and complaints about weak scripts for blockbusters are a familiar refrain amongst critics. The problem persists because of the simple reality that the screenwriting process can be squeezed in a way that no other part of the production process can. Studios build a release schedule around the delivery of a movie on a certain date, and because so many films are "packages" of star, director, and actors, this commitment is frequently made when no script exists. (Picking up a script, and then trying to cast it, is far from the norm, and even when the script does come first, the attachment of particular talent might trigger rewrites anyway). Having locked in a date, most phases of the production require a certain finite period of time that can't really be compressed. When a project is making a late run at its opening date, there is very limited scope to accelerate principal photography or the construction of sets, for example. Some aspects of post-production (editing, scoring, special effects, etc) can be accelerated a little, but this usually either costs a lot or saves only a little time. So the sacrifice is often made at script level: the film moves ahead before people are happy with the script (perhaps with the rationalisation that it can be fixed on the run). While it might seem obvious that this is likely to lead to a flawed film, script problems are a minor concern for studios: they only rarely tip a production into chaos (as appears to be happening to the Pirates sequels), so they don't cost anyone money in a tangible, measurable way. The cost of a bad script is lost revenue due to the film being no good when it's released, and that's hard to quantify. What's more, from a studio's point of view, you can see why they don't want to risk a key date just to give a writer longer to hone a script: after all, there's no actual guarantee the extra time will make it any better. Trying to discern the vagaries of a writer's creative process must seem a pretty unproductive way for businessmen to spend their time: much better to just manage the logistical side as best you can and let the lightning of artistic inspiration fall where it will. Films do sometimes triumph over compressed schedules and rushed scripts. However, usually the best a director can hope for is to paper over the plotholes and make something moderately entertaining out of their ramshackle first draft script. (A really textbook example of this kind of film is Jurassic Park, which ran out of time for script rewrites and went ahead with a last minute draft that David Koepp whipped together in a matter of weeks. As a result, there are whole scenes that go nowhere, characters that are written out awkwardly, and a host of other problems that would have been smoothed out in any subsequent draft). Even by these sort of standards, however, the Pirates sequels are showing a particularly swashbuckling sense of adventure in terms of forging ahead with incomplete scripts. One of the keys to good sequel-making is to have some overall idea of where the series is headed and how the sequels build on each other: this is notable in series such as the original Star Wars, Harry Potter and Spiderman films, where the sense of multi-film story arcs is very strong. (Even the early Bond films had a multi-film arc that built from Dr No to a climax in On Her Majesties Secret Service). This is all the more important where sequels are filmed back-to-back. This is usually only done where there is a really tightly worked-out scenario that everyone is certain of (and, of course, when good box-office is almost guaranteed). Examples include The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Back to the Future parts two and three, and the first two Superman films. While the latter example ran off the rails somewhat due to discord and disorganisation behind the scenes, those projects are notable for the way in which an overall story arc for the concurrently filmed parts was very clear from day one. When Peter Jackson suggested the key to such a production model was reshoots, I imagine he took it for granted that those involved would have some basic knowledge of what was to happen in each film during principal photography. By contrast, it seems that the only overarching idea driving the Pirates sequels is that all involved thought it would be great to make more money... and the only idea behind filming them back-to-back was that it would be great to make twice as much money. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Friday, September 30, 2005
A Three Hour TurkeyOh, the humanity. Ain't It Cool report the latest bit of Hollywood idiocy: a remake of Gilligan's Island:
Sheesh. This is a classic example of a movie that is made simply because someone couldn't resist a bit of stunt casting. (Although, yes, I do know that there is a huge gulf between something being reported on Ain't It Cool and actually being made). The only reason anyone would contemplate something like this, surely, is that the there is something so undeniably right about Dennehy as the Skipper. But perfect casting is never a reason to make a movie - and a screening of the original TV show should be all the encouragement anyone needs not to make one. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Friday, May 06, 2005
The Sith has hit the Fans
Just a quick heads up to follow my comments about Kevin Smith's review: there are now reviews aplenty at The Force.net. (Credit to Ain't It Cool for an unusually witty pun). Update: Okay, to avoid just constantly adding new Revenge of the Sith posts, I'm going to make this a rolling list of reviews for the film as they appear. Keep in mind the fan reviews are likely to be more positive than the mainstream media. I'll concentrate more on the more interesting on-line sources here: at the bottom is a link to Rotten Tomatoes, which will do a pretty good job of covering the prominent media critics. Note that the fan reviews, in particular, contain many spoilers. If you want to avoid them, but still want to know if the movie's good, try this spoiler-free review at The Force.Net. So - the reviews: Kevin Smith (View Askew; very positive) Josh Griffin (The Force.Net; generally positive, but gives a good idea of some of the flaws) Bill Hunt (The Digital Bits; positive) Todd McCarthy (Variety; positive) Scott Chitwood (ComingSoon.Net; pretty positive, and seems one of the better reviews) Harry Knowles (Ain't It Cool; very positive and typically self-indulgent) "Neely" (The Force.Net; positive) "Matt" (The Force.Net; positive, but with some interesting reservations) Gabriel Shanks (Mixed Reviews; positive, and another well-written review) Ed Gonzales (Slant Magazine; mostly negative, and listed purely because I wanted to include a negative review) Various Fans (Ain't it Cool; generally positive) Update 10/5/05: Alexandra Du Pont (Ain't it Cool; positive - This is the best written and most promising review I've seen: if you read only one, read this) Update 12/5/05 Luke Buckmaster (In Film Australia; positive) Update 14/5/05 Garth Franklin (Dark Horizons; mixed-positive) And for more assorted critics, you can of course check out Rotten Tomatoes.  Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Thursday, April 28, 2005
Review of the Sith
We have a Revenge of the Sith review. Filmmaker Kevin Smith has given it a rave review on his website (note that spoiler and language warnings apply: in particular, I feel a little miffed that Smith gave away the final shot of the film). It's the first definitely legitimate review we have. There have been previous near misses and false alarms. A few months back Josh Griffin, then the editor of The Force.Net, the biggest Star Wars fan site, hinted on the site's forums that he had seen a working version and stated that he would provide a "review of sorts," setting off something of a frenzy. In the end, there was no review - "of sorts" or otherwise - and Griffin instead resigned as editor. (For an interesting but harsh blast at Griffin about this whole debacle by one of Star Wars fandom's more obstreporous figures, click here). But this is the real Kevin Smith, and he has no doubt seen the film. Smith has good credentials to be posting this review: as he explains in an essay in Glenn Kenney's anthology A Galaxy Not so Far Away, he is a lifelong fan and even got married at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch while doing post-production on his film Dogma. He has also been rumoured as a possible writer / director for the likely Star Wars TV show, a fact that he seems to allude to in the review. Of course, this also counts as a possible conflict of interest. The other thing that some fans have used to discredit Smith's review is the fact that he gave a positive review of The Phantom Menace back in 1999. In particular, he gave the following damning quote: I'd rank it right after 'Empire' in a list of fave 'Star Wars' flicks.Damning because it is of course accepted wisdom by fans that The Empire Strikes Back is the one, shining masterpiece of the series (with the original film close behind). To rank the execrable The Phantom Menace just behind Empire is considered by fans pretty much definitive proof of insanity. Which would be fair enough if it weren't for the fact that the rest of Smith's 1999 Phantom Menace review is so underwhelmed that it completely fails to back up the quote. He sounds - as so many of us did in 1999 - like someone desperately trying to convince himself that it was okay. An example? Smith in 1999: Compare this to Smith in 2005: "Revenge of the Sith" is, quite simply, fucking awesome. This is the "Star Wars" prequel the haters have been bitching for since "Menace" came out, and if they don't cop to that when they finally see it, they're lying... this flick is so satisfyingly tragic, you'll think you're watching "Othello" or "Hamlet".Hyperbole raises its own suspicions, but you can't doubt that the enthusiasm level is much higher in the second review. I obviously have not seen the film: however, I have seen a 7 minute compilation of footage that seems to be very similar to the one described here, with the conspicuous difference that there was definitely no dialogue in the version I saw, only music. The copy I saw was a bootleg, complete with silhouetted heads in the foreground, but you could still get a good feel for it. The footage looked absolutely spectacular. Here's the YouTube version: I hated The Phantom Menace, and am one of the few who enjoyed Attack of the Clones - but I just have a feeling that this film will really deliver. If Lucas can provide some dialogue and plot that can halfway match what I saw, I'll be happy. Labels: rumours Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. |
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