Hollywood screenwriting legend Lorenzo Semple Jr. has died at 91.
This guy had a career any industry pro would envy, penning classics like "The Parallax View" and "3 Days of The Condor," along with cult-classics like "Flash Gordon." But he's probably best remembered today as the creator/mastermind of the Adam West "Batman" series; through which he was either directly or partially responsible for the "Bat-____" device-naming convention, the Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl, the creation of Mr. Freeze and the rehabilitation of what were then largely-forgotten DC characters like Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman. In recent years he was part of the team behind the "Reel Geezers" YouTube series.
Semple lived a full life, certainly. We should all be so lucky. But I do think it's kind of a shame that he didn't live to see "Batman's" long-awaited DVD release later this year. I've maintained for awhile now that fandom, which unpleasantly turned Semple and that series into a rhetorical punching-bag in the Dark Age 90s, was due to turn around on that once all of the episodes were more widely available (a lot of people have really only seen the movie, which is missing a lot of the smart/sharp satire the episodic series brought) and I imagine it might've been nice for him to see that.
Jumat, 28 Maret 2014
Escape to The Movies: "NOAH"
Here's something you don't hear every day: "Damn, that Bible Movie kicked a lot of ass!"
ALSO: "10 Bible Movies Even Weirder Than "NOAH."
ALSO: "10 Bible Movies Even Weirder Than "NOAH."
Kamis, 27 Maret 2014
I'm Sad Now
So... this looks really underwhelming. And surprisingly cheap, too. Say what you will about Michael Bay (who only produced this one), He's at least got style, whereas Johnathan Liebsman really is sort of a rote point-and-shoot guy, at best:
Animators? Look, I get that deadlines and budgets are a thing and that studios want you to use facial-tracking algorithms instead of taking the time to animate a character's expressions independently... but this thing (a direct result of that approach prevailing) where otherwise inhuman characters have overly-humanoid eyes, noses and (especially) lips? It just never looks good. Uncanny Valley and all that. Please, trust me: No plurality of filmgoers have ever expressed the following sentiment: "I was totally onboard with the premise of six-foot tall amphibians trained in ancient Japanese martial-arts until I noticed they're mouths shouldn't be capable of producing human-sounding syllables!"
Look. New origin for the TMNT? I can dig it - they aren't exactly Superman in terms of modern mythmaking. But man, they really did just lift the (already shitty) "your father was a scientist working with the bad guy to create this" psuedo-predestination wankery from "Amazing Spider-Man," eh? I'll have more to say on that front in the near future, but until then enjoy freeze-framing that one shot where Leonardo actually looks sort-of cool.
Animators? Look, I get that deadlines and budgets are a thing and that studios want you to use facial-tracking algorithms instead of taking the time to animate a character's expressions independently... but this thing (a direct result of that approach prevailing) where otherwise inhuman characters have overly-humanoid eyes, noses and (especially) lips? It just never looks good. Uncanny Valley and all that. Please, trust me: No plurality of filmgoers have ever expressed the following sentiment: "I was totally onboard with the premise of six-foot tall amphibians trained in ancient Japanese martial-arts until I noticed they're mouths shouldn't be capable of producing human-sounding syllables!"
Look. New origin for the TMNT? I can dig it - they aren't exactly Superman in terms of modern mythmaking. But man, they really did just lift the (already shitty) "your father was a scientist working with the bad guy to create this" psuedo-predestination wankery from "Amazing Spider-Man," eh? I'll have more to say on that front in the near future, but until then enjoy freeze-framing that one shot where Leonardo actually looks sort-of cool.
Rabu, 26 Maret 2014
JUPITER ASCENDING Trailer 2
A bigger look at "JUPITER ASCENDING," The Wachowski's first stab at big-scale space-opera, due out later this Summer:
Selasa, 25 Maret 2014
Big Picture: SCARLET UNITY
Senin, 24 Maret 2014
Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch look... okay, I guess?
"AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON" is location-shooting in earnest right now, which means we'll be seeing set pics out the wazoo. Today, that means we're getting a look at Wanda and Pietro in costume... but without the extensive special-effects work thats apparently set to be laid-over both of them in post-production. They look... alright. CBM has a decent collection of snaps, which also include guys wearing what look like props/stand-in suits for Ultron himself...
Quicksilver, at least, looks like an admirable attempt to make his comic look work in reality - lightning-bolts and all. Scarlet Witch, on the other hand... gotta be honest, I don't love it. I guess maybe it'll be visually interesting to have one Avenger doing the "street clothes plus glowy FX = superhero" look next to an otherwise all-costumes team, I just don't know that I needed it to be this character. Yes, I know, they weren't going to have her fighting in what typically amounts to lingerie - though I wouldn't have complained if they had...Of course, Quicksilver gets to benefit from how spectacularly awful the version of him in "X-MEN: DOFP" looks, whereas Scarlet Witch just sort of looks like she's cosplaying Jane Lane. We'll see.
X-MEN: DOFP Finally Starts Looking Good
Bryan Singer's "X-MEN" movies will always get a certain amount of credit for being good enough. When that first film hit, we were still in post-"BATMAN & ROBIN" fallout and Raimi's "SPIDER-MAN" was still a year away. So despite Singer being at best a modestly competent stylist who can't really direct action, the first one gets to be remembered as pretty-good while the sequel (also pretty-good) coasts by on the residual "whoa!" of seeing that Phoenix tease just before the credits rolled. Plus, the third one was so spectacularly terrible it made everything else look that much better until "ORIGINS: WOLVERINE" came out.But none of that changes what an oddly underwhelming series this is, overall, and I imagine the consensus on it would be worse still if Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart hadn't continued to be such beloved movie-nerd icons today. "FIRST CLASS" is still the only entry in the franchise that's legitimately great, and unsurprisingly it was 99.9% free of any connection to the rest of the series and the only entry to have been helmed by a truly great filmmaker in Matthew Vaughn. Everything wrong with the whole series can be summed-up by the cheezy new poster (on the right,) wherein everything else is just a tiny detail within a sooooo serious brooding Wolverine, while Jennifer Lawrence stares blankly as though she'd rather be doing anything else.
BUT! Credit where do, even though I'm still pretty certain that Singer coming back is a step backwards... the new trailer for "DAYS OF FUTURE PAST" looks pretty damn great. It's still hurt by the lingering presence of everything still being carried-over from the inferior earlier movies (all the damn black rubber, Singer's dreary po-faced gloom, Halle Berry) but yeah - it looks big-scale and cool and the Sentinels look great and it looks like Iceman gets to do his surfing thing so that'll be fun to see; and it looks like Mystique has an appropriately big role... which is interesting, since it's kind of an open-secret that she, Fassbender and others from "FIRST CLASS" had basically had to be contract-bullied into doing another one of these (Fassbender is apparently looking for "ASSASSIN'S CREED" to be his franchise ticket, not this.)
There's supposedly a lot still being held back from this or deliberately edited-around by the trailers. If you look close, it feels like everything involving the "future" is from one or two scenes in the same basic setting, which would jibe with the pre-production word that the majority of the film is a 70s-set deal with the "FIRST CLASS" crew. What I'd really like to see is for the "change the future" part of this plot leading to a near-complete reboot: Use the "changed timeline" as an excuse to re-cast the "A-list" X-Men and re-start for the "present" carrying-over the best stuff from the FC timeline but abandoning any pretense of lining-up with the "Look, this is the best we were able to manage at the time" original Singer-timeline.
Jumat, 21 Maret 2014
Glenn Beck Slams "NOAH" Sight-Unseen
There are two kinds of people in the world: Thinkers and Believers.
Case in point: Here's Glenn Beck and company pissing and moaning about the potential of Darren Aronofsky's film to undermine Biblical literalism. Perish the thought.
Kamis, 20 Maret 2014
"THE GIVER" Teaser Trailer
Below, the first teaser for the movie of "THE GIVER," based on a book you may have been forced to read in middle-school about (all together now) a tween hero with a special destiny bracing against a dystopian future where free-will has been suppressed.
In fairness to Lois Lowry, this was written in 1993 when only most of it's component parts were tedious cliches. Either way, I'm not sure how this premise is going to work in 2014 - but that involves SPOILERS so hit the jump for those...
SPOILERS:
Okay, so if you either don't remember or don't care about spoilers, the book of "THE GIVER" was pretty-much the main thing "EQUILIBRIUM" borrowed it's setup from: A dystopian future society that enforces an emotionally-numbed "sameness" largely by excising the population's collective memories of the past up to and including what color, music, emotion, etc "were." Our hero is a 12 year-old who's next in line to become "The Giver," i.e. a guy who gets to be a human backup-drive whose mind will contain all those "lost" memories in case the leadership ever needs to look something up. He befriends the current Giver, and the two of them start thinking about kicking off a revolution against The System.
Here's what I want to know (apart from why it doesn't look like they're doing it in black-and-white gradually transitioning to color when that's pretty-much how the hero's development is layed out in the book and also damn near the only way to make any of this look visually dynamic): Are they still working from the premise that this is the future of our world? Because if so, they're going to have to change what the big inciting "Must Fight The System" issue is.
Short version: Every dystopia needs a big central horror underlying it in order to prevent the audience from asking "yeah but" questions about liberty vs security, and in "The Giver" it's that The Community practices Spartan-style population control by euthanizing "aberrant" babies in infancy (example of aberration: identical twins). Problem: In the time between the writing of the book and now, the existence of prenatal genetic testing has made the basic premise of that (apart from being barbaric) wholly obsolete... or does The Giver remember everything about the earlier world except that particular technology?
From the looks of the teaser, it would appear that "save that baby!" is still the big Act III suspense-kickoff; but I'm given to think they might've been better acknowledging that the world has moved on and a new angle was necessary overall: Now, however good the movie is, they're going to get swept up in a bunch of media nonsense about whether it's a "pro-life metaphor" (which won't be helped by the presence of Walden Media, which has connections to right-wing Christian activist Philip Anschutz, as producers.)
In fairness to Lois Lowry, this was written in 1993 when only most of it's component parts were tedious cliches. Either way, I'm not sure how this premise is going to work in 2014 - but that involves SPOILERS so hit the jump for those...
SPOILERS:
Okay, so if you either don't remember or don't care about spoilers, the book of "THE GIVER" was pretty-much the main thing "EQUILIBRIUM" borrowed it's setup from: A dystopian future society that enforces an emotionally-numbed "sameness" largely by excising the population's collective memories of the past up to and including what color, music, emotion, etc "were." Our hero is a 12 year-old who's next in line to become "The Giver," i.e. a guy who gets to be a human backup-drive whose mind will contain all those "lost" memories in case the leadership ever needs to look something up. He befriends the current Giver, and the two of them start thinking about kicking off a revolution against The System.
Here's what I want to know (apart from why it doesn't look like they're doing it in black-and-white gradually transitioning to color when that's pretty-much how the hero's development is layed out in the book and also damn near the only way to make any of this look visually dynamic): Are they still working from the premise that this is the future of our world? Because if so, they're going to have to change what the big inciting "Must Fight The System" issue is.
Short version: Every dystopia needs a big central horror underlying it in order to prevent the audience from asking "yeah but" questions about liberty vs security, and in "The Giver" it's that The Community practices Spartan-style population control by euthanizing "aberrant" babies in infancy (example of aberration: identical twins). Problem: In the time between the writing of the book and now, the existence of prenatal genetic testing has made the basic premise of that (apart from being barbaric) wholly obsolete... or does The Giver remember everything about the earlier world except that particular technology?
From the looks of the teaser, it would appear that "save that baby!" is still the big Act III suspense-kickoff; but I'm given to think they might've been better acknowledging that the world has moved on and a new angle was necessary overall: Now, however good the movie is, they're going to get swept up in a bunch of media nonsense about whether it's a "pro-life metaphor" (which won't be helped by the presence of Walden Media, which has connections to right-wing Christian activist Philip Anschutz, as producers.)
Selasa, 18 Maret 2014
Good Grief
So they finally went ahead and did it.
Sooooooo many mixed emotions about this. The whole concept of doing PEANUTS in 3D sounds abhorrent on it's face, but look of this is... not bad. If nothing else, there's obviously been a lot of work/thought put into the style here that's coming from the right place: They've used the "dropped keyframes" animation trick from WRECK-IT RALPH and LEGO MOVIE to preserve the instant-shift from static to motion of traditional animation, and the programming physics behind the faux-linework for the details and faces (which makes them look like "embossed" 2D-paintings rather than fully-3D figures) would probably make my head spin. Blue Sky is a consistently under-appreciated studio.
So it looks right and sounds right, but what I want to know about is TONE: A 3D PEANUTS is terrifying because 3D animation's current "default" is dizzying, movement-centered showcases for 3D projection - all chases and pratfalls and elaborate visual gags - all of which are anathema to these characters and their world. Part of the reason Charlie Brown etc. look the way they do is because they were designed, deliberately, to occupy space and grouse to one another... and that's about it.
...except it just occured to me that a Snoopy "Red Baron" sequence would be the most-logical place for this to jump-out into a bigger-scale "wheeee!" showcase moment apart from the rest of the film, and now I want to see what that looks like. Huh.
Sooooooo many mixed emotions about this. The whole concept of doing PEANUTS in 3D sounds abhorrent on it's face, but look of this is... not bad. If nothing else, there's obviously been a lot of work/thought put into the style here that's coming from the right place: They've used the "dropped keyframes" animation trick from WRECK-IT RALPH and LEGO MOVIE to preserve the instant-shift from static to motion of traditional animation, and the programming physics behind the faux-linework for the details and faces (which makes them look like "embossed" 2D-paintings rather than fully-3D figures) would probably make my head spin. Blue Sky is a consistently under-appreciated studio.
So it looks right and sounds right, but what I want to know about is TONE: A 3D PEANUTS is terrifying because 3D animation's current "default" is dizzying, movement-centered showcases for 3D projection - all chases and pratfalls and elaborate visual gags - all of which are anathema to these characters and their world. Part of the reason Charlie Brown etc. look the way they do is because they were designed, deliberately, to occupy space and grouse to one another... and that's about it.
...except it just occured to me that a Snoopy "Red Baron" sequence would be the most-logical place for this to jump-out into a bigger-scale "wheeee!" showcase moment apart from the rest of the film, and now I want to see what that looks like. Huh.
Senin, 17 Maret 2014
This Is Your New GREEN GOBLIN
...I got nothing.
Oh well, appearances aren't everything - a lot of people hated the Tokusatsu-esque Goblin armor in the original, and I liked that just fine, so who really knows?
I'm just glad that Harry Osborn was such an important presence in the first "AMAZING SPIDER-MAN", so that his transformation in this one will be informed by the weight of that well-established relationship with Peter and the other characters. I mean, can you imagine how awkward it'd be if there hadn't even been any indication that this person existed before now and they had to stuff the origin and the narrative of Peter and Harry's friendship - the only thing that makes him compelling as an eventual nemesis - and Harry becoming a Goblin into one movie that's already built around at least two other villains and the continuing plot threads of Peter's missing parents, his relationship with Gwen, whatever is going on with Norman Osborn and that guy with the hat???
That would be nutty...
Here's The GoPro Fan-Film That'll Make You Love SUPERMAN Again:
Things you're probably sick of on The Internet: FX-demo reels playing out in Southern California, "_____ With a GoPro," bitter thirtysomething nerd movie-critics telling you how some fan-film nails this or that licensed property better than it's most recent movie did. Well, tough - watch this SUPERMAN short anyway, and be amazed:
Perfect. Basically perfect. I can't even bring myself to hate the dubstep (I assume unapproved "With John Williams Theme" versions will be all over the place in a few hours, for good or ill.)
Incredibly, it's looks like they accomplished 90% of this using a remote-controlled quadcopter and lot of clever editing. Impressive as all hell. If I'm Zack Snyder, I'm quietly tossing these guys a bunch of money not to raise a fuss when I borrow a bunch of these shots for "MAN OF STEEL 2."
Perfect. Basically perfect. I can't even bring myself to hate the dubstep (I assume unapproved "With John Williams Theme" versions will be all over the place in a few hours, for good or ill.)
Incredibly, it's looks like they accomplished 90% of this using a remote-controlled quadcopter and lot of clever editing. Impressive as all hell. If I'm Zack Snyder, I'm quietly tossing these guys a bunch of money not to raise a fuss when I borrow a bunch of these shots for "MAN OF STEEL 2."
Jumat, 14 Maret 2014
Kamis, 13 Maret 2014
2016: Batman VS. Superman VS. Captain America
Check out the big-ass BALLS on Marvel Studios, eh?
It's been a story for about a year now that Disney was adamant about NOT moving a May 6 2016 date they'd set up for "Untitled Marvel Studios Feature" even though the delayed "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN" slid into the same date. Most assumed that this was a publicity thing - namely that the date had been put aside for one of the new post-"AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON" franchise characters and that the announcment of who the film was actually about would provide "cover" for the secondary news that they were backing down in the face of a stronger competitor for the date: "Hey kids, look! DOCTOR STRANGE MOVIE!!! Oh and by the way we're moving him out of Batman and Superman's way..."
It's been a story for about a year now that Disney was adamant about NOT moving a May 6 2016 date they'd set up for "Untitled Marvel Studios Feature" even though the delayed "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN" slid into the same date. Most assumed that this was a publicity thing - namely that the date had been put aside for one of the new post-"AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON" franchise characters and that the announcment of who the film was actually about would provide "cover" for the secondary news that they were backing down in the face of a stronger competitor for the date: "Hey kids, look! DOCTOR STRANGE MOVIE!!! Oh and by the way we're moving him out of Batman and Superman's way..."
But it turns out exactly none of that is correct: THR Reports that Disney/Marvel will drop "CAPTAIN AMERICA 3" as their early-May release for 2016... and they have no intention of moving - they want to open against "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN."
The substory here is that Disney/Marvel is NUTS about "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER." The early reviews are beyond ecstatic - it's being called the best Marvel movie, period, with comparisons being drawn to "THE DARK KNIGHT" and other bigger-deal sequels. They signed the writer/director team to helm the third one while the movie was still in post-production. Chris Evans has been signed for six more films, and Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier) for nine. They believe they've got one of the biggest hits of the Summer, and maybe the movie that puts Captain America somewhere near Iron Man/Spider-Man/Batman levels of individual market-value.
The other substory? A gamble that the still not officially titled "MAN OF STEEL" sequel may want to move it's date again before 2016 hits. The film has moved slowly into shooting, but they still don't have a finished script and production is supposedly still very much in flux.
If you were betting money, obviously, the smart bet would be that one of the studios will blink and that "CAPTAIN AMERICA 3" will move; but I'm not 100% sure. This is, unquestionably, peacock-posturing on Marvel and Kevin Feige's part: "We aren't afraid of Batman OR Superman!" ...but what interests me is that they've got a lot less to actually lose. Opening in second place is what people would expect of them in this scenario, so if they do it's not much of a "defeat." "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN," on the other hand, needs to make a shitload of money to justify what they're pouring into it, and having another same-genre movie out at the same time would unavoidably eat into their boxoffice. It might actually be smarter for Warner Bros. to jump ahead a week or more and garauntee a big open (and limit Marvel's repeat-business) but they'd have to suffer every single website and industry trade running with "Captain America Singlehandedly Defeats The World's Finest!" as a headline.
Plenty of time for this to change, but you just don't see public "Come at me, bro!" moves like this as much anymore.
The other substory? A gamble that the still not officially titled "MAN OF STEEL" sequel may want to move it's date again before 2016 hits. The film has moved slowly into shooting, but they still don't have a finished script and production is supposedly still very much in flux.
If you were betting money, obviously, the smart bet would be that one of the studios will blink and that "CAPTAIN AMERICA 3" will move; but I'm not 100% sure. This is, unquestionably, peacock-posturing on Marvel and Kevin Feige's part: "We aren't afraid of Batman OR Superman!" ...but what interests me is that they've got a lot less to actually lose. Opening in second place is what people would expect of them in this scenario, so if they do it's not much of a "defeat." "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN," on the other hand, needs to make a shitload of money to justify what they're pouring into it, and having another same-genre movie out at the same time would unavoidably eat into their boxoffice. It might actually be smarter for Warner Bros. to jump ahead a week or more and garauntee a big open (and limit Marvel's repeat-business) but they'd have to suffer every single website and industry trade running with "Captain America Singlehandedly Defeats The World's Finest!" as a headline.
Plenty of time for this to change, but you just don't see public "Come at me, bro!" moves like this as much anymore.
Rabu, 12 Maret 2014
WubWubWubWub
I lost count, but when I was still counting we were on our seventh or eighth "AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2" trailer, so you can be forgiven for feeling like you've now seen pretty-much every minute of the actual film. I mean, geez... I know Sony Pictures is in a bad spot right now and if this thing underperforms (the original was already the lowest-grossing of the "SPIDER-MAN" movies) it's armageddon for a whole bunch of people at that studio, but still...
)
Anyway, here's one more minute of the film, which appears to be an early-ish encounter between Spidey and Hoodie Smurf. I gotta say... Electro's look still isn't doing it for me (and we've already seen that his "final look" doesn't get much better, so the "it's early in the story" thing doesn't work) and whoever is mixing the sound really needs to bring Garfield's vocals forward, but I like almost everything else about this - well shot, good sense of scope, and I dig the music right up until that fucking dubstep beat comes in at the very end (is this a piece of music or part of the score?)
)
Anyway, here's one more minute of the film, which appears to be an early-ish encounter between Spidey and Hoodie Smurf. I gotta say... Electro's look still isn't doing it for me (and we've already seen that his "final look" doesn't get much better, so the "it's early in the story" thing doesn't work) and whoever is mixing the sound really needs to bring Garfield's vocals forward, but I like almost everything else about this - well shot, good sense of scope, and I dig the music right up until that fucking dubstep beat comes in at the very end (is this a piece of music or part of the score?)
Selasa, 11 Maret 2014
Jumat, 07 Maret 2014
Kamis, 06 Maret 2014
"SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR" Trailer Hits
Aw yeah!
Let's just get it out of the way: Frank Miller, in 2014, is a walking punchline - a guy who hasn't turned in unironically good work in decades and has aged into a profoundly unpleasant human presence on the pop-culture radar. BUT! The "SIN CITY" books were good, and remain probably the perfect manifestation of his undeniably unique creative voice: all of his hangups, fetishes and fixations, cobbled together at the peak of his actual talent and laquered by enough style to keep the more problematic stuff boiling under the surface in proper check.
"SIN CITY" is Miller's perfect creation, and - in case you've managed to forget - Robert Rodriguez's "SIN CITY" movie was fucking awesome. So yeah, finally getting a look at the sequel? Welcome back, old friend:
Let's just get it out of the way: Frank Miller, in 2014, is a walking punchline - a guy who hasn't turned in unironically good work in decades and has aged into a profoundly unpleasant human presence on the pop-culture radar. BUT! The "SIN CITY" books were good, and remain probably the perfect manifestation of his undeniably unique creative voice: all of his hangups, fetishes and fixations, cobbled together at the peak of his actual talent and laquered by enough style to keep the more problematic stuff boiling under the surface in proper check.
"SIN CITY" is Miller's perfect creation, and - in case you've managed to forget - Robert Rodriguez's "SIN CITY" movie was fucking awesome. So yeah, finally getting a look at the sequel? Welcome back, old friend:
Selasa, 04 Maret 2014
"...I think we just found a Transformer!"
There was a moment, back "BAD BOYS II" had already happened and the first "TRANSFORMERS" had not, that I imagined that Michael Bay might be the guy to make a singularly great live-action Transformers movie. The movie I was imagining... looked like this.
Comprehensible action? Flag-draped Americana (LITTLE RED WAGON!!!!)? Ultra-earnest/sincere Mark Whalberg?? Plot seeming to imply The Autobots fighting the military/government and (maybe?) evil man-made Transformers? Optimus Prime being revived in a rural garage? (maybe) Galvatron/Unicron? Dinobots? STATIONARY SHOT-COMPOSITION????
This... might actually work...
Comprehensible action? Flag-draped Americana (LITTLE RED WAGON!!!!)? Ultra-earnest/sincere Mark Whalberg?? Plot seeming to imply The Autobots fighting the military/government and (maybe?) evil man-made Transformers? Optimus Prime being revived in a rural garage? (maybe) Galvatron/Unicron? Dinobots? STATIONARY SHOT-COMPOSITION????
This... might actually work...
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