i was going to write a post for today about the first season of life on mars, touching lightly on john simm's ability to cry on cue (truly miraculous) and philip glenister's ability to bluster and mow down on sarnies, also on cue (also miraculous -- and slightly stomach-churning).
but instead i'm going to write about ray harryhausen because the man is 90 and he is awesome. in fact, he may be one of the top 10 "made of awesome" people ever. he even got his own evening at the bfi to showcase precisely how awesome he is: guardian coverage of same evening here. look at the people in that room: phil tippet (i want to see that short), dennis muren, rick baker, george lucas, james cameron, peter jackson -- the list goes on and gets more staggering.
this is all for a guy who, basically, spent a lot of time making octopi out of modelling clay and figuring out how to make a plasticine medusa scary. which seems really ridiculous until you sit down and watch it came from beneath the sea -- one of my personal favorites for the peculiar interpersonal relationship between the main characters alone, to say nothing of the huge octopus -- or clash of the titans or jason and the argonauts. yeah, they look stilted and kind of funny given the sexiness of effects we're used to now -- but if harryhausen hadn't put together his plasticine skeletons and clay octopi and made them work in a very real way, then there would have been no rancor, no terminator, no kraken, no predator--- the list just goes on.
i'm sure there are plenty of other people who should get listed with harryhausen as "special-effect pioneers" -- melies, lang, and lots of other people i'm not clever enough to remember the names of -- but harryhausen, for me at least, probably tops the list. if nothing else, working through his back catalogue will give you a really interesting netflix queue for awhile!
and the harryhausen stuff still works if i knew precisely why, i'd probably be a very highly-paid film executive somewhere living in a perpetual haze of air-conditioning and expensive espresso, but i don't and i'm not. but go and watch jason and the argonauts or the original clash of the titans -- there's something highly watchable about the claymation monsters and beasties. and, yes, part of the watchability is that if we look at the 1981 kraken, we can all look back a few years and see the 2006 kraken blowing johnny depp's hat off. and, yes, in comparison the hand-molded beastie does look a little silly -- but it's still kind of scary. and, if you're a little kid, downright terrifying. it's still big and inhuman and just damn strange. it's a monster in all the ways a monster is supposed to be.
and without the claymation kraken in 1981, there really is no cgi kraken in 2006 because -- well, why would there be? someone has to be the first to make it apparent that something is possible. and then other people take it, elaborate on it, invent quicker, better, shinier ways of doing it. that doesn't invalidate or devalue the original demonstration of what could be done.
which is precisely why in the corpse bride, the piano victor is playing on is called a 'harryhausen.' happy birthday.
coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad:
whether from great personal success,
or just an all-night drive,
we are the sole survivors of a world
no one else has ever seen. - john le carre
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
short thoughts: "whiteout"
don't bother.
really.
don't.
one of the few movies in the past...oh, year? or two? that i haven't finished.
and this is with a cast which claims, as headliners, alex o'loughlin and kate beckinsale.
first -- why cast o'loughlin if all you're going to do with him is illustrate him with excitingly detailed tattoos and show him in one totally gratuitous shirtless scene? i mean, yes, thank you, he's lovely without his shirt on but -- on a base in antarctica? i'd consider having my shirt permanently attached to me.
and that's it, folks, say hello and wave goodbye to the nice australian man.
and kate beckinsale should have known better -- there is nothing happening in this movie. really and truly. nothing at all.
it's a shame because with the cast -- solid b-list plus beckinsale, o'loughlin, and tom skerrit -- they should have done better. and the basic idea -- first murder (maybe) in antarctica -- is a good one. creepy, atmospheric, weird, definitely cold.
but it isn't any good at all, really.
there's a weak attempt at a plot twist which just comes too late to be of any use. there's a lot of mumbling early in the movie when there should have been some plot development and character introduction -- but there isn't. there's snowstorms which pass for tension-inducing. there's irrational leaps in the story which...well, they just suck.
personally, i turned it off to go watch the us get pwned by ghana.
really.
don't.
one of the few movies in the past...oh, year? or two? that i haven't finished.
and this is with a cast which claims, as headliners, alex o'loughlin and kate beckinsale.
first -- why cast o'loughlin if all you're going to do with him is illustrate him with excitingly detailed tattoos and show him in one totally gratuitous shirtless scene? i mean, yes, thank you, he's lovely without his shirt on but -- on a base in antarctica? i'd consider having my shirt permanently attached to me.
and that's it, folks, say hello and wave goodbye to the nice australian man.
and kate beckinsale should have known better -- there is nothing happening in this movie. really and truly. nothing at all.
it's a shame because with the cast -- solid b-list plus beckinsale, o'loughlin, and tom skerrit -- they should have done better. and the basic idea -- first murder (maybe) in antarctica -- is a good one. creepy, atmospheric, weird, definitely cold.
but it isn't any good at all, really.
there's a weak attempt at a plot twist which just comes too late to be of any use. there's a lot of mumbling early in the movie when there should have been some plot development and character introduction -- but there isn't. there's snowstorms which pass for tension-inducing. there's irrational leaps in the story which...well, they just suck.
personally, i turned it off to go watch the us get pwned by ghana.
Friday, June 25, 2010
friday fun times
enjoy some movie trailers, folks.
first off, we've got red, written by warren ellis.
it looks kinda like wanted for the driving miss daisy demographic but, hey, with that cast, how can i not watch it?
centurion, neil marshall's new film, which makes me happy because...
...well, 'cause of lots of things really but look! there's mickey the idiot! i know, i know, his real name is noel clarke and he's an awesome actor and doing some great things not being mickey the idiot but, honestly, i'm pretty much always going to think of him that way, largely because i learned to love mickey.
and this just makes me happy because it finally looks as though maybe, just maybe, my birthday won't be used as a day to release movies which suck:
i love danny trejo's line: "does this look like a team-orientated group of individuals to you?" but i'm not sure about adrien brody as a "mercenary." admittedly, he might be great in the stealth department 'cause i'd sure never expect to see him armed!
there's also new resident evil which i was all kinds of excited about -- until i realised it was being released in 3-d. i have a very rough relationship with 3-d since i wear glasses. just like i can't be further back than the second row in a yoga class or i can't see what i'm supposed to be doing, i can't find a comfortable place to sit in a theatre and wear those stupid little damn glasses.
but for this?
i just might make an exception.
first off, we've got red, written by warren ellis.
it looks kinda like wanted for the driving miss daisy demographic but, hey, with that cast, how can i not watch it?
centurion, neil marshall's new film, which makes me happy because...
...well, 'cause of lots of things really but look! there's mickey the idiot! i know, i know, his real name is noel clarke and he's an awesome actor and doing some great things not being mickey the idiot but, honestly, i'm pretty much always going to think of him that way, largely because i learned to love mickey.
and this just makes me happy because it finally looks as though maybe, just maybe, my birthday won't be used as a day to release movies which suck:
i love danny trejo's line: "does this look like a team-orientated group of individuals to you?" but i'm not sure about adrien brody as a "mercenary." admittedly, he might be great in the stealth department 'cause i'd sure never expect to see him armed!
there's also new resident evil which i was all kinds of excited about -- until i realised it was being released in 3-d. i have a very rough relationship with 3-d since i wear glasses. just like i can't be further back than the second row in a yoga class or i can't see what i'm supposed to be doing, i can't find a comfortable place to sit in a theatre and wear those stupid little damn glasses.
but for this?
i just might make an exception.
Monday, June 21, 2010
"a little fucking solidarity goes a long way."
so...pandorum.
first of all, lets get one thing straight. *ahem**kofkof*: sunshine, 30 days of night, alien, aliens, city of lost children, alien: resurrection, pitch black, the abyss.
and this is just a partial list of the movies that pandorum is really really obviously "inspired" by. there's a couple others that i know are out there but i can't quite put my finger on it. if i think about it a bit more, i'm sure they'll come to me.
i heard some really bad reviews of pandorum when it first came out that put me off seeing it in the theatres; had i realised that paul w.s. anderson co-wrote it, i would have had more faith. i know that this anderson -- there's another paul anderson out there in the film-making field -- isn't exactly "flavor of the month" for a lot of genre fans, but i think he generally turns in pretty solid, watchable work. occasionally it wanders into the bizarre, but, hey, you fire him off a franchise and you get shit like the 3rd resident evil and the 2nd alien vs. predator. the man knows how to put together your basic summer blockbuster.
mostly.
so the rough outline of pandorum might be described as follows: huge spaceship out in the middle of nowhere. we get a very sketchy fill of recent past history: the earth is vastly overpopulated and dying. population is shoved onto said giant spaceship and sent off to colonize -- and probably destroy in the fullness of time but whatever -- a new planet discovered out in some immeasurably distant galaxy called tanis. of course, the shit is going to hit the fan here in some pretty big ways, right? it's just a matter of when, how, and precisely how much.
the squishy brown matter begins to strike the rotating blades when an unidentified crew member -- ben foster -- wakes up suddenly and unexpectedly from hypersleep. he finds himself in a powered down, cold, dark ship he only vaguely remembers. he doesn't know his own name, what he's supposed to be doing, how to do much of anything. as time passes and we wander around the ship with him, his memory comes back -- but he very quickly realises that he's stuck in a pretty small room. he knows -- rather vaguely -- that there's a lot more ship out there and that things aren't supposed to be like this -- but he can't really make anything work and he doesn't know what to do.
when another crew member -- dennis quaid -- wakes up, the problems begin to multiply pretty quickly. the ship's nuclear reactor is working and powering the ship -- a little spasmodically -- but it's set to go critical in a few hours; the other crewmembers are all missing, the door to the bridge and the door to the outside world are both locked -- but there are signs someone's been trying to force their way out. neither of the two men remember doing it -- but someone must have.
get the idea?
it's a pretty straightforward closed system monster movie; experienced fans of the genre will more or less be able to count out the beats in the pattern: one two three four -- discover near-feral ex-crew member -- one two three four -- get attacked by unrecognizable weird-ass monsters -- one two three four -- discover weirdly mutilated corpses...
so pandorum definitely doesn't do anything in the way of bringing brand new ideas into the genre or reinventing the space-going monster idea. the monsters themselves are -- competent and there are some great actors inside the suits doing some of the posturing and body language that makes them alarming if not outright frightening. but, really, they're just peter jackson's orcs crossed with joss whedon's reavers. there's nothing here you haven't seen before and once you realise that they work to basically human logic -- no funky extra limbs, strange powers, magic extra sets of jaws -- they're not too intimidating. so they like to hunt people, drag them down, and eat them alive. who hasn't had a bad monday, right?
so if the monsters are no big draw, why keep watching? well, what's interesting here is the attempt to create a meta-story around whether or not the monsters are real. and what's really happening on the ship.
as foster's character goes deeper and deeper into the ship in an attempt to reach the reactor and reset it to not blow the ship to hell, he meets up with other survivors of past crews who give him insight into other views of the ship and other views of what has happened to it.
meanwhile, back in our original locked room, quaid has drawn another survivor to him -- a shocked, naked boy tumbles out of the ventilation duct, gabbling about monsters and having had to "do" something. as time passes -- and the monster narrative really goes nowhere interesting; there are some suggestions that it might, but it doesn't so don't get your hopes up -- the interesting story is happening inside the skulls of foster and quaid. and maybe this new survivor -- cam gigandet displaying some nice scenery-chewing chops -- or maybe not. the survivor might be psychotic. or quaid might be. or foster might be -- if he isn't when he starts, he sure as hell might be by the time he finishes!
the special effects are good but really what kept me sitting here rather than hitting "back to browse" or reading a book were quaid, gigandet, and foster. and i'm impressed by a movie where there's a sidekick character who speaks no english (cung le as manh -- i don't actually know what he was speaking). and where the female character -- although the only one and something of a defacto token -- can take and deal damage on a level usually restricted to the hero or at the very least to male characters. antje traue (nadia) does an excellent job of being an independent, self-motivated character with only the occasional slide into t&a. she takes on a final confrontation with quaid -- in a revelation scene i won't spoiler -- with guts and style.
quaid and gigandet, particularly, help to hold the middle part of the movie together. gigandet goes from being a quivering sack of shock-ridden jelly to...well, lets just say someone with a lot more self-control in a very interesting way. i think ben foster could have picked up the ball a little more; there are definitely more than a few scenes he sleepwalks through rather than taking them and shaking them until their little necks break as he did in 30 days of night, but where he does pick it up and go, he goes well.
so, yes, don't go in with huge expectations; go in for a competent gore-party (it isn't a fest; it mostly isn't that bloody) and i'd say it's worth the hour and a half. there are bits that get a little draggy, but i think it's worth it to see quaid and gigandet face off.
first of all, lets get one thing straight. *ahem**kofkof*: sunshine, 30 days of night, alien, aliens, city of lost children, alien: resurrection, pitch black, the abyss.
and this is just a partial list of the movies that pandorum is really really obviously "inspired" by. there's a couple others that i know are out there but i can't quite put my finger on it. if i think about it a bit more, i'm sure they'll come to me.
i heard some really bad reviews of pandorum when it first came out that put me off seeing it in the theatres; had i realised that paul w.s. anderson co-wrote it, i would have had more faith. i know that this anderson -- there's another paul anderson out there in the film-making field -- isn't exactly "flavor of the month" for a lot of genre fans, but i think he generally turns in pretty solid, watchable work. occasionally it wanders into the bizarre, but, hey, you fire him off a franchise and you get shit like the 3rd resident evil and the 2nd alien vs. predator. the man knows how to put together your basic summer blockbuster.
mostly.
so the rough outline of pandorum might be described as follows: huge spaceship out in the middle of nowhere. we get a very sketchy fill of recent past history: the earth is vastly overpopulated and dying. population is shoved onto said giant spaceship and sent off to colonize -- and probably destroy in the fullness of time but whatever -- a new planet discovered out in some immeasurably distant galaxy called tanis. of course, the shit is going to hit the fan here in some pretty big ways, right? it's just a matter of when, how, and precisely how much.
the squishy brown matter begins to strike the rotating blades when an unidentified crew member -- ben foster -- wakes up suddenly and unexpectedly from hypersleep. he finds himself in a powered down, cold, dark ship he only vaguely remembers. he doesn't know his own name, what he's supposed to be doing, how to do much of anything. as time passes and we wander around the ship with him, his memory comes back -- but he very quickly realises that he's stuck in a pretty small room. he knows -- rather vaguely -- that there's a lot more ship out there and that things aren't supposed to be like this -- but he can't really make anything work and he doesn't know what to do.
get the idea?
it's a pretty straightforward closed system monster movie; experienced fans of the genre will more or less be able to count out the beats in the pattern: one two three four -- discover near-feral ex-crew member -- one two three four -- get attacked by unrecognizable weird-ass monsters -- one two three four -- discover weirdly mutilated corpses...
so pandorum definitely doesn't do anything in the way of bringing brand new ideas into the genre or reinventing the space-going monster idea. the monsters themselves are -- competent and there are some great actors inside the suits doing some of the posturing and body language that makes them alarming if not outright frightening. but, really, they're just peter jackson's orcs crossed with joss whedon's reavers. there's nothing here you haven't seen before and once you realise that they work to basically human logic -- no funky extra limbs, strange powers, magic extra sets of jaws -- they're not too intimidating. so they like to hunt people, drag them down, and eat them alive. who hasn't had a bad monday, right?
so if the monsters are no big draw, why keep watching? well, what's interesting here is the attempt to create a meta-story around whether or not the monsters are real. and what's really happening on the ship.
as foster's character goes deeper and deeper into the ship in an attempt to reach the reactor and reset it to not blow the ship to hell, he meets up with other survivors of past crews who give him insight into other views of the ship and other views of what has happened to it.
the special effects are good but really what kept me sitting here rather than hitting "back to browse" or reading a book were quaid, gigandet, and foster. and i'm impressed by a movie where there's a sidekick character who speaks no english (cung le as manh -- i don't actually know what he was speaking). and where the female character -- although the only one and something of a defacto token -- can take and deal damage on a level usually restricted to the hero or at the very least to male characters. antje traue (nadia) does an excellent job of being an independent, self-motivated character with only the occasional slide into t&a. she takes on a final confrontation with quaid -- in a revelation scene i won't spoiler -- with guts and style.
so, yes, don't go in with huge expectations; go in for a competent gore-party (it isn't a fest; it mostly isn't that bloody) and i'd say it's worth the hour and a half. there are bits that get a little draggy, but i think it's worth it to see quaid and gigandet face off.
Friday, June 18, 2010
friday fun times: "and marx was claiming it was offsides..."
in honor of england's disastrous encounter with the u.s. last weekend...
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
things look bad. send chocolate.
feeling kind of uninspired this week, folks. one of my jobs is ending, my other one is ramping up hours but only for a week or so, and there is continual construction near and about the apartment which is unconducive to rest and relaxation, let alone coherent writing.
so here are some other interesting things for you instead...
an article about justin cronin's new vampire book, "the passage."
a much more positive review of david kynaston's family britain than my own.
edited highlights from the saville report on bloody sunday (the one in 1972 in northern ireland). (and if you're thinking, "gee, you do irish history. shouldn't you have more to say about this enormously important report than a one-line write-off in a links list?" you'd be right. and i do. but i need time to catch up on all the coverage first!)
and some more relaxing things....
lots and lots and lots of pretty pictures of ilm special effects.
some absolutely fantastic costumes (and more) from dragon-con courtesy of jen at the epbot blog who also does the wonderful and wonderfully wrong cakewrecks blog.
and warren ellis's take on the england/us soccer match last saturday.
so here are some other interesting things for you instead...
an article about justin cronin's new vampire book, "the passage."
a much more positive review of david kynaston's family britain than my own.
edited highlights from the saville report on bloody sunday (the one in 1972 in northern ireland). (and if you're thinking, "gee, you do irish history. shouldn't you have more to say about this enormously important report than a one-line write-off in a links list?" you'd be right. and i do. but i need time to catch up on all the coverage first!)
and some more relaxing things....
lots and lots and lots of pretty pictures of ilm special effects.
some absolutely fantastic costumes (and more) from dragon-con courtesy of jen at the epbot blog who also does the wonderful and wonderfully wrong cakewrecks blog.
and warren ellis's take on the england/us soccer match last saturday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)