So, who exactly are Kerry and Kenny Conran? Perhaps this theatrical trailer might serve as a refresher:
Released in 2004, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a film unlike any other…at least up to that point. Kerry Conran wrote and directed the film while Kenny Conran worked to visualize the concepts that ultimately made it to the screen.
The film was the first to feature actors working almost entirely in front of a greenscreen and all the backgrounds and effects were created by computer. This practice, trailblazed for the first time in this film, was subsequently utilized in films such as 300, Sin City, the Star Wars prequels, and a whole host of other features.
And yet, Kerry Conran hasn’t directed a feature film since the release of Sky Captain over ten years ago.
So what happened?
The article goes into details and I highly urge you check it out. But I will say, briefly, that the film fell prey to the bottom line -money- as well as, perhaps, the brothers’ inability to establish and maintain contacts within the industry.
It is a story well worth checking out.
As for my feelings regarding Sky Captain and the world of Tomorrow? When I first heard of the film I was super excited to see it. I’m a big fan of art deco art (which the film has in spades) and I also absolutely love the serial cliffhangers/pulp fiction of the 1930’s and 40’s.
However, when I saw the film (in the theaters, no less!) I found it visually stunning but, to be frank, rather lifeless. All three leads (particularly Angelina Jolie, who essentially played a female Nick Fury!) were good but the film was never as exciting as it should have been and there was never a point where I was breathless or in rapture.
I did buy the DVD when it came out (I don’t believe a high definition BluRay has ever been released), and was hoping the film would do enough business to get a (hopefully better) sequel. Alas, none of that was to be.
Too bad.
If the article is accurate and the price of making the film was greatly exaggerated (and therefore the financial losses incurred didn’t happen), then the Conrans and the film were effectively shafted by the studios. Everyone glows in success and no one wants to admit being part of a “failure”.
I don’t know how I was clued in on this film but somehow I must have read its description…
After finding their scientist neighbor dead in a storage room, friends Callie, Finn and Jasper come across a strange machine in the man’s apartment — and soon discover that the device can produce pictures of events 24 hours before they happen.
…and decided to put Time Lapse on my Netflix que and got it the other day. I watched it and…
The movie was pretty damn good…with a couple of quibbles I’ll get into in a moment. But first, the theatrical trailer:
So between the description and this trailer you should have a pretty clear idea of what this film is about: A group of three young friends investigate the possible disappearance of their neighbor and discover he’s dead. More importantly, they discover he created a camera which takes a picture out of his window and at their apartment. Each photograph taken depicts what will happen 24 hours later.
Now, I love time travel stories, though the biggest problem with them is they often unravel if you think too hard about what’s going on in them. Add to that the idea of paradoxes and possible history changes and, well, you can rightly spin your brain into a pretzel.
And yet, I still love time travel stories, particularly if they present a fascinating twist on the subject matter.
In the case of Time Lapse, the characters don’t travel in time, per se, but have access to information from the future and this, in a devious way, winds up very much affecting their present.
I have to give great props to Bradley Cooper and Bp Cooper, the film’s co-writers and director, who have obviously spent many hours thinking up the movie’s twisty plot and delivered a work that despite its very intricate nature (which, to be fair, had a couple of minor misfires) holds up and delivers, especially in the climax.
Having said that, I did have some issues with the film which kept me from fully embracing it despite its for the most part solid story.
To begin, the acting in the film was at times…not quite what I was hoping. I don’t want to point fingers at anyone in particular (after all, a good director should be able to encourage good acting and vice versa), but suffice to say there were times when the actors didn’t convince me they would do what they were shown to have done. While the movie is effectively a time travel feature, it is also very much a film in the vein of such works as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where a group of friends are undone by temptation.
The thing is, you have to believe the characters and their deterioration. They have to be real people to you, and at times I couldn’t help but think of them only as characters. This goes for some of the external characters as well. In the hands of others, I can easily see the menace and the succumbing to temptation handled in a much stronger, much more immediate way, but in this film, unfortunately, my breath is never quite as taken away as the film’s makers hoped it would be.
Having said all that, I’m going to make an abrupt 180 degree turn and applaud the movie’s makers and actors for pushing themselves and trying hard to create something unique and interesting versus so many features out there that go for the lowest common denominator and deliver subpar entertainment.
While Time Lapse may not be a perfect film, it is ambitious despite its low budget and presents a twisty turny plot that I can’t help but admire, even if the execution leaves a bit to be desired.
So, even with these quibbles, I recommend Time Lapse to anyone interested in a time travel movie that pushes the limits of this genre in interesting directions. While not a perfect work, you have to give the makers of this film credit for trying hard to deliver something unique and very interesting.
Up until the flood of Anime’s first big wave hit in the late 1980’s, all the Anime-type shows I found on U.S. stations were things like Speed Racer and Kimba the Lion. Because I lived in South America and they didn’t have as many U.S. animated shows available, I was inundated with many fine Japanese Anime serials and therefore got to see these types of shows a little before they became “hot” in U.S. markets.
When I moved out of South America and began living in the U.S., I found it curious to see as a spectator Anime’s quick rise. Even today Anime holds a strong spot in animation lovers’ hearts, with one of the bigger hits of the past year being Attack on Titan.
But looking back, the first two really big Anime hits to make it in the U.S. during that original golden wave, if I remember correctly, were Akira and, a few years later, Ghost in the Shell. Both were originally released, translated, in their comic book form, gained great interest, and then had their movies released with great fanfare (again, if memory serves).
While I enjoyed the movie version of Akira, its ending veered wildly from the comic book’s ending. From what I understand, the movie was based on a comic book serial that, at the time, wasn’t quite finished and therefore is the reason movie and comic book veered wildly in their concluding moments (one wonders if the same might happen with Game of Thrones?!).
As for Ghost in the Shell, I don’t recall following the comic book and don’t believe it suffered from the same problem. Regardless, I only had the movie by which to judge the material and I recalled liking it when I originally saw it back in the late 1990’s. However, over the years I’d forgotten most of what happened in the film.
The other day, Amazon.com had a great sale on the complete Cowboy Bebop and, in ordering it, I noted that the 25th Anniversary BluRay Edition of Ghost in the Shell was available (and at the moment I’m typing this is still available) at just below $10. I added it to my order and, yesterday, got to see it once again after many, many years.
As I watched it, I was struck by the visuals, something that most certainly remained incredibly strong. The plot, which I recall somewhat confused me way back when, was more easy to follow this time around…with the exception perhaps of the opening minutes (why was that diplomat killed?!).
Basically, Ghost in the Shell concerns a society where flesh and machines are forming hybrid “humans”. The protagonists of the movie consist of two “Section 9” agents who are investigating a mysterious hacker that is infecting high prize software as well as androids.
The movie moves along well, using elements borrowed from film noir while mixing them with this view of a futuristic society, clearly a path the movie Blade Runner blazed.
Ultimately, the film becomes something not unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey, a meditation on the thin line between machine and humanity. While by today’s standards the story may not be quite as deep and mysterious as it was when it was released (there have been many such meditations offered since), Ghost in the Shell still holds its own.
If there’s one major quibble I have with the film it is that it ends rather abruptly. It felt like there was a lot of buildup leading to that ending and that there could, indeed should, have been a little more story to tell initially. I know there have been sequels and reworkings of this feature and I may just have to give them a look.
Those who study film even casually know that one of the great “arts” behind a successful film is that of editing, i.e. splicing scenes together to make an impact.
It’s been said that Alfred Hitchcock became so good at making his films that editing didn’t matter as much as he essentially did all the edits in camera. I believe it was stated that when he directed Rear Window, a film that was made entirely on an elaborate set, the editors simply cut out the frames which showed the director yelling action and cut and put them together with the next scenes filmed.
But Alfred Hitchcock was a unique talent in his field and directors often “create” their movies while in the editing room and with their editor, unless of course they are also the editors of their films.
Steven Spielberg, in talking about Jaws in the extras on the movie’s disc, offered praise for the work of editor Verna Fields in “making” the film such a hit.
Here then is a fascinating bit of film which I found at vimeo.com. In it is a great examination of the editing in the final gunfight from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and shows the mathematical precision of what was going on in this scene:
I think this is one of those humorous little side things that people with a sharp eye notice about TV shows or movies: There are sometimes props reused or, conversely, set decorators follow certain patterns, which is what appears to be happening with this particular blanket.
A while back there was a humorous story regarding a newspaper that seemed to find its way into many a show/movie:
And while the rug in question doesn’t seem to be the same one used over and over again, it is a curious thing that this particular design/style has been reused.
But I got the biggest kick from one of the comments by Jay Lawson presented below the Slate article. In it she states:
There’s a granny square afghan that shows up all over Dark Shadows, from 1966 onward. I started calling it ‘the ubiquitous afghan’ because that darn thing showed up in everybody’s house: the Old House, the Evans house … all through time and space, that thing showed up everywhere.
Given the cheap budget of the Dark Shadows TV show, I suspect Ms. Lawson was seeing the exact same afghan being repurposed from scene to scene.
It reminded me, in a weird way, of one of the funniest realizations I had when watching something. In this case it was the 1942 Spy Smasher cliffhanger serial. Considered by many to be among the best cliffhanger serials ever made, Spy Smasher was based on a Fawcett Comic book (that publishing company was the home of the original Shazam! Captain Marvel, who himself was featured in what is considered by many to be the best movie serial ever produced) and ran for 12 episodes (roughly 212 minutes in total).
When I watched it, I did so via VHS tape (it was a number of years ago!) and I had the whole thing available to me versus the way it was originally aired all those years ago chapter by chapter. As I watched the serial, I started to pay attention to the various locations used to film on. It soon became clear to me that many of them were reused and, after a while, I formed a general idea of where certain buildings were in relation to others.
Which lead to this: In one of the later episodes of the serial, we see a group of the bad guys hurriedly emerge from a building (one I was quite familiar with by that point), get into their car, and drive off at high speed. After a cut, the bad guys and their vehicle comes to a screeching stop at their destination, which was another building. By this point, I knew that their destination building lay directly across the street from the building they had just emerged from the scene before!
They didn’t need to drive to their new location, all they had to do was cross the street! 😉
Man, I have to get my hands on that serial again. Oh, wait…
Over on reddit, someone opened up on the topic of Terminator: Genysis having such a spoilery trailer (it revels who the villain of the piece is, something that probably should have come as a surprise to viewers), and asked which other movie trailers gave away too much of the movie they were trying to build up hype for:
I was thinking of which trailers I personally found most spoiled the movie they were promoting and the one that to me was the worst in that respect had to be the trailer for another Terminator film, in this case Terminator 2:
I know there are those who really like Terminator 2 and consider it among the best action films ever made. While I enjoy the film, I’ve always felt it wasn’t as good as the original Terminator. Having said that, the above trailer, which was the official trailer for that movie’s release, gives away the movies BIGGEST element: That the Arnold Schwarzenneger machine was the good guy.
The fact is that the first half hour or so of Terminator 2 presents a near identical reprise of the original Terminator, complete with time traveling and acquiring a “target”. Director/writer James Cameron took pains during this segment of the film to NOT give away the fact that this time around the Schwarzenneger Terminator is good. In fact, it appeared he wanted audiences to believe him to be just as bad as he was in the first film, then surprise us when the “target”, a young John Connor, is trapped between what turns out to be (another intended surprise) two Terminators.
But of course, the above trailer gives all that away and all that work on creating suspense and surprise are effectively shot down.
In the end, Terminator 2 was a smash success so the spoilery trailer didn’t do much damage with audiences. Still, I really wish I could have seen the film upon its original release without seeing this trailer. I might well have come away with a higher regard for it and its biggest surprise.
Call me cynical, call me tired, but I just can’t get all that excited over the “new” casting of Tom Holland for the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in film…
If there’s a superhero franchise that is in real danger of being over-exposed, I believe it to be this one. In very short order we had three films with Tobey Maguire (all of which were hugely financially successful though most audiences panned the third and last film in that series) followed by a re-booting and two films with Andrew Garfield (unfortunately for him and the people behind that two-film set, the second film soured Sony on continueing down that particular pathway).
So now we have a new Spider-Man, one that will somehow cross-over into the Avengers movie while remaining at Sony.
Ho hum.
Don’t get me wrong, there was a time I would have killed to see a high budget Spider-Man film on the screen. But once it finally happened with Tobey Maguire, I found myself curiously unimpressed with the whole venture. Many site his second Spider-Man film to be one of the all time best super-hero films ever made but for some reason it didn’t grab me like so many others and I wound up thinking it was at best only an “ok” feature. And this is coming from a big fan of director Sam Raimi (absolutely love the Evil Dead series!)!!
As for the Garfield iteration, I suspect the lingering bad feelings I had with the Raimi/Maguire Spider-Man films turned me off of the whole re-booting concept. While I applauded the return of the mechanical web shooters (I really didn’t like the Maguire/Raimi concept of “organic” webshooters), seeing yet again a Spider-Man origin story and a new set of “first adventures” of the character felt more like a chore than entertainment.
Before you think my feelings only extend to Spider-Man, know that I had very similar feelings when I finally got to see Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, a film that some critics sang high praises to but for me was a colossal bore…an almost scene for scene/theme for theme remake of Richard Donner’s original Superman but without any of the sense of wonder or fun.
There always exists the danger that audiences might have their “fill” of the superhero genre and this big tent pole features and their equally big investment dollars may finally reach their critical mass.
The superhero genre has had something of a charmed life in recent years despite some bumps in the road, but a couple more “terrible” (in the eyes of audiences) superhero films might just tire audiences of these features and we may *gasp* one day have a summer without a single superhero film.
I know, I know, this is heretic talk, but there you have it.
There is no doubt as to my absolutely favorite Christopher Lee movie: 1973’s The Wicker Man. Yes, he made a damn great Dracula and was a great villain in countless films (he was one of the more intriguing elements as the titular villain in the otherwise very dull -to me- James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun), but his role in The Wicker Man has stayed with me every since I saw the film.
Sadly, when mentioning this particular film modern audiences may confuse it with the truly horrible 2006 Nicholas Cage remake of the same name. That later film is rightfully scorned but the original is an absolute horror classic that tackles issues of faith and religion in a manner today’s studios wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
Here’s to you, Mr. Lee. You’ve entertained people for many, many years and lived a long and very productive life. In the end, that’s about all we can hope to do as well.
Before the summer movie season formally began, I checked out various lists of (in some cases then) upcoming films and found myself looking forward to a precious few. There was Mad Max Fury Road (seen it), Furious 7 (was curious but decided to wait for the home video release), Avengers: Age of Ultron (ditto, at least for the moment), and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.
Summer usually means action, action, and more action, and at least with regard to the films listed above, this was most certainly the case.
There was at least one other film, however, that didn’t seem to fit in with that mold and, at least based on the trailers, looked to me like it could be a lot of fun: The Paul Feig directed/written, Melissa McCarthy starring comedy vehicle Spy. The red band trailer is presented below. Careful for the decidedly NSFW dialogue spoken with!
Okay, first off: I know there are those who aren’t fans of Ms. McCarthy. I can understand. There are some “comedians” out there releasing movies on a regular basis I have absolutely no interest in seeing. Further, I know there are also those who don’t like comedies with raunchy dialogue, something that is a Paul Feig specialty.
Me? I like raunchy dialogue, if done well. I also like Ms. McCarthy, so going in to see this was a no-brainer.
And as it turned out, with Spy I’ve found all three of Ms. McCarthy’s movie appearances in films directed by Mr. Feig to be a hoot (the other two were Bridesmaids and The Heat).
What makes Spy so good is that although it is a starring vehicle for a very hilarious Ms. McCarthy (the first time she is as with Bridesmaids she was a supporting character and in The Heat she was a co-star with Sandra Bullock), the supporting cast is also quite terrific. Special mention has to be made to two co-stars in particular, Jason Statham and Rose Byrne (I don’t want to slight the other actors, particularly Jude Law who gives a terrific turn as a pseudo-James Bond, but his role is a little more straightforward and not meant to be as humorous).
Jason Statham is glorious as Rick Ford, a Clint Eastwood-esq “bad ass” secret agent whose legend, it becomes apparent rather quickly, is in his own mind. His preposterous character appears to be the missing genetic link between Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil and every scene he’s in is an absolute delight.
So too it is with Rose Byrne who brings a cool, razor sharp wit to her role as Rayna Boyanov, the movie’s main villain. While testosterone (over) fueled Rick Ford is the walking definition of a bull in a china shop, Rayna is Euro-Cool to the extreme and whenever she’s with Melissa McCartney’s not-quite superspy they engage in some devastatingly funny (and raunchy) verbal jabs.
As for the movie’s plot…well, it may not be the most logical thing in the world, but it is more than enough to keep things interesting.
One final note: while Spy is a comedy, its humor comes from the characters. The movie itself is not a parody of the superspy genre. In fact, there are some pretty brutal action sequences sprinkled throughout, in particular a close quarter fight in a kitchen. Though it might seem incongruous for a comedy, this film does feature its share of gory/bloody stuff.
With all the above said, it should be obvious I highly recommend Spy to anyone who likes what they’ve seen/read. While it may not be one of my all time favorite comedies of all time, Spy is a damn good time.
Personally, I hope we get to see the further adventures featuring the entire cast. Give me more Rick Ford!
A few months back the kind folks at the Criterion Collection, makers of some of the finest BluRay/DVD releases of intriguing national and foreign films, had a sale on their products.
I checked through their stuff and considered some films here and there but nothing stuck out. As diverse as their listings are, for the most part I had the films I wanted and, while there were some that called out to me, they didn’t make me curious enough to outright buy them.
So I narrowed my search to “science fiction” titles and, in a few seconds, stumbled upon the listing for the 1973 2 Part German TV movie World on A Wire. The description of the film, as presented in the Criterion listing, follows:
World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.
Huh, I thought.
I had never before heard of this film and had only the barest idea of who director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is/was. Yet that description had me and I ordered the movie. Before it arrived, I researched Mr. Fassbinder and found him to be a fascinating character. He died in 1982 at the age of 37 from an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills…and left behind a mind-boggling legacy of 41 films made in a span of 13 years, many of which are considered classics of German cinema.
Incredible.
World on A Wire would be Mr. Fassbinder’s only science fiction film and, as stated in the Criterion description, it was essentially forgotten and lost (hence the need to be “rediscovered”) for many years. No doubt this was due in part to the tremendous amount of work Mr. Fassbinder released. As was stated in some of the supplemental materials on the BluRay, there is such a wealth of material Mr. Fassbinder left behind that much of it even today waits to be rediscovered.
Based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, World on a Wire can rightfully be called one of the very first -if not THE first- film to deal with the concept of virtual reality, something explored to great effect in more recent years and in movies such as eXistenZ, The Matrix, Dark City, and The 13th Floor (itself also based on the novel Simulacron-3) Virtual reality has also found its way into various TV shows, including the concept of the “Holodeck” in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Even I’ve explored the concept in my short story Virtual found in the short story collection Shadows at Dawn. (self promotion ends in 3…2…1…)
As I put the movie into my player, I frankly didn’t know what I’d get. It is, after all, an older film and a TV movie to boot. It’s long, consisting of two parts each of which run a little over an hour and a half. It was a daunting task to find that much free time…
Still, that description had me. I gave the film a go…
…and I couldn’t have been happier with what I saw.
World on a Wire is, paradoxically, an incredibly forward thinking work yet one whose luster is nonetheless -perhaps inevitably- somewhat dulled by the movies/TV shows I’ve mentioned above. I imagine audiences in 1973 were floored with the cliffhanger revelation at the end of the first part of the film but modern audiences, I suspect, will have figured out that particular twist long before it is formally revealed.
The thing is, once that revelation is made, we’re left with the entire second part of the film and this is where we venture into “new” and unexplored territory. To put it more clearly, part 1 of World on a Wire acts as a “rules of the game” presentation while part 2 gives us the story/resolution proper. This very logical progression worked incredibly well and, in spite of my familiarity with the concepts, had me intrigued until the very end.
Those expecting to see a special effects extravaganza need look elsewhere. Despite its science fictional trappings, World on a Wire is decidedly low tech and features almost no special effects. Its tone is more in line with film noir mysteries, and indeed that works best for the mysterious story presented. Our hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), as also noted in some of the extra material on the BluRay, is essentially a Humphrey Bogart detective-type, a man who is presented with an initial mystery involving a disappeared co-worker no one else but he remembers existed. It is this initial mystery that leads him down dark paths and strange new experiences and tests his very sanity.
World on a Wire turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. I so enjoy discovering older, fascinating works that put into perspective other works. In the case of this film, it clearly is the granddaddy of many more famous, recognized virtual reality works, yet it stands out on its own.
