I posted an article a few days back concerning the Ryou-Un Maru, a Japanese “ghost ship” that traveled the Pacific since becoming dislodged by the tsunami that hit Japan a little over a year ago and was now approaching the Canadian shoreline. (You can read that original article here)
The ship got close enough for the U.S. Coast Guard to sink it:
The full CNN article regarding the sinking of the Ryou-Un Maru can be found here:
Interesting back and forth regarding the merits of the 1997 James Cameron directed mega-hit Titanic, which is being re-released in 3-D:
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/titanic_waterlogged_schmaltz_or_pop_classic/singleton/
Apart from being incredibly successful, for years I’ve been intrigued with Mr. Cameron and his movies, even as I find myself less and less interested watching his most current works.
I was first exposed to Mr. Cameron, but not aware of his hand in, such films as Android (where is credited as doing work in the Art Department), Galaxy of Terror (Second Unit Director), Battle Beyond the Stars (Special Effects and Art Director), Escape From New York (Special Visual Effects and Matte Artist), and, finally, his first “full” directorial credit in Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (if memory serves, there is considerable irony in this credit as Mr. Cameron was fired from the director’s job before fully completing it).
So there he was, in front of me in these various films I saw as a youth. I didn’t really like most of them all that much (the big exception being Escape From New York), but they were part of my early days and I nonetheless had nice memories of watching the films, either in theaters or on the then brand new cable channel HBO.
Fast forward to 1984, and my sister telling me that I just had to go see this film currently playing in theaters. I heard about it, but for whatever reason hadn’t thought much of it. Nonetheless, I followed her advice and, with little knowledge of what exactly I was in for, bought a ticket, found a seat somewhere in the middle of the theater, and sat down to watch The Terminator.
I was blow away.
The film wasn’t perfect, mind you. I thought there were one too many “endings” at the film’s conclusion. But, for crying out loud, this was one hell of an action film. It was brutal at times, humorous at others (the film’s most humorous line was uttered by last person you’d expect to utter anything funny!), and so damn entertaining.
I had to know who was behind this incredible work of action/adventure/sci-fi. The name was unfamiliar to me in those pre-internet days. James Cameron. I didn’t know who he was, but I resolved to keep an eye out for whatever works he does.
Two years later, most likely while reading through movie magazines, I found out what his next film would be: Aliens. To say the least, I was ecstatic. I loved the original Alien film and the thought that Mr. Cameron, who did such a fantastic job with The Terminator would follow up that film with a sequel to one of my favorite sci-fi horror hybrids was more than I could bear.
On opening day, I was right there.
I wasn’t disappointed.
The Terminator and Aliens were a potent one-two punch. Both were action/adventure sci-fi and horror hybrids. Both were the incredibly great. With his success, the world at large got to know more about Mr. Cameron. I realized for the first time around that point his work in the films I mentioned above, including the pretty terrible Piranha sequel. What was next for him?
Why, another sci-fi film, this one set under the ocean. !989’s The Abyss. Like Aliens, I was there opening day, eager to see what wonders Mr. Cameron had in store for us.
I was disappointed.
The film wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t bad. It was actually pretty good…at least for the first couple of acts. But somewhere along the way, especially towards the end, the film simply fell apart, and it dawned on me the film really had no ending. As one movie critic put it brilliantly, watching The Abyss was like seeing a marathon runner have the race of his/her life, but tripping and falling on their face just feet away from the finish line.
Later, when the “special edition” of the film was released to video/laserdisc (eventually DVD), we were presented with a much longer ending to the film. Some really liked this version and felt this was the way the film should have always been. To me, it didn’t matter. Even with the longer, more effects filled ending, the film still felt as if it wasn’t fully developed. I had the suspicion Mr. Cameron had an idea -a very good idea- for a story but never really figured out where it was going and how it should end.
Despite this, I was still very interested in seeing what Mr. Cameron was up to. His follow up to The Abyss sounded really exciting: A sequel to The Terminator. In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released. Again, I was there opening day, eager to see Mr. Cameron return to the property that effectively “made” him.
Again, I was disappointed. Mind you, I was in a minority. Most theater goers really, really liked the film. I, however, found it a decent movie with some pretty eye-popping (for the time) effects…but the story simply wasn’t as breathtaking or action filled as the original. As with The Abyss, it wasn’t a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it just didn’t connect with me as well.
His next film, 1994’s True Lies, had me excited again. Early word was that the film, which featured Arnold Schwarzenegger, was Mr. Cameron’s take on the whole James Bond/super-spy genre, with Mr. Schwarzenegger in the spy role. Somehow I snagged tickets to an early showing of the film and headed to see it. The theater was very crowded, the film began…
…and I was disappointed once again.
In fact, more so than with either The Abyss or Terminator 2. True Lies, to me, was a herky-jerky film that would wow you with a great scene and follow it up with a terrible one. The film tried to straddle comedy and action but in the end short changed on both. There were moments I greatly enjoyed, but there were other moments I was cringing.
I came to the bitter realization, after the release of those three films, that I may never see the James Cameron that thrilled me with The Terminator and Aliens again.
In 1997, Mr. Cameron’s latest film, Titanic, was in the works. The early word was quite bad. Incredible cost overruns. Too long run-time. Unproven stars. When the film neared release, there were those who predicted this was the end of Mr. Cameron’s career.
They were wrong.
Titanic, of course, was a not just a success, it was a HUGE success.
But I found myself uninterested in seeing it. Not that I expected it to be bad, its just that the whole Titanic thing (with or without the romance) never did much for me. For the first time since Mr. Cameron rose to prominence, I didn’t bother seeing one of his films. To this day, I haven’t seen Titanic. I may be one of only a handful of people who hasn’t
Years later, in 2009, word came that Mr. Cameron was at work on another film, this one a sci-fi action/adventure. My interest perked. However, the more I heard about the film and the story it was presenting, the less interested I was in seeing it. It all boiled down to the story being told, which I found way too overly familiar: “Noble savages” being exterminated so that “civilized” folk can take their land. That type of story has been used over and over again, most often in westerns such as Dances With Wolves.
Avatar arrived in theaters that year and, like Titanic before it, was a HUGE success.
And like Titanic before it, I didn’t bother going to see it. To this day, I may be one of only a handful of people who haven’t seen either of those two mega-hits.
So we reach the present. Mr. Cameron is arguably one of the biggest, most well known directors in the entire world. He has scores of fans eager to see what he’s up to next. I may not be one of them, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.
After all, he wowed me before. And while it’s been many years since then, who’s to say he can’t do it again?
…at least according to Entertainment Weekly:
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20583478,00.html
Is there anything worse than a good film whose reputation may be sullied a bit (or a lot) by a sequel that is both unnecessary and/or awful? The choices given in this list are interesting. If I may, let me add a movie to that list, a film that was a sequel, yet not a sequel, to a very popular film…
The summer of 1988 was the only time I can remember seeing not one, but two absolutely gut-bustingly hilarious films one after the other. That was the summer that The Naked Gun was released, and to this day I still remember a lady sitting in front of me in the theater absolutely losing it when the inept Sgt. Drebin got a little too carried away playing the umpire during a major league game.
The second film released that summer that had me in stitches was A Fish Called Wanda. While a little more grounded in the “real world” than the lunacy of The Naked Gun, the movie nonetheless was inspired comedy, featuring Monty Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin at their best, along with great work by both Jamie Lee Curtis and, in an absolutely maniacal turn, Kevin Kline as a dimwitted wanna-be crook.
Nearly ten years later, those four-some would return to the screen in 1997’s Fierce Creatures. While the film was certainly not a direct sequel to A Fish Called Wanda (the characters the four actors played were different), the film was obviously intended to draw in people who enjoyed the interaction of those four A Fish Called Wanda actors into what was touted as another comedic foray. Minus, alas, even a fraction of the laughs one found in that film. I dimly recall reading about many problems during the making of Fierce Creatures. There was talk of re-writes and re-filmed sequences and the studios having very little faith in the final result. As it turned out, they were right. Fierce Creatures, the sorta/kinda sequel to A Fish Called Wanda proved to be a bitter disappointment.
Don’t believe me? Check out the trailer below. You know your comedy film is in trouble when even the trailer doesn’t elicit so much as a smile.
Way back in 1988 I was first exposed to director Pedro Almodovar via his breakout hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. That movie was funny, a bit trashy, absurd, and highly entertaining. The movie also featured then unknown Antonio Banderas in a large role that no doubt helped him make the big jump to Hollywood. Both Almodovar and Banderas, thus, would go on to very successful careers. The Skin I Live In, released last year in 2011, represents the first time in many years the two worked together again.
When I first heard of The Skin I Live In, I was curious to see how Mr. Almodovar, whose most successful works to my mind are usually humorous or dramatic in nature, would handle a foray into the horror genre. I approached the film with excitement, interest, and curiosity. I also avoided spoilers, only reading cryptic hints as to the movie’s plot, which apparently involved a surgeon/skin researcher Robert Ledgard (Banderas) and a most unusual client, Vera Cruz (the stunning Elena Anaya) and their twisted relationship. That, in the end, was the extent of my knowledge of the film.
When i finally sat down to watch it, I was immediately struck by the thematic similarities The Skin I Live In had to other (very) old-time horror works. Indeed, this film employs what is perhaps one of the oldest horror movie tropes: the mad scientist.
To give away more details of the movie’s plot would be a crime, for this film offers plenty of bizarre –very bizarre– surprises. At a couple of points in the film I thought I had things worked out, but the eventual story reveals proved a whole lot stranger than anything I came up with.
Having said that, as good and as wicked as the story being told is, The Skin I Live In proved also to be a frustrating experience. The very gutsy and potentially profound story is undermined by weak, almost soap-opera level characterization and melodrama. The way the story unfolds, too, is frustrating, starting in the present and then, halfway through, abruptly shifting to the past. Finally, as an audience member one has to accept too many unlikely things happening between the characters and often involving dumb actions on their part for the movie to actually work.
Without giving too much away, here are a few of the things that didn’t work for me: We have to accept that a group of veteran surgeons would perform a very major operation on someone without looking into their patient’s background at all. We have to accept that a character who appears quite grounded would allow a very dangerous individual into her home. We have to accept that a character would take a disturbed relative to a party, her first foray (apparently) out of a mental institution…and then simply lose track of her whereabouts.
And these are the things I can mention without getting too heavily into spoilers.
Still, the film presented a very strong and mind-bending story. Perhaps if the script had been worked on a little more, and perhaps if the film had been focused more on Vera Cruz’s point of view and her attempts to uncover the mystery around her, I think the film might have worked a lot better. Nonetheless, if you’re interested in taking a journey into some genuinely bizarre story directions, The Skin I Live In might well be for you. Note however, the film is rated “R” for good reason.
Fascinating story regarding a squid fishing boat that floated away following last year’s earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. This Japanese craft has floated the seas since then, a rusted derelict that will, apparently, soon ground itself somewhere…
http://www.gadling.com/2012/03/27/tsunami-powered-ghost-ship-closes-in-on-canadian-shores/
There’s something almost primal, romantic, even scary, about the concept of an abandoned ship. A story like this should appeal to me…I’ve toyed with that idea of an abandoned craft in one of my novels.
If you’re not in the mood to read the article, the video I’ve embedded below shows a photograph of the derelict craft.
Back in the 1970’s Burt Reynolds was easily one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood. Quite an accomplishment considering some of his rivals included such heavy weights as Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, etc. etc.
Today, he is probably best known for two movies/roles: The wannabe outdoorsman Lewis in the 1972 adaptation of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance and the 1977 action/comedy Smokey and the Bandit. But his success in the movies, of course, wasn’t limited to just those two roles.
Perhaps falling a hair under those two films (at least in terms of recognizability) are his “Gator” films, 1973’s White Lightning and its 1976 sequel Gator. A recent episode of Archer (catch it if you can, it is quite hilarious, an animated spy version of Reno 911) had Burt Reynolds as a “guest”, and one of the more amusing comments by the show’s dazed protagonist was his pitch to Burt Reynolds to make a sequel to Gator, and Burt noting that the movie was a sequel.
Which brings us back to White Lightning. Watching the film recently was an interesting experience. The passage of time may have dulled some of the movie’s more exciting set pieces (mostly involving car chases), but the Burt Reynolds charisma shines very bright in this film. The plot is simple enough: Gator McKlusky (Reynolds) is “good ol’ Southern boy”, a bootlegger currently in jail serving a small sentence. He’s due out in a year or two, but when word comes that his younger brother was found dead, he is filled with righteous fury. And when the rumor comes that his death was the result of the action of Sheriff J. C. Connors (Ned Beatty), he agrees to go undercover with the Feds to take the man down.
What follows is Gator’s attempts to infiltrate the moonshining organization in Connors’ town. But when Connors gets wind he has a Fed infiltrator in his territory, things go from bad to worse.
I have to admit, while I enjoyed White Lightning, I found Gator an overall better film, if only because the villain in the later film, played by Jerry Reed (who would join up with Burt Reynolds once again in Smokey and the Bandit in a very, very different role!), was soooo much more detestable than Ned Beatty’s Sheriff Connors.
Still, one has to admit that watching White Lightning you see the very beginning of things that were to come. Turn the movie’s plot a little this way -and into comedy with even more car mayhem- and you have Smokey and the Bandit. Turn the film a little that way -and make it more of a drama- and you have Justified.
So, if you’re interested in movie history and would like to see something that may well have influenced works that even today entertain us, you could do a lot worse than check out White Lightning.
Way back in the mid-1980’s and while looking through a newspaper I found a very positive review for Edge of Darkness, a mini-series that was scheduled to air on PBS. The premise was intriguing: A British police officer’s daughter is murdered and, in his subsequent investigation of the matter, discovers a toxic cesspool of government corruption linked to nuclear research. I watched the series when it aired back then and though my memories of it are vague after the passage of time, I distinctly recall liking it quite a bit. I also really, really liked Joe Don Baker’s performance within the series as Darius Jedburgh, a shady CIA operative/fixer who, over the course of the series, became a delightfully unpredictable wild-card.
Years passed and, in 2010, I heard that the mini-series’ original director, Martin Campbell, was working on a movie remake of the mini-series with Mel Gibson in the title role. I was intrigued. I’ve been a fan of Mr. Gibson’s work since first seeing him in the incredible Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior when it first hit theaters way back in 1981. Of late, I’ve been equally shocked by some of the lurid details regarding his personal life. Still, I was interested in seeing the film but, of course, didn’t find the time to do so when it was initially released to theaters. Yesterday, I finally had a chance to see it and did just that.
The 2010 film version of Edge of Darkness retains the same general plot involving police officer Thomas Craven’s (Mel Gibson) search for his daughter’s murderers and the way it eventually ties in to a shady nuclear research facility and equally shady politicians. The movie’s setting has been changed, transplanting the story for no discernible reason from England to Boston.
While watching the film’s first half, I thought things were unfolding quite well. The central mystery was set up and Mr. Gibson does well providing a Boston accent and acting both filled with equal parts grief and rage as he investigates his daughter’s murder. Unfortunately, in the film’s second half the story suffers from compressing too much material to fit the parameters of a theatrical release. The original Edge of Darkness mini-series had the luxury of five and a half hours to tell its story. The movie, which clocks in at just under two hours, simply doesn’t have enough time to flesh out characters and situations and provide a good wrap up in that short a period of time.
The character who suffers the greatest from this compressed storytelling is, unfortunately, the character that to me was the most intriguing in the mini-series: Darius Jedburgh. In the movie, the role is played with considerable menace by Ray Winstone. Unfortunately in the movie he isn’t given anywhere near enough time to develop. In the mini-series, Craven and Jedburgh meet many times and become something of an odd-couple while pursuing the mystery of Craven’s daughter’s death. In the movie, they meet up a total of two times. There is more story presented with Jedburgh, but it involves his own reactions to his “bosses” and isn’t nearly as compelling as it could have been. Anyone who hasn’t seen the original mini-series and therefore isn’t aware of how important the character of Jedburgh was in it can be forgiven for wondering just why he was present in this film at all. He simply isn’t as necessary to this version of the story and, sadly, could well have been cut out entirely in favor of more time with Mel Gibson’s Craven.
In conclusion, what you have with the 2010 version of Edge of Darkness is a movie that starts well but simply can’t present as much plot as the original mini-series, devolving into a rather standard “good guy takes on the bad guys” story before reaching its admittedly very emotional conclusion. Two stars out of four.
And here’s Jedburgh and Craven’s first meeting from the original mini-series:
One of the more recognizable, at least to me, helicopters out there is the military’s Apache attack helicopter. This video, presented on CNN, shows one of those fearsome helicopters having an equally fearsome crash in Afghanistan. As the reporters note, no one was injured in the incident (incredibly!).
This is the full “uncensored” video.
Amazing that everyone survived.
Fascinating video and article from CNN concerning a possible clue to the fate of Amelia Earhart’s aircraft found in a 1937 photograph. The video of the story is first:
The full article:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/20/reports-new-search-planned-for-amelia-earhart/
Consider me one of those people who are fascinated with the the multitude of “unsolved mysteries”-type stories one can run into. Perhaps chief among them is the perennial mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart back in 1937 while attempting to become the first female to circumnavigate the globe by aircraft. Discovering the fate of Ms. Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan would be a terrific story and close the book on the enduring mystery and I hope the investigators in this article and video are on the right track.
Having said that, the photograph they say may show the landing gear of the Lockheed Electra protruding from a reef is intriguing but I find it hard to completely swallow. Why did whoever took that photograph a few months after Earhart’s disappearance not notice a metal protrusion coming out of the water by the island? Granted, the image takes up a very small part of the photograph, but still, wouldn’t they have noticed something metallic shimmering close to the edge of shore? Further, and while I freely admit to being absolutely NO expert at the Lockheed aircraft, the amplified image itself looks like something of a Rorschach blotch. Is it possible the investigators are seeing what they want to see there?
I certainly don’t know, but I sincerley hope their theories turn out to be true and one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th Century is finally solved.
If you need any further proof of the directorial genius of Steven Spielberg, just look at some of the incredible set pieces/adventure sequences to be found in his first computer graphic movie The Adventures of Tintin.
That’s not, however, to say to that the film as a whole is a complete success. But let me backtrack just a little.
When I was very young, I was absolutely charmed by the works of Georges Remi, aka Herge, in the twenty three Tintin graphic novels he produced over his lifetime. I know there were previous animated and live action features based on the graphic novels, but Steven Spielberg’s film is the first time I would see Tintin and his world in something other than the original graphic novels.
When the film was originally released, I was curious how audiences in the United States would react. While Tintin is a beloved fictional character in Europe, Canada, and other parts of the world, Herge’s work never seemed to rise above cult status in the United States. Would audiences here give this film a look despite the lack of familiarity with the character and books?
As it turned out, the movie proved a mild success in the United States and a big hit oversees. The film was generally viewed positively by audiences here (Rottentomatoes.com has the film scoring a very good 74% among critics and 78% among audiences). I was eager to see the film in theaters, but the crunch of time proved too much and I simply couldn’t. Instead, I waited for the eventual video release and quickly got the movie into my BluRay player.
As I mentioned at the start, there are some scenes in The Adventures of Tintin that are simply astonishing. These scenes follow one after the other at roughly the middle of the movie to close to the end. First up is the escape from a freighter and subsequent airplane flight to the desert. These scenes are both hilarious and suspenseful. Soon after that, there is an incredible flashback sequence involving the Unicorn, a ship from the 1700’s whose fate is central to the story we’re presented. This flashback features some of the very best pirate action you’re likely to ever see in any film, live action or animated. Then there’s the sequence -all presented in one “take”- featuring a mad dash between the protagonists and the villains to gain control of three pieces of paper.
Each of these sequences are great and guaranteed to make your eyes pop.
…But…
Sometimes, too much of a good thing can be…too much. To me, some of the greatest works of fiction know how to balance out “quiet” scenes with “action” scenes. A few years back, while watching (of all things) Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I came to realize that when every sequence in the movie is presented as if it is a big set piece (action or otherwise) with all the bells and whistles (swelling music, frantic editing, solemn dialogue, etc. etc.), then after a while the “importance” of the sequence you’re watching becomes…less so. I had been so assaulted by one supposed big earth-shaking scene after the other that by the time Hellboy II reached its actual climax, it felt like just another sequence instead of what should have been a rousing conclusion.
So too, unfortunately, it is with that second half of The Adventures of Tintin. While the first half of the film -dare I say it- allows the story time to “breath”, when we’re finished with those wonderful sequences I noted above, we are unfortunately not quite at the film’s climax. We’re close, mind you, but because those sequences I pointed out are so damn good, when we actually do reach the movie’s climax and the villain and hero face off that one last time, it proved to be rather…dull. By that point I was mentally exhausted with the all that good stuff that came one after the other just before. Granted, Mr. Spielberg and company tried to fashion something great with that last confrontation between villain and hero, but it just didn’t live up to what came right before. Even worse, the sequence involving the chase for the three pieces of paper could easily have served as the movie’s climax…and it would have worked very well there. Had Mr. Spielberg done so, the film’s dénouement could have just as easily followed.
Regardless, I still admire what Mr. Spielberg and company did with The Adventures of Tintin. While I can’t say that the film was a complete success, particularly during that exhausting later half, I nonetheless was very impressed with what they did get right, from the incredible computer animation (some of the best I’ve ever seen) to those very successful action and humor sequences. Overall, I’d give this film a very solid three stars out of four. Recommended.