Keep it up – visuals continue to be great, the plot(s) are decent, and the buildup of good vs. evil still ongoing – no Clu yet, but I suspect he’ll show up sooner or later….
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Episode 3
So to me, Prometheus was another of my highly-anticipated movies this summer. It has seemingly everything going for it – Ridley Scott as director/creative genius; solid cast (Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba); plot concepts originally from the ‘Alien‘ movies (well the first two – good, not the later two – lame – nor the even lamer Alien vs. Predator series); some interesting pre-movie hype (see previous post on Guy Pearce’ fake TED speech); – but the result ended up a bit mixed for me. SPOILERS BELOW!!!!
First, the good stuff:
The movie LOOKS AMAZING. While I’m sure they reaped the rewards of capitalizing on some of Avatar‘s special effects innovations – I personally think this movie simply blows Avatar out of the water visually – despite having a much ‘grayer’ visual look and an obviously much darker theme. Scott has taken the earlier ‘Alien’ SFX, including the H.R. Giger artwork, and gone to a whole new level. The ships, action sequences on the planet, the set(s) used for the ship interiors – all of it is just amazing and very realistic-looking. Another major influence on the visuals has to be Chris Foss – their ship looks like it flew right out of one of CF’s paintings, and the overall effect of ‘tiny man, huge alien spacecraft/planet bases’ is a regular Foss artistic theme.
I also liked the cast. I think the actors chosen were well-suited and believeable in their roles, despite in many cases not having enough to do or say (see below). Noomi Rapace looks like a ‘tough Audrey Tatou‘ to me, and Charlize Theron seemed like she was shaping up to be the ‘Ripley character’ – she has nearly the same voice and bad-ass-type bearing as Sigourney Weaver in the first two Alien movies – but her role ends up pretty different than Ripley. Michael Fassbender is the humanoid robot, kind of a ‘twisted Commander Data’ if you will – because it’s completely obvious from the first scene he’s up to something, and Fassbender has given him a strong dose of soft-spoken malevolence to boot (HAL 9000, anyone?).
The not-so-good:
The Plot – while not near as thin as say, TRON:Legacy was – there are some gaping plot holes here that just don’t make sense or seem inexplicable given the considerable talent and effort that went into this movie.
Example one – what IS Charlize Theron’s real role here – is it as enabler, spoiler or indifferent observer of Guy Pearce’s (Weyland Corp.) dream to discover these aliens? Is she only in it for a paycheck? She seems at first to be the person who’s going to end up running the show but that doesn’t happen, and despite several scenes where she’s obviously ‘in charge’ – there are many other critical scenes where she’s nowhere to be found, nor in charge?
Example two – where was the rest of the crew – especially David, who put it in her, when Noomi Rapace is busy using the med-unit to forcibly remove the alien implanted in her body? Was everyone else taking a nap, or?
Example three – when the ship’s xenobiologist reaches out to actually TOUCH the cobra-like alien swimming around in puddles in the ancient alien ship on the planet – it attacks him. What did he THINK was going to happen? This was simply ridiculous to me – of COURSE it was going to attack him and even if it didn’t, no biologist EVER does something SO STUPID without adequate preparations and care? Especially not one on ANOTHER PLANET.
Example four – I find it hard to believe generally that a private corporation would be the ONLY entity making such an obviously momentous and historic journey to potentially discover Man’s possible ancestors? No govt’ involvement at all? This is where movies like Contact and 2001/2010 have simply done a better job on this point, I think. It seems almost impossible for such discoveries to remain secret if under control by one govt., let alone a private corporation? Heck, there were actual Marines on the second Alien ship – but here? Hmmm……not even private mercenaries?
Example five – Guy Pearce’ sudden appearance ON THE SHIP in the latter 3rd of the movie – hel-lo? And all those ‘extra crew’ that seemingly appeared out of nowhere with him? Come ON, guys – did everyone cryo-sleep in a secret footlocker for the first half of the movie?
Another aspect was simply ‘not enough explanation’ – the whole opening sequence is a complete mystery without a bit more info? There was some interesting speculation in the IMDB faq on the movie, but it’s unconfirmed. Maybe on the DVD later this year….
I guess in summary, not unlike TRON:Legacy of a couple years ago, this movie fulfills in many ways, but in some key ways, is simply flawed, given its implied mission as a ‘big thoughts’ kind of movie – If I compare it to say, The Avengers – I have to say that in some ways, The Avengers is more entertaining, but it’s also a silly superhero movie, so you don’t take it seriously in the first place. It is probably harder to reach for bigger meaning in a movie – but when you do, you have to deliver, or it’s going to be more obvious you haven’t.
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Watched Episode 1 of the new TRON:Uprising animated series last night – pretty cool! Hopefully they’ll keep uploading them to YT, given that I don’t have (nor am interested in buying) DisneyXD….
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So having already seen The Avengers – I was able to get last year’s Captain America movie on DVD and watch that a few days ago. Same Captain America as that movie (Chris Evans, formerly The Human Torch) and my previous comments still pretty much apply here – CE plays it pretty straight, and Hugo Weaving is a great bad guy as Red Skull. There were only a few flaws in my opinion, namely:
1) Chris Evans is the voice of Cap the entire movie, although the first portion of the movie has him being 19 years old and trying to get drafted despite a number of physical ailments – the adult voice simply doesn’t fit with a nineteen year old – it just sounds ‘off’.
2) essentially same comment for what must be CGI grafting CE’s head onto another actor’s body. The kid’s body seen in the early part of the movie is obviously NOT that of Chris Evans, and the head looks a bit out of proportion to it. I’m pretty sure they shot the scenes with another body actor, then grafted in CE’s head and dialogue using CGI, until it was time for him to emerge from the ‘super soldier’ experiment, at which point it’s his actual body. Nice try, but doesn’t quite work – see TRON: Legacy on how to pull something like this off far more effectively.
This was a decent run-up to The Avengers – as seen with the first Iron Man, there was a teaser Avengers intro at the end of the credits here, too.
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At least a year or more ago, I read Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil. This is an interesting thriller with a somewhat ridiculous plot – Joseph Mengele and other escaped Nazis living in South America carry out a sinister experiment to clone a bunch of ‘baby Hitlers’ based on saved cells he had obtained from Hitler during the war. Then when old enough, the babies are farmed out to foster parents in the USA and Europe with similar background demographics to that of Hitler’s original parents, and monitored to attempt to duplicate AH’s upbringing as much as possible to bring about the desired result (Hitler rises again to power and brings back Nazi control, of the world this time around).
A movie was made of this book in 1978, starring Gregory Peck, Lawrence Olivier and James Mason. While naturally the movie cuts some of the details a bit short, it’s an entertaining view. Other actors include a VERY young Steve Gutenberg as a cub reporter monitoring the Nazis in Paraguay; the familiar Walter Gotell (played the Russian spy boss in several Roger Moore James Bond films); Denholm Elliott (may remember him as Dan Ackyroyd’s butler in Trading Places, among his many other films, including at least a couple of the Indiana Jones movies).
IMHO Gregory Peck is the main reason to watch this movie. Not only is he playing against type (here he’s the E-VIL arch villain, normally he’s the good guy everyone roots for) he goes for broke in playing the character, probably not unlike the real Mengele (who apparently was still alive in South America when this movie premiered in the theaters). There are a number of scenes where he all but loses it (or DOES lose it) and goes apes*** – great fun and way over the top.
I thought Laurence Olivier was good too, but while he’s the good guy nazi-hunter, his character is a bit whiny and somewhat annoying – maybe that’s the way the real Simon Wiesenthal was? Not sure.
It was also fairly surreal to see Bruno Ganz in this movie as a minor character in this movie – given that much more recently he played Hitler himself in Downfall, and of course starred in all those ridiculous ‘Hitler meme’ videos on YouTube as a result.
It’s always interesting to watch ‘alternative history’ movies generally (unless they really suck acting-wise or just present way too lame a plot premise) – this one doesn’t disappoint.
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So now with YouTube, we usually have the ability to watch (even more) TV than we otherwise would, because all those crazy people out there with too much time on their hands spend uncounted hours uploading classic (and lame, to be sure) TV shows up there. I’d sure hate to see YT’s power bill to keep all that crap online 24-7.
Anyway, for whatever reason I was thinking about The Six Million Dollar Man a few days ago and did some searches, specifically for an episode where he meets Bigfoot. Bigfoot turns out to be a sentry for space aliens who live in a cave in the California mountains and study the human race from this hidden vantage point. Naturally they want to examine Steve Austin – so Bigfoot (and some weird spinning tunnel) captures him for their nefarious needs.
Who is The Six Million Dollar Man, you say? Well, he’s Steve Austin, an astronaut who crashed very badly in the California (Nevada?) desert during a test flight and had to be ‘rebuilt’ as a cyborg (new eye, arm and legs) to survive – this is all explained in the show opening sequence. Naturally Steve then becomes a government agent for an elusive agency (OSI) and has weekly adventures on TV as a result. Kind of like an early 70s Knight Rider without the computerized Trans Am, KITT, and without the mulletized Hasselhoff in a leather jacket (this being the early 70s, Steve was more a leisure suit kinda guy).
So back to Bigfoot. The nice thing about YouTube (and DVDs for that matter) is that it lets you zip past boring plot points and/or stupid stuff. Since T.S.M.D.M. were hour-long shows, and this was a two-parter, it meant not having to watch two whole hours of it – meaning not having to watch Steve Austin’s lame battle against Bigfoot (Bigfoot was played by Andre the Giant – cool!) and, all the footage of SA running around the woods in slow motion (a regular staple of this series to give the impression of great speed) and using his other bionic abilities (eyesight, powerful arm) to the requisite repeated sound effects for each – if you’ve ever watched this show, you know what i’m talking about.
This show was out in the early ’70s, so the special effects are ok, but obviously way dated given their age. Lee Majors was the breakout star here (he had been in some TV before but this was a major role and god knows they marketed the HELL out of it then – you could buy nearly any action figure, toy, lunchbox, you name it). What’s also weird is that given the time period – the hairdos and clothing makes everyone look so much older, even given that Lee Majors was only early 30s at best? Kind of like the original Captain Kirk looking a lot older than his recent movie replacement did? Or that i’m now older than both so I don’t know what the (blank) I’m talking about? 🙂
Anyway, it was weird watching that show again, probably first time i’ve seen any of the episodes *since* the early 70s, as unlike say, Star Trek – I don’t remember that show really going into syndication? There were weird miscues in the sound effects – Steve Austin throws a large tree branch at Bigfoot during one of their ‘melee’ scenes – and it makes a sound like an incoming air missile? Huh?
Also, part of the plot involved some missing scientists who Bigfoot/the aliens ultimately kidnapped – those scientists were researching a big earthquake fault line, which in part two they set off a NUKE to keep it from causing an even bigger natural quake that would have killed thousands along the California coast otherwise. Really, a nuke? Funny how everyone is only a mile or two away (likely less) according to the plot, and they show no mushroom cloud, the nukes are only buried a few feet deep? Come on, people – even a 10 year old knows what a nuclear explosion looks like (and that you have to be a bit farther away from it)?
Finally, there’s a token phone call scene with The Bionic Woman (Jamie Sommers, played by Lindsay Wagner) where she wants to come help find Steve Austin (cooling his bionic butt in the aliens’ cave at the time with Stefanie Powers, who plays one of the aliens) but their boss tells her to just stay at home (like a good bionic girl – it’s not stated but that’s sure what he was telling her). So the US Govt. spends all this money to build TWO bionic people and then tells one to stay at home and mind her knitting? Really? I guess the episode budget was already too high (given Andre the Giant, aliens and ‘special’ effects) to afford more than one scene from Lindsay Wagner – why even bother?
Apparently there is a second two-part Bigfoot episode from the next season also on YT – don’t hold your breath for me to watch it, though. Eventually i’ll watch the better one from The Bionic Woman where she battles a HAL-like killer computer; or when she takes on the ‘fem-bots’ made by some mad scientist (arguably the second coming of Westworld). Far more interesting.
Ah, tv……
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The summer of 2012 looks like it will be a bang-up collection of good-to-great movies, even if several are getting the jump on summer by starting a couple months early – to wit:
April: We started with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – starring Gary Oldman, who like his fellow Brit Alan Rickman, is one of those ‘chameleonic’ actors that seems to morph into something completely different in nearly every film (although Mr. Rickman keeps that unique, uber-distinctive voice no matter what he does – and we love him for it!). This film, based on a John LeCarre novel of the same name (I have never read any of his books) is very interesting, although it took me a while to understand what was going on. Unlike say, James Bond or Jason Bourne movies, even though a spy movie, this isn’t an action thriller really at all – no, this movie is far more subtle (but no less devious!). Always good to see John Hurt (he was the spymaster ‘Control’) and Tom Hardy was also good. And as Kerewin pointed out afterward, this isn’t a story of black & white/good & bad – everyone has flaws, everyone does things that aren’t necessarily on the up and up. Definitely worth watching!
Next on the list was The Descendants, starring George Clooney and set in Hawaii. Ah, I want to go back to Hawaii so bad!!! This is a story of serious family dysfunction but with hope and some eventual redemption (it is a Hollywood movie, after all 🙂 – the acting is good and believable, and it’s easy to see why this movie was in the running for Best Picture among other awards this year. It’s not a ‘happy’ movie by any means – but it’s definitely worth seeing – and thanking that your own family (immediate or otherwise) isn’t in the same boat. I still wanna go back to Hawaii.
Next, we saw The Hunger Games. Astute readers will remember the Battle Royale review here from last August – this movie is very similar, but based on a trilogy (sequels on the way I’m sure) and set in a future rich-guy-rules-poor-guy-gets-f’d America, rather than Japan. Both movies have more than a few similarities to Lord of the Flies, the book that arguably inspired most such stories way back in the ’50s. I’m not going to rehash the plot – but rather, muse a bit on what this movie made me think about.
1) if the book’s author and movie-makers are trying to send a message of the kind of country we could become if we don’t deal with income inequality in the USA (now!) – well done. Certainly this dystopia is an extreme endgame with many sci-fi overtones to boot, but without reading too much into a pop culture movie – the risk is real, guys.
2) Another movie/story this reminded me of was The Handmaid’s Tale. That movie, while nowhere near the budget and production values of this one (I couldn’t make it through the entire book, either) has equally scary scenes and VERY evil central characters too – Victoria Tennant most prominently, but Robert Duvall also takes a turn as a cynical military commando at the highest ranks of the religious government – unlike Hunger Games, Handmaid’s Tale is much more about a religious takeover, not far from the Heinlein classic “If This Goes On…”
3) What’s also interesting about these dystopian stories generally is the attention (or lack thereof) paid to the ‘downtime’ – that is, what is everyone doing when they aren’t doing ‘the main event’ the story is about? Are the poor just making gruel and crappy bread all day in their districts while the rich live completely off the fat of the land and run around to endless parties and socializing? I honestly can’t think of any human society, totalitarian or not, that has managed to survive for many decades without at least minimal change – even the last remaining “Communist” countries have embraced tentative steps into free enterprise in the past several years, for various reasons. It’s one potential flaw to these dystopian scenarios – save for possibly those that include the world being ruined in some way (Terminator movies, Matrix, etc.) – but The Hunger Games doesn’t appear to be about the environment, it’s about power and exploitation, plain and simple.
The next major movie was The Avengers, seen last week. This isn’t any ‘message’ movie by any stretch of the imagination (e.g. there are Norse gods in it, hello?) but just the first of the pure mindless entertainment summer movies to debut (that I care to see, anyway). And despite some minor flaws (would SHIELD really fly a ‘stealth’ aircraft carrier, really?) it mostly delivers. I was also surprised how much I liked the Thor and Hulk characters – I still haven’t seen either Hulk movie (nor do I plan to) and the Thor movie wasn’t really in the cards either, and then Conan O’Brien made SURE I didn’t want to see it :). But here Mark Ruffalo is a great Bruce Banner/Hulk, and I liked Chris Evans as the ‘serious but somewhat ignorant’ Captain America – very different than his portrayal of The Human Torch in the FF4 movies of a few years ago. Robert Downey is the same smarta** he was in the two previous Iron Man movies, and is still very good. The Black Widow and Hawkeye characters are obviously ‘lesser’ as they have no super powers, but whatevs, they are still good too. All in all, a very good movie – I still think the first Iron Man was easily the best of these so far, but time will tell….
Onward, movie summer!
I thought I had seen nearly all the dystopian/computer-ruled-future sci-fi movies out there, especially that of the 1970’s (the decade that pretty much invented the genre) but recently came across one I had not – 1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project.
While this movie is a bit dated given its Cold War theme (the USA builds an invincible computer to run our missile defense system – then we find out the Soviets have done the exact same thing) and the fact that it’s 42+ years old now, it still presents a somewhat different take on the now-common TRON/Terminator/Matrix vision of man handing off control (either by mistake or on purpose) to technology, and then having to fight to regain freedom.
Here, the computer(s) (Colossus from the USA and Guardian from the Soviets) ‘discover’ one another, begin communicating (we never find out what about, save that they progress through simple math into subjects alleged to be beyond human capability within a day or so and never look back) and then start taking over as they gain sentience. When the humans try to regain control, well, that doesn’t work out so well of course. Finally Colossus forces the technicians to install a weird-looking speech unit, and issues an edict to the world by the end, that it is ushering in a new era of peace, ‘on my terms’. Enforced by control over the world’s nuclear arsenal, which is re-aimed at countries still not under its control computer-wise.
The difference to me on this movie was the ‘peace enforcement’ angle – usually all-powerful computers want to enslave or worst case, exterminate all humans once they gain power, right? Here Colossus hints that he’s going to force Dr Forbin (his creator) to evacuate Crete and build an even bigger, autonomous computer complex there that will control all world communication within 5 years. To which Dr. Forbin naturally replies – ‘never!’
So on the positive side, the plot is pretty decent, although there could have been a bit more editing of somewhat tedious long shots after the main sets are established – I really liked the opening of Dr. Forbin walking around the huge Colossus complex as it goes online – you really get the impression of scale (it’s an impregnable fortress in the Colorado Rockies). The acting is generally effective, with even a few familiar faces, including Marion Ross, James Hong and William Schallert, although only the latter gets much to do.
What’s also amusing in these movies (and in similar books – helped by hindsight of course) is how the ‘humans never learn’ – they always go creating something magnificent to solve some enormous problem – and it ends up creating far more problems than it solves – and they wonder why? But it must be human nature (or a time-honored/tiresome element of sci-fi plots) to try and try again….
On the negative side – the main computer interface they use is similar to those neon ‘announcement’ lights you see by the side of the highway or in a shop window, backed by typing sounds. Even 2001’s HAL (from several years earlier) had a much more advanced interface (those all-too-menacing ‘eyes’ located all over the ship) than this. And that Colossus doesn’t learn to talk until about the last 15 minutes of the movie? And that we never see or really hear from Guardian (the Soviet computer) at all, save that it effectively becomes Colossus’ partner in world domination by the end – why not have it be a rival instead? That would be another interesting take – most movies have computers vs. humans – why not computers vs. each other, with us caught in the middle? While the Matrix addresses that theme a bit, we never really know WHY the computers in that movie decide to help us out, it’s really just assumed that some are ‘good’ and some are ‘bad’…?
Anyway, this was an interesting movie, if you like old-school sci-fi and don’t mind that the Cold War is now over (replaced by the ‘invent-a-war’ nature of the world now, arguably more unstable in some ways)….
Other reviews:
The Chicago Reader
Eccentric Cinema
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I’ve been watching 1998’s Cowboy Bebop on Adult Swim over the past several months (at one episode a week with 26 episodes, it can take a while) – finally finished them last week.
This is a great anime, if you like bounty hunters in space and don’t mind occasional crazy violence (and that they don’t usually explain a lot of what’s going on – you have to infer or watch all the episodes to really get it). The main characters’ backstory are slowly revealed throughout the entire timeline, and even though Spike’s fighting abilities seem a bit beyond his outward appearance – it still works. And the overall visuals are pretty much pre-CGI – now rare for a space-opera but like Akira – the animation is more than adequate and well done.
I think the only real downside for me was having to watch it dubbed in English – I prefer watching them in Japanese with subtitles to get the flavor of the original actors/authors as possible. But that wasn’t really too big a deal here.
The other downside is that now i’m done with the main anime’s on Adult Swim – I’ve seen Ghost in the Shell at least twice all the way through; I tried to watch an episode of Big O but just couldn’t get into it – and the others they show aren’t really of interest – doh!
check it out in any event – i’ll be headed back to Scarecrow myself….
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this short was just released by Ridley Scott regarding the upcoming Alien prequel this summer, Prometheus. Can’t wait for this movie! This short features Guy Pearce and reveals some backstory – this isn’t in the upcoming movie…
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