Film

An archive of blog entries about films and film production.

Film

View the first 24 minutes of A Scanner Darkly online for free

17 July 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

The animated Keanu Reeves in A Scanner DarklyEveryone loves Philip K Dick. A man who seemed to have 97 original ideas every minute, who would throw away concepts on a short story others would regard as the pinnacle of their writing careers, he’s probably one of the most influential writers of the last 50 years.

His work is slowly being adapted into movies, some successfully (Blade Runner, Total Recall – well sort of successfully and sort of adapted) and some unsuccessfully or relatively insipidly (Minority Report, Imposter, Paycheck).

The latest to be adapted is Through A Scanner Darkly, one of Dick’s druggiest stories. Directed by Richard Linklater, A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey Jr among others in animated form. And is a surprise twist, you can see the first 24 minutes of the movie online for free.

For once, it’s not a YouTube video, but an honest-to-goodness official vid. You’ll need to verify you’re over 18, but if you are, you can view the extended trailer at the FilmForce web site.

Film reviews

Fearless: fun but I’ve seen it somewhere before

13 July 2006 Natalia Romanova Post a comment

Last night, it being Orange Wednesday and all, I went to see what is promised to be Jet Li’s last martial arts movie: Fearless. How could I resist?

Fearless is set in Shanghai at the turn of the 20th Century. Li plays Huo Yuan Jia (the film’s Chinese title), founder of the Jin Wu Sports Federation. A martial arts master, Huo Yuan Jia ends up fighting Westerners and Japanese in a demonstration contest to prove that the Chinese are not “the weak men of the East”, as the Westerners suggested. But most of the movie is a flashback to his life, showing how he became a famous fighter, how his life fell apart through poor choices and mistakes, and how he was able to pull himself back together again.

There are essentially three intents of Fearless:

  1. To prove Jet Li can act and therefore should be considered for future dramatic roles that don’t involve wu shu
  2. To prove that China was a mess in the early 20th century and that the People’s Republic of China was therefore a very good idea indeed
  3. To recapture some of the things that made Jet Li’s earlier Hong Kong films so good in order to give him a good send-off.

Continue reading “Fearless: fun but I’ve seen it somewhere before”

Garth Ennis and John Woo unite!

13 July 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

New comics publisher Virgin Comics is to launch a “Director’s Cut” series of comics. The idea is that famous directors will come up with their own comics, the first in this line of mighty story-tellers being John Woo. Garth Ennis, famous for various things including Preacher, is going to be scripting “Seven Brothers”, as Woo’s comic will be called.

I checked the Virgin Comics web site and I have to say the rest of their stuff looks like arse, so this is going to be a blessing for them I suspect. And yes, Richard Branson does have something to do with it. As of yet, the web site has nothing on the new range.

Film

The world of movie titling

12 July 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Coming up with movie titles is hard. We all know the tales (true or otherwise) of the problems faced by various filmmakers on learning that their audiences didn’t understand their carefully planned and balanced linguistic allusions:

  • License Revoked: What does revoked mean? Became License To Kill
  • The Abyss: What’s an abyss? Decided to keep it anyway
  • The Madness of George III: What happened to The Madness of George 1 & 2? Became The Madness of King George. (Actually, there’s a touch of the urban myth about this one. But only a touch)

There’s plenty more where that came from, too.

The problem becomes even greater when you’re dealing with a foreign language movie.

Continue reading “The world of movie titling”