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Mr. Beaks Visits THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
We held the latest Jedi Council the other night, right after Mr. Beaks came from visiting the SKY CAPTAIN & THE WORLD OF TOMORROW production facility. I've seen some of the glowing, hyperbolic descriptions of this footage on other sites, and I know how much our own Grande Rojo is looking forward to the movie. I hope it's great. I really do. But I get worried any time a movie seems to be all about design, especially when it's in the hands of someone who has never worked with actors before. I'd hate to see this movie be a big, empty, pretty spectacle when all the ingredients are in place for it to be something special and fun. Which way does it look like it's going right now?
Well... here's Beaks with his take on things...
Jon Avnet knows precisely what he has with Kerry Conran’s SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, and he’s not afraid to say it: “This is a movie by a nerd, for nerds, that just happens to be accessible to normal people.” While we’ll have to wait and see on the validity of the latter half of that proclamation, there’s certainly no doubting the accuracy of the former. This is the mayhem laden sci-fi film daydreamed by geeks in study hall, scribbled onto the backs of notebooks, suddenly realized twenty years later through the expressive magic of CG. It’s the kind of movie no studio would make without forcing compromise upon compromise until the finished result was some watered-down non-starter like THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, which is why Avnet wisely opted to tap the independent finances of Aurelio De Laurentiis in order to bring the film as near to completion as possible before offering it the distribution rights.
But now that Paramount has signed on to this light show, it’s finally time to compromise, no?
“Not yet,” says Avnet. “We’re still cruising away here in Neverland.”
“Neverland” is a production facility housed in a drab office space nestled among even drabber one-story structures in a Van Nuys, California industrial park. A sweep of the block whilst jockeying for a parking spot tells you that tractor equipment is manufactured here, not films. The only symbol suggesting otherwise is the winged Totenkopf insignia affixed to the red-brick front of the building where I and representatives of every online site in fandom are mulling about waiting for our grand tour, which will include the most extensive presentation of footage from the film yet shown to the press.
Eventually, we’re granted access to this house of secrets, and guided through the cramped, but cheery workspaces into an ersatz screening room where we’re shown the twenty minute reel that was used to woo every single major studio in a highly unusual one-day courtship, which ended with an aggressive Paramount walking away with… what did they get anyway?
The “reel” that launched a thousand bids winds up posing twice as many questions before it’s finished, but the very first image decisively answers the doubts of those who’d say that the film is just a quaint, low(er) budgeted version of Lucas’s digital STAR WARS prequels. High above an ominously dark 1930’s Manhattan, a commercial zeppelin rumbles through the clouds on its way to being tethered to the top of the Empire State Building. The ship is called the Hindenburg III; thus, cleverly placing the film in a World of Tomorrow as might’ve been imagined by an early twentieth century futurist before the fiery end of the dirigible era. It’s important to note that the imagery in this reel is mostly black-and-white, with some very muted colors creeping in here and there, and is not representative of the finished product (though we got a peek of that near the end of our visit – more on that later). But it’s still breathtakingly beautiful in its own way; an expressionistic, soft-focus metropolis that calls to mind the work of the great industrial artists (in fact, Kevin Conran, Kerry’s brother and the film’s production designer, credits folks like Alex Raymond, Ramond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes for influencing this striking look).
After eliciting audible “oohs” and “aahs” from the assembled press, the narrative gets underway as we’re introduced to intrepid reporter (is there any other kind in these films?) Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow, who seems as luminous as her hyper-stylized surroundings). Lost in the hullabaloo over the Hindenburg’s spectacular arrival is Polly’s story about the disappearance of Doctor Jorge Vargas. It’s the latest mysterious vanishing of a notable scientist, and while the authorities are puzzled, Polly might be on the verge of cracking the story via the assistance of Doctor Walter Jennings, a specialist in nuclear enzymes, who has just arrived on the Hindenburg. Polly rushes to Radio City Music Hall to meet with the nervous Jennings. In a marvelous sequence set against the projection of THE WIZARD OF OZ, Jennings tells Polly of the insidious “Einheit Elf” (Unit 11) project convened in Berlin at the outset of World War I. But he’s only able to give Polly a rough sketch of their awful experimentation before the air raid sirens begin to roar outside the theater. Totenkopf has come to snatch up Jennings, the last scientist remaining from “Einheit Elf”.
All is chaos out in the streets. Police scramble to clear the streets as they prepare to do battle against, yes, giant fucking robots (these things are just too big and too badass to be described differently). We catch our first glimpse of them through Polly’s eyes as they clomp down Fifth Avenue smashing cars and raking the sides of buildings with their shoulders (apparently, the avenues in New York City were not designed for giant fucking robots marching in pairs). Unable to slow their progress, the police call in their last hope: Sky Captain (Jude Law). Signaled hilariously by what looks like the RKO tower, Sky Captain and his Flying Legion come screaming out of the skies to save the day. Because they’re impervious to bullets, Sky Captain has to get a little imaginative with his efforts to fell these mechanical monstrosities, succeeding in the nick of time, and, of course, saving Polly in the process. But the robots, after zapping an underground power grid, seem to get what they came for, and take to the skies once again.
The succeeding scenes in the reel economically provide a bit of backstory – would it surprise you to learn that Sky Captain and Polly are ex-lovers? After a quick round of Hawks-ian banter wherein we learn that Sky Captain blames Polly for sabotaging his plane in order to get a scoop, while Polly believes Sky Captain conducted an affair with a “mystery girl in Nanjing”, the action picks up again with another frenzied aerial battle through the streets of New York City. This time, it’s Sky Captain and Polly in pursuit of an elusive fleet of “flying wings”. Like the rest of the succeeding sequences in this reel, this was mostly bluescreen, but we did catch glimpses of the finished chase as we toured the facility, and, if nothing else, it looked gorgeous.
Everything beyond this point mostly served to give us a better sense of the story, which becomes quite the globetrotting affair, stretching all the way to Nepal (where we’re introduced to Sky Captain’s Sallah-esque pal, Kaji), and what I assume will be a dense jungle setting (I can’t wait to see what these guys do with such diverse environs). Still, my favorite “location” is the “flying fortress” of Captain Frank Cook (the eye-patched Angelina Jolie), which is exactly what its name suggests, and is big enough to accommodate the landing of a P-40 Warhawk. Though we weren’t shown a finished version of this aeronautically improbable creation, what we did see was enough to send my jaw floor-ward.
Following the screening, it was up to Jon Avnet to make sense of what we just saw, while describing the unusual route this project has taken to its eventual exhibition. A veteran producer and occasional director who’s no stranger to introducing audiences to uniquely gifted filmmakers (he shepherded Paul Brickman’s brilliant 1983 debut, RISKY BUSINESS, to the screen), Avnet was first introduced to Kerry Conran by longtime business partner, Marsha Oglesby. As Avnet puts it, “I had done a lot of movies at Disney that I wasn’t wild about. They were successful, some of them were fun. But as a producer, I just look for something where you can maybe break a talent like what I did with RISKY BUSINESS with (Paul) Brickman and his first movie, which I did find stimulating and exciting.” After taking a gander at an animated six minute presentation made by CalArts grad Conran, he knew he had found something special. “I thought it was a really fascinating piece of film. It was shot all digitally. It was shot all on bluescreen. And he manipulated it on his Apple computer, literally in his garage, and it created these images. And I went, “Wow!” It was just a level of sophistication – you saw the shots. So, I was responding to that level of design, which I thought was quite impressive.”
While Conran possessed what Avnet refers to as the “boys-with-toys” technical acumen, the producer saw where he could implement his own expertise as a director of more intimate human dramas like FRIED GREEN TOMATOES. What they ended up with was a breezy, repartee heavy script bursting with the director’s desire for boundlessly imaginative sequences that would be cost prohibitive in a traditional studio production (according to Kevin, his brother “dreams big. His ambitions are outsized.”)
With a script in place, it, um, *wasn’t* time to cast. According to Avnet, “The notion was (Kerry) would shoot the entire movie before we went with our actors on a bluescreen with basically extras, and storyboard what he was going to shoot, and then cut it in a kind of crude animatics of the entire movie. So, in fact, storyboarding the entire movie, shooting the entire movie before we ever put any actors in. And he did it.” With the skeleton of the film in place, it was then time to supply the vital organs; i.e. the actors, which is when one Avnet made one of the project’s key decisions. “Whereas (Kerry) wanted to do it as a very, very small film, I thought, ‘Well, why don’t we try to get really great actors?’ Because usually, with all due respect, a lot of these big movies tend to either have new actors, or you don’t tend to get actors who are really refined actors.” As a result, they turned to the actor with the initials J.L. who doesn’t conjure memories of infamously bad bluescreen acting, Jude Law, which in turn attracted the likes of Paltrow and Jolie.
One of the major concerns one might have with a technically savvy, but reportedly shy fellow like Conran would be his facility with actors. “It took a little while for him to say ‘Action’ out loud,” jokes Avnet. In all seriousness, though, it did take some time for Conran to warm up to his performers. “In the initial rehearsals,” says Avnet, “he was kind of quiet. But as they progressed over a couple of days, he got more active. Because he knew the movie, he started to assert himself. Now, I bet if you asked him right now, he would tell you that he could do better, and that he would like another chance to do better. He’s not coming from the theater having worked with actors, but he acquitted himself pretty damn well.” In response to the other inevitable road bumps for a first time director, and how they might impact the finished product, Avnet simply invoked the great cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. “The most amazing thing about film is how forgiving it is.”
Shot with an HD 24-P DV camera, it probably isn’t amazing how crisp the images have turned out, but what’s surprising about it is the degree of stylization, which stands in marked contrast to the clean look of Lucas’s STAR WARS prequels. Essentially, Conran and crew are compositing in black and white, and adding in the color later to give it the look of the old Three-Strip Technicolor process. Since the film will largely be distributed on film, Avnet states that “our goal is to make it look like film.” And he’s certainly quite pleased with the way things are working out. “This mimics film’s quality. That will happen no matter what simply by the ones and zeroes that are available on the computer. You’ll be able to hit, ‘I want to do Technicolor Three-Strip; I want to do BEN-HUR.’ That’ll happen. That will be available to people. Here, this is the first that I’ve seen where you can do film on it. As such, that’s a big deal.”
Once we were done chatting with Avnet, we got a more in-depth tour of the facilities, starting with Kevin Conran’s design room, which is covered from wall to ceiling with hundreds of literally fantastic sketches. A soft-spoken, bespectacled fellow, Kevin’s drawings represent the outsized thinking of his brother, while giving us a preview of the film’s underwater battle sequence, and its other, as-yet-unseen, giant fucking robots. (There was one sketch of giant, manacled hands reaching through a jail cell for what looked like a teeny-tiny Sky Captain, which intrigued me because it doesn’t match up with anything in the script that I, er, have not read.) Though I could’ve easily hung out in there all day, Kevin, while friendly, appeared ready to swing back into work. Indeed, with a release date of June 11th, there’s an undeniable sense of mounting pressure throughout Chateau du Sky Captain. In talking with Kevin, it’s not hard to detect a certain uneasiness with the way this one-time homemade project has turned into a hotly anticipated summer movie. Still, he’s not about to sound an ungrateful note. “It would really sound awful for me to sit here and have this great opportunity and act like it’s not a great opportunity. At the same time, we didn’t set out to make SPIDER-MAN 2, or something ambitious and enormous.”
Judging from the CG work we saw on the rest of the tour, it certainly doesn’t look that way. From the intricate sculpting of a miniature elephant, to its integration in the finished scene, the process appears every bit as astonishing as those I’ve witnessed in other f/x houses. Even more impressive than the elephant, however, was the degree of detail in the actors’ surroundings. Given our step-by-step breakdown of the scene, I was acutely aware of the fact that this was shot against a bluescreen, but by the time we arrived at the finished sequence, there’s no way you could convince me that they weren’t on a fully constructed set. If nothing else, SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW boasts some of the most convincing virtual scenery to date.
One of our last stops on the tour was a dip into an editing bay, where we were shown the (almost) final version of the first robot attack as seen on the preview reel. Suddenly, the Three-Strip Technicolor comment made sense; the colors really popped in this cut, making me excited to see what’s in store for the film’s more exotic locales. The action had also been noticeably tightened up from the earlier cut, which bodes well for the finished product.
And that’s the most salient question at hand. Will SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW add up to more than the sum of its eye popping design work, or will it join the boundary pushing, but dramatically inert likes of TRON and DICK TRACY? With Avnet promising non-stop cliffhangers in the mold of the old serials, and franchise talk starting to bubble around the project, there seems to be every reason to believe that Conran and company have delivered. Still, with a hectic stretch-run staring them in the face, a second film is the last thing anyone wants to talk about.
Says Kevin Conran, “I hope *they* have fun making the sequel.”
Faithfully submitted,
Does it ever get boring for me to tell you what a great job you do for us, Beaks? Even if it does, let me repeat it. Nice report. Thanks.
"Moriarty" out.
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This sounds like a hell of a lot of fun; I miss fun movies. We need Todd-- the PUD of giant robots-- to weigh in on the attendant giant robot issues, however.
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Thank you for your set report, Mr. Beaks. That was awesome. Gosh, I can't wait to see this film, and ugh, I'm actually taping the Super Bowl in hopes that Paramount has chosen "Sky Captain" for it's commercial slot. I wasn't able to find out what would be featured. I have my fingers crossed tightly that it will be "Sky Captain," *squee*!!
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Nice work, Beaks! My appetite is throughly whetted!
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Cant wait.
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Gwyneth, she is fu-uuuu-uuu-uugly. WAY OVERRATED! So I guess this too pretty movie is going to be kept in check with Gwyneth's ugly hide.
Oh yeah, her dad died, did you get that news bulletin? The world mourned, and is still crying about that one. Talk about your overhyped celebs, this one consistantly slides in under the radar of overexposure, yet goes unchallenged. -
So who is the JL that should have immediately popped into my head when I thought of bad bluescreen acting?
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This was a great article, except for the last thing. I hope this movie never has a sequel. This looks like it could turn out to be a piece of film history, and I hope nobody will ruin it with a sequel.
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Jennifer Lopez.
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Anakin in Episode 1.
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missed the fact that they went back and worked on the script, and went through ten different drafts until they got it right. I'm not a fan of big blockbusters, but this one sounds like it's covering all bases. As for the acting or first time director jitters: George Lucas has proven to all of us that he is the worst with actors, this coming from a guy who's directed five movies, with the latter two becoming progressively worse, and the hope thats a third will improve, just screams of "pipe dream." David Thomson was right when he said, "one day, only robots will watch Lucas' films." SKY CAPTAIN & THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is going to deliver; and I'm ready to accept.
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recalls fond memories of the first time i saw the 30's sci-fi classic "THINGS TO COME"
the future, as envisioned in the 20's-30's was the most glorious site, and this film looks to fulfill my dreams.
CANNOT WAIT!
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mr beaks is worthless
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That's probably some kind of racist innuendo. I haven't figured out exactly what it is but I'm working on it. =-=-=-=-=- By the way, George Lucas owns all your flabby asses. It's been two years since his last movie, and 18 months untill his next one and you tubby bitches pretend to hate him, yet use his movies as the gold standard for other films. Lucas is one of the greatest filmmakers ever because he hired strong, proud black actors like James Earl Jones and Billy Dee Williams and put them in REAL roles -not the token police captain roles they try to stiff strong, proud black actors with. Lucas did before it was considered cool. Lucas rules all, and you chubby racist losers know it.
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I think the people who do the shitty halftime shows at the Super Bowl are the same wankers who do the production numbers at the Oscars. Jeez, they suck!
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...it REEEEAAALLLY looked like Janet Jackson flashed everyone. Maybe it was just a boredon-induced mirage.
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I like the look but it looks overdone. Two hours of that might get old. Hope that's not the case.
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Feb 01, 2004 8:59:52 PM CST
You are correct User ID. Janet Jackson did indeed let Timberlak
by rolling_stone
But she still lip-synced her whole show the talentless bitch. I guess when your career is in the toilet and you need attention you go ahead and let the goodies flash out in a last gasp for attention. Time to retire Janet and let the yung'ns take over. Don't get all Madonna about it and start making a fool of yourself.
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Feb 01, 2004 9:01:23 PM CST
Oh, and by the way, World of Tomorrow is going to ROCK!
by rolling_stone
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and SKYCAPTAIN will hopefully deliver. I also agree with a previous tber, gwenneth is indeed ugly, but to her credit, its cool that shes starring in a "nerdy" movie such as this. Personally, I would have gone with Cameron Diaz, shes proven to be good at crappy/campy acting, which fits in this movie, and shes alot hotter than paltrow.
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I guess 1 could say that about a lot of movies, but still... I don't get tired of watching the trailer for this, + will be looking forward to seeing the whole thing in all it's campy, throwback glory. I know this came up once a while back, but what the fuck does "pwned" mean? Citizen Ken (the scourge) won't stop saying it, + until I understand it, I can't get it out of my head. Argh! Out.
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One person I know who has seen a generous helping of this footage expressed that more than 10 minutes of this stylization and you've had enough. When is too much too much? When it get so stepped on, it loses depth. Look at what happened to Peter Greenaway's movies. Who knows what will happen with this fluffanutter?
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The film obviously doesn't work for everyone, but it is a perfect visualization of a comic strip. If it seems "dramatically inert", well exactly how do the old Tracy strips read? I think there was a specific intent to make things 2 dimensional, and everything is stilted by design. That may not fly with most people, but it's clear from watching all of Beatty's other films that he knows what he's doing. Visually it still stands as the best comic book film ever made, and is unlikely to be topped (unless someone else convinces Vittorio Storaro to shoot another one. As for "dramatically inert", Burton's Batman wasn't exactly a fine specimen of the opposite...
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seriously .. go check the net there are nude pics of her everywhere, real and fake (unless thats michael or her dad giving her those cum shots .. hmm cant be sure..). the dirty slut.
Look, dont be fucking suprised during the jacko pedo trial, if jacksons lawyer, accidently grabs Michaels Crotch and exposes his dong for the judge and jury at the end of the hearing.
Its suprise witness Testimony, they'll say!! -
http://inspiredbygw.com/waffles/eggs.html
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Feb 02, 2004 5:41:42 AM CST
This guy owes a nickle to Sid and Marty Krofft (http://imdb.com/
by declan_swartz
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the film already suffers from one intrinsic failing: the director doesn't have any ideas. he is basically making a picture book of renderings and concept drawings. It's interesting to think of what Howard Hawks would have done with this material. For one, Hawks was animated by a few running ideas (masculine camaraderie under physical duress, the tough phallic broads who challenged and rewarded the champions, etc.), so that the drama in his films was amplified by the settings, not dwarfed by it. And even the lesser jeopardies had high stakes; losing carried a Darwinian penalty. Ultimately, in a Hawks movie, you could take out the good lines and the expensive sets, and you'd still have a tough, gripping, eminently watchable movie. In my judgment, if you were to take away the production design from movies like World of Tomorrow, they'd collapse like a stack of matchsticks. It's permissible for a filmmaker to be besotted with cool drawings and outsized (if conventional) set dressing, but it's unforgivable for him or her to step behind a camera without any cinematic ideas.
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Feb 02, 2004 11:38:42 AM CST
Don't forget that the live action portions of Tron's computer wo
by declan_swartz
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sorry, but this is obviously just a mix of LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY and PORCO ROSSO! I think what we have here is another fat anime geek who probably just missed out on getting into PIXAR, so decided to beat them at their own game by COPYING MIYAZAKI FILMS!!
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Feb 02, 2004 12:17:16 PM CST
"the film already suffers from one intrinsic failing: the direct
by minderbinder
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So any movie that takes place in some pre-WWII period with fast talking characters is soms inferior riff on Hawks? As Minderbinder pointed out, you haven't even seen the film yet, so to point out its failings is VERY premature. But hey, that's par for the course on Talk Back. Judge it before you see it. I think it would be appropriate to point out that none of the '30s screwball films had much of a visual style, whether you're talking Hawks, Gregory LaCava, W.S. Van Dyke, or Capra. Because it was all about the banter. If the Coen Bros. can breathe visual life into the genre and keep it real (Hudsucker Proxy), then why is it impossible for this guy to do it just because he's using computer-generated sets? That's a little unfair.
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Feb 02, 2004 2:41:12 PM CST
Those giant robots don't just look like the ones from Laputa...
by jtylor
But Miyazaki himself cribbed the design (also used in a Lupin III TV episode Miyazaki directed in the late 70s) from the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons.
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I don't think this movie will succeed financially though because the common person has no imagination and would rather see the latest Julia Roberts romantic comedy than a sci-fi movie with cool robots smashing stuff. But I'll be there and I'm looking forward to those robots.
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This is my must see movie of 2004.
Looks great!!!!!!!!!! -
I cant believe how many morons visit these boards...some say that
everybody laughed at the trailer at theaters..bullshit!I saw it with ROTK and it got better reactions than the SpiderMan 2 trailer.All my friends say how cool it looks and keep me asking questions about the movie...
I cant wait to see the full trailer!!!!!!!!!! -
Feb 02, 2004 3:30:26 PM CST
"I'm a lot more interested in seeing an intelligent take on the
by fluffyunbound
I'm not. Science fiction may, in fact, be dead, for precisely the reason that any possible future one can extrapolate from this present is dreary, and ugly, and painfully dull. The future is More big box stores and More ugly townhouse developments around crappy artificial lakes and Safer sports equipment for children and MORE endless babble about annoying political and economic minutaie and A chain restaurant on every street corner. That's the future. At least in the 30's and 40's they had the luxury of deluding themselves that there was some hope out there that didn't involve fire, plague, or water sweeping the globe. THOSE people had a "future". We just have the ongoing extension of the most tedious and tackiest parts of the present. Why do you think that alterate history is the fastest growing part of the sci-fi market? Because it allows us to imagine that it might have turned out differently than this, if Burgoyne hadn't been such a pinhead, if FDR was five feet to the left in Florida that day, or if someone had run over Senator Proxmire with a bus. Jude Law isn't the hero of this film, Kerry Conran is; he had a vision, and he sat down and did it. Kudos to him, even if its "retro and tragically self aware" quality does strike a bit of a sad note.
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Feb 02, 2004 4:57:31 PM CST
It does always seem that you say to Mahto and I say to Mayto, do
by fluffyunbound
I guess I have a different take on this film than you do, and that is why talking about your specific criticism depresses me a bit. You see, I don't see this film as camp. I didn't when I first heard about it, and nothing in the set visit at CHUD makes me think any differently. // The charming thing about science fiction up until the time of, say, Hiroshima, is that it was generally produced and consumed by people who believed in Progress, with a capital P. Even in its darker visions - think Fritz Lang's Metropolis - the general premises of Progress were accepted. The "clean" vision of the modernist future even when viewed in its worst possible light [with its sterility, its inorganicity, its potential for tyranny or destructive scientific accident] still has a certain rough grandeur. Its design elements in particular evoke, in me at least, a great deal of nostalgia, if nostalgia is the appropriate word for a feeling of loss over something that can now never be. But Progress is dead now, in the sense that even if technological advance continues no one really believes that this will result in any real improvement in the human condition. There are no gleaming white cities in the future anymore, no political utopia, not even the dystopias of affluence like "Brave New World" or "Logan's Run". There is only the degeneracy of a materialist culture not IMPROVING in the way that optimists thought that it would, but simply burying itself under an ever-increasing pile of shabby trash. The real problem is that you cannot build cities of the future and then have soccer moms live in them, because there aren't enough cup holders and My Little Pony videos and fruit roll-ups and Old Navy shirts to go around in those modernist palaces. America turned its back on its future because there was nowhere in it to get bad mozzarella sticks, and that just wouldn't do. I would even take the Blade Runner future at this point, but even the dystopia of cool isn't possible anymore, because before any of that stuff could come about the zoning board would have to meet ten thousand times and we would have to ask every asshole out there what they thought about it and by the time we were done, there wouldn't be bizarre part-Asian landscapes with flying cars and noodle stands, but instead we'd get the only thing we can all agree on, which is ugly houses that look like the ugly houses we already have, just built out of cheaper materials, and with the old symmetry of their designs destroyed to make room for a bigger garage. The future isn't white and stainless steel, and it isn't even neon, the future is mauve and teal and beige - beige as far as the fucking eye can see. And the people who live in that beige world are NEVER going to Mars, and they are NEVER going to remake their world, and they are NEVER going to change, and all talk or discussion about it happening is pointless and vain. They are going to argue over parking spaces and prescription co-payments and will change from diet to diet with the seasons and will perpetuate a landscape that looks exactly like the one we already have, until they cover the earth with it, and then, mercifully, they will die. // So I look at this film and I don't CARE about its story. The Sky Captain bit is not relevant to me, except to the degree that it reveals a sort of goofy optimism that went hand in hand with its general worldview and aesthetic vision. I am watching this movie for its world. A silly world, maybe, where giant robots walk the earth and where scientists are working on secret plans and where the city continues to reach skyward. A silly world, but a BETTER one, by far, than the one that we have. There is an innocence to this world-view, and it is pleasing, and sad, at the same time. It strikes me that the people then did not know that the future they envisioned in their magazines and at their quaint World's Fairs was not going to happen, that it would be stillborn. They had no idea. They did not know that the world was going to become one giant, tacky, beige suburb filled with the most unimaginative people in mankind's history. The worst that they could think would happen was giant robots.
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i know this was said a while back in this TB.... but did someone refer to lando calrissian as a "real" role?
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WE are the robots. We'll upgrade ourselves before we design better-than-human anthropomorphized machines. The next stage of evolution, folks. Raymond Kurzweil has it right.
And Tron live action was not painted, it was colored in multipass backlit filtering with holdout mattes and photo gels. -
I thought he was gonna be out of a job after Howard the Duck (Jeffrey Jones character), but I guess this is a prequel for him?
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. . . brother?
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Maybe it can do the same kind of business as THE ROCKETEER. That movie was fun although nothing special, in the final analysis. Lightweight entertainment that paid tribute to the old Republic serials. I believe it did good numbers, and I find it endlessly fascinating that anyone still talks about it. It certainly was no ROCKETMAN or COMMANDO CODY, which is the kind of film we all keep hoping will happen again. Otherwise, this is going to be one fucking expensive cult film like BUCKAROO BANZAI or DOC SAVAGE -- both reasonably inventive popcorn flicks. Worse, it could be another THE SHADOW. Or FLASH GORDON. Or CONGO. Or KING SOLOMON'S MINES. Or ALAN QUARTERMAIN. Or...
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...and that was proven with Taro Rin's formidable 2002 anime version of Metropolis! Nowhere else in recent history our civilisation had such an ambitious vision of the near future than in the '20s-'30s era (except maybe at the turn of the millenia, but, naaah...). Our world would probably look the same today if it were'nt for the Crack and World War 2. Visionaries and their lost dreams, and now resurrected into cult films for geeks. ***Now Robofag gets sensitive and will look forward being there when the giant robots will invade New York and wait for them to sodomize him with their huge crates-like phallus!***
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Feb 03, 2004 6:54:42 AM CST
Geez..we complain about CGI, but when its a "nerd" movie it look
by bong
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Feb 03, 2004 9:08:10 AM CST
"Roger Ebert likes to complain about the recent proliferation in
by minderbinder
I agree that it can be silly to throw 135 million at a fun campy schlock flick...but if you can make one for dirt cheap, why not? And Scream didn't kill horror movies, they were dead until it came along and revived them. And then the shitty knockoffs killed them once again.
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Feb 03, 2004 10:58:06 AM CST
I refer the right honorable gentleman to the remarks I made earl
by hud
Minder, good call: definitely talking out of my ass, but I stand by my remarks based on the trailer and the director's apparent set-dresser's mentality. I also refer you to Fluffy Unbound's post above in which he maintains a grimmer future is in store for us. Those are ideas! That kind of thinking, no matter how anguished, is better raw material for an original vision than a superficial intoxication with thirties' design.
I'm certainly willing to give the movie a chance, but I'm just not feeling any real thinking behind it, just pictorialism. And the qualifications for making a nice-looking movie are a lot less demanding, IMO, than those for making a smart, or a tight, or a gutty one.
Lazarus, thanks for calling me out; I guess I wasn't being clear. But my point about Hawks was if you take a director with real cinematic ideas and certain fruitful preoccupations,and then give him a simple genre story, it's quite possible you'll get a master work, even in a minor key. Hawks's work on The Thing is exhibit A. Both Alien and Aliens owe their best moments to that film, and Hawks (via Christian Nyby) wasn't working with a fraction of the money Ridley Scott and Cameron had. He didn't need to. He located the drama of the movie, the heart of the movie, in the elements of the story that didn't need ten million dollars worth of special effects. I cite Hawks because he exemplifies the difference between a film director versus a gussied-up production designer.
But I haven't seen the dopey thing yet, so yeah, I'm so far talking out of my ass. It's plenty to fair to call me on that one.
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You've made me think now.
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Go and watch "Tomorrow Calling" on the BBC channel 4 website -
http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=111281
Or better yet go read William Gibson's "The Gernback Continuum" on which it is based:
http://202.9.60.157/~chabuduo/william%20gibson-burning%20chrome.Pdf
It's exactly what FluffyUnbound is saying, only in prose. We're with you on that, Fluffy, although I can't say BladeRunner's future is "kewl" in any way (unless you consider polution and urban decay to be cool) -
Feb 03, 2004 4:51:26 PM CST
Rollin Stone when did Janet's career fall into the toilet? What
by the founder
This just shows you the closed mindedness and racism that is alive in Amerrica. All i've seen was the media come down on Janet. It's as if Justin Timerberlake wasn't there. He is just to blame as her, and Janet was not controlling him. If you wanna put real blame on someone, let it go to balless CBS, who are acting as if they had no knowledge of what was going to happen. It was live broadcast people, and their is a delay before the image actual hits the tv screens at home, so the people in the control room had enough time to dump the feed and shoot to another angle from any of the hundred plus cameras that were there.
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Feb 03, 2004 9:14:42 PM CST
Speaking of the world of tomorrow: FUTURAMA VOL. 3 is out March
by frankdrebin
It's not "Season 3", because Fox has been going by production date instead of air date or something--who knows? But this box should have such goodies as PARASITES LOST (Fry eats a bad truck-stop egg salad sandwich, leading to a FANTASTIC VOYAGE parody), AMAZON WOMEN IN THE MOOD (where Fry and Zap are sentenced to death by sex), I DATED A ROBOT (the Lucy Lui assassin-bot) and the annual what-if episode, ANTHOLOGY OF INTEREST 2.
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we are a world up made up of huge corporations. we are a world that worships celebreties like fucking gods."ohh, britney spears went to fucking walmart, lets make an hour tv show out of it". we are a world that covets money and materialism over things like love and creation. no one has any imagination beyond making a new george foreman fucking hamburger grill. we're a world that spends millions of dollars dropping nuclear bombs on people instead of building a super rocket to explore space and find possible new life. we are a world that creat medicine for illnesses that don't fully cure the illness on purpose, so more money can be milked from patients. its fucking over, if there was a god, he flushed the tiolet on humanity long ago. its game over man, game fucking over...
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This one looks like it was made to be good...it may not make a profit though.
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