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Ardath Bay reads the tanna leaves on Universal's THE MUMMY!!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
What does the future hold for THE MUMMY? What is to come to our screens this May 7th? So far you have had only my word, and that of our dear Moriarty to excite you about this film. But last night the first test screening of THE MUMMY unfurled. This was a very rough print, it was timed at around two hours and ten minutes, but this was a 'loose edit' meaning that it was long for a reason... To see what worked and what didn't. 'thus the term TEST SCREENING...' There were almost NO COMPLETED VISUAL EFX. There are huge
portions missing, some FX shots are 10-20% complete, some are just
indicated
by words on the screen as to what will go there. The beginning visuals of
ancient egypt and
the climactic battle sequences with the mummy are very, very incomplete. Or at least that's what the Wrap Artists said. And now.... it's time for our good friend Ardath Bay to take the floor... There is still much to see from this film, can ILM pull their magic off? I hope so...
Thanks to your tip and the efforts of a mole in the exhibition community
down
here near the birthplace of the late great Richard M. Nixon, yours truly got
to see what amounted to a really unique film -- unique on a number of
levels...
I guess the reseearch types thought it was clever to describe the film as a
major adventure film with visual effects from a major studio, but I gotta
say
a few people in the line-up took it kinda hard when some clipboard-toting
geeks came out and told us that we were not going to see Star Wars (hello?),
but that we were gonna see THE MUMMY. That was a little weird. What was
the
point of that?
Anyway, it looked like an important screening cause there were quite a few
limousines pulling up and depositing suit-types.
Anyway, we all scrambled inside, took our seats and waited. At 730, an
older
man walked to the front of the theater and told us how we were going to see
a
film that was more of a work in progress than is usually presented to an
audience, that there would be scenes where no effects were present, others
in
a semi-completed state etc, and we would please bear with it, knowing that
all
would be perfect when the movie is released. Off he goes, and the picture
starts, beginning (very cool) with the classic Universal logo (the airplane
circling the globe).
What can I say that harry and others haven't said already? I was kinda
blown
away by how much I liked THE MUMMY... I wasn't really prepared that it
would
be so rich-looking, so detailed and so very funny in a few places. The lack
of finished effects did kind of bother me, surprisingly, but none of it was
hard to follow or imagine.
The cast. Brendan Fraser, who I never liked til I saw him in Gods and
Monsters is great as O'Conner (O'Connell? I swear he's called both)...the
other people in the cast aren't known to me except the other male lead, who
I
know was in Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. He's very very funny. The
girl in the lead (she plays a librarian who wants to be taken seriously as
an
Egyptologist) is SO beautiful and such a great actress... I dont think I've
see her before (she has a British accent, but I'm not sure if she' s
actually
British). The Mummy (who isn't seen very often in full human form) was
played
by the guy who was the bad guy in John Woo's Hard Target with Jean Claude
Van
Damme.
Its a very old fashioned, rousing adventure movie...a little Gunga Din, a
lot
of Raiders of the Lost Arc, even a little Journey To The Center Of The Earth
(there are two opposing teams of treasure-hunters)
This remake differs considerably from the original, as the regenerated mummy
is able to bring plagues to the earth (there are amazing scenes with locusts
and scarabs, and a firestorm hitting Cairo) and is able to command the
elements. There's a scene where he causes all the sand in the desert to
whip,
take form and "attack" a plane. mazing stuff, and so unexpected. There's a
lot of temp CGI stuff aving to do with the Mummy, and a very "Jason & The
Argonauts" scene at the end where Fraser battles hordes of mummies.
Whats weird about the condition of the movie they showed tonight is that, in
the scenes which were in the trailer playing in theaters now or on the
commercial in the Super Bowl, those effects looked more "finished" than the
same scenes did tonight. Anyone know why that is?
There were no credits or anything, and a lot of the music they used was from
"Dracula" and "Waterworld."
Anyway, if anyone was there tonight, i'd be curious to hear what they think.
Thanks guys,
Ardath Bay
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I am very excited about this film. I love the subject matter - Egypt, Egyptology and Mummies. I'm not really concerned that the film differs from the originally. The idea of screaming protagonists running from a slow, lumbering villain probably wouldn't play so well to today's audiences (no insult to the late, great Boris Karloff of course). I'm hoping this film is good enough to carry me through those long early May days!
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Original. I meant to say "original version." Don't punish me. Thank You.
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here's what i believe to be correct.in a sfx film like the mummy, the trailer and the finished film are to completely seperate entities. the trailer, of course, has to be ready months earlier. the sfx shots to be used in the trailer will be handpicked much in advance, and the teams working on these shots will quickly complete (or at least make credible) these shots (or parts of shots) promptly. with the finished film, the makers want to keep their options open, and won't lock down the finsihed shots until the last minute, just in case more changes are deemed necessairaly. remember the shot of the exploding white house in the independance day trailer? in the finished film the shot was quite different (it had the helicopter element added on top). not showing the helicopter in the trailer made sense in that context, but in context of that scene in the film we needed to see the helicopter. and the reason they didn't have the higher quality trailer shots in the work print you saw? probably i'd say because in the trailer you only saw small grabs of each shot, which would have been all that was rendered. (deep breath)
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Just as a point of clarification to our wonderful reviewer, the FX seen in early trailers like the Mummy (or SW1 for that matter) are often done specifically for the trailer, because the real FX are often not completed or are still being "tweaked" till a couple of weeks b4 release. Remember how the scene in the Twister trailer was never in the film. This has become standard practice for studio mega-blockbusters that like to start putting trailers out 6 months in advance. In some cases I'm aware of a different FX company makes the trailer than the actual movie.
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I've never been able to fully understand the concept of telling a story (much less make a film about) about some dead Egyptian king coming back to life by the means of some old curse. I do realize that in this day in moive-age I am often forced to throw plausibility out the window, but this concept has never made any sense to me. Sure these new mummy-films have seemingly good casts and crews, but how far can you go with this extremely flat genre; somebody awakens the mummy from his tomb (through mythological reasons alone), he kills people, a bunch of scientists/historians stop him in the end. With all respect to even the great Anne Rice, this persistent story-telling idea should be left undisturbed in its tomb (no pun intended AT ALL!).
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Like the subject above says, I simply cannot wait for The Mummy. I really liked Stephen Sommers's last film, Deep Rising, a lot because it was such a fun B-flick. It seems to me that Sommers is taking the whole spirit of fun and adventure even further with The Mummy and will make something to rival even Lucas and Spielberg's Indiana Jones films.
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just a quick question
What honest screenplay competitions are out there?
Can you advise a budding punter on how to get a screenplay to the proper people?
I apologize in advance if this is a waste of time.
best, Bwana
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Was there just one screening of this movie? I saw the Mummy last night also. Overall the movie was fair to good. I can easily see this movie be improved when the FX are complete and editing polished. Some of the scenes seemed empty/confusing without them. The movie does have an Idiana Jones quality to it. You pretty much already know what the plot of the movie from the trailer. So I think it will do it's job for being an eye-candy thriller/suspense movie. I noticed they used Titanic music in it and Willow. My friend said something funny regarding the movie. The main evil guy is cursed for doing something very bad/evil. So they mummify him and give him the opportunity to come back to life and bring more havoc/destruction to the world. He said,"Is this a bad or good thing for a bad guy?"
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I was told by fellow Ann Rice fans that the "Mummy" film was going to be based on Rices book. In your report you mentioned that it was a remake. Can anyone clearify this for me and tell me who the screen writer for this film is.
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Just wanted to say I am sorry for not being more informative about the test screening of the Mummy held on Thursday at the Cinemapolis in Orange County. As I just didn't think to make it a point to remember the details since I knew I wasn't going to go. I just didn't feel like driving all that far, unless I knew what film it was going to be for sure. Though I did guess correctly about it being one of three films I thought it could be. Either way I hope that I was able to get a few people into the screening, even if it seems that the films sucks! Which is too bad as it is one of the films I am looking forward too. Though I think I will get a chance to see it again if it ever screens in the area. So please feel free to email me if you hear anything in the near future. Light House Shines
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This is supposed to be a remake of an old 20s or 30s movie called the Mummy..the Anne Rice novel The Mummy (or Ramses the Damned) has not to anyone's knowledge gone into production at this time. James Cameron brought the rights to it in I think it was 1997.
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I was also at the test screening at Cinemapolis... and I can't agree with Ardath's review. My short review can be found at Dark Horizons. I recommended it as a rental or bargain show, but after further consideration, I'm gonna have to say that it was quite lame. There's a longer review on DH that I think better reflects what's going on with the movie than Ardath Bay's review (no offense... just two men's opinions).
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Try the Columbus Discovery Competition, the Disney Fellowship, the Nicholl Fellowship, and the Gotham. They're the ones that get watched the closest as more and more competitions spring up in every little berg in the nation and winning a single screenwriting contest doesn't mean that much.
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