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Harry claws to learn from Joe Johnston on WOLFMAN set!!!
Hey folks, Harry here with my chat with Joe Johnston that took place in the Talbot family home. There was a ton of last act spoiler activity going on around us, but the Talbot Manor was exquisite. Very much the home of a hunter, taxidermy abounded. Just loved it. Now - you have to know that this was about two months prior to Joe committing to CAPTAIN AMERICA - so that wasn't even a topic that anyone knew to discuss. Instead we discuss mainly his work on the WOLFMAN film, but also a bit about Rocketeer, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and the world of Jurassic Park. Joe, the creator of Boba Fett, is incredibly cool in person. It was very nice to finally meet him. Also in this piece we talk about Danny Elfman quite a bit, but he will not be the man scoring the film. His duties on ALICE IN WONDERLAND made him unavailable, so instead - Paul Haslinger has apparently filled that role. Without further catching up - join me for a fire lit chat with Joe Johnston in progress as my recorder kicked in... Joe Johnston: I’m impossible to stop. I just go on and on and on. Harry: Yeah, we have only shared a few emails in the past between us, the old “General Joe” account. Joe Johnston: Yeah, that was a long time ago. Harry: Yeah, so how are you doing? How’s WOLFMAN coming along? Joe Johnston: It’s crazy. It’s work. It’s nuts and we are right… Harry: I had no idea how gory you were making this thing. Joe Johnston You know, it probably looks gorier than it is, it really does. Harry: The girl in the park that I saw them making up was pretty heavy duty! Joe Johnston: It’s all about taste. Harry: You have never done something like this, really. Joe Johnston: Not that I had my name on. Harry: Ah. Joe Johnston: I’m just yanking your chain. [Laughs] You are right, I haven’t. I haven’t done an R rated picture before. Harry: What’s that like? Are you enjoying it? Joe Johnston: It’s not so much about the rating, it’s about making it exactly what you want it to be. It’s about controlling what goes on to film, whether its G or PG or R. It’s just a matter of basically controlling what goes through the lens and making it what you want it to be, so in that way all films are the same. Harry: What made you want to take on this project when it came across your table there? Joe Johnston: What is it about blood in the water that attracts a shark? [Both Laugh] Joe Johnston: I had been off of work, a self imposed hiatus for like four years and I had actually read the script like two and a half years ago and I didn’t care for it in that version, but after several rewrites and notably one by David Self who did a really nice rewrite on it and he’s addressed all of the things about the original script that I had had problems with. He made it much more layered and healthy. I decided it would be something that would be fun to do, plus I was ready to go back to work. Harry: In making a Universal horror film that’s not a… I take it this film is not a very “winky” film, right? Do you feel there’s “winky” going on? Joe Johnston: No, it’s not very winky at all and there are references to the original film, but I just think of it more as a classic noir film or at least that’s what I’m trying to make. Harry: That’s a noble ambition these days. Joe Johnston: It does have it’s challenges. Harry: What has been the toughest thing for you on this, besides the studio? Joe Johnston The balance between… I want it to be a classic horror film, but I also want it to push the envelope a little bit. Harry: And which envelope are you pushing there? Joe Johnston: I want it to be intense and I want to find out where that line is, where the violence and the blood has sort of gone too far and I want to kind of pull it back. It’s sort of tough to know until you screen it for an audience. You get so wrapped up in it at the end of the day and I don’t really look at what we are shooting two weeks or a month from now, I look at what we are shooting today, like this morning and then I start to think about what we are shooting in the afternoon. Although I have a vision of how it’s all coming together, but it always changes. This one, more so than most, it sort of evolves and becomes something beyond what I envisioned. It’s interesting. Harry: How so? What sort of changes do you feel it has taken? Joe Johnston: It’s gotten… The subplots that were in the script that I read were sort of buried and they have been coming to the surface and I feel like now there are four very distinct character arches that are all intertwined and I guess the draft that I read before… David had done a pass on it, but he continued to work on it for months. It was about Lawrence Talbot and it’s still about Lawrence Talbot, but it’s about how all of these other characters interact with him and how their relationships get interwoven. That wasn’t that apparent in the original draft. I’m just trying to make it classic in a way. I’m just trying to make it a movie I would want to see. Harry: In terms of the effects on this film, you got two sort of camps that want to pull more towards the physical effects and the digital, where are you on that? Joe Johnston: It’s not like… There’s never an easy answer for this. There are effects that should be practical and there are effects that should be digital and to me it’s after you have analyzed what the effect is, you usually know… Those kinds of camps want to do it all, like “We can do that” and digital guys are saying “We can do everything. It can all be digital.” It’s the same with the practical guys, “It’s the way they did it in the old days,” but it’s usually obvious to me, having come more or less from that world, long before there was digital. It’s very obvious to me which way we should go and I tend to go toward the digital, because I know it’s the future and in ten or fifteen years it’s probably all going to be digital. It has come so far since JURASSIC PARK. That was the… Harry: It’s come a long way. Joe Johnston: That was the moment where everything sort of changed. Harry: With JURASSIC PARK, the reason that the first one still holds up so well is because of the exact right mixture of the physical as well as the digital and there are some times when the audience isn’t quite sure when they are looking at a Stan [Winston] thing and when they are looking at a Dennis [Muren] thing, which is fun. Joe Johnston: It is and that happened right at that horizon. I’m sure you know, Phil Tippet was preparing all of the puppets to the… Harry: Yeah, the go-motion stuff. Joe Johnston: I’m sure that would have been amazing in itself. Harry: It would have been the last great stop motion/live action film. Instead, we had the first great CG Live Action film. Joe Johnston: That’s very true. Harry: Speaking of JURASSIC PARK, are you thinking of heading into that fourth one after this? Joe Johnston: Well, there is a great story for the fourth one that I would be interested in getting involved with and it’s nothing like the first three. It sort of takes the franchise off in a completely different direction, which is the only way I would want to get involved. Harry: Another movie about a group of people struggling to survive a dinosaur attack is… Joe Johnston: We’ve done that and it’s been done three times and I figure it’s… Harry: Stay away from that island. Don’t go there! Joe Johnston: Why would anybody go back to that island? It was hard enough to figure out the second and third reason for them to go, but it would take it off in a whole other trilogy basically, but when it gets to that level it’s sort of about studios and Steven’s thing and who knows. I think we are at that point where we are due for another one if we are going to do it. They had what four years between them? 1992… 1996 or 1997, and then 2001, so we are past due. I don’t know, but we will see. Harry: I loved what you did with HILDAGO in terms of creating… frankly doing something different with a western and sort of playing with that in taking it to a different world. What are you doing with Victorian England here that you feel we haven’t seen before? Joe Johnston: I don’t think we have seen a classic horror film done in Victorian England, at least not that I have seen. The previous director who I replaced, Mark Romanek, I haven’t met him and haven’t spoken to him, but just looking at what he’s prepped, I feel like we are sort of on the same page in that visually I want it to look very accurate and very much of the period. I don’t want to throw anything in that one of the artists are going to say “Hey, that’s out of time with the film!” I feel like once you believe that you are in Victorian England, then if you take this amazing element of the wolfman and put him into that world that’s very solid and you believe in, then it’s going to make the suspension of disbelief for THE WOLFMAN that much more powerful. That’s my theory. Harry: What were the challenges that you had to wrangle in stepping in for Mark on this with so little time to shoot? That’s a hard thing for anybody to do. Joe Johnston: It is and I have never done that really. I did replace a director on my first film, HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS, but it was… Harry: Who was directing that originally? Joe Johnston: That was Stuart Gordon originally. Harry: That’s right. Wow. Joe Johnston: When he left the show, they added another eight weeks to preproduction, so I had plenty of time to do what I wanted to do, but with this I came in and had to look at what had been prepped and decide what I could keep and what I could get rid of and how I could say “After reading the script, here’s what I think the movie is… How can I adapt what has been prepared?” Harry: Quickly and under a strike… Joe Johnston: Exactly. In a way, it was very liberating to take that on, because it’s like I’m being dropped in the middle of something that’s already making progress and rolling along, “How can I stear this thing and how can I control it?” “How can I turn it into something that’s not Mark Romanek’s film and it’s not Universal’s film and it’s not the producer’s movie and it’s entirely my film?” That has been the challenge. It was much more of a challenge in the first three or four weeks and now that I’m looking back at however many weeks it has been, 14 weeks or whatever, I feel like I’ve been able to do that. I feel pretty good about it. Harry: Cool. I’m rooting for you on this thing. Joe Johnston: Thanks. I’m rooting for me too! [Laughs] Harry: It’s weird, because I have been friendly with Mark for years and knew this thing, but at the same time when they were looking at directors to step in, almost all of them I knew and had communicated with at one point in my life, if not more, and when you got announced as the director, I was like “My God, I don’t know what this movie is.” Joe Johnston: I think that’s a good thing in a way. Harry: I do too and I became excited, because that inherently the movie that I had heard about, read scripts from, knew inside and out, was not necessarily a Joe Johnston film, but at the same time it absolutely… not only what you would do to this film, but what this film would end up doing to you, because of the difference in material and type of story that it was. I am very excited to see what that combination does. Joe Johnston: That’s an interesting way to put it. I’ve always wanted to make, whatever the rating… I don’t think you can say “I always wanted to make an R film,” but I’ve always wanted to make a very intense horror film, but I would only do it if I got to put it within these kinds of parameters, where it’s much more than that. If you don’t care about these characters and you don’t get to know them and how they relate to each other, then it just becomes a gorefest and who cares? Harry: That’s one of the things when I was talking to Benicio, he was desperate to get as much variation into the wolfman performance as possible, because he feels that the more we make him animal versus monster, the more the audience can kind of root for him in a way, which of course pays off to what’s happening here at the end. I think in terms of is this is a film that begins a franchise of horror, as opposed to a one off, which I know certain powers that be would probably want it to be a franchise versus a one off. Joe Johnston: I could imagine. Harry: Adding that variation to the performance would only serve to extend people’s desire to see more of that character. Joe Johnston: Sure. It’s interesting you know, in something like this you never know really. I have my vision of who the wolfman is and I’m sure Benicio has his and the studio has theirs. Harry: It’s about wrangling that. Joe Johnston: And there is some crossover in there somewhere, but the one thing Benicio and I agree on very much is that he does not start slashing and killing at random, he only attacks and kills someone who has attacked him. That’s something from the very beginning that... He said it’s crucial for the character, because in a way it’s two characters. On one side we have the wolfman who is this animal, this uncontrollable beast, and it’s Lawrence Talbot on the other and in a way they are at war with each other. Lawrence is his own victim, which is what makes it interesting to me. He’s a very conflicted character. He hate’s what he had done when he wakes up and realizes what he had done, he’s devastated and I think that’s why you have sympathy for Lawrence and in the end, because of what he is doing, you can have sympathy for the wolfman, too. It really is a fine line and like I say, you don’t really know until you put it in front of an audience and start analyzing the feedback and not that you ever want the audience to dictate what the movie is, but you can certainly let them clarify the film. Harry: Yeah and see if what you think is working is in fact working. Joe Johnston: Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes what you think is a very intense and scary sequence is not at all and something else you thought “This sort of works…” It’s because you get so attached to it. You really can’t step back. It helps when it’s all over and done to take a couple of weeks and get away from it and not think about it for a while, but you have been living with it for so long. Harry: One of the things my readers are desperate to know is when we are going to get an astonishing BluRay version of THE ROCKETEER and I thought about the question before I came and it’s so sad that Dave Stevens is now gone, because that’s a film that I just dearly love. Joe Johnston: I do too. Something happened on that film where like all of those big movies, it sort of took on a life of it’s own and got a little bit out of control and there were two sequences in there that were sort of, in a way, the heart of the story and we got to a point where the studio said “You cant…” Disney always does draw a pretty firm line at this stuff, they said “We are not going to pay for this.” Harry: It feels that way, because the best action sequence of the film is essentially that first major flight sequence and then after that it seems like everything got a little cut back a bit. Joe Johnston: It did and there was a whole sequence over Hollywood Boulevard where he lands at Grauman’s Chinese Theater and had more stuff to do with the gangsters chasing him and stuff like that. I know why they did it. They want to get their investment back, but sometimes they don’t realize that “Okay guys, spend another six million and you are going to get back a lot more than that.” That’s a hard sell. Harry: That’s a hard sell, but at the same time, if you build a movie that doesn’t escalate and you cut back those escalations, it becomes something that is as much… “Yeah, you had an amazing score there…” Joe Johnston: That’s the best thing that Horner has done in years. Harry: I think that might very well be the best thing that Horner has done. I could listen to that endlessly. Joe Johnston: Me too, but it’s hard for me to listen to, because of the ordeal that we went through to get it, but it’s beautiful. Harry: Speaking of, who is doing the music for this? Joe Johnston: We haven’t locked anyone in, but I know that Danny Elfman wants to do it. I think he’d be great. If Danny Elfman does do it, I’m going to basically just let him run loose. I’m going to run the movie for him without music and without the temp track and say, “Do what you have never done before and see what comes out of it.” I think he’s fantastic. I can still listen to his score for BEETLE JUICE. Harry: The BEETLE JUICE score is amazing. His original BATMAN score… like a god wrote that thing. EDWARD SCISSORHAND’s music adds a lot of soul to the thing. Joe Johnston: We have actually used some of his scores in our temp track, because every time we get a scene cut, we put music with it and it’s amazing to see what happens. It gets transformed, but knowing that it’s likely that we might be using him, I’m trying to move towards that. It’s interesting, because his stuff is so specific to each film, it’s not like there’s a… It’s almost like there’s not a Danny Elfman style. There used to be with the Danny Elfman and Tim Burton style and I think he’s moved away from that. He’s gotten much more versatile and he’s really pushing the envelope in many ways. Harry: For a while he was sort of in a rut of [imitation of a beat] that sort of staccato buzz thing that he was doing, but I hear the score that he’s doing on HELLBOY 2 is amazing. Joe Johnston: I went and visited them at Abbey Road. I was only there for half an hour when they were scoring that, but it was just amazing. When I left, I was like “Just do the same thing for WOLFMAN.” Harry: I have to say, I was totally not expecting the gore stuff when I came. Joe Johnston: Just remember you are seeing it on a table. Harry: I know and I love gore stuff. I’m a kid, so I love that stuff. Joe Johnston: There’s a way to photograph that stuff and keep it frightening, but still keep it as part of this world. Harry: I’ll tell you what’s weird to me, the original WOLFMAN, which is it’s own film and this is not that movie, is essentially a fairytale. It’s told like a fairytale. It’s very brief with no subplots or character arches really. It’s a very small movie, but the heart of that story is definitely still here, which is the curse and the man on the train, the foreboding sense of stuff, but to add a fairly go for the throat visceral feel to that is something I haven’t really seen before and I’m very curious to see how, once you get into the editing room, how much is too much and how much is right… Joe Johnston: That’s always the battle and there are all kinds of variations on an R rating. There’s this huge across the board… I think much more so than with any of the other ratings. PG 13 is pretty well defined and south of PG 13 is pretty well defined. PG and G are virtually the same in a way. Harry: In the R rated realm, you have the R rated films that are about torment and torture and that’s where they are pushing the NC 17 ratio, then you have the R rated films that you just feel would give kids nightmare. What sort of R rated film are you thinking here? Joe Johnston: It’s got a little bit of… It does have blood and gore and I haven’t determined where that line is yet, but it’s also got… Harry: Is there a sexual nature to this film at all? Joe Johnston: There is, but it’s more unspoken between the characters. It’s there and you know it’s there and there’s some skin, but its not really about that. Harry: But there’s not Francis Ford Coppola werewolf doing the girl in the mausoleums. Joe Johnston: No, not yet. Harry: Not yet, but you will get there!? Joe Johnston: That’s in the rewrites I guess. Harry: But that’s the scene that Benicio and Emily desperately want to shoot. [Laughs] Joe Johnston: It’s more about… It gets back to what you define as frightening. I think that images and ideas that are out of context are frightening, you know? It gets into that whole psychological thing of basically its this guy’s history that sort of drives him. [A production person walks up and informs him that he’s needed for a rehearsal.] Joe Johnston: Harry, are you around tomorrow? Harry: I’m here tonight, then I’m off tomorrow. Joe Johnston: Okay, well I’ll see you before you go. Harry: Okay, cool.
Readers Talkback
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Amazing score. Need to track it down again.
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good stuff, harold. looking forward to wolfman. hopefully the transition from mark to joe went smoothly.
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I thought it was one of Elfman's weakest scores ever.
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...the whole thing, based on the effects, and the troubled production. I definitely am also rooting for it though.
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Hated Jurrasic Park 3. I really hope if they go for a fourth, he's right and they go in a whole new direction. That last reason to return to the island was so contrived it was painful. Some of the action scenes were lotsa fun (TRex fight, pteradactyl cage, boat attack), but the reason for going back was lazy. Looking forward to Wolfman.
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One, The Hellboy II score is amazing. Two, Elfman did actually write and record a whole score for this movie over the summer. Because the film was pushed back _yet again_ and Elfman wasn't available to come in and do revisions, they decided not to use his score. Also, apparently he wrote big, old-fashioned music (the kind that he's great at), and the decision now is to go with something more contemporary. It's a real shame. Elfman's contribution was seriously the only thing I was looking forward to about this movie.
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Why ask about JP 4 when Captain America is supposedly next. There's an extreme lack of info on this movie.
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I like almost all of his films, the Rocketeer esp. I hope this hits for him too.
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http://www.vimeo.com/6869175
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I would love to watch that proposed Jurassic Park movie with the Raptor Spec Ops team.
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It's right at the top. My bad, thanks JuanSanchez.
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can be a bear to read it all. I know.
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Nov. 6, 2009, 10:09 p.m. CST
Fucking hell, Elfman's score was what I was most looking forward
by Nasty In The Pasty
...aside from Rick Baker's makeup effects, and now it looks like BOTH are getting tossed out.<BR><BR>Piss shit FUCK!!!
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FIX THE SITE, HARRY!!!
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I so love that movie. It's one of the few properties I would love to see revisited with modern special effects ... but only with Joe.
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Then I'm confident that Captain America will be a solid film.
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He's really done some great work, going back to when he was in the special effects department for ILM and all that. His films are pretty good too. Fucking love The Rocketeer, and it's a damn shame it didn't launch a franchise like it should have. Really looking forward to the Wolfman.
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What happened to this weeks DVD picks & peeks? You wrote in another article that you were working on it...and here it is, Friday, and still no article. The weekly DVD picks is one of my favorite parts of this site. Get to learn about so many obscure films from asian pseudo-porn to 1970s minority exploitation fliks, to some of the most fucked-up-peverted shit I've never heard of (but desperately want to see after reading about it). All that, and snide comments about GI Joe. Where's the article this week, Harry?
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...dvd column!
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I know he was excited to be CREATING the themes for this movie, rather than paying homage to any themes from the original Wolfman... cos lets face it... nobody remembers the music to that particular classic. <p> Please let Elfman do this thing.
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but i`m looking forward to this... i hope johnston delivers...
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No questions about his 1986 World Snooker victory? Poor.
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What a pile of shit. Who okayed it? Rehash the first 2 brilliant films, but repopulate with irritating fucks. 2 ended with such potential scope for the series, then... follow it up with Tea Leoni shouting for 2 hours. Woo, Wolfman!
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Where's the Carl Ballantine Talkback!? Haven't you learned your lesson by never posting an Ed McMahon Talkback! Carl Ballantine was funny as hell and a pioneer in the art of Comedy/Magic! R.I.P. Old Friend!
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movie doesn't come out until 3-4 months. And Danny Elfman jumped the shark around the late 90's, he went from rehashing his late 80's early 90's material to now becoming pretty bland. I didn't even know it was him, nor really cared for, the score for MILK. He should get some earplugs and get Oingo Boingo back on the road.
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I'm just busting balls, looking forward to this movie!
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That's why Harry's been posting a lot of Wolf Man news, because I think his embargo on it has passed. He didn't ask any "CAPTAIN AMERICAN" questions because at the time Harry was over there doing all this stuff, Johnston still hadn't closed the deal.
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Buy the Rocketeer DVD off of eBay or something, but for Gods sake watch it. It is one of the best films of the nineties.....one of the best films, period. An utterly joyous movie to watch, no matter the troubles Johnston went through with the studio the end result was just perfect.....and it also has one of the most beautiful movie scores ever made. Just simply a wonderful, wonderful piece of cinema.
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Nov. 7, 2009, 10:54 a.m. CST
Plus, Rocketeer had Jennifer Connelly at her pre-anorexia peak
by Nasty In The Pasty
God DAMN, did I fall in love with her in that movie...
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Harry, if you DONT mention North by Northwest you are offically DEAD to me you bitch....its the FIRST US Hitch release and the 50th anniversary release. Get it together gingerman!
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Was the ending. A whole Navy battle group appears from god knows where because he SAT Phone'd a friend of his? REALLY??!!!? What a shart ending. Total BS. Poor Sam Neill.
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Harry, I know Butt-Numb-A-Thon has you busy, but I want to buy some shit and I need your opinion. Throw it down, big man.
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His atrocious score for Terminator Salvation has convinced me he doesn't know what he's doing anymore.
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I wish this borderline-illiterate cripple all the best.
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Nov. 7, 2009, 2:50 p.m. CST
HArry plugging a movie because he was allowed onto the fucking s
by standundermyumbrella
How typical!
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Nov. 7, 2009, 3:03 p.m. CST
Lone Fox, did you really call The Lost World Brilliant?
by IHaveSeenEveryEpisodeOfPrisonBreak
I hate that movie. Sure JP3 is not a pimple on the ass of the first JP, but it is FAR SUPERIOR to Lost World: JP2.
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BEEP BOOP BEEP BOOP BEEP BOOP BOOOP BEEP Now, just imagine dancing skeletons.
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I'll have to give my vote for JP:Lost World being better than JP3. I agree that it was less than "brilliant", but I really didn't care for JP3 as a film (again, as a loosly tied together series of dinosaur action sequences, it was okay. As a sensible film...blech). Anyway, just an opinion.
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Goldblum. T Rex running loose in San Francisco. Renegade dinosaur hunters on safari. The British hunter, forget his name, badass. Limited use of the dull kids from JP1. Limited/no use of Dern and Neil, the least appealing characters in JP1. Load of great dino sequences. The bad? Goldblum's daughter. Spielberg loves to shoehorn in family disfunction. JP1 had the wow factor, but JP2 was a better made film, a la Aliens. Says me anyway. I cannot stand watching 3, such a pointless waste of talent.
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Lost World was a major disappointment for me. I haven't even bothered to watch it again since the first time I saw it. JP3 was entertaining as hell. Especially the whole cell phone bit. JP3 doesn't come remotely close to JP1 though.
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Seriously, the site needs an overhaul. I'm not saying you need to overly commercialize or go extra flashy or anything like that, but really, it's 2009, you shouldn't be posting transcription of an interview that you have a digital audio file of. You should be posting the audio. I'm not just speaking as a lazy guy here. I mean, think about the richness and subtleties of your conversation that we're missing out on by not being able to hear your voices. You have the resources to make this site much more user friendly, and I think it's high time you gave it some attention. I'll be honest, I haven't been frequenting AICN all that often for about the past year or so, and that's one of the reasons (although, certainly not the only one).
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There's an example of sometimes awkward looking special effects ADDING to the effect. That scene where he catches the wing of the plane going out of control was awesome BECAUSE it looked unreal. That's my main issue with modern digital effects, they just look too smooth and processed, and it doesn't make it any more 'real' imo. Can anyone tell me if most of Rocketeer's effects were digital or did it use some sort of projection etc? Also, Rocketeer's teaser poster out-noirs this Wolfman one by a large ratio.
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T rex was running around San Diego in "The Lost World" if I'm not mistaken. Although I'm with ya on it being much better than the drivel that was JP3.
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Nov. 7, 2009, 8:55 p.m. CST
Harry, you should ask J.J why won't he announce that Will Smith
by Ganymede3001
Will be Captain America? With Marvels profits plummeting by the day - I'll gaurantee you that the suits over at Disney/Marvel are salivating at the astronomical box-office earnings that Will Smith will generate. And I'm 110% positive that BIG EGO Will wants the role. If he wants it, he'll get it. That's why they're waiting on announcing it. They're going to wait to the last possible moment. Because they know the comic book fans will be furious, but the general public will be ecstatic.
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Lol, You're complaining that CG effects look too real? Get over yourself.
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You're talking to a man so fat he needs a wheelchair. He's not crippled; he's just so fat he can't stand up. He can't control himself enough to lose enough weight to get out of a chair. He paid doctors to tie a knot in his stomach because he can't control his eating, despite the fact that it's crippled him. Harry is insane. He doesn't take advice. His site needs an overhaul. Are you fucking kidding?
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Ha I knew it had a San in it. And Ganymede... you mean the cell phone that a dinosaur eats and is heard throughout the film ringing as it travels through it's digestive system? Really? Oy.
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Why would a person with such a low opinion of a website and its owner take the time to...oh never mind. What's the use?
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That's pretty funny. Seeing as Elfman shamelessly used one of the main cues from the 1941 "Wolfman" for his Batman theme. Unremarkable my ass!
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That trailer hanging off cliff sequence (with Toby from West Wing!) is pure genius. I'd love to see McG, Abrams or Bay tackle that. Textbook.
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Pure bliss. And, as others have said, one of the greatest movie scores of all time.
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JP3 was shit, but I blame the script, not him, I'd be fine with him coming back for JP4 (if they ever make it) and I rented The Rocketeer from Netflix a few months ago (first time I saw it in years), unfortunately the picture quality was not so good (I don't know if it was just the copy I rented or not), but I still enjoyed it regardless, I'd flip for a nice blu ray of it
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FUUUUUCK!!!! what is with Hollywood and pushing back movie lately? first Shutter Island, now this, FUCKING STOP IT!
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Nov. 8, 2009, 8:33 a.m. CST
Ganymede3001: "but the general public will be ecstatic"
by Starship Captain
You've got to be kidding! I don't think the general public wants to see Will Smith as Captain America EITHER. Even if the average person doesn't know that Steve Rogers is Cap (ala knowing that Clark Kent is Superman), the average person DOES KNOW that Cap is white. Sorry, this is not about racism, that's just the flat out truth. All I'm saying is IF you cast Will Smith as Cap the average person would scream "stunt casting!" and then say "Aw, hell no!" -- and the movie would be dead on arrival.
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http://tinyurl.com/y9x773p
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Never saw Del Toro as Marv, but he's good, he can do it I guess. I imagine Stan Lee will play himself in a cameo. Are they going to use that creepy CGI process they used on Patrick Stewart in Wolverine to make him look younger?
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It's going to be a deeply mediocre film and we all know it. Accept it, Harry.
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No one wants to see: "Dinosaurs... with (airquotes) LASERS (airquotes)... on their heads!" Seriously.
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"I'm livin' in da World War days gettin' jiggy wit' my Cap 'Mairka ways!" Gee thanks, Disney!
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For the idiotic reason that T Rex is my favorite dino and in JP3 the T Rex went out like a bitch against that stupid fuckin' crocosaur thing with the dumbass fin on its back. Plus, the movie sucked and came off like a TV movie on SiFfy, but with slightly better FX.
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I guess its just me. But I don't agree with the assessment with Jurassic Park. I can certainly tell when I'm looking at an animatronic dinosaur and a digital one. Their differences are incredibly clear, and easy to tell apart. Though Stan did a fantastic job, both FX are so different, a blind person could tell them apart.
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Nov. 8, 2009, 2:08 p.m. CST
People who think Elfman only does wacky circus music...
by Nasty In The Pasty
...are fucking morons. Name ONE movie in the last DECADE Elfman has scored that sounds anything like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure or Bettlejuice. His Wolfman score would have been EPIC, and now we're stuck with the "genius" who scored two Underworld movies, Turistas and Vacancy. Bleargh....
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...with a digital horse and probably digital Arabs too, because "that's the way it's going"?
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No dude, that was Jennifer Connelly at her pre-breast reduction surgery peak!
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I really, desperately want this to tank. There are a lot of different reasons. There are SO many reasons. It's remake, and I want the studio to take a monster bath on a big-budget remake to hopefully steer them, even a little, away from the remake party. I despise the "paint by committee" casting on the lead, getting Benicio Del Toro primarily to appeal to the "growing Latino audience" when he's got absolutely NO onscreen charisma whatsoever and can't manage an English accent to save his life (his accent changes three times in the trailer alone - the movie is going to be hilariously awful in this regard - "EY wheel KEEL AWWWWL'AYOUUUU!"). He wasn't cast for doing the best job - he was cast to appeal to a demographic. That kind of casting should not be rewarded, no matter what, so I want it to fail for that. I want it to fail because I think it'll illustrate concretely the absolute disinterest the general public has in genre and will get the studios to stop making genre movies (the best thing for us genre fans right now would be Hollywood moving away from assfucking us and practically stealing our money making in-name-only genre pictures for a looooooong time). I want it to fail even for the trailer alone, which is one of those "tell the whole plot and show every scene" movies where you know Anthony Hopkins is the other werewolf and there'll be a werewolf-vs-werewolf fight at the end), so I want Hollywood to stop doing that. I want this to fail because it represents absolutely everything wrong with Hollywood in terms of the tinkering that's been done with it. I want it to fail for taking a giant dog-squat SHIT on the notion of practical effects, met with disadain by Hollywood executives who all deserve a kick in the nuts. So, yeah, I want this to make $11m on its opening weekend and disappear with a 80-percent plunge. After the massive failure of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE ($65m on a budget of $100-150m) and the upcoming massive failure of AVATAR (there's just no interest, anywhere, outside of the geekgasm crowd, and even they're like "Ehhh" for the most part) ... this should be the one that will push Hollywood over the edge and make them say "Ok, um, maybe we need to not do this kind of movie any more for a while." Thank fucking god. I hate you, Hollywood.
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He'll be playing Isaiah Bradley. So it's categorically incorrect to insinuate that only a White Man can play Captain America - when the lore specifies that a Black Captain America existed at one point in time. Here's the facts. A Captain America movie with Will Smith will out-gross a Captain America movie without him. And the suits know it. The general public would go gaga over Will Smith especially once they find out that there was an actual Black Captain America.
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I'm quite certain I described modern CG as 'too smooth and processed', not 'too real'. I find the ED-209 stop-motion effects in Robocop a lot scarier than digital because it makes the machine look big and ungainly...you know, the way it actually WOULD look. If you're happy with the endless dishing out of Big Fake Effects, that's fine, but the best CGI in the world doesn't make a tidal wave look any more real to me.
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First you tell me you don't want genre pics to fail, now you post that you do. Your last post is a bit odd to say the least. I know where you're coming from on all your points - but your reaction to them is simply to say you want to shoot yourself in the foot. I hate the remake culture, I hate the pretty teen in everything culture, I hate the move to CGI from practical effects simply as a cost exercise rather than a choice of what would work better. I hate the dumbing down. But you know what, that's ways been the case and it's no worse now than it was 30 years ago. There are still intelligent pics being made. There are still great actors entertaining. And once in a while, a good horror flick comes along. This movie is hardly able to be lumped in with the I Know What this Incredibly Foxy Teen Did Last Summer bollocks - I wish it had practical effects too but regardless it looks decent. Del Toro is a great actor so I can't really give a shit if his accent isn't perfect, and I'm a Brit. It doesn't bother me. I want to be entertained, to enjoy a monster movie - and Johnston hasn't let me down before; far from it, he's given me one o the most joyous movie experience of my life. Wanting it to fail for those reasons you mention, I know where you're coming from but it's cutting your nose off to spite your face.
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I bet you couldn't tell what's model work and what is CG these days. Did you know almost every big movie that has some sort of CG also has model work? They have to build the model first to scan it into the computer. It's not lazy work by any means.
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One of my favourite movies from my childhood and I was always dissapointed they never made a sequel. Sure it wouldn't have been as good but who knows, it might have been fun nonetheless. Anyway, since we're talking about it check out this video I found... <p> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdrVdpFLzvQ
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Of course the people who work on these effects aren't lazy. I have no doubt an incredible amount of time and effort went into something like Transformers. What I'm saying is, it just doesn't work on me any more. I recall the day I first saw TV trailers for ID4 and thought 'anything's possible...movies are only going to get better from here'. Almost 15 years later, and I couldn't be more bored. Old special effects, because of their somewhat arcane nature, still work on me because I have not much idea how they were done, whereas most punk teenagers these days can look at a movie and say 'wow, nice computer graphics' - there's just no mystery any more, at least in the final product. I dunno, maybe it's the way certain directors put too much of the spotlight on CGI...see that awful transformation scene in the New Moon trailer as an example (don't ask what I was doing watching it in the first place), or the creatures from the early Harry Potters, or the vampire-things in I Am Legend. For every creative movie that uses digital effectively, there's three others that deaden my pulse.
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I know it's cutting my nose to spite my face, but that's the frame I'm in when it comes to genre movies. At this point with the way the movie industry in the US is going, if someone offered me a button I could press that would shut down all funding for all genre projects in the United States, of any stripe, I would happily do it. I don't generally want genre pictures to fail; there's no contradiction. Ususally, if I get the feeling the people involved are genuine, I wish them only the best. That's why I was totally supoortive of the FRIDAY THE 13TH remake - like them or not, the people involved did seem to really love the Jason character and want to do a good movie, and I thought they succeeded (I'm a die-hard Ft13th fan). However, this movie feels like a corporate rush job that got caught in the cookie jar resulting in reshoots and reshoots and reshoots. Joe's a cool director, and this failure isn't wished upon him. Rather, I've reached a point where I think the best thing that could happen is to give everything a little push in terms of the evolution of art and a new creative Rennaisance.<p><p>I'm also a big believer in people getting what they ask for - forcing them to get the results of what they demand. For instance, I think that all religious people of any stripe should be condemned any time you catch them listening to music of ANY kind other than hymns from their various faiths. "Oh, no you don't, Mr. Christian - your church declared rock'n'roll to be the music of the devil - NOT FUCKING ALLOWED!" No dancing, no singing, no chocolate, no mixed fibers, etc. Make Neo-Nazis refrain from using any product or invention ever created by anyone but Aryans (including medical care developments). And I actually think that genre fans - with their whining, screaming, complaining, drooling idiocy - deserve to have no more good movies made, because they support this kind of shit. And they tolerate executives like Peters control the industry. Do you know what a total walkout boycott of WATCHMEN could've done? It would've crushed some balls, that's for sure. A complete empty-theater scenario, picket lines, etc. STOP SUPPORTING FOX. STOP SUPPORTING JOHN PETERS.
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For me, I always loved the "fall behind a table" thing, where the monster would suddenly pop up after the guy who changed into the monster fell.
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I'll actually tell you when it all reached its nadir, some time ago but not too long a time. I got the chance to be involved in a chat with the "creative" (*a-hem*) folks behind FLASH GORDON, the recent Sci-Fi Channel debacle version.<p><p>The moment I heard about the chat, I knew EXACTLY the question I was going to ask, and it was WELL before the show had been cast, the details worked out or any of the concepts actually released, hence the initial Q&A being very general, about what sort of feel/theme/ideas they were going for in the show.<p><p>So what was my question? Simple - I asked, not an exact quote but basically this: "So, on the subject of Ming the Merciless. Please tell me you're going to make him a legitimate, powerful Asian villain, as he has been portrayed since the character first appeared ... or are you going to do what I expect and simply make him a blond blue-eyed American businessman with a British accent, as I SUSPECT you will do?" There was a weird pause, and my question got the response, again not an exact quote: "We haven't done casting yet, of course, but ... we're going to make sure we cast Ming ... in a way that's true to our vision yadda blah blah." Needless to say, when the show premiered, what do you fucking know but Ming is a blond blue-eyed American businessman character with a British accent. What a shock. And it was just like - ok, this is stupid. These fucking producers are so fucking out-of-touch and so politically-correct and so money-hungry and so devoid of talent, there's just nothing there creatively left. Once you ruin the whole of the creativity of a medium, the art form is dead. And I'm of the opinion that film in America is dead.
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I fucking -despised- every waking minute of THE ROCKETEER because it was a "No Weapons of Any Kind" movie. I saw the "money shot" of the trailer - Rocketeer on the top of Griffith Observatory holding a gun - as indicative that, like the old serials (which are rated 'g' when they're re-rated for DVD, btw, for the most part) the main character would be shooting Communists and terrorists and gangsters with, oh, you know, the PISTOL THAT'S ALWAYS IN THE ROCKETEER'S HAND WHENEVER DAVE STEVENS DREW HIM! But, it turned out that - just like the Apache Helicopters fighting Dragons on the poster for REIGN OF FIRE which never happens in the movie itself except for a single-second flash - the Rocketeer wouldn't shoot even a single person's GUN out of their hand. In fact, after he -gets- the gun so they can do the shot in the trailer, he promptly loses it a second later before he can even shoot anybody with it. He lands on the blimp and it slides off the side, instantly. Not one shot of THE ROCKETEER, a pulpy gun-toting hero, with him shooting a gun. Oh. My. Fucking. God. Dave Stevens even got annoyed with me at a convention once when we were chatting (nobody was at his table) and he was all friendly until I said that I worried that they'd sort of de-ball his creation and ruin the pulpy atmosphere. That got a hard stare and a 'get out of here' kind of tone of "Well, maybe you should be moving along now." I think I hit a nerve. The point is that I love all these old 1940s characters and so I see a lot of the entertainment that was out in a "less sophisticated" time. One recent example is an episode of THE SHADOW -from the 30S/40S- which is called "The Society of the Living Dead." This show, which ran on THE MAJOR AIRWAVES WITH A MAJOR CORPORATE SPONSOR, featured a story about anti-American groups stealing the identities of recently-deceased people to cross the border into the US to commit acts of sabotage. And that was the 30s/40s. Can you imagine if I went to a major studio and said "I want to do a movie about a super hero who goes after terrorists and Anti-American interests stealing identities and crossing the border to do damage to the US?" I'd be told I was crazy, that such a movie would be totally insensitive in our PC age.
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I don't agree with everything you're saying, but I do agree with some of it. I think what you pointed out about Flash Gordon is dead on. So fucking typical of the talentless, spineless, dickless, hopeless, piece of monkey shit (thanks C. Griswald) producers and executives. Hollywood is a pretty cynical/scared shitless town, I think, mainly because of middle management development ass-wipes and orders that come down from on high (i.e. - not the heads of the studios as much as the heads of the studios worrying about the real bosses - the heads of the conglomerates). <p>I'm not sure if you're saying there's no creativity left in genre films or in film itself, but if it's the latter, that's where I disagree. I've seen a lot of films these past few years that fit my taste for movies that may stand the test of time: The Wrestler, Two Lovers, There Will Be Blood, No Country, Jesse James, and Moon to name just a few. <p>The bigger problem is most likely that the directors who could have carte blanche on genre films either have lost their balls (Spielberg) or they just aren't doing them. I'd like to see P.T. Anderson do a genre film, or David Fincher finally do Rama. I guess there's just too many projects generated by the execs that are then handed to total hacks because genre films still make money and they want a constant stream of genre remakes, sequels, reimaginings, 80's cartoon adaptations and whatever other bullshit.<p>I also want to clarify that Spielberg comment in relation to what you said about the PC age - a perfect example is how dark and sick Temple of Doom was. I saw it in the theater when I was 7 and guess what? I didn't grow up to be a murderous, heart-tearing out, member of a thuggee cult. But that's what Spielberg in his unending wisdom would have you believe might happen because they just went too far and made it "too dark." I at least have to give Lucas and Ford credit for saying how much they still like that one, but it does show the kind of PC back-pedaling bullshit you're talking about. Another example is Harold Ramis on the National Lampoon's Vacation commentary talking about how uncomfortable the 'racial' humor in the scene where the Griswalds drive through the ghetto makes him. Why, because it's the fucking TRUTH??? Because a lilly white family like them SHOULD be fucking scared driving through a rough neighborhood and because the truth is that such places are inhabited by a disproportionately large number of black and hispanic people? If anything, it proves how fucked up it is... would it be better to ignore it? What's wrong with finding humor in truth? Trading Places and Coming to America have the same kind of humor, was it not ok when they did it? Just hate that kind of disingenuous bullshit.
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Ditto on the werewolf stuff in the Twilight trailer. FUCKING HORRID... I mean, it looks so bad as to be almost a joke. Isn't that a big budget film? The wolf stuff is worse than something you'd see on the Sci-fi channel. A lot of this CG has movies moving BACKWARDS, I swear. I'd rather, ANY DAY, to see something physical and real, like the stuff in Neverending Story, than bad CG. Even when that stuff becomes outdated, it retains a certain charm or is still interesting to look at.
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Harry: That’s one of the things when I was talking to Benicio, he was desperate to get as much variation into the wolfman performance as possible, because he feels that the more we make him animal versus monster, the more the audience can kind of root for him in a way, which of course pays off to what’s happening here at the end. I think in terms of is this is a film that begins a franchise of horror, as opposed to a one off, which I know certain powers that be would probably want it to be a franchise versus a one off. -Harry Knowles Wouldn't want that attributed to myself. Especially if I was a successful Internet Dude.
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Nov. 9, 2009, 4:53 a.m. CST
Dalto here...good to see all this love for ME!!!!
by NomoredirtyjokespleaseweareYanks
Just remeber, I do my own stunts....
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Nov. 9, 2009, 4:55 a.m. CST
Damn this Qwerty keyboard and my need to type onehanded
by NomoredirtyjokespleaseweareYanks
but I need my other hand for my flamethrower-lighter and C4 cigarettes.....
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Robert Zemeckis should remake the Rocketeer ala motion capture with I, Dalton playing Cliff Secord, Jenny Hot-tits, and that old Alda fella...and my Nazi-Actor-DateRapist of course.
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I didn't know that Harold Ramis felt uncomfortable about that scene in "National Lampoon's Vacation"—it's unfortunate if he does because that scene works beautifully. That would be like John Landis cringing at the line 'Do you mind…if we dance…with your dates?' from "Animal House." I mean, those scenes are hilarious and are rooted in context.<br><br>Unfortunately, we're talking about power dynamics within the film industry; a commercial enterprise—I don't think it's an appeal to 'Political Correctness'— American film history proves otherwise.<br> But, honestly, how many directors have the talent for comedy that Landis does? How many can actually wade through lazy racial stereotypes and find kernels of truth that aren't obnoxiously one-sided, shallow and blissfully stupid? Landis was commenting on hypocrisy in the establishment, using an 'outsider' to contrast societal 'norms'. He wasn't exploiting that outsider status for it's own sake, he was making a point. A contrast is "Temple of Doom," which unfortunately, triggers the WORST feelings of 'darkie exoticism'— and although it's hyperbolic action scenes and harsher tone are welcome, the blatant exploitation of that movie isn't. Finally, in light of Lucas,' um, idiotic choices in the prequel trilogy, reading about him defending it comes across as disingenuous bullshit.
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Nov. 9, 2009, 5:21 a.m. CST
I Dalto have cornered the market on Nazi/Actor/DateRapist
by NomoredirtyjokespleaseweareYanks
that is all.....<p> Call me Joe Johnston for I am DALTO!!!!
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Nov. 9, 2009, 5:24 a.m. CST
Also, if you need another Rhett Butler I, Dalto am your man
by NomoredirtyjokespleaseweareYanks
I am also available for weddings and barmitzvahs.... <p> You should see me light the wedding cake with my flamethrower lighter, or destroy glasses with my c4 cigarettes...
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Take THAT Sean Connery!!!
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Nov. 9, 2009, 5:30 a.m. CST
For too long now, I, Dalton have wallowed in the shadows
by NomoredirtyjokespleaseweareYanks
Now that Cubby wants me back, I'll be taking over from that ugly, scarred, blond-haired,blue-eyed Hitler poster boy Craig. <p> If he has any problems with it I will handle him like I did Benicio delDruggo and Robert Davi. That is to mean I will put him through a cocaine mincer and then set fire to his remains with my flamethrower lighter whilst saying a dry English quip.
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if I could I would strap you down in a chair and hold your eyes open Clockwork Orange style and then I would play footage of dancing skeletons set to Danny Elfman music until you went batshit, how does that make you feel?
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Seriously, I feel like we've been discussing this movie for years. Enough already, release the damn thing.
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Smith has gone on record saying he's not interested after the WWW fiasco. Not to mention this is still a Marvel film..now that they've got the reins I don't think they'd permit such nonsense anyway.
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lol..jesus..whats next? Harry: Farts. Harry: Scratches..
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Now - what I need someone to do is to find out precisely WHEN this audio commentary with Ramis was made for VACATION, what year. And then do a search in EVERY SINGLE MOVIE THAT RAMIS HAS DONE SINCE THEN to see if there is even ONE anti-white joke or ANY humor aimed at white people EVEN ONCE in ANY of those films. Certainly there's no racial humor in ANALYZE THIS or ANALYZE THAT ... right?
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INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM is my favorite of all the INDIANA JONES movies. It's the one that plays out the most like a serial AFAIC. There are so many classic moments. The search for the vial and diamond in the ice, the tunnel chase, the moment when Indiana is going to kick ass and suddenly gets his voodoo-doll comeuppance from the Prince. Plus, being the same age as Short Round when the movie came out, I have to admit I had the WORLD'S BIGGEST (AND PROBABLY ONLY) crush on Short Round. But, yeah, the movie rocks.<p><p>And to all who say it plays off of "exoticism," are you willing to go no record and say there's nowhere in all of the entire Indian continent where people eat chilled monkey brains or eyeball / eel soup, or who worship Kali? I'll take that bet, bitches. It's there because it HAPPENS.
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You're right. Studios NEVER appeal to political correctness: In 2006, when Disney first announced they were finally bringing a black princess to the big screen with 'The Princess and the Frog,' it was cause for celebration -- long overdue, yet still worth celebrating. The honeymoon didn't last long. The first cries of foul came quickly, with critics bemoaning the lead character's announced name and occupation. She'd be a maid for a white family named ... Maddy. When her name and occupation were labeled demeaning (as AOL BlackVoices points out, the moniker bares close resemblance to the ethnic slur "Mammy"), Disney was quick to respond, renaming the heroine Tiana and recasting her as a chef. Crisis averted. Until early this year, anyway, when it was revealed that our groundbreaking African-American princess (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) would not in fact be falling in love with an African-American prince. It's unclear what ethnicity her dreamy Prince Naveen is exactly -- his first name is Indian, he's from the fictional land of Maldonia, and he's voiced by Brazilian actor Bruno Campos -- but he's certainly not black (nor white, for that matter, as reported in some camps). Outrage ensued, with the popular refrain coming in question form, "We can have a black president in office, but not a black Disney prince?" (It's an interesting contrast to Hollywood's well-documented under-representation of black actresses in major roles -- just see the many times Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Eddie Murphy have been cast opposite white or Latina love interests.) Are the criticisms warranted? Or are the reactions excessive? Depends on how you look it at. There are some reasonable questions being asked: In a film set in 1920s New Orleans, where most of the characters are black, why isn't the prince? Why make the princess clearly culturally definable, yet the prince ambiguous? After 70 years of white princes, doesn't the black community deserve a prince to call their own? (And no, we count neither Prince Akeem nor the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in this argument.) But at the same time, shouldn't we credit Disney for diversifying their portfolio and promoting interracial relationships? Won't this scenario help teach our kids about racial tolerance? Aren't we all just overreacting here? After all, this is an animated movie for kids about people who transform into frogs; the main characters even spend most of their screen time as reptiles amphibians. So should race even be an issue here? In a year that saw Hollywood's biggest moneymaker, 'Transformers 2,' draw justified ire for its inexplicable jive-talking robots, 'Princess and the Frog' has also caught some flak for some of the supporting characters -- a blues-singing lightning bug with missing teeth could easily be seen as stereotypical -- but since when have Disney sidekicks not been over the top? Just see the French (and quite possibly gay) candlestick Lumiere, the flatulent warthog Pumbaa and the scantily clad pixie Tinker Bell. So the question remains: Does Disney deserve all this controversy? Or is it all much ado about nothing? Tell us what you think.
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http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2009/09/24/princess-and-the-frog-controversy/
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To say nothing of the trailer I saw for TOY STORY 3 where Buzz Lightyear is transformed into a Spanish-speaker to further pander.
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I, for one, enjoy the PREQUELS, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why people hash on them for being "light-hearted" and "kiddie." What other series of "kiddie" movies do you know featuring so much sword-slashing, window-falling-out, pit-falling, limb-cutting, caught-on-fire-with-lava-until-limbs-burn-off-ing, Youngling-Jedi-Trainee-Murder, Jet-Lucas-the-Last-Preteen-Jedi-Gunned-Downing, Kid-Seeing-His-Dad-Beheaded-In-Front-Of-Him-So-Head-Lands-Nearby-ing ??????? Not fucking many, true-love-Force-throwing, find-the-twin-babies-to-murder-them-questing movies out there any more. Yeah. fucking DARK when I put it that way, guys, huh?
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Over on the other side of the coin, Speilberg thinks kids can't handle FBI agents carrying guns and replaced them with Walkie-Talkies. Yeah. Fuck you, SS.
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I like the TWILGHT transformations just fine, as a fan of the books. The guys aren't werewolves, btw. They're shapeshifters who magically *POOF* into wolves. It basically plays onscreen exactly how it reads in the books, a blurring and shifting of reality and they're suddenly wolves.
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I absolutely freaking ADORE the movie HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS. I want to see it on blu-ray with a full cast commentary. And I wish to hell they'd made the one sequel I head about as the most likely option at one point, the title alone being worthy of a film being made of it: HONEY, I FAXED THE KIDS.
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Nov. 9, 2009, 10:04 p.m. CST
Spymunk. I'm totally with you on Skiffy's "Flash Gordon"
by Hint_of_Smegma
I wore out the message boards at imdb posting hatred at what they'd done to one of my favourite characters. I grew up on all the versions of Flash, Buster Crabbe was a childhood hero and I still to this day venerate the 1980 movie. What Skiffy did was awful. But I can't agree with you on the rest of your comments even though I see where you're coming from. We still get some terrific genre pics - so to say we should throw the baby out with the bathwater makes no sense. There was never a time when Hollywood WASN'T churning out mostly crap. It's the gems you have to sift for. Beyond that, The Rocketeer. Have to take issue with your hatred for that. I LOVED the comics. I shelled out more than I should have not a couple years ago for a mint copy of the GN. The movie was a seperate article and to me, it captured the spirit of the material perfectly, just perfectly - and Johnston elevated the work even further, creating what is to me a genuinely magical movie on all fronts. Each to their own, I guess, but Rocketeer is a sacred movie for me - No.2 only to Flash Gordon 1980. Pure cinema, both of them.
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... why was Hollywood afraid to let him, you know, fight crime or shoot a gun?
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I watched ROCKETEER through a red haze of disgust the entire time, as more and more time went by and he wasn't Rocketeering. I had hope by the end, when he got the gun. "Ok, it's all been building to this!" I thought, and then "Whoops!" it slides down the side of the blimp and I was out of the movie. I wanted to just walk out in disgust. I stuck around for a friend, but I was done with the picture at that moment, since it was literally like some producer walked up at the shot of him holding the gun and said "We have notes. DESTROY! DESTROY!" and ruined the script.
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OMG! I ask this because you said you had a crush on Short Round
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... is not a girl.
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Nov. 10, 2009, 2:51 a.m. CST
I Dalto also had a crush on a young asian
by NomoredirtyjokespleaseweareYanks
luckily I Dalto eluded the Thai authorities and am able to still star in motion captured remakes of my former glories....Take THAT Gary Glitter!!!
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for a second. When he hit that pose with the gun and the spotlight flashed on him? I was SOLD—it felt like I was watching a Buster Crabbe vehicle.
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Notice that Joe COMPLETELY ignored the question about the possibility of a Blu-ray release of The Rocketeer. That means it ain't coming soon. If it was, Joe would have winked and said, "I can't comment on that". HERE THIS DISNEY!!! The current non-anamorphic single-layer DVD transfer of The Rocketeer just DOESN'T cut in on modern home theater systems.
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the Princess and the Frog is demeaning in concept. It's not this great liberating moment where the black community finally has a Princess, it's just Disney realizing they need a black princess to sell more of their never ending princess merchandise. I can picture the smoke filled conference room: "Hell, we even have a middle eastern princess, it's time we got a colored one".
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Instead of using the score Elfman has already recorded for the film, they will go with the composer that brought us the transcendent music of Deathrace!! I was excited about this film, but no more...
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I still like it, but the last half of the movie, the hero isn't doing anything remotely interesting. He just kind of falls into stuff.
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I can agree with this person who wrote this movie as one of those most anticipated movies to suck. Check it out: http://www.ranker.com/list-of/film There's a list of a lot more movies that are going to blow. I don't think this movie will be written well enough to be meet everyone's expectations.
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I know the anticipation isn't great for this after all the delays and changes, but fuck it. Joe Johnston has my money every time after he gave me Rocketeer. I'm looking forward to Wolfman too...if it turns out bad, well, I'll be disappointed. But I'm betting it'll be a lot better than most talkbackers are anticipating. I mean, face it - it's Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins in a retro werewolf movie. Directed by the guy who made Rocketeer. Sounds like a fucking great night out to me.
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http://tinyurl.com/yeqov6e
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any thoughts on that? I'm guessing this movie has it's haters on here, but personally I love, it's a great kid's movie with a creative premise, plus Rick Moranis is hilarious in it
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Said above that it's a favorite of mine, and it's one of the few movies I'd pay for a blu-ray of. I want extras though, like full cast commentary.
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WTF? First Rick Baker, now this... Way to screw up your film, guys.
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Now, what was Fox going to do with those remaining episodes? Was it "burn them" or "burn them off?" I can't remember. AMERICA HATES GENRE!
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He broke down on a show (The Ellen Degeneres show). He's had a rough year.
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I'm excited for Wolfman. I wonder if it'll make my list of good movies. Y'all can find some of them here: http://www.ranker.com/list-of/film. What do you guys think?
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threr be dvds fer revewing
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loss the toss
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That's why District 9 did so badly. Oh, wait. It did brilliantly. Come on man. Genre flicks are not as predjudiced against as you make out. And we've gotten some really terrific genre pics and shows over the last 10 years. This "bitter" act you've got going for yourself is kind of self-defeating.
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They worked up hype, hiding the reality of the space aliens for a long-ass time. Mystery stuff sells. Hype sells. If they'd trown the aliens right out there it would have been a giant turd. And as soon as word got out about it, it collapsed at the box-office once people realized it was sci-fi pure-and-through.
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Sorry but it's true.
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unless its just bad grammar, harry talks about hellboy 2 like it hasn't been released yet.
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D9 was never marketed as a mystery, unless you're referring to the question of whether the aliens would be good or bad based on which trailer you watched. It was still pretty obviously a heavy scifi and I don't know where you get this 'collapsed at the box office" from. It did really well and anyone who went to the theatre not knowing it was about aliens must have been deaf and blind.
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I didn't get that either. Or that craptastic run on mess of a sentence... but thats Harry. Aint it cool?
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Hardly. The mystery I refer to is that people were conditioned to be interested with the WARNING DO NOT ENTER type signs everywhere selling the mystery and the "found footage" element, as opposed to selling it as being about space ships and rockets and lasers. Sure, the trailers eventually changed to the awful limbo-walking robot doing TRANSPORTER missile dodging, but hey. And it sucked. Aside from that ... it was not a huge commercial success. It was a pretty big failure when you consider what they hoped it would make. People want exploitation and nothing more now in the USA; they went for splojinz and bloodz and titz. Nothing more. And genre flicks don't rule the b.o. Movies taking the trappings and titles of genre and bearing little or no resemblance to them do. Notice the fucking insane failure of WILD THINGS ARE? It died a horrible death - collapsed despite promises of "repeat viewings to keep it aloft." FAIL, fuckers.
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wouldn't that scorch the holy fuck out of Cliff Secord's buttocks and the back of his thighs? Wow, one second into the flight and you'd be screaming in God-awful, agonizing pain. When you finally crashed you'd have to spend the rest of yur life laying on your stomach, shitting into a bag. Your ass would look the English Patient's face.
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The fire burns cold. They even say in the movie that the jet pack doesn't get hot. It's cold in fact.
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You say District 9 was a failure "because it didn't make what they expected". Well you're half right. It made a lot more than anyoe expected of it. Come on, I get it, you didn't like it. But let's not just make stuff up, eh? It was an unexpected critical and commercial success far beyond it's budget. You saying otherwise doesn't make it so.....an you're still way off base with your "mystery marketing" comments. It was never in any way intimated to be anything other than what it was - a hard edged scifi with political leanings.
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Intimating District 9 was somehow NOT a scifi movie, but instead some weak movie wrapped in Scifi "trappings". Uhhhh, WTF?
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I'm guessing it REALLY doesn't get any love here, but I can't help, but love Jumanji as well
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Intimating District 9 was somehow NOT a scifi movie, but instead some weak movie wrapped in Scifi "trappings". Uhhhh, WTF?
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DISTRICT 9 was advertised as an intriguing mystery - WHAT IS THE SECRET OF DISTRICT 9 ? They were given blurred images of the aliens, mysterious shots of the space ships, no explanation of the plot. If they had advertised it in a fashion similar to, say, STAR TREK, it would've tanked. As it was, once people found out it was a sci-fi hard movie with political leanings as you say, it did a massive nose-dive. Hence, my argument.
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That is what you call 'advertised as mystery"...? give me a break. Yeah, all the shots of the alien in the interrogation room being questioned, and seeing or not seeing what it was saying based on what trailer you were watching - plus the shots of the mech - must have had people absolutely convinced they were watching Agatha Christie's only sci-fi book adapted onscreen... I mean come on, that's really stretching it. On top of that, to try and suggest D9 was a failure at the box office is patently ridiculous - it has as of Nov1st earned $199,448,079 worldwide. For a little expected film that cost 20mil to make, it`s kind of a massive success. And it`s yet to earn it`s inevitably massive DVD numbers. So give it up Spymunk. D9 was not advertised as a mystery, nor was it a box office failure. You simply don`t like it. Fair enough. Lying won`t make anything you say the truth though.
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BCOAjnHK <a href="http://grvocx.com/ ">ZllYJs</a>
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fvnqKC <a href="http://xplnpy.com/ ">BGfHaD</a>
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