The information age has not yet finished with us.
What’s Ridley Doing? No really. I have asked that question a few times. This time he’s all about short films. Ridley Scott’s Ad Agency, RSA, has linked up with YouTube channel Machinima to provide series of twelve science fiction shorts. Directors will initially come from the RSA roster (a group of talented visualists) but Scott is also talking about involving major directors, pretty much if they have a great idea for a short film, he’s interested.
The films which potential will then be developed as features. Now you’re talking.
This is not Ridley’s first involvement in the world of short films, besides the ad work, he also sponsored a short film competition, Parallel Lines, which yielded
Carl Erik Rinsch’s celebrated short, The Gift.
Holy Moses, what is Ridley Doing?
The latest announcement is that Ridley Scott is going to make an epic about Moses (Exodus) and he’s trying to snare Christian Bale. The project has been knocking about at Warner Bros. for a while. Steve (American Gangster) Zaillian has most recently re-written the scripts.
I don’t want to be selfish* but if Scott has finally made a commitment then it means all plans for further science fiction movies are now on the shelf; and that is something considerable; No Prometheus sequel (quick kvetching, it made money, not Avatar money, but money .) No Blade Runner II. No Forever War. Not for the next two years at least. Ridley has never been a big Science fiction fan (yes, a considerable irony). Maybe the critical drubbing and less than stellar performance of Prometheus has driven him back to his first love.
Nothing is cut and dried; Exodus is competing with the similarly themed feature Gods and Kings, once a pet project of Spielberg, now in the hands of Ang Lee.
Actually there have been a whole lot fewer biblical films than I expected (not that I’m complaining). In the wake of The Passion of the Christ (and the frankly enthusiastic Christian contingent in the USA) I expected the film industry to be falling over themselves to get holy on us. But those godless heathens in Los Angeles are proving reluctant. (I’m sure there a ton of money in it.)
Just look at it. Bible Epics are basically superhero movies with the advantage of righteousness behind them. You have massive action scenes and dudes with superpowers.
There are a bunch of movies in development, some with major stars attached to them. But the only big one actually in production is Darren Aronofsky’s’s Noah (I’m thinking, not a traditional biblical epic).
Sitting around in Development Purgatory as another take on Samson, a couple doing the David and Goliath thing (one tantalisingly taking Goliath’s point of view, you would not be surprised to hear The Rock -Hercules- has been associated with that one.)
Here’s something, producers Joe Roth and Palak Patel are working on a feature named Brilliance.
It’s based on a novel by Marcus Sakey. A world of superpowered humans called “brilliants”. A “brilliant” federal agent goes up against a “brilliant” terrorist.
Has potential.
Now here is something. I have been seeing copies of Ramez Naam’s novel Nexus knocking around town. Looks interesting. In a future where human minds are linked together by a nano drug named Nexus, a scientist is thrust into world of espionage and danger. Hme.
It looks like it’s been optioned by Paramount Pictures. What is more interesting is among its many producers is Darren Aronofsky, he may be more famous for making Black Swan, But I remember his groundbreaking Cyberpunk indie Pi. Ari Handel and Mark Heyman are developing the script.
Not to get too excited though. Nexus is a recent novel, and if history is any guide, novels take years to get to the screen.
Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are at it again, as writer/producers they have the largest plate heaped with the most goodies in Hollywood; just some (but far from all) of their slate includes: Star Trek 2, the Van Helsing reboot, the Mummy and Ender’s Game. Just added is Sagittarius A. Nothing is known about it but it is presumed to be some kind of science fiction project.
The Hong Kong scene has been quiet lately. Not in Hong Kong, they are still very much making films, it’s just that the rest of the world, particularly the rest of Asia have pulled western attention away from the territory. But fear not, there are still gems to be found.
When was the last Chinese vampire movie you saw?
Well they are back. Juno Mak has revived the sub-genre with Rigor Mortis. Chin Siu-ho, veteran actor of vampire movies, is plating the hapless hunter.
It is in production and the preliminary production photos are looking good.
I hate to be obvious but most of the current news is about remakes, reboots and sequels. In fact on some of the blogs three quarters of the news is of some heavily franchised property. We are living in an era when some of the most highly anticipated events are reboots of remakes of formerly big series from thirty years ago. Many of the rest are sequels to comic book movies based on characters from the 1960s. This is not all bad news, in fact I am looking forward to a few of these forthcoming films, but mostly I’d like to cover new stuff.
Mostly.
I’ve been thinking about those garage Kubriks again. Time to get out of the garage. Now we know the filmmakers beavering away in their bedrooms, classrooms and garages share less with Kubrik than Spielberg or Jim Cameron. Aside from their alienation from actual narrative (not a small fault) they have a problem- not real enough.
CG and blue screen have given the impression that natural habitat of the filmmaker is in front of a computer screen. Time to get some sunlight and fresh air. There is another breed of filmmaker whose work seldom sees the big screen and who’s also hostile to things like acting, characters and stories, and it might benefit all of those basement film directors to hook up with or at least learn from them. Extreme sports film makers. They strop a camera onto their helmets and then throw themselves into, or over unlikely situations to get jaw dropping footage. These helmet cams are getting cheaper and better every year and one day some smart guy (or gal) will get the idea of shooting a bunch of footage then stringing it together as a story. Not a documentary but a genuine little movie with characters and a plot. When this happens people will ask why no-one ever did it before.
One of the interesting places at the moment is Ubisoft which is making a play to become a major player in the film world. Our main interest is Deus Ex, but I’m sure that film will wait in line behind the plethora of other projects in the works: Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and Uncharted Drake. My take is that Ubisoft are trying to do what Marvel Studios did; leverage their success in one area into the film industry. I’m concerned this may not work. Marvel Studios was very tentative at first starting off with one thing at a time, slowly building towards a major event. Ubisoft are moving forward with a lot of projects at once. Too far, too fast.
So far Ubisoft have delivered a lot of deals but no films, it’s a tough business, but they are trying to deliver something we haven’t seen over and over again and I wish them luck.
Will it end in fire or in ice? In the case of The Colony, definitely ice. It seems like this film has been in production forever. But it gets a Canadian release on April 12th. (This makes it the first of this year’s Ice Age holocausts; Snowpiercer is due in the spring).
The basic set up is this.
The ice age has returned, humanity lives underground. But there has been a signal and a rescue team is dispatched to discover what has happened at The Colony.
Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton star. No word on a US or UK release.
So when was your last good chunk of Thai horror? (Actually Mine Was The Eye, but don’t tell) Thailand has a thriving horror scene, much of which has failed to get a release over here.
Soon to be in production is Ghost Coins, and it sounds cool. Thai tradition mandates each dead person have a coin placed under their tongue before burial. Disturbing this money is strictly taboo, which does not stop a gang of wayward teenagers who grow rich and confident on their grave robbing, until they go for the big score, the corpse of a millionaire rumoured to have a cache of gold coins in his mouth.
It’s a robbery too far as the old man’s ghost rises, and he wants his cash back!
director Pawat Panangkasiri, it should arrive in 2014.
David Goyer has been wallowing in history for his Leonardo Da Vinci TV show, he must be enjoying it because his latest film project is also historically based,
It’s The Count of Monte Cristo. They are calling it a “reboot” but since the last major version was some decades ago, we can let it pass
Michael Robert Johnson (“Pompeii”) did the script and would you believe the same production house that does the Resident Evil movies.
OK, “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” made a respectable $206 million worldwide. Inevitably a sequel is being planned. And that is all I have to say about it.
There are two thrillers about a White House invasion due this year and reviews are emerging for the first one, Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen.
Word is it’s a cliché yet fast moving and effective thriller with horror and humour served up in equal measure.
Gerard Butler stars as the disgraced Secret Service man who has to save the president (and all that good, free and just).
The Bay is out now. The Bay skipped the theatres and went straight to disk. This unusual because unlike most Straight to Video films this one has a major director, Barry Levinson. It’s a found footage film about an eco-disaster. Pollution creates a plague of flesh munching sea bugs. It has the usual Jaws/Piranhas arc; it all happens on the 4th of July weekend. Get out of water..
Reviews suggest it is a superior example of the found footage horror genre.
*Well not so much.
And if you want some real movie news you know what to do.
http://www.darkhorizons.com/
And if you want to walk the wild side of genre video try Starburst’s review section
http://www.starburstmagazine.com/reviews/dvd-and-blu-ray-home-entertainment-reviews
I’m Jack Eris and if you know me, you know Jack.