The information age isn’t finished with us.
Now here’s something. Rumours that the game Watch Dogs was heading for the big screen began months back.
It’s now been confirmed. Sony Pictures and New Regency have partnered to produce it. No creative team has been announced as yet.
What is interesting is that Ubisoft have the similarly themed Deus Ex: Human Revolution in development at the same time.
I wasn’t sure if they would put competing products into the mix, but it seems they have.
MGM are making a film about a robot serial killer called Abe. (We mean a serial killer who is a robot, not a killer of many robots).
Hey wait up. This is an expansion of a short movie.
Now you know I don’t watch shorts (Haven’t the patience for them). But I’ve dug this up but it.
The original was 8 minutes long; Abe is a robot who kidnaps girls and tries to “fix” them (I’m hoping with a screwdriver.)
It was written and directed by Rob McLellan who is returning to direct the feature.
Post Apocalyptic short film Turbo Kid is now set to become a feature. I was an entry in the ABC of Death competition, and even though it did not win it attracted the attention of Jason (Hobo With A Shotgun) Eisener and now original directors (the collective RKSS) will be making their first full length film.
This and Abe got me thinking. I have a file full of stories about short films set to be features, I counted up how many had actually made it and I came up with… zero.
Not that it never happens, because it sometimes does, but it seems making short films is no more certain a path to directing glory than any other, and it is a pity because there are some interesting things out there that deserve a wider audience.
Casey Affleck and director David Lowery are teaming up to make a science fiction movie. To Be Two; a matter transportation accident between Earth and Mars causes the appearance of copies of an individual on both planets.
Although this is not and unknown theme in science fiction (didn’t I see something like this on Stargate last week…?) In this case they are looking into the philosophical aspects of it.
So whatever happened to the Spierig brothers. The who, you ask? Well; they’re Australian first came to prominence with their debut, Undead, and action comedy horror feature. But most of you know them from their vampire action film, Daybreakers.
We haven’t heard from them lately but it seems they are on the move again.
Their latest project is science fiction feature Stem, writer is Leigh “Saw” Whannell and it’s described as in the vein of the Terminator and set in the near future.
I promised to update you every week with news of straight to video science fiction. I lies… ‘though not intentionally. There’s just not enough of it. However I have found something.
Extracted, Directed by Nir Paniry. A scientist invents a way of entering other people’s minds (never heard that one before), he enters the mind of a heroin addict and gets stuck there for four years. Reviews are pushing this as “indie science fiction” rather than just cheap-ass genre.
Its heavy on the talk, low on the action.
Reviews are all over the place. Some think it is an intellectual and thematic tour de force, others just don’t see the point. It’s called both fascination and boring, compared positively and negatively to Inception.
All I ask…please don’t let it be like The Cell.
The Evening Standard has produced the first review of Gravity. The verdict; great visuals, thin plot. Well that tells me nothing, you could apply to half the films of the summer. More as it develops.
Elysium
This is it. More than Oblivion, more than Pacific Rim, this is the film I have been looking forward to.
Neill Blomkamp burst onto the scene in 2009 with District 9. This debut cost $30m but raked in over $100m in the US Box Office. It proved you could do great science fiction, at mid budget, without stars, and still make money.
Well Blomkamp’s follow up is here. And whatever it is like it demonstrates a few things. Blomkamp is not willing to sit back and do sequels to his or anyone else’s movies while he has ideas of his own.
We cannot help getting excited at Elysium. District 9 had aliens, but Elysium has men in exoskeletons and a huge space station.
The set up feels very cyberpunk. And it has that trademark Blomkamp look; very real, almost documentary in quality.
It is a different proposition to District 9; made with a major studio, with a budget three times as much (We are hearing figures around $90m) and starring a big Hollywood actor.
Still the publicity stills and trailers look incredible. Even though this is now a given. the days when science fiction films could get away with looking cheap are long gone, they all employ teams of concept artists to create elaborate and spectacular visuals, and many of these artist are not just trained in engineering and architecture but aficionados themselves so films are now full of plausible detail.
In interview Neill Blomkamp is encouraging, he is trying to balance the edgy themes with an entertaining story. In time out he modestly compares himself to the Young George Lucas (no, modestly) and says he would rather fail at being Lucas in 1977 than make a Star Wars sequel this year.
Those are the words we wanted to hear.
Elysium Review.
You know the drill: Earth is impoverished, the rich have fled to a massive , luxurious space station; our hero Max is dosed with radiation on the job and has five days to get up to the forbidden space station and cure himself, but it gets complicated when he’s asked to spearhead a revolution against the masters in the sky.
The visuals are exquisite and very convincing, the FX are utterly convincing, they are better than photo-real, in fact I suspect that much of what we saw especially in the initial LA scenes were real.
I expected it would look good. The question was, would the story work? And it pretty much does. The set-up with an unequal world, the aspirations of the underclass and indifference of the off-world upper-class is all handled well and it transitions into an action adventure smoothly. It does not have the humour of District 9 but this is a very different animal.
Blomkamp is trying different things, working with character, emotion and themes; he has really expanded his style since the last one.
Admittedly… this is not as fresh as District 9, and it will not leave you with the excitement that District 9 left you with. But it is solidly made, entertaining and has something to say.
I had specific concerns that differed from those of reviewers. I didn’t mind that it was basically an action-adventure film; if you spend $90m of studio money you’d better deliver a film that people will want to see, regardless of their political awareness.
No, what concerned me was the sentiment; Elysium lacked the edge I’d associated with Blomkamp, and it kept returning to a scene with a nun and a locket to the point where you thought you were being hammered with an emotional subtext-turned super-text.
Thematically it was also sentimental. The revolution was supposed to deliver the fruits of the wealthy to everyone, but could that ever happen? Can the benefits be spread that thin? Or would it just end up with a few thousand people on Earth benefiting, leaving billions no better off?
The intention is fine, but method lacks credibility.
Never-the-less this is a fast moving, smart movie with good politics and a heart.
Riddick is coming
And if you want some real movie news you know what to do.
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.
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