May | 2022 | gruntingatthescreen

Archive | May, 2022

Grunting at the Screen (329)

“Digital Transformation is ongoing.”

There is some movement on Crimes of the Future (Grunting 310); the trailer is out.

It’s very Cronenberg. We have echoes of the surgical body modification of Dead Ringers.

We’ve wanted Cronenberg to return to his body horror roots, who knows, this could be just the ticket.

We have actual details; it is the near future and the artificial environment is causing the human body to rapidly adapt; artist Saul Tenser has made a performance of publicly having his growths removed.

Crimes of the Future is getting a screening at Cannes, reviews should follow.

It has a release date; June 3.

Looks like “Parallel Forest” slipped past me. it is a Chinese film directed by Zheng Lei; Du Yen loses her son in an accident, she takes a trip to recover and finds herself in a forest where walking through it takes her parallel worlds including one where her son is still alive.

Interesting this is that it became the subject of a US remake with Kolosh Ahari as the director.

Project Dorothy (Grunting 298) has some details.

Fleeing a botched robbery two crooks take refuge in an abandoned lab facility, of course they awaked something monstrous; an AI played by Danielle Harris.

Still no release date.

Alien Sniperess, yeah you read that right. Directed by Joseph Mbah; a female solder on leave encounters an alien invasion. She starts shooting.

This did not encourage me, I had some prejudice towards it.

It’s cheap, not necessarily a deal-breaker.

And yes reviews grumble over the crappy CG, while praising the prosthetic effects.

Surprisingly they seem to like it; they say it has good action, well-paced and technically punches ahead of its (budget) weight.

Alien Sniperess on Amazon and other digital platforms, also exclusively a DVD at Walmart under the more sensible title “Alien Sniper”

Walter Tevis’ novel Mockingbird has been picked up for feature film adaptation;

a love triangle between a man a woman and an android.

No details.

New Science Fiction feature; Divinity directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Steven Dorf is about to unlock the secret of immortality, a problem since he has just been kidnapped.

Production is underway, no release date.

‘Wonderland Recoil’ what are they smoking? I first mistook this for cyberpunk but what we have here is something stranger.

It looks like the result of having consumed too much Terry Gilliam and then having access to a greenscreen. This could be a bad thing, at this point it is hard to say.

Director is Shaun Rana.

A young woman tries a psychedelic drug called “Nirvana”.

It has some festival showing, no general release date.

Film continues to seek new material among the comic pages, and it is not only with superhero material.

Next up is Stalag-X adapting a story by Kevin J. Anderson, Steven L. Sears and Mike Ratera.

A human soldier is imprisoned on an alien planet, the alien Krael subject him to a battery of experiments aimed at ending the war.

Francis Lawrence has been hired as the director, Joy Wilkinson will write the script.

No schedule.

I wasn’t not going to mention After Blue, it just seemed too weird but then First showing called it “El Topo in Space”.

Well, sigh, better say something.

The Director is, Bertrand Mandico and they are calling it psychedelic Science-Fiction.

Humanity have abandoned earth and settled on an alien planet, men are unsuited to the harsh environment so all the settlers are women, a mother and daughter team are charged with running down an escaped assassin.

Well it is getting a US release. You can catch it in select theatres from June 3rd.

Here is a new one; “Cryo” five scientists awake from cryosleep in an underground facility.

they have no memory, but slowly realise that they are being hunted by a killer.

Cryo opens June 24th.

You thought you’d get away without any coverage of Avatar 2.

They problem is everyone has dismissed it. “It’s too late.” Every article on Avatar 2 starts and ends with a comment questioning if anyone wants an Avatar sequel, because it’s been so long.

And they complain the original story was too simple.

They feel like they’ve been hoodwinked but fancy 3D CG.

All of that just leaves me with an opening; what in a franchise obsessed world you don’t want the sequel to the biggest movie of them all? Hme.

The publicity drive has started in earnest. Footage has been screened at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. There was a lot of ocean footage. Cynical, hardened film distributors where heard to gasp at the vistas.

Cameron and his producers have played up how spectacular the film will be and how it will be only suitable for the big screens.

in the run-up to its release Disney are re-releasing Avatar, if only to remind the audience why they went the first time.

Avatar 2 also had a name change; “Avatar: The Way of Water”, which seems ripe for satire.

So. Will it succeed?

I don’t have a clue. In the loose column that other long awaited sequel The Matrix; Resurrections did very poorly, showing audiences can be fickle.

In the Win column, this is Jim Cameron; he has only lost once and pundits have learned not to count him out.

On the third hand that last time he bombed it was with The Abyss; another water based Science Fiction film.

Avatar: The Way of Water opens on Dec. 16 2022

It is the age of the giant robot. Projects that have languished in turnaround for decades are rushing to the screen.

The reason of course is streaming; we have a menagerie of streaming beasts all hungry for contents, that means back-burner projects are turning up the heat.

First up is the Voltron Live Action Movie.

Rawson Marshall Thurber is to co-write and direct

It is being shopped around and Amazon is in the forefront.

Next up is Robotech (Grunting 109) They have been trying to make a movie of it for fifteen years.

Sony Pictures is the studio. Rhys Thomas has been hired to direct the film.

Netflix is working on a live-action Gundam (Grunting 279)

As you can guess there is no schedule on any of these. But current conditions make it more likely than ever that at least some of these will appear.

The Fall of Netflix; in April Netflix announced it was losing subscribers.

The blogosphere crowed. The mighty were fallen.

Then Netflix announced it was laying off staff.

Bad news piled on; there was word that Netflix was cancelling series, and then Netflix shareholders sued the company for lost dividends.

So is this the long road back to normal?

I’m not sure it is.

We’ve lived through unusual times, and it has become normal to us. The pandemic kept most people at home and the subscription to streaming services soared.

Now that the perception is that the pandemic is waning people are getting out and doing outdoor things; they don’t want to watch so much Netflix.

This is a correction and it was expected.

But streaming is not going away. Why not? It’s just too convenient. You pay one fee and watch as much as you like.

Will Netflix survive? Probably.

Other streamers are thriving, but Netflix is the biggest player, it has hundreds of millions of subscribers, deep pockets and an enormous catalogue.

It has momentum, and that counts for something.

What it is failing at is content and content is king.

Disney+ is rising because of its content. The parent company spent years eating up IP and that long and patient process is paying off; Marvel. Lucusflm, Fox and who knows what else have provided Disney with content aplenty to fill their streaming service.

At the same time this deprives Netflix of vital content.

There is a way forward; it is the slow way. The quick way is to buy up IP; expensively. That’s not the way. Netflix have already hired a ton of talent but only slowly developed it.

The sure way is to raise quality and create events, make compelling television and the audience will return.

Peter V. Brett’s novel The Warded Man is getting a TV adaptation, it has been optioned as a feature film, but you know, it’s the streaming era.

Just in case we didn’t mention it before it’s a book about surviving where demons roam the night ripping people to pieces; fun stuff.

No word on writer, director, cast, schedule or anything like that.

Just hearing about Don’t Worry Darling a feature film from director Olivia Wilde, written by Cary Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke;

It is the 1950s and a woman is living in a utopian community, except, she might not be.

Interesting; it was on the 2019 Black List.

Opens September 23, 2022.

More has emerged about Alex Garland’s ‘Men’. I would not exactly call it detail.

As suggested by the title its theme is toxic masculinity. Contrary to earlier suggestions, reports are veering to it being in the horror genre rather than Science Fiction.

Jessie Buckley in fact the writer/director is calling a ghost story.

is playing a woman hounded by Rory Kinnear, who plays several different characters; different “men”. (I kind of get it.)

In terms of tone Garland said it will be aggressive and visceral; unlike say his “Devs” miniseries.

“Men” will be released on May 20.

OK, spin-off series Dune: The Sisterhood, is showing progress. What took them so long.

HBO Max is a streaming service and its parent corporation has been letting it go hungry. It needs content and they have the means to feed the beast.

Anyway, as indicated film writer Jon Spaihts has been asked to take a step back from the series, also not directly involved is director Denis Villeneuve (this is not a huge tragedy, both are better served working on the second half of the feature.)

Instead the series will be will be written by Diane Ademu-John and directed by Johan Renck.

It will be set 10,000 years before the events in Dune and concern the founding of The Bene Gesserit sisterhood.

Still no schedule.

The not at all confusingly named Korean Science Fiction movie “Alien” (Grunting 300) has a trailer; it’s about aliens who live in Korea and time-travel back to the Joseon period.

This is just the first of a two part movie.

Still no release date.

We are hearing about Birchanger Green from writer-director Moin Hussain;

a quiet, ordinary man becomes convinced he is descended from an alien race.

This one has wrapped production and is looking for a distributor.

No release schedule

Fantaspoa festival has so many films in its program I could not possibly list them all.

Some of them are of possible interest.

Some are so odd I suspect they are short films.

But let’s assume they are features.

Apps; Directors: Sandra Arriagada, Camilo León, Lucio A. Rojas, José Miguel Zúñiga, Samot Marquez;

Ah an anthology with four segments; an app opens the door to terror.

Au Jour D’aujourd’hui; Director Maxence Stamatiadis

familiar territory. A woman brings back her dead husband using deepfake tech. But he’s not he man she used to know.

Apparently the sixth stage of grief is and always was ‘resurrection’; all of the self-help books need to be changed.

Bashira; Director: Fong Nickson.

This is what the site says; “An electronic musician and a troubled fan are plunged into a hallucinogenic nightmare where they must confront an ancient Japanese entity – capable of bending space and time and wreaking havoc and death – in order to save their souls”

If it had not been for “electronic music” and “Japan” I would not have bothered. Would you believe this is an American movie?

Chicken Of The Mound, Director: Xi Chen.

Again from the site “A particularly curious chicken larva did not undergo the adult transformation and did not hide in the cave. Instead, it roamed the plains and mounds wearing robot armour. “

is this animated? Well yess. I mean WTF.

Corazón Azul Director Miguel Coyula; Fidel Castro uses genetic engineering to create The New Man to save the Cuban republic.

This one I take issue with; obviously a rip-off of an idea I had twenty years ago and told no-one about the Cubans have powerful Super Quantum Interference Devices and are reading all of our minds. Beware!

Tiong Bahru Social Club, Director: Bee Thiam Tan. Tiong Bahru Social Club is a data driven project to create the happiest place on earth, I’m guessing it does not work out that way.

Fantaspoa ran from April 15-May 1 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

It’s the season, also arriving is Sci Fi London. Lots of films there, some known to us.

Most promising is Annular Eclipse (Grunting 322)

Also there is Deus (Grunting 326)

Sci Fi London runs from 19-22 May’

“Deus”, is written and directed by Steve Stone (Grunting 326)

We’ve been doing some digging and it appears the director Steve Stone is the same artist known for his Science Fiction book covers.

He was one of the pioneers in bringing digital imagery to cover art. He’s well known for his covers for the British Neal Asher editions.

“Deus” is not even his first feature film; he has made four including: Entity (2013), Schism (2015), and In Extremis (retitled Point Of Death for UK release, 2017)

Spiritwalker (Grunting 317) is getting a UK release.

” A man wakes up in a different body every twelve hours, each time forced to discover who he is – all the while being pursued by a secret organisation”

we also have a review from Asia Movie Web.

It is fast-moving but they complain it does not make use of all the possibilities of the premise.

The FX are good, there is great set-design, it ends with a well-constructed action scene.

They also say the resolution is disappointing and makes no sense, they don’t hate it, just think it could be better.

Out now on Digital platforms, already on release in the US.

Love, Death and Robots is coming back.

We now have a list of the episodes and writers. And there is some very special stuff in here.

Three Robots: Exit Strategies

Writer: John Scalzi

Studio: Blow Studio

This is a sequel of the Three Robots story from season one.

Bad Travelling

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker, based on the short story by Neal Asher

One of two Neal Asher stories and the first animated film directed by Fincher.

Don’t know the story but the feel is similar to his Spatterjay stories.

The Very Pulse Of The Machine

Director: Emily Dean

Writer: Philip Gelatt, from a short story by Michael Swanwick

Swanwick is an author from the cyberpunk era (though he always seemed like an outsider looking in).

Night of the Mini Dead

Director(s): Robert Bisi, Andy Lyon

Writer: Robert Bisi & Andy Lyon, from a short story by Jeff Fowler & Tim Miller

Kill Team Kill

Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Writer: Philip Gelatt, from a short story by Justin Coates

Swarm

Director: Tim Miller

Writer: Tim Miller, based on the short story by Bruce Sterling.

Now this is something very speak, an adaptation of one of Sterling’s most accessible stories. Something gooey and nasty (I am more than half sure that Starship Troopers 3 ripped it off) well here is the real deal.

What is more it is directed by Tim Miller, now who would have predicted that Miller would direct Sterling before Gibson…?

Mason’s Rats

Director: Carlos Stevens

Writer: Joe Abercrombie, based on the short story by Neal Asher.

The second Neal Asher story, and the screenplay by Lord Grimdark himself!

Interesting fact, Mason’s Rats was one of the first stories put into development for “Love+ Death..” back when it was a reboot of the Heavy Metal movie. Really.

In Vaulted Halls Entombed

Director: Jerome Chen

Writer: Philip Gelatt, based on a short story by Alan Baxter

Jibaro

Director: Alberto Mielgo

Writer: Alberto Mielgo

It returns to Netflix from May 20th, 2022.

I’m Jack Eris and if you know me, you know Jack.

Get down to Film Combat Syndicate, you’ll be surprised.

http://filmcombatsyndicate.blogspot.co.uk/

And if you want some movie news about other than sequels and reboots try

http://screenanarchy.com/