Timur Bekmambetov is not the director of this upcoming alien invasion film The Darkest Hour. The director is actually one Chris Gorak, but the trailer is definitely pushing Bekmambetov’s name as if he is the director. Then again I think the film does seem to have Bekmambetov’s stylistic flourishes written all over it.
The Darkest Hour looks to be set in Russia from beginning to end as we follow a group of young Americans on vacation and hitting up all the party night spots in Moscow. This makes for an interesting premise in that we see an alien invasion from a wholly different perspective. It’s an alien invasion seen through the Russian perspective even if half the cast are American tourists.
I hadn’t heard much about this film until now, but after seeing the trailer I’m definitely going to run out and see it when it comes out.
The Darkest Hour is set for a December 23, 2011 release date.
Been awhile since I was able to find and post a new AMV (anime music video) which means the pickings have been slim. But as I was writing up the post commemorating the site’s 1000th post milestone I was listening to some J-Pop as background music and one particular song came on. It was BONNIE PINK’s “Ring a Bell” which was used as the opening song for the very fun and beautiful JRPG Tales of Vesperia. As soon as I finished writing up the milestone post I searched YouTube for AMV’s which used this song and after finding a couple AMV’s which used it I settled on the best one I was able to find.
The latest AMV is from YouTube user XValkyrieAngelX and it was titled Kobato – Ring a Bell. I knew of the song, but the anime used was one I’ve heard about but never had the opportunity to watch: Kobato.
First off, the editing work by XValkyrieAngelX was very good. She didn’t make the video too cluttered and confusing with massive amounts of quick edits and cuts. Her use of particular video effects was timed well with the song that they weren’t distracting. One thing she was also able to do was keep the AMV relatively spoiler-free. The anime itself has been called one of the many romance-comedy that continues to be quite popular in Japan and pretty much with most anime fans so the video shows of the romance side of the anime but not enough to ruin the whole story.
The song “Ring a Bell” is one of those catchy J-Pop ballads which just sticks to one’s mind and won’t let go. Using this song really matches up well with the visuals used from Kobato. One of the best compliments I could ever give an AMV creator is that they were able to convince me to watch an anime I’ve only remotely heard of just based on watching them use it in one of their videos. Kobato – Ring a Bell is one such AMV and as soon as I finished watching it I went over to Amazon and, lo and behold, the DVD was up for pre-ordering and I went ahead and pre-ordered it.
XValkyrieAngelX has more AMV’s uploaded in her YouTube account and this one has given me reason to watch the rest of her work.
I never figured out that this little hobby of mine to help pass the time and share my love for writing about films, books, anime, games and other forms of entertainment would last as long as it has. I’ve always thought that when I first began the site that after a couple months I would get tired and bored by it and just let it wither on the vine. But instead of withering it’s actually has grown to include not just myself as a contributor but many others.
I have to say many thanks to some old buddies of mine going as far back as the old FF Gurus stomping ground which turned into the Suikox stomping grounds. I will forever be indebted to necromoonyeti (Shad4K for those who remember him from FFG and Suikox) for not just writing about his love for all things metal, but for the other genres of metal beyond the Metallica, Slayer, Black Sabbath and Megadeth I grew up listening to. Its through his educated and passionate writing about black metal, folk metal and power metal (and many more) that I’ve grown to appreciate the finer points of music.
Sailor Sexy has been a partner-in-crime that I think we may have been twins in a previous life. He’s been the anime and manga dude who may not have been as active but has definitely expanded my own appreciation for Japanese anime and manga. He’s probably helped introduce the artform to many of the site’s readers who have never really experienced anime outside of what’s being shown on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Here’s to hoping he celebrates this milestone with beer and more beer with his pals Tugger and PB at his side.
Other contributors have joined the site in just the past 6 months to help add their unique voices to the growing crew. There’s SemtexSkittle who has become the site’s gaming guru and whose love for gaming surpasses even my own. In addition to his helping write articles and reviews for the site he has also helped me become a better Black Ops player even though I’m probably still the one guy in the team who dies most of the time.
Another contributor who has added his own unique writing style is uberthegeek who shares the same love for all things nerdy and geeky as I do. Then there’s Leonard Wilson who brings his own film reviewing style which shows not just his love for film, but also shows him growing as a writer and hopefully he will continue to write as he finds his true writer’s voice. Another film fan who has joined just recently is leonth3duke who I first met over at a film fan union over on Gamespot. He brings a cineaste‘s appreciation for film that I rarely find when talking with my contemporaries and has been a welcome addition to the site.
The site also has one-time contributors in danceonavolcano and zackthewicked1 whose lone contributions are much appreciated as the ones made by the other writers for the site.
Last, but not least, is the one person who has helped me through the growing pains of the site when it was just months old and who accepted my invitation to write for the site without questions asked on her part: Lisa Marie Bowman. She has been so active in keeping the site always with something new to check out and read that she’s become as much a founder of Through the Shattered Lens as myself. Her love for grindhouse and exploitation cinema surpasses my own. Her unique personal take on films she reviews has made her articles some of the most read one’s on the site and I hope that giving her an outlet to write without restrictions has helped her in whatever small way to open up creatively since she first joined me almost 17 months ago. She’s also the reason for bringing in her sister, Dazzling Erin, to add to the coterie of writers which will only continue to help grow the site beyond what I had first envisioned it to be.
Through the Shattered Lens has been and will continue be a place guided by no rules other than for each contributor to write what they want to write about in regards to entertainment of their choosing. I’ve wanted to keep the site as chaotic and as free of restrictive guidelines as possible. While other sites have succeeded in being more focused on a particular theme or having access to the entertainment industry for news and interviews, I’ve always thought that this site has been a success on its own right because of it’s own chaotic nature. Visitors both new and old will always come in with the expectation that something new, weird and unexpected will greet them as they enter for the first time or the umpteenth time.
Thanks for sticking by us as we reached our first 1000th post milestone. Here’s to hoping you stick around and see us through to the next 1000….
Torchwood: Miracle Day has been very casual in revealing the cause and ultimate agenda behind the so-called “Miracle Day” event which has turned everyone on the planet Earth with a unique form of immortality. There’s been speculation from new and old fans alike about the cause and reason. Some think it’s aliens from the future. Some believe it to be a government experiment that went terribly wrong. One thing the previous and third episode in this new season did dole out was that a major pharmaceutical company, PhiCorp, seemed to have been aware of the arrival of “Miracle Day” and planned accordingly even to the point of infiltrating governmental agencies to deflect suspicion from them. Which brings us to the fourth and latest episode: “Escape to L.A.”.
This fourth episode sees the latest incarnation of the Torchwood team arriving in Los Angeles with a plan to infiltrate one of PhiCorp’s many headquarters around the country and steal a server which may hold the information they need to expose the company to the world and finally get down to the bottom of what “Miracle Day” truly is. To say that PhiCorp has become more than just an ovelry opportunistic megacorporation after this episode would be an understatement. This episode had everything for pretty much all spectrum of Torchwood fans. It had some very emotional and quieter moments for some of the main characters (such as Esther Drummond and Rex Matheson). For those wanting a bit more action this episode had it as well as the team’s plans to infiltrate the PhiCorp server room runs across a few stumbling blocks in the form of a creepy hired assassin in the form of one C. Thomas Howell. There’s even a few lighter and funnier moments involving the team’s search for a base of operations while in L.A. with Rex sarcasticly commenting that Jack was trying to turn everyone he meets gay with Jack’s retort admitting to just such.
“Escape to L.A.” also continues to delve into the growing role of Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman still hamming it up as the twitchy, but smarter than he looks pedophile-murderer) in this new season’s scheme of things. While the last episode threw off the cloak of repentance Danes had shown on live TV this latest episode shows Danes as quite devious in trying to keep himself in what he thinks is the only way to protect himself from those who still thinks he owes society for what he had done. The interesting thing about what Danes does in this episode was that it put a voice into one of the themes being explore in this season. Danes sees those still living when they should be dead just like him being herded into places (abandoned hospitals and camps being built by PhiCorp) to be away from those still living in truth. It was interesting that he would be the voice for this theme and a counter to the fearmongering of a Tea Party politico in the form of Mayor Ellis Hartley Monroe (Mare Winningham). For once in this series, so far, I think many wouldn’t be too far off in saying they were rooting for Danes. He was the lesser of two evils in this episode even though it looks like it will be the catalyst which will propel Pullman’s character into the cult leader the season’s marketing had been hinting at.
While the episode wasn’t as good as episode 3’s “Dead of Night” it was still a very strong episode. This was an episode that actually added more pieces to the mystery of “Miracle Day” and just how far-ranging PhiCorp’s (and what could be others as hinted at cryptically in the episode’s final moments) role as the main antagonist for this new season. From how the episode ended for the Torchwood team it looks like we might see the team back on British soil as Gwen must now deal with her father’s safety.
The season continues to improve with each new episode and it’s a good thing this episode gave out more than just dribbles of clues. With only 6 more episodes to go it was high time the series went into the next gear as it races towards the answer to the question of “What is Miracle Day?”.
Everyone who has seen David O. Russell’s The Fighter knows by now the life and travails of not just Mickey Ward but that of his half-brother Dick Eklund. The film showed Ward at his lowest and struggles to get another chance to succeed and make a name for himself in the annals of boxing lore. The climactic bout between Ward and Neary to finish off the film was well choreographed and looked quite realistic (compared to the one’s for the Rocky series).
I am one of the film’s fans who would’ve picked another fight to truly make that impact to Ward finally making it big after all the drama and familial issues Mickey Ward had to maneuver to finally get his chance to shine. As great a fight as the Neary-Ward fight was in the end the one that should’ve been picked and re-enacted was the first of what would be called one of the greatest trilogy of fights between two fighters in boxing history: Gatti-Ward I.
The fight would earn Ring magazine’s 2002 fight of the year and the 9th round would go down as one of the greatest boxing rounds ever as both Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward would not give an inch to each other. To be able to see this re-enacted would’ve been a dream of any boxing fan. It’s a good thing we have HBO to keep a visual record of the round so we can continue to watch and marvel at two fighters who actually deserve the label of having “heart and soul”.
Not to be confused with the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film about elite assassins, this 2011 action-thriller is purported to be based on the true life story that was the basis for the controversial novel, The Feather Men, by British author Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The film has quite the cast of testosterone with Jason Statham, Robert DeNiro and Clive Owen, but also Dominic Purcell and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.
This action film is the first full-length feature for the Northern-Irish filmmaker Gary McKendry whose short film, Everything in This Country Must, was nominated for Best Live-Action Short Film for the 77th Academy Awards. It’s going to be interesting how this first major production turns out. One thing for sure the trailer made some great use of the classic Scorpion heavy metal anthem, “Rock You Like a Hurricane”. That use alone made this trailer a success in making me want to see this film.
It was just going to take before someone in one of the major Hollywood studios decided to tap into the board game market and pick one to adapt into a big-budget blockbuster. It worked wonders for Dreamworks and their bottom line with the Transformers trilogy. This time around we have Universal Pictures ready and set to release in the summer of 2012 their very own board game turned film in the Peter Berg-helmed Battleship.
Yes, you heard it right. That classic naval warfare game that made long road trips both easier to handle and also ripe for arguments has now been made into a film. There’s not much else to say other than watch the trailer. I will say that Liam Neeson must need a new mansion.
While looking over at something to watch as the night wore on I came across a film that I still consider to this day one of the best action films ever made. People may try and guess that I’m looking at a Michael Bay flick (wrong). Maybe it’s a John McTiernan classic 80’s actioner (wrong again). Or maybe it’s one of those Luc Besson Euro-action flicks which became such the rage amongst the hipster cineaste during the 90’s (wrong thrice). No the film I’m talking about comes from Hong Kong and was the last actin film directed by the master of bullet ballet himself, John Woo, before he left for Hollywood to try his luck.
The film is Hard Boiled and it has so many iconic film scenes that it would be difficult to just choose which one I love. So, I decided to go right at the beginning and picked the “Tea House” gun fight which opens up the film. To call this scene awesome would be an understatement. The scene looks like chaos the moment the first gun goes off, but looking at this scene over and over one cannot help but wonder at the musical-like dance choreography in how the gun fight unfolds from beginning to end.
It’s not a surprise that the musicals of the 50’s and 60’s were some of John Woo’s favorite films and it shows in how he choreographs and films the scene. Chow Yun Fat as the coolest cop ever to walk a beat with the kickass nickname of “Tequila” almost goes through the scene like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly except this time the lead is not dancing in the rain or with Ginger Rogers, but shooting and weaving his way through a tea house full of Triad gangsters.
Two of the coolest sequences in this scene would be the body grind down the stair bannister and then the final climactic sequence in the end. Also, the way Chow Yun Fat and the main gangster look as they shoot it out reminds one of samurai dueling each other right down to the very stance they sometimes use.
Michael Bay and his supporters could learn and thing or two from Woo and this scene.
Been an uneventful day for me today which usually means a slow posting day. One thing that I did come across which came out today was a new trailer for one of my more highly-anticipated games this year. The latest trailer for THQ and Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has been released and shows more gameplay footage and hints at the single-player campaign’s storyline.
I was once asked if I ever was given a chance to be a fictional character who would I choose to be. Well, as this trailer clearly shows I definitely want to be a Space Marine (or the more accurate term used in this fictional world: Adeptus Astartes). I mean look at the size of these guys and they even get to wear very ornate and baroque looking armor. Though I’m sure Lisa Marie would want that I paint the armor in more pastel colors.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine still set for a September 6, 2011 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC.
Torchwood: Miracle Day has now reached it’s third episode and we’re beginning to see a few more clues as to the truth about the so-called “Miracle Day” event which automatically made everyone on the planet Earth immortal (with the exception of the planet’s previous lone immortal Capt. Jack Harkness who became mortal instead). The series has been a bit slow about the reveals and dropping of clues and with only 10-episodes to this season it’s going to be interesting to see how Davies and his writers will tie things up when the tenth episode rolls around.
“Dead of Night” is the name of this latest episode and it’s actually quite an apropo title. The episode happens mostly at night and it’s during the darkness of night that we get a glimpse at some of the darker sides of some of the characters on the show. First, we see the team on the run after the bungled attempt by CIA deputy director Friedkin (Wayne Knight) to apprehend Matheson and the remaining Torchwood team at Dulles International. It’s interesting to notice how Rex and his fellow agent in Esther Drummond seemed out of sorts realizing that they’ve been betrayed by the very agency they work for (and maybe the very country they serve loyally) while both Jack and Gwen seem to take it all in stride as if they’ve been there and done that. Some have mentioned that the show doesn’t seem to be classic Torchwood and I can see where they’re coming from. The additions of the American characters to the team and the transplanting to US soil has created a different tone to the show which seem to be harder for the veteran fans to accept at the moment.
It’s definitely not the writing or the acting which has given this show an almost dual nature and feel. Tonight’s episode was written by Jane Espenson (who helped write the excellent sixth episode of Game of Thrones, “A Golden Crown”) and the flow of the show seemed to have improved for the previous one. Most of the set-up’s been completed and now the team is up and running once again with a new problem to solve. It’s that very problem which drives this episode as Jack and his new team begin to uncover one of the major clues that goes a long way into explaining the true nature of “Miracle Day”. I do think that finding out a major pharmaceutical conglomerate might have had a hand or knew in advance about “Miracle Day” wasn’t too much of a surprise. The way the episode paints PhiCorp and their plans for their wonder drug seems like the bad dream for everyone trying to overhaul the nation’s health care system for the better.
The show further explores Capt. Jack Harkness’ current situation as he begins to accept the fact that he’s finally dying (aging being the correct term people would use, but not for one so used to being immortal) and he doesn’t do as well as some would want him to. His emotional and drunken late-night call to Gwen after a one-night’s dalliance with a stranger picked up at a club brings back some emotional baggage and the sexual tension between the two. There’s an almost air of desperation in John Barrowman’s performance in this scene which should show new fans to the show that the series won’t be all about action and intrigue. There’s a reason the series has cultivated such a rabid fanbase and it’s been the performance by the actors, first and foremost. Eve Myles performance as Gwen on the receiving end of Harkness’ call were at times empathic, sad and frustrated as if she thought this was something the two were past but now have been brought back to the surface.
The other major performance of the night belongs to Bill Pullman’s pedophile murderer, Oswald Danes. His character still continues to be the show’s cipher. We’re still not sure what to think of Danes. He’s being made out to be a sympathetic character in one moment then a devious manipulator trying to find whatever advantage he could get his hands on to keep himself safe. We finally do get an idea who Danes is during a confrontation between him and Harkness and it spoke volumes at just how banal evil really is and it’s current face happens to be Bill Pullman’s. It’s going to be interesting to see how Danes, PhiCorp and “Miracle Day” will tie together once this season gets deeper into it’s main story.
“Dead of Night” was better than the last episode but still shows some growing pains as the writers are still coping with some of the major changes to the show’s usual tone. While some long-time fans of the show seem to not be as accepting of these changes I think it’s these changes that show’s growth in the series and such things do take time to find their footing. I expect more growing pains in the coming episodes, but I do think that this episode goes a long way into establishing the melding of old Torchwood with the new Torchwood.
Through the Shattered Lens 