One of my most-anticipated films this summer of 2014 has released it’s latest trailer and it shows the central conflict which will drive this sequel to 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
It’s been many years since the pandemic from the “simian flu” tore through the planet as shown during the end credits of the first film. Now the surviving humans must now contend with the growing population of hyper-intelligent apes led by Caesar from the first film.
While the first film showed the rise of Caesar as a revolutionary leader it looks like this sequel will now put him in the role of war leader as his apes must now gear up for a war with the surviving humans that can’t seem to be avoided.
Plus, all I can say is this: Apes on horses with assault rifles.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is set for a July 11, 2014 release date.
To say that 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes went a long way in washing out the taste out of fans mouth after having seen Tim Burton’s reboot of Planet of the Apes would be an understatement. Rupert Wyatt was able to bring the franchise back to prominence by actually treating the story as a sort of scifi allegory instead of a platform to once again exercise one’s filmmaking quirks.
It was a no-brainer that a sequel will follow up the success of the 2011 film. But with a fast-moving schedule there were several casualties. Rupert Wyatt didn’t think he had enough time to shoot the film the way he wanted to so he was replaced by Matt Reeves. James Franco is also gone from the project. Instead we get several veteran actors like Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Kirk Acevedo joining Andy Serkis.
The film seems to take places a decade or so after the release of the deadly virus at the end of the first film. Humanity has survived both the virus and the wars which followed it, but civilization as we know it now are a thing of the past. With humanity trying to rebuild it must now deal with a rising nation of genetically-enhanced apes led by Andy Serkis’ Caesar. With Gary Oldman on one side seeming to be the leader of humanity’s survivors I don’t see peace as being a goal in this film.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is set for a July 11, 2014 release.
Dreamworks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon was one of those films for 2010 that caught me completely off-guard. I had dismissed it as another Dreamworks attempt to try and take the crown from Pixar. So, it was quite a surprise when I finally saw it and realized that Dreamworks had out-Pixared Pixar with this latest offering.
The film did great in the box-office and made the names Hiccup and Toothless names to remember fondly. So, it was a given that a sequel was going to be made and now it is 2013 and we finally have the first teaser trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2 which will splash across all big-screen theaters around 2014.
To say that this teaser trailer evoked all the fun of the original would be an understatement. I would say that this simple teaser showing Toothless just flying around with Hiccup gave a better sense of the joy of flying than this year’s Man of Steel.
First we had the WonderCon Exclusive trailer for Pacific Rim drop a couple days ago. Now we have the CinemaCon Exclusive trailer for the upcoming The Wolverine which looks to be an improvement from this film’s first trailer.
This trailer for The Wolverine looks to emphasize the action in the film instead of the film’s story. We get many scenes of Wolverine doing what he does best. For fans of the character this storyline and setting should be recognizable as being based off of the Chris Claremont and Frank Miller mini-series about the character that helped create one of this character’s better backstory.
The Wolverine drops in the theaters on July 26, 2013.
The video above was released today by 20th Century Fox as part of their marketing machine to help create buzz for their upcoming summer blockbuster scifi film Prometheus.
It’s a clip of a fictional keynote speech by one Peter Weyland at the TED 2023 conference. Guy Pearce plays the role of Peter Weyland and talks about how technology’s influence in human history from the beginning with fire (he mentions the Greek myth of Prometheus stealing the technology of fire from the gods and giving it to man) all the way to artificial intelligence and realistic cybernetic constructs.
Anyone who has been a fan of the Alien franchise will recognize the name Weyland. It’s the fictional transnational corporation which has become a major part of the films in the franchise and, to a degree, even to the Predatorfranchise. They’re the corporation which sends Ripley and the crew of the ore mining hauler Nostromo to the desolate planet of LV-426 where they encounter the very lifeform that would become one of film’s iconic monsters. It is also the corporation which 70+ years later would send a terraforming colony to the very same planet which would become a major part of the plot for Aliens. Even the David Fincherdirected third film, Alien3, would use the corporation as the monolithic badguy behind-the-scenes.
Weyland is just part of the corporation’s name as through the years it would combine with another corporation to become Weyland-Yutani. While the aliens in the franchise have been the immediate threat in all the films in the franchise it would be Weyland-Yutani who became the face of the corporate evil that continues to try to get samples of the very alien the franchise is known for.
It’s going to be interesting how this viral video ties into the upcoming Ridley Scott “prequel” to Alienand whether Weyland-Yutani will play a major role in the film’s plot. One thing I’m sure is that Pearce definitely plays a convincing corporate visionary with a God-complex that’s part Steve Jobs and part Richard Branson (if both iconic businessmen channeled their inner-darkside).
If my memory serves me correctly the year of 2010 ended up becoming the year of the Action Team Flicks. Arriving first was the comic book film adaptation, The Losers, which didn’t do so well. Coming out last was the Stallone testosterone action vehicle, The Expendables, which did much better though it lacked somewhat in the grindhouse it was promising. Smack dab in the middle of these two was the film adaptation of the classic 80’s action tv series of the same name, The A-Team, which in the end I thought was the best of the three Action Team Flicks of 2010.
The A-Team was a film project that once had Mel Gibson attached to it right up to Bruce Willis, but delays upon delays pared back what would’ve been a mega-budgeted action blockbuster into something in the bargain basement (for a summer film). It starred Liam Neeson in the iconic role of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith made famous in the 80’s by George Peppard. Surrounding him would be Bradley Cooper as Templeton “Face” Peck, Sharlto Copley as H.M. “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock and veteran MMA fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as B.A. Baracus. Holding court over this A-Team was filmmaker Joe Carnahan working with a script he, Skip Woods and Brian Bloom (who also had a role as the amoral, sociopathic mercenary Pike).
The film took what was great and fun about the original tv series and gives it a 21st-century upgrade. To say that the film’s plot was secondary to watching the cast having fun on the screen would be an understatement. The story dealt with Smith and his team being accused of a crime they didn’t commit and must now escape from a military prison to find out who set them up and clear their name. It’s straight out of the tv series’ basic premise which managed to last a full on four seasons. Fortunately, Carnahan and his writers only had to make this premise last just a little over two hours. While some may think that two hours would be too long for this film it actually moved quite fast for something that went beyond the two hour mark.
Right from the beginning the cast looked to have been having the time of their lives. Neeson was Hannibal through and through while the other actors making up the rest of the team managed to imbue these well-known characters with their own brand of craziness, absurdity and panache. Just like the other two Action Team flicks of 2010 this film also had it’s share of scene-chewing villains in the form of Patrick Wilson as a duplicitous CIA agent and Brian Bloom as the sociopathic leader of a private military company at odds with Smith and his team. It’s these two groups who end up trying to outguess and outmanuever each other to get that final upper hand. Each encounter between these two groups just got more ridiculous with each passing event.
If one ever wondered if one could fly a tank while it was in freefall then this film answers that question. The climactic showdown at the LA shipyard at night has some of the most over-the-top action of the last couple years that wasn’t a scifi-actioner. Laws of physics doesn’t apply in The A-Team and the film revels in that notion as if telling the audience to either get onboard and enjoy the ride or get off and go on the Toad ride instead.
It’s a shame that The A-Team didn’t do as well in the box-office as some would’ve hoped because the film does set things up for further adventures for Neeson and his crew. What Carnahan ended up making won’t be breaking down the doors to the awards committee, but he did deliver on paying homage to the original tv series while adding his own brand of crazy to a film that had just the right amount of fun, ludicrous action to make it the best of 2010’s Action Team Flicks.
In 2001, Tim Burton released his highly-anticipated remake of the classic 1968 film adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s sci-fi novel which would ultimately be called, Planet of the Apes. Fans of the series were excited to see what idiosyncrasies Burton would add to the series which had petered out decades before. What people were hoping for and what they ended up getting were polar opposites. The film in of itself wasn’t an awful film, but it wasn’t a good one and many saw it as average at best and bad at it’s worst. Any plans to sequelize this remake fell by the wayside. It took almost a decade until a decision was made to continue the series in a different direction.
British filmmaker and writer Rupert Wyatt would be given the task to rejuvenate for a second time the Planet of the Apes franchise. He would be working with a screenplay written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver which would take the 4th film in the series, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and rework it for a much more current setting. The film was to be called Rise of the Apes and would star James Franco, John Lithgow and Frieda Pinto. As time went by the film would be renamed Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Despite having such an awkward sounding titles the film would end up to be one of the best films of the summer of 2011, if not one of the best of the year.
The film begins with a harrowing sequence in the jungles of Central Africa as poachers capture several chimpanzees to be sold as medical test subjects. Some of these chimps end up at a genetics research lab outside of San Francisco where one Will Rodman (James Franco) is working to find a cure to Alzheimer. He sees the encouraging result in one chimp he has named “Bright Eyes” (due to the side-effect to the test subject’s eyes taking on green flecks to their irises) and pushes for the next step and that’s human testing. The ensuing pitch to the company’s board of directors doesn’t go as planned as Bright Eyes goes on a violent rampage leading to her being put down and the project shelved. Her reaction they soon find out has less to do with the breakthrough treatment and more of a maternal instinct to protect her baby she secretly gave birth to. Will takes the baby chimp home in secret temporarily, but soon becomes attached to it as does his Alzheimer stricken father (John Lithgow) who names it Caesar.
The first third of the film sees Caesar showing an inherited hyper-intelligence from his genetically-treated mother. Caesar becomes an integral part of the Rodman household even to the point that Will has taught Caesar to call him father. It’s a family dynamic which would help mold Caesar into something more than just a wild animal. He begins to show signs of humanity which would become bedrock of his decision later in the film to turn become the revolutionary that the film has been leading up to the moment Caesar gets sent to a primate sanctuary after a violent encounter with a boorish neighbor to end the first reel of the film.
It’s during the second reel which sees Caesar realize that while he may as smart (maybe even smarter) than the humans he would never be a part of that world. In the sanctuary he learns that his very uniqueness has set him apart from the other primates. He sees the abuse inflicted on his fellow primates and longing to be back to his “home” with Will turns to a focus need to free himself and his people. He does this in the only fashion he knows would succeed. With the help from a couple canisters containing the aerosol-based treatment which increased his mother’s intelligence, Caesar frees everyone from the sanctuary and takes the fight to the humans as they make for the wilds of the Muir Redwood Forest north of San Francisco.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes might look to be an action-packed film from how the trailers and tv spots has been pushing the film, but it actually only has three major action sequences and they’re integral to each third of the film in helping advance the story. These were not action for the sake of having action on the screen. Writers Jaffa and Silver do a great job in figuring out that the real strength of the film would be Caesar’s journey from precocious ape child, rebellious teen and then his final unveiling as the leader of a people who have shaken off the shackles of medical research and their forced sacrifice for the greater good.
The film was never about the humans played by Franco, Pinto and Lithgow. It was always about Caesar and the film hinged on the audience believing Caesar as a character. In that regard, the work by WETA Digital should be commended as should Andy Serkis’ performance as Caesar. Serkis’ motion capture performance goes beyond just mimicking the movement of an ape. His own acting as Caesar comes through in even in the digital form of Caesar. In fact, the film never had a real ape used during filming. From Caesar right up to the scarred ape Koba every ape in the film was the work of WETA Digital’s furthering the motion capture work they had done in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and James Cameron’s Avatar. Never once during the two hour running time of the film did I ever not believe I was watching apes on the screen. Every emotion Caesar goes through during the film was able to show through facial expressions and body language.
It’s the strength of Serkis’ mo-cap work and the overall execution of Caesar’s character by WETA which also highlighted the one major weakness of the film through it’s underdeveloped human characters. Whether it was Franco’s benevolent Dr. Frankenstein-like Will Rodman right up to his greedy, amoral boss in the company (played by David Oyelowo), all the human’s in the film were very one-note and mostly served to propel Caesar’s story forward. At times, Franco actually seemed to be just as he was during his hosting gig during the Academy Awards earlier in the year. These were not bad performances by the actors involved. They were just there and part of it was due to how underwritten their characters were.
To help balance out this flaw in the film’s non-ape character would be the beautiful work by the film’s cinematographer in Andrew Lesnie. He has always been well-known for beautiful, majestic panoramic shot of the world as he had demonstrated in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. He does the same for this film as we see some beautiful shots of the Muir Redwood forest, of San Francisco’s skyline and in the climactic battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. The city of San Francisco and it’s iconic red-hued bridge and the surrounding area has never been shot as gorgeous as Lesnie has done with his DP work on this film.
Even with some of the characters in the film being underwritten the film succeeds through Rupert Wyatt’s direction which keeps the film moving efficiently, but also bringing out the emotional content of the film’s script in an organic way. Film has always been about manipulating the audience’s emotions. It’s when a director does so and make it seem normal is when such manipulation doesn’t come through for those watching to feel. Then add to this Serkis’ exceptional work as Caesar with some major digital artistry from the folks over at WETA Digital and Rise of the Planet of the Apes does rise above it’s B-movie foundation into something that should live beyond the summer and for years to come.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes does a great job and a long way towards wiping off the bad taste left behind by Tim Burton’s failed attempt to remake the franchise. We didn’t need something exotic and idiosyncratic to give the franchise a fresh breath of life. It seems all it needed was a very good story, some exceptional work from Andy Serkis and WETA Digital and a filmmaker knowing how to tell the story in a natural fashion and not fall into the temptation to go into shock and awe to tell it. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a film that could stand-alone, but it does something that many trying to create film franchises never seem to do right: it makes people want to see what happens next in the lives of Caesar and his apes.
To say that I’m not a big Jonah Hill fan would be an understatement. The characters he has played on film have ranged from annoyingly nebbish to downright obnoxious. An almost irrational rage builds up in me whenever I see a trailer with him in it either as a supporting cast member or one of the leads. To my surprise when I saw the red band trailer of his upcoming R-rated comedy, The Sitter, the rage I was feeling petered out the more I watched the trailer.
The Sitter stars Jonah Hill and is directed by one David Gordon Green who also made the hilarious Pineapple Express and also one of the creators of the HBO comedy series, Eastbound & Down. Unfortunately, Green also directed the very unfunny comedy earlier in 2011 called Your Highness. Here’s to hoping that The Sitter is more of the very hilarious kind and not the unfunny that was his latest comedy film this year.
From what I could tell in the trailer this film looks almost like a remake of the 80’s comedy, Adventures in Babysitting starring Elisabeth Shue. That was a funny film and if Jonah Hill and Green can deliver the raunchiness and laughs then I have a feeling The Sitter may just be worth a look-see.
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.
Last night, as I struggled to get some sleep, I ended up turning on the television to HBO and watching a truly infamous film — 1970’s Myra Breckenridge. Based on a novel by Gore Vidal (a writer that I generally have little use for), Myra Breckinridge is infamous for being one of two X-rated film released by 20th Century Fox in 1970. (The other one was Russ Meyer’s Beyond The Valley of the Dolls.)
Why Was I Watching It?
Because I’ve read a lot of books devoted to “the worst films ever made.” And all of them mention 1970’s Myra Breckinridge as being one of the worst ever made. And having seen the film, I can say that they’re right.
What’s It About?
Well, that’s a good question. Okay, there’s a bisexual film critic named Myron Breckinridge (played by an actual film critic named Red Reed). Myron gets a sex change operation from a pot-smoking doctor played by John Carradine. “It won’t grow back,” Carradine warns him.
Next thing you know, Myron is Myra and is now being played by Raquel Welch. Pretending to be Myron’s window, Myra goes to the acting school that is run by Myron’s uncle Buck (John Huston) and ends up falling in love with an acting student (played, pretty badly in her film debut, by Farrah Fawcett). Unfortunately, Fawcett’s in love with a cowboy from Oklahoma so Myra ends up anally raping the cowboy with a big dildo.
Oh, and a 70 year-old Mae West in the film for some reason. She plays a talent agent.
It all sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is.
What Worked?
Nothing. Just in case I’m not being clear, allow me to clarify: Nothing. Seriously, this may indeed be the worst movie I have ever actually sat through. What’s said is that it didn’t even work on a “so-bad-its-good” level. I love trashy film but Myra Breckinridge isn’t really interesting enough to be trashy. It’s just an amazingly boring film that thinks it’s about sex.
I’ve also read some who have claimed that this film, bad as it is, has a certain camp appeal. And, if you’ve never actually seen a campy film, you might think that Myra Breckinridge is camp. However, camp is not boring. Myra Breckinridge is.
Actually, there is one scene that has an odd, “you’ve-got-to-see-this-crap” appeal to it and here it is. Mae West sings “Hard to Handle.”
What Doesn’t Work:
The entire freaking film. Seriously. I mean, I don’t even know where to begin or what specifically to point out because, if you simply take this film’s failings on a problem-by-problem basis, it creates the false impression that the film is somewhat watchable.
Okay, here’s a few things that I simply will not be able to live with myself if I don’t take a few moments to be a bitch about:
1) There’s a lot of bad movies that are distinguished by interesting or, at the very least, watchable performances. It’s as if the actors realize that they’re going to go down with the ship unless they bring something new to the film. (Meanwhile, so-called great films feature some of the worst performances this side of Avatar…) Unfortunately, Myra Breckinridge is not one of those films. The cast alternates beyond going insanely overboard (like John Huston and Rex Reed) to delivering their lines with a dull contempt that seems to be directed as much at us as at themselves (like Raquel Welch.)
By the way, Raquel Welch is actually one of my favorite of the old school film stars. For me, she’s a bit of a role model, a strong Latina who never felt the need to apologize for being both a sex symbol and an intelligent, succesful woman. But Welch really does give a pretty bad performance here. Then again, I would argue that she gives the material exactly the amount of effort it deserves.
2) As bad as the cast is, no one is as terrible as Mae West. The 70 year-old West came out of retirement to play her role here. Anyway, it’s hard to understand why she’s in this film. At one point, when she meets a 6’7 actor, she says she’s only concerned with the seven inches. Now, imagine this being said by your great-great-great-grandma and you have some idea what it’s like to watch her performance here.
3) This film was made in 1970 and it attempts to be all counter-cultural by having “hippies” wandering around in the background. As well, we get a lot of hard-hitting political satire. By that, I mean that various fat men in cowboy hats pop up and complain about “smut” and “nudity” in the movies. I guess the audience is supposed to go, “Oh my God, they’re talking about movies like this!” It’s for this reason that I think that Myra Breckinridge is actually secretly meant to be a piece of right-wing propaganda.
4) Finally, for no real reason, clips from old 20th Century Fox films are littered throughout the film, popping up randomly to…well, I was going to say “comment on the action,” but few of them manage to do that. Basically, it works like this: you see Raquel Welch anally raping a man with a dildo. And then you see a clip of Stan Laurel for a few seconds. Then, you’re back to Raquel anally raping the man. Suddenly, there’s a clip of Claudette Colbert smiling. Suddenly, Raquel’s back and she’s still anally raping the man. And by the way, I’m not just making this up so I’ll have an example. This is what actually happens in the film.
5) And again, allow me to clarify that this film — which features Raquel Welch using a dildo to anally rape a man — is still one of the most boring things ever made.
6) “Okay,” you’re saying, “if you hated it so much then why did you sit through the entire freaking movie, Lisa?” I did it because, once I start watching a movie, I can’t stop watching until it ends. That’s my addiction. That’s my curse. That’s a duty that I’ve proudly accepted as a film lover. And not even Myra Breckenridge is going to keep me from doing my duty.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments:
Yes, I know that this is where I traditionally offer up some sort of teasingly vague comment about my first year at college or where I admit that I’m scared of dogs, heights, swimming, and the area directly behind the television. And you would be justified in thinking that a film that claims to celebrate sexual freedom and bisexuality would give me the perfect excuse to be all sorts of TMI.
But you know what? There were absolutely no “Oh my God! Just like me!” TMI moments in Myra Breckenridge because there was not one single moment that, in any way, rang true or seemed to possess any sort of insight about…well, about anything. For an X-rated film that was specifically about sexuality, Myra Breckinridge left me as dry as the Sahara.
So, sorry — for the first time, I can say that I watched something that had absolutely no “OMG! Just like me!” moments.
Through the Shattered Lens 