1. Jason Apuzzo – Page 12 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

Sword & Sandal Report: Andy Whitfield, Immortals, Spartans, Vikings + Mel Gibson Goes Old Testament

By Jason Apuzzo. • We had some very sad news lately in the Sword & Sandal world with the passing of Spartacus’ Andy Whitfield, who recently succombed to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The intense Whitfield was only 39 years old, and after his first – and only – season as the star of the hit cable series Spartacus on Starz his career really seemed to be on the rise. We extend our condolences to his family and friends and to his colleagues at Starz – and the network will be holding an Andy Whitfield-Spartacus marathon in his honor. Whitfield will be missed; the arena won’t be the same without him.

• Otherwise, the biggest news of late on the Sword & Sandal front is the long-rumored return of Mel Gibson to the genre with a new film project on the Maccabees story, the freedom-fighting tale of Jewish revolt against Syrian and Hellenic rule in second century B.C. Judea – essentially the story that inspired Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. Almost as striking as the fact that Gibson is taking on this material is that the gruff and colorful Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) will apparently be returning from self-exiled Hollywood purgatory to write the screenplay – returning to material with which he is familiar, having previously written about the Holocaust in Hungary.

How do I react to all this? Twenty years ago this project would’ve sounded great. Today it sounds like two middle-aged guys who want to bond over bottles of Cazadores while auditioning dancing girls. In the wake of Gibson’s distasteful anti-Semitic tirades, this film is feeling like his belated mea culpa, like D.W. Griffith making Intolerance as penance for Birth of a Nation – which is not to imply, incidentally, that Gibson has a fraction of Griffith’s talent or determination.

Look, Gibson can do whatever he wants to do with his career as far as I’m concerned. Personally, however, I can’t watch his films anymore – even the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon movies I enjoyed so much years ago. His behavior has ruined those films for me; the magic is gone, Gibson’s ‘charm’ eroded away after too many boozy encounters with police, racist and/or paranoid rants, and Russian mistresses. I get very tired of people these days talking about how ‘George Lucas spoiled their childhood’ just because he re-edited a few scenes from Star Wars, or dropped some new digital creatures into the back of Jabba’s palace. You know who’s really spoiled a lot of fond memories from my teenage years? Mel Gibson. I look forward to the day when Gibson’s personal psychodramas are no longer routinely inflicted on us as industry news.

FireIce — Concept art for "Fire and Ice."

• A lot of new Sword & Sandal projects are suddenly in the works: a new Spartacus movie is on the way; Warner Brothers has acquired a Viking-related project for Alexander Skarsgard, a project said to be in the Gladiator-Braveheart vein; there’s yet another new Viking project floating around that deals with the Viking slave trade in Irishmen (centuries before the Irish were owned by the USC Trojans); The Rock is in talks to play Goliath in Goliath; Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, Wrath of the Titans) is attached to a big new Julius Caesar movie that would apparently cover “Caesar’s Spanish campaign, his formation of the 10th Legion, and the battles that would eventually establish Caesar as ruler of the Roman republic” (this is great history to cover in a film); Justin Lin will now only be producing the Highlander reboot, because a new director has come on board; 300: Battle of Artemisia (which now has a director) will have small roles for Gerard Butler and Lena Headey, meaning that Butler will have to train for 6 months to get his abs in shape for 30 seconds of screen time; and some sweet new concept art (see to the right) is out for the Frank Frazetta-inspired Fire and Ice that Robert Rodriguez wants to do, a film that will hopefully prevent Rodriguez from doing any Machete sequels.

• The Immortals continues to roll down the tracks with a new marketing push, although the film still isn’t looking any better than it did before. Is it the bad dialogue? The trite storyline? Mickey Rourke wearing bunny ears? Hard to say. A lot of eyes will be on the film in November because it stars the new Superman (Henry Cavill), and because Freida Pinto will likely be getting her last chance to make an impression in a major film. Director Tarsem Singh will probably survive, of course, because he can always be hired to do Christian Dior ads.

In any case, The Immortals has a new trailer, a new TV spot, poster, and some new pics.

RourkeEars — Mickey Rourke wearing bunny ears in "Immortals."

Continue reading Sword & Sandal Report: Andy Whitfield, Immortals, Spartans, Vikings + Mel Gibson Goes Old Testament

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Trailer

By Jason Apuzzo. A new trailer is out for David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which opens December 21st. You can check out the trailer above; be advised that it’s on the adult/mature side.

This trailer overall is much less striking than the first one, and is obviously intended to introduce the main characters and also more elements of the plot. I like the mood and atmosphere of it – the aggressive cutting and ominous music work well – but unfortunately I think Fincher is giving us too much plot here and too many characters, because outside of the somewhat freakish Lisbeth Salander (who comes across here like a self-mortifying, medieval monk) everything else about this film looks quite conventional, as thrillers go. Were it not for Christopher Plummer’s presence, I doubt I’d even be interested in watching this film. Why? Because as is so often the case with Fincher’s films, I’m wondering whether this one is promising more originality than it will actually deliver. And as for Daniel Craig, he continues to be affectless and dull; it’s difficult to imagine watching him over the course of what is intended to be a trilogy.

In any case, I’m curious as to what people think – especially those of you who’ve have read the books or seen the Noomi Rapace films. Are you getting what you want here?

Posted on September 22nd, 2011 at 4:19pm.

The J. Edgar Trailer

By Jason Apuzzo. The first trailer for the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar was released yesterday, and I wanted to say a few words about it.

Regular LFM readers know that back in July I did an in-depth script review of J. Edgar, and for the time being I’d rather not recapitulate what was said then in terms of the film’s basic storyline and themes; suffice it to say that if you read this site routinely, you already know in great detail what J. Edgar is going to be about. What I’d like to comment on instead, because for the first time in the trailer we’re get an extended look at it, is DiCaprio’s performance as Hoover. And based on what I’m seeing in the trailer, I’m not terribly impressed.

Here is how I evaluate DiCaprio: over the years he’s evolved into a stylish leading man, best suited to films like Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator or even Inception (a film I otherwise disliked) in which he can trade off his smooth good looks and impish disposition to nice effect. Truth be told, DiCaprio at this point is more of a European, Alain Delon-type lothario than a gritty, James Cagney-style brawler, which is really what the J. Edgar Hoover story needs. DiCaprio temperamentally belongs in sophisticated, Transatlantic fare like Delon’s Once a Thief (1965) or The Leopard (1963), rather than in a big, sprawling, boisterous biopic about America’s top cop.

In the J. Edgar trailer, DiCaprio is still coming across to me as too youthful and soft to carry a picture like this. This film needed someone like a Jack Nicholson (think Hoffa), a young Robert De Niro (a la Raging Bull) or even a younger Clint Eastwood himself (circa Heartbreak Ridge) to pull off a character of this scale – to make the character feel truly grand, fearsome, just and tragic. As things stand, this is looking a little bit like high school drama hour.

Posted on September 20th, 2011 at 2:59pm.

Cold War Update: Tinker, Tailor, Playboy Bunnies & Spies + Top Gun Returns in 3D!

By Jason Apuzzo. • If you needed any more evidence that the 80s are back in a big way, word comes this week that Top Gun is being retrofit into 3D and should hit theaters in 2012. This is big news because so far as I’m aware it represents the first time a ‘library’ film title not made by James Cameron (Titanic) or George Lucas (the Star Wars saga) is being converted into 3D for theatrical release. If Top Gun 3D performs well, expect more such conversions down the line and a lot of classic film titles coming back to your local theaters – a very welcome development, in my opinion. It’s certainly better than paying $15 to watch a stereoscopic version of Green Lantern.

But lets talk Maverick. Regular LFM readers know how highly I think of Top Gun, a signature film from my youth – not to mention a watershed moment in my relationship with aviator sunglasses. Why did people of my generation love that film so much? Was it the appeal of being a hot-shot jet pilot? Was it the beach volleyball? The Kawasakis? The girls? Sunsets in San Diego? Maybe it was Iceman’s sweet flat-top haircut. Or Tom Skerritt chewing out Tom Cruise, slyly motiving him by implying he wasn’t as committed as his father. Maybe it was Cruise’s great line about flying “inverted,” or the angry bald guy in the flight-ops center barking, “Damnit, Maverick!” every five minutes.

Whatever it was, Top Gun was the movie from the 80s that romanticized American military life – and did so without having to demonize any particular enemy nation. It was a film that hit the sweet spot, made a dull teenage summer exciting, and incidentally launched Tom Cruise’s career. How good was Top Gun? I personally have a friend whom I strongly suspect was pulled into a career in Naval aviation – not to mention beach volleyball – at least in part due to this film. And who could blame him? Top Gun paints an appealing, glamorous picture of serving your country. I’ll definitely be first in line when Top Gun 3D arrives next year. [Btw, whatever happened to Berlin?]

• A slew of Cold War-related films are suddenly in development right now. One of the ones I’m most excited about is something called Hunter Killer, which may end up starring Gerard Butler and was originally supposed be directed by Phillip Noyce (Salt). Here’s how JoBlo describes it:

HUNTER KILLER, based on the book “Firing Point,” follows an untested submarine captain who must work with a Navy SEAL team to rescue the Russian president, who has been taken prisoner during a military coup, in an effort to stop a rogue Russian General from igniting World War III.

There seem to be a lot of ‘rogue Russian generals’ in the movies these days, all trying to re-ignite the Cold War. Wasn’t there one in X-Men: First Class? And Salt? If Putin’s the Alpha Dog he pretends to be, he really should put the kabosh on these people. In any case, even without a director or star, Hunter Killer is apparently hot enough to have a release date of Dec. 21st, 2012.

• Even though it doesn’t open until Dec. 9th, a major marketing push is being made for the new adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’m not a Le Carré fan (as for espionage novels, I’m more of an Eric Ambler man), but a dark, cerebral little Cold War spy thriller? With a superb British cast? After a summer of idiotic, deafening comic book movies, that’s sounding quite appealing. Besides, now that Gary Oldman is more or less done taking checks for Harry Potter and the Batman films, perhaps he can return to actual acting. Read about Tinker here, see new posters for the film (here and here) and a new featurette; John Le Carré will be making a cameo in the film; the film also has three new trailers (here, here and here), and here’s a clip from the film.

• Another project I’m excited about is something called Red Star that was picked up this summer by Warner Brothers for producer Neil Moritz (Battle: Los Angeles). The project is based on a comic series by Christian Gossett, and according to THR the story is “set in an alternate USSR where futuristic technology and magical elements co-exist. The main character is a soldier in the Red Fleet and his wife, who become keys to defeating a former brutal ruler and his minions.”

This would certainly have to be an alternate USSR, if ‘futuristic technology’ is involved. I still remember driving in a Russian Lada sedan on a trip to Moscow as a teenager, and my spine still hasn’t recovered. In any case, Timur Bekmambetov was previously attached to this project when it was at Universal – we’ll see if he stays with it at Warners …

• Some other promising new projects on the horizon include a $100 million Korean war-era epic called 1950, to be directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious). The story follows a journalist who travels across the Korean peninsula with a platoon of Marines in the midst of a mass, Christmas Eve evacuation of 200,000 South Koreans escaping the oncoming Chinese communist and North Korean armies. Also: a new anti-communist drama called Closer to the Moon is being made starring Game of Thrones’ Harry Lloyd; the Cold War sci-fi classic Colossus: The Forbin Project is getting a remake … but the best news by far is that we may get a Danger Girl movie starring Milla Jovovich, Sofia Vergara and Kate Beckinsale! Do I believe these rumors? I’m not sure I do, but I can’t begin to describe what a great idea this would be. If you’re not familiar with Danger Girl, it’s a comic book series about a trio of impossibly curvaceous female spies sent on missions to retrieve mystic relics also sought after by a powerful international crime syndicate. Think Charlie’s Angels by way of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The stories are a lot of fun, inventive, playfully sexy, and it’s easy to imagine something like this working much better than even Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider films did. And since Sofia Vergara’s name is being thrown around, here’s hoping they do it in 3D.

• Some fabulous news of late is that Steven Soderbergh’s Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie will be set in the 1960s, and won’t feature George Clooney! Hooray! Is Michael Fassbender available?

• Die Hard 5 has a new director, and the film may take place in Russia. Does anybody still care about Die Hard? Please tell me if you do below, along with why.

• Speaking of Tom Cruise, Mission-Impossible: Ghost Protocol is rattling its way down the tracks. The film is now set to debut on Dec. 21st, there is a new poster out, along with new promo images (see here and here), and producer J.J. Abrams has been talking up the film’s stunts and the scale of the film in IMAX. I think MI4 actually had the best trailer of the summer, and the film opens with no less than the destruction of Red Square – not a bad way to grab your attention. I’m looking forward to this one, although this series hasn’t always worked before …

Continue reading Cold War Update: Tinker, Tailor, Playboy Bunnies & Spies + Top Gun Returns in 3D!

For The 10 Year Anniversary of 9/11 LFM Presents a New Series: Terror Watch

strikeback — From "Strike Back" on Cinemax.

By Jason Apuzzo. With the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 approaching, I thought today would be a good time to launch a new series here at Libertas that I’ve been intending to do for a while, called Terror Watch. Terror Watch will join our other ongoing Libertas series (Invasion Alerts, Cold War Updates, Sword & Sandal Reports) and will cover the new wave of films, TV series, video games and even graphic novels dealing with the War on Terror.

The very fact that we’re able to do such a series is representative of a gradual and welcome change that’s taken place in Hollywood and popular culture over the past several years, a change whereby positive depictions of the War on Terror as a just and necessary cause are no longer considered taboo in entertainment circles. This change has been building for several years now (and has already been rippling through science fiction for quite a while), although it was accelerated considerably this past May by Navy SEAL Team 6’s successful mission against Osama bin Laden – an event that appears to have semi-officially opened a new chapter in Hollywood’s willingness to depict the struggle against terrorism as a vital activity.

And although one might be tempted to treat this development as coming too late to affect the public’s morale regarding the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, my sense is that how history perceives those conflicts is still very much up for grabs, especially for younger Americans – and so this new trend is one that I very much welcome. This does not mean, of course, that all of the projects we’ll be discussing will be very good – I suspect quite a few may be dreadful – but I advise people to keep an open mind. Certainly several recent projects – The Devil’s Double and Four Lions, most notably – have really been superb, and overall I think there is reason for optimism.

Why optimism, you might ask? Because Hollywood isn’t as dominated as it used to be by the Baby Boomers.

For his Washington Times article today entitled, “Hollywood AWOL in War on Terrorism,” my colleague Christian Toto kindly asked me to comment on Hollywood’s overall reaction, ten years on, to 9/11 and the War on Terror. Here is what I said:

Jason Apuzzo, conservative filmmaker and editor of Libertas Film Magazine, says politics clearly played a role in Hollywood’s initial reaction to 9/11. “Their primary response [to 9/11] was to ignore it,” Mr. Apuzzo says. But that appears to be changing, witness the upcoming film on Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of Navy SEALs due for release next year, as well as director Peter Berg’s adaptation of “Lone Survivor,” a film detailing the hunt for a Taliban leader. “As the baby boomers start to retire off the scene in Hollywood, it’s becoming less of a factor,” Mr. Apuzzo says of the industry’s politically charged greenlighting process. “Younger people are not as hesitant about dealing with this issue.”

krugerspecial — Diane Kruger is a journalist captured by The Taliban in "Special Forces."

Many people nowadays believe that the Obama Presidency is the primary reason behind whatever change of heart there’s been in Hollywood of late regarding the War on Terror, and there is no doubt some truth in this. Yet while I’m sure that Obama’s Presidency – and specifically his successful management of the bin Laden raid – plays some role here, my sense is that this change was likely coming regardless, due to the gradual changeover of the industry to a younger (i.e., non-Baby Boomer) generation. By my experience, the younger Hollywood generation – and this includes the independent filmmaking world – is much less ideologically driven than the Boomers were, and are far less conflicted about the current war than was the Vietnam generation.

So this is ultimately why I’m optimistic: the people dominating Hollywood today are not the same people who were running the industry 10 years ago right after the 9/11 attacks. They are, instead, a generation driven by a desire to simply make careers for themselves – rather than to fight proxy culture-wars through the cinema, as their parents’ generation so often did.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the War on Terror projects that are heading our way down the tracks …

Continue reading For The 10 Year Anniversary of 9/11 LFM Presents a New Series: Terror Watch

Co-eds & Cajuns: LFM Mini-Review of Shark Night 3D

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Riffing off last year’s surprise cult hit Piranha 3D, Rogue Pictures cross-breeds Jaws with Deliverance to create Shark Night 3D – an energetic genre quickie that follows a pack of sexy, edible college students as they navigate a nightmarish evening along Louisiana’s backwaters, dodging voracious sharks and insane Cajuns.

THE SKINNY: Though not half as wild or excessive as Piranha, the surprisingly satisfying Shark Night delivers plenty of thrills, bikinis and even some unexpected satire – while turning Lake Pontchartrain into one of the creepiest cinema backwaters since Boggy Creek.

WHAT WORKS: • The film’s remote Louisiana locations create an unnerving and slightly bizarre atmosphere – an upside-down, backwoods world in which the otherwise ludicrous storyline of shark-fueled Cajun revenge against fancy college kids actually makes (some) sense.

• Sara Paxton delivers a surprisingly credible performance as the lead co-ed, given that she spends the entire film either in an eye-popping cyan bikini or covered in fish-gore.

• It’s hard not to love the film’s colorful, freakish Cajuns – one of whom has teeth sharpened like a possum, another of whom quotes Nietzsche (“It’s beyond good and evil!”) while describing his bizarre, money-making scheme to … ***SPOILER WARNING*** … live-webcast college students being eaten by sharks. ***END OF SPOILERS*** These backwater charismatics give the film a slightly Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe.

• The 3D is excellent, with the film having been shot natively in that format. The underwater scenes in particular look frothy and alive.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • The film’s lead bad-guy, as played by male model Chris Carmack, is too much of a pretty boy and seems out of place among the ragin’ Cajuns.

• There’s far too much build-up in getting to know the various college kids, none of whom are all that interesting and most of whom are chowder by film’s end.

• The sharks look a little too nimble and digital. I miss the days when movie sharks were bulky, slow and rubber.

• For much of the film, the sharks seem smarter than the college kids. Then again, perhaps that was the point.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The basic fun of Shark Night, its biggest surprise, is that the behavior of the human villains is far more outrageous and ruthless than anything the sharks can muster. In the dog-eat-dog world of today’s economy, the film seems to be saying, it’s amazing what some people will do to get a head. Or to get an arm. Or a leg.

(Incidentally, Shark Night is rated PG-13, and most of the film’s violence and nudity are merely implied. This film doesn’t even come close to the bacchic excesses of Piranha, which probably deserved an NC-17.)

There have been some great underwater creature features over the years, from the 3D Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954, to Jaws and The Deep in the 1970s, to last year’s Piranha (see my review here; Piranha 3DD, with David Hasselhoff and Gary Busey, comes out November 23rd). Shark Night is definitely a minor entry in this genre, but it holds its own.

What’s surprising is that the people behind this unassuming little thriller thought to supplement their toothy sharks with creepy human characters, backwater Cajuns apparently suffering from a major case of class envy. These Cajuns ridicule and sneer at the college kids, and it’s hard to blame them given the way these supposedly brainy kids walk (or swim) right into one obvious trap after another. Shark Night indulges in a certain amount of satire directed not only at the rustic Cajuns, with their outrageous and gruesome money-making scheme, but also toward naive city kids who are useless outside of their safe, academic/urban environments. The same kids who seem hip on their Tulane University campus early in the film – lazily playing Halo, indulging in loose sex talk, and planning their lucrative post-collegiate careers – get ripped to pieces out in the ‘real’ world, fooled at every turn by their cagey Cajun rivals. It’s not exactly Tennessee Williams material, but Shark Night knows when to amplify the terror of the sharks with a dash of class warfare – all to juicy, amusing effect.

I haven’t had the chance to visit Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina, although I’ve been very eager to get back. I think I’ll stick to the cities, though. Those Cajun guys look too clever for me, and I wouldn’t want to end up as some shark’s gumbo.

Posted on September 3rd, 2011 at 2:43pm.