By Jason Apuzzo. We wanted to remind Libertas readers that The Devil’s Double, a new film about the mobster-like lifestyle of Saddam Hussein’s son Uday (‘The Black Prince”) – and the moral crisis faced by his body double Latif Yahia – hits theaters this Friday, July 29th. The film stars Dominic Cooper (Howard Stark in Captain America) as both Uday and Latif Yahia, and also stars French actress Ludivine Sangier as Uday’s mistress, Sarrab. The film is based on the real-life memoirs of Latif Yahia, and is directed by veteran director Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day, The Sopranos, Next). Libertas’ Joe Bendel reviewed The Devil’s Double in January at Sundance and absolutely loved it. Be sure to catch the film’s trailer here, and you can also see a colorful new music video remix of the trailer here.
By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Marvel Comics rolls out an old-school take on the Captain America comic book series, bringing the revered character to life by way of depicting his origins fighting Nazis in World War II … all as a set up for next summer’s mega-superhero go-round, The Avengers.
THE SKINNY:Captain America makes for reasonably pleasant, unstressful summer entertainment, but Marvel takes no chances here – literally, none whatsoever – in picking the hardy Captain’s enemies, so as to guarantee that absolutely nobody gets offended by this film … not even Germans. Although Captain America has been around for some 70 years, fighting everything from Russian communists to terrorists to mad supercomputers, Marvel has him back fighting Nazis again – technically, rogue Nazis (the usual ones weren’t good enough?) – as if America hasn’t had any new enemies since that time. Origin-story purists will be thrilled; everyone else will likely yawn.
WHAT WORKS: • From leads Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America and Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, to veteran stars like Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving and Stanley Tucci in supporting roles, the cast here creates characters who believably inhabit the World War II milieu – even if their roles rarely rise above cliché.
• The production design and visual FX are sumptuous, presenting a highly romanticized vision of the World War II era – not unlike something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rocketeer or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
• Much effort is taken to distinguish Captain America’s regular-guy, shrimpy-kid-from-Brooklyn origins from the usual ‘Chosen One’/supernatural boy-toy so common in comic book fare. This lends the film an unmistakably old-fashioned American vibe.
By Jason Apuzzo. In advance of Comic-Con, Legendary has just taken the unusual step of releasing a trailer for Frank Miller’s forthcoming Holy Terror, which will be released by Legendary as its inaugural graphic novel title on September 14th.
Here’s how Legendary described Holy Terror in a press release from June, courtesy of Deadline:
In HOLY TERROR, join The Fixer, a brand new, hard-edged hero as he battles terror. The graphic novel is a no-holds-barred action thriller told in Miller’s trademark high-contrast, black-and-white visual style, which seizes the political zeitgeist by the throat and doesn’t let go until the last page.
THR also had this to say about the project, back in June:
Holy Terror was originally conceived by Miller as a story of Batman taking on those responsible for the attacks on 9-11 but was scrapped by DC several years ago. … The political themes and ties to 9-11 will almost certainly remain.”
Miller is famous, of course, not only for his work on the Batman comic/graphic novel series but also for 300 and Sin City. We’re certainly looking to what he’s cooked up here.
As I’ve said before, I like the concept of building a film around the ancient Greek hero Theseus, lover of Ariadne and slayer of the Minotaur – but from this new trailer it still looks we’re dealing with more CGI overkill here from the same producing team that gave us 300 – a film which, for all its cheeky/politically incorrect depiction of the ancient Persians, still felt way too much like a cross between a video game and a Chanel ad. Immortals looks like it’s picking up right where 300 and the Clash of the Titans remake left off, substituting CGI and TV commercial styling for a lack of storyline or interesting characters. I’ve seen two trailers for this film so far, and I still have no idea what the film is about – why, for example, as the tagline goes, ‘the gods need a hero’ (gods being gods, they usually don’t need human heroes) – although I have seen a lot of massed CGI armies and shouting. And Mickey Rourke wearing what look like Bronze Age bunny ears.
And by the way, where’s the Minotaur in this film? There’s no sign of it – nor of the Labyrinth. I’m hoping the creators of this film are aware that what Theseus is most famous for is slaying the Minotaur inside the Labyrinth – think of slaying the Minotaur as being for Theseus what, say, the 56-game hitting streak was for DiMaggio – and that it might’ve been a shrewd idea to include either a Minotaur or a Labyrinth somewhere in the film or the trailer. Is it too much to ask for a Minotaur or a Labyrinth in a movie about Theseus? Hello?
• Speaking of 300, the big news about the prequel is that it will no longer be called Xerxes, but 300: Battle of Artemisia – a triumph of brand marketing over common sense. The new film, of course, is not about the 300 Spartans, and is about Xerxes – but no matter, brand triumphs over all and the producers are obviously worried that no one in foreign markets like Poland or Thailand or West Virginia will understand that a film called Xerxes is actually a prequel to 300. (Maybe they should just call it 200 – that makes about as much sense.) In any case, Zack Snyder will not be directing the prequel – it will apparently either be Noam Murro and Jaume Collet-Serra. (Murro, interestingly, has done commercials for the Halo video games – and may do the next Die Hard film.) So what does any of this mean? Not very much, except that this would-be franchise is still on the drawing board while a lot of time passes. By the time Battle of Artemisia hits theaters (in late 2012 at the earliest), both Clash of the Titans and Wrath of the Titans will have been released, along with Immortals, and 300 will be at least 5 years in the past.
One of the things that made 300 so intriguing was its apparent relevance to our contemporary War on Terror. With Iran becoming more belligerent all the time, that relevance will likely still be there by 2012 or 2013, but one can’t help but wonder whether an opportunity is being lost with this franchise …
• Conan the Barbarian 3D has a new international trailer out, an amusing new ad, and also a red band trailer for the more bloodthirsty among you. This film seems to be cruising along toward its late summer (August 19th) release, without a lot of heat or buzz – mostly, I suspect, due to the cast not being filled with A-listers. But the film looks diverting enough (as these things go), and – in an important carryover from the Schwarzenegger films – willing to have a sense of humor about itself. This, incidentally, is what’s noticeably lacking from the Immortals trailers thus far – a sense of humor.
By Jason Apuzzo. • I had the opportunity recently to read Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay for the new Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio film J. Edgar, set for release this October. Even though the film covers a fair bit of Cold War history, in terms of the FBI’s handling of communist infiltration, due to the fact that J. Edgar covers Hoover’s full professional story – from his rise in the late 1910s all the way through to the Nixon years – I’ve decided to talk about the screenplay outside the context of one of our regular Cold War Updates!. I would love to give the screenplay an even more exhaustive write-up, frankly, but due to my own time constraints I’ll have to keep things brief – and focus primarily on what the film will be saying about the anti-communist struggle.
I’ve decided to write about this screenplay publicly because it’s covering extremely important areas of history – 50+ years of it, in fact, dwelling on issues of law enforcement and privacy that still resonate with us today – and also because we’re dealing here with an actual historical figure, with a very public record. (I’ll also try to keep things here as spoiler-free as possible – with the understanding, again, that we’re dealing with Hoover’s long public record.) People should know, frankly, how the man who founded the FBI and shaped a large part of 20th century American domestic history is going to be portrayed.
There’s a lot to like about J. Edgar in its first act. Hoover’s colorful rise is set against the struggle over communist infiltration of American society during the late teens and early ‘20s – a struggle rarely covered in cinema, as most people assume (mistakenly) that Soviet agents only first hit our shores during the 1930s. The screenplay actually begins with the bombing of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s home by communist/anarchist saboteurs in 1919, and we see famous figures like the young FDR and Dwight Eisenhower pour out onto the street in the aftermath – as a peppy, ambitious young Hoover arrives on a bicycle and begins piecing together clues over the bombing. In fact, if you’ve seen early set photos of DiCaprio as Hoover on a bicycle (see right), those images are likely from this opening sequence of the film – a sequence that sets the tone and mood of the film with America under a constant sate of siege (first from communist agents in the 1920s, then from criminal mobs in the 1930s, and finally from Soviet agents again from the late 1930s forward). We see Hoover and his maverick team take down Emma Goldman and a violent gang of communist-anarchist saboteurs, and Hoover begins to put the policies and procedures of modern criminal investigation in place.
The communist/anarchist saboteurs in this section of the film, incidentally, are not depicted as terribly pretty people. They’re made to look dangerous and deceptive – not as victims of a witch hunt, or martyrs. In fact, with their bomb-making factories, and attempted gamesmanship of the legal system, obvious parallels will be drawn with today’s Islamic terrorists. The message here couldn’t be more plain: a robust federal investigative force is needed to face down this threat, and ensure domestic security. Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Reviews the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar Hoover Screenplay
By Jason Apuzzo. • Libertas is about to break some major news regarding one very big, forthcoming movie related to the history of the Cold War, so stay tuned …
• .. although of course, the biggest Cold War-related news of late is the whopping debut of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a film steeped in the lore and romance of the U.S.-Russia space race (see my review of the film here). Dark of the Moon had its huge, worldwide premiere just over two weeks ago in Moscow, and as of the writing of this post is already approaching the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office.
I’m liking this film even more as I ruminate over it – and over the entire Transformers series, which snuck up on me unexpectedly, in so far as I only ever saw the first two films on DVD. Some of you might ask, is it possible – or even healthy – to ‘ruminate’ on a Michael Bay film about giant toy robots? I’d say ‘hell yes’ it is, when the films are as well-crafted, warm and human as these are – not to mention freedom-loving. And although Dark of the Moon to some extent surrenders to its (admittedly fantastic) technology in the third act, it only feels that way because – once again – Bay does such a nice job setting up his characters in the film’s early sequences. This is the aspect of Bay’s work that is so consistently underestimated by critics: his ability to create sympathetic characters, who bring a human dimension to the mayhem that otherwise transpires in his films. Believe me, f this were an easy thing to do, more directors would do it.
Incidentally, it looks like Bay may actually complete the trifecta here. Both previous Transformers films were the top grossing films in their year (in part due to Avatar straddling 2009-10), and it looks like Dark of the Moon may complete the hat trick. I don’t think anybody’s done anything like this since the Lucas-Spielberg heyday. Dark of the Moon is also is tracking young, which has suddenly – and mysteriously – become Hollywood’s big problem this summer; plus, the film is also blowing up all of those silly, premature burials of 3D – most of which were based on bad 3D conversions.