By Jason Apuzzo. My favorite part of this video? The way Mansfield tosses away the envelope.
Enjoy the Oscars this weekend, assuming you consider that possible.
Posted on February 25th, 2011 at 4:30pm.
Category: 1. Jason Apuzzo
Cold War Update!: Apollo 18, 24, Sexy Russian Spies + Christopher Nolan Talks Howard Hughes
By Jason Apuzzo. • The biggest news since our last Cold War Update! was the debut of the trailer (see above) for Apollo 18, produced by Timur Bekmambetov. I can’t say that I was all that impressed with it; the movie looks more or less like Paranormal Activity on the Moon, and otherwise far inferior even to what Michael Bay seems to be doing, re: Apollo missions in Transformers 3. The trailer looks cramped and claustrophobic, and plot-wise a bit too obvious in terms of where it’s going. None of the characters jumped out at me as being interesting – merely as victims in a standard-issue horror scenario.
Also: I don’t mind the ‘found-footage’ motif, but what bothers me here is that the filmmakers don’t seem to have actually nailed what Super 8 film looked like back in the day. Super 8 was generally grainier, but also (as I recall) had slightly deeper-than-usual color saturation. In any case, I’m a bit underwhelmed by what I’m seeing thus far with this film. Perhaps they need to find some piranhas on the Moon …
• Christopher Nolan has announced that after Batman 3, he essentially wants to do a hit-job biopic of Howard Hughes. That, at least, is the strong implication from this piece over at New York Magazine, which states that Nolan’s Hughes-pic “would focus on the freakier decades of Hughes remarkably secretive and OCD-addled life.”
This captures, in essence, what I dislike so much about Nolan. Howard Hughes was an extremely innovative, daring and ultimately tragic individual – and easily one of the most compelling American figures of the twentieth century. (He was also, incidentally, an ardent anti-communist and Cold Warrior.) Martin Scorsese’s biopic of Hughes, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, only lightly scratched the surface of Hughes’ accomplishments and refined allure – but I’m glad Scorsese at least got a crack at the material, because what Nolan is sure to give us is another of one his epics of adolescent derangement (The Dark Night, Inception, Memento, etc.) for which he’s becoming so famous.
What disgusts me here is that Hughes’ mental and emotional troubles later in life – which were likely genetic in nature, and beyond his control – were also ones that he went to great lengths to conceal, precisely in order to avoid this kind of exploitation. Like a graverobber, though, Nolan apparently can’t resist the temptation to plunder them – his new film project, incidentally, will be based at least partially on handwritten memoranda actually burglarized from Hughes’ office – and so now Nolan will drag us through the garbage pile of Hughes’ later life in order to make whatever trite points he has in mind. It’s ghoulish – but typical for Nolan.
• Olga Kurylenko has a spread in the current issue of the Russian Glamour. It’s pretty good, but I like this picture to the right better.
• According to Kiefer Sutherland, the 24 movie is still very much on – and Tony Scott is still apparently interested in doing it. They’re still waiting on a script, though. Scott, incidentally, has also been attached to the Top Gun sequel.
And speaking of Top Gun, writer Mark Harris in GQ is currently blaming Top Gun for ruining contemporary Hollywood cinema. Harris recycles the oldest cliche in the book: that the nefarious forces of Lucas, Spielberg and Bruckheimer have ruined Hollywood forever, when the industry should rightfully have been left to the likes of Hal Ashby and Mike Nichols. Harris – who reads like a kind of poor man’s Peter Biskind – also doles out more trendy, fanboy love to Christopher Nolan.
Memo to Mr. Harris: had the industry been left to the likes of Hal Ashby and Mike Nichols – admittedly fine filmmakers – Hollywood would’ve gone bankrupt, and we would still be shooting movies in Super 8. Sorry, but that’s how it is. Incidentally, if a genuinely innovative filmmaker like Hal Ashby came up nowadays, people like Harris would probably be the first to attack him.
• The makers of John Milius’ anti-North Korean Homefront video game recently talked to The Wall Street Journal. Here are some choice quotes from the WSJ piece:
Homefront is less about vilifying North Korea than about placing the player within an occupied America. The 1984 film “Red Dawn,” which Milius directed and co-wrote, was a key influence. In “Red Dawn,” a group of high schoolers form a guerrilla resistance against an invading Soviet Union and its allies. The uncanny image in the film of paratroopers landing in a school field, says Votypka, sums up the feeling Kaos has attempted to capture in Homefront—that of a gross violation of boundaries. Invasions are not supposed to happen on American soil, and as such must inspire a certain gut reaction in the player.
This is certainly true of Homefront’s opening minutes. The game begins with a dizzying pastiche of real and simulated news footage about foreign conflicts and the failing economy, blurring the line between fact and fiction. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking in a televised broadcast about last year’s North Korean torpedo that sank a South Korean ship, is the very first image. The rest of the video sequence concerns the game’s near-future setting and backstory but is hard to parse. What it does convey is a sense of urgency and imminent danger. When the player is subsequently given control as Robert Jacobs, standing in his home in occupied America, it isn’t long before Korean soldiers drag him out and onto a bus headed presumably for a prison camp.
Like a long establishing shot in a film, the bus ride sets the scene, but lets the player move the camera. Looking out the windows, one can see Korean guards battering young men in front of a playground, spot a large “Store Closing” sign, and watch Koreans gun down a young boy’s parents as he begins to sob. The reaction, of course, is anger on top of helplessness. “When you play most military shooters, you get the sense that there’s a war overseas somewhere, and the military commander has told you to go take these objectives,” says Votypka. “[This game is] less about trying to associate with some military character that you have very little in common with. Homefront is much more personal, because it’s about how you would react in this situation.”
Cool. Not to pick a bone with the WSJ writer, but actually the game rather obviously does seem to be about “vilifying” the North Korean regime – which is fine by me. The game certainly sounds intense, not to mention hard core in its depiction of our current antagonisms with Pyongyang. Homefront debuts March 15th.
• In other Cold War News & Notes: some footage has leaked of Leonardo DiCaprio filming Clint Eastwood’s Hoover biopic; January Jones is talking more about X-Men: First Class (see here and here); more images have leaked of Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher; word comes that Kevin Spacey was almost set to play the villain in the new Bond film (nooo!); THR has a review up of the new documentary just premiered in Berlin about the Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial; THR also talks to the German director of the new Red Army Faction movie; the creators of Atlas Shrugged have released a clip from the film that looks like something out of Dallas; and Tyrese Gibson is saying that Transformers: Dark of the Moon is going to be the best movie of the series. I certainly hope so. Special Note: As I’ve previously reported in our Invasion Alerts!, producer James Cameron and director Shawn Levy are apparently going to be remaking Fantastic Voyage in 3D. I’ll be reporting on this periodically here in our Cold War Updates!, since the original Fantastic Voyage was, in fact, a Cold War thriller about America and the Soviet Union racing to create technologies that could miniaturize their militaries for transportation purposes (an odd idea, when you think about it). What Cameron will be doing with this premise, God only knows.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … In a week in which Vlad Putin urged sexy Russian (not so) super spy Anna Chapman to run for the Russian Parliament – a great idea, in my opinion – you would think she would be our Cold War Pin-up … but not when Russian supermodel Irina Shayk gets the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, my friends! Ms. Shayk talked to The Wall Street Journal this week, and revealed her ambitions to play “a Russian spy” in a movie; however, she also pouted that Vlad Putin hasn’t called her yet to congratulate her on the SI cover. Bummer!
Tempted as I was to use a picture from her SI photoshoot, I’ve decided to go with something a bit sultrier she did for South African GQ recently.
And that’s what’s happening today in The Cold War!
Posted on February 23rd, 2011 at 5:51pm.
Aliens in the Heartland: LFM Mini-Review of I Am Number Four
By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Sexy alien teenagers flee to planet Earth on the run from another alien race out to exterminate them. One such teenager, played by Brit star Alex Pettyfer, hides out in a small Ohio town (‘Paradise’) where he falls for a cute blonde at his high school – played, conveniently enough, by Glee‘s Dianna Agron – and otherwise learns to love Heartland America, pickup trucks, pet puppies and middle class life.
THE SKINNY: This very solid, D.J. Caruso/Michael Bay adaptation of the popular young adult novel, I Am Number Four, works effectively because of its excellent casting and detailed attention to the emotional lives of its young characters. The film also works as an affectionate encomium to the values and lifestyle of middle America, right at a time when those things seem most under assault. Frankly, I never thought Ohio could look like such a great place to live – especially post-LeBron.
WHAT WORKS: • The cast, top to bottom. Alex Pettyfer as the teen alien ‘John Smith,’ and Dianna Agron as his girlfriend Sarah steal the show. Pettyfer comes across as a brooding hunk, and Agron has an ironic, quirky quality to her that makes her appealing. The two have definite chemistry – and, not surprisingly, they’ve apparently been dating off-screen since making this film.
• The depiction of ‘Paradise,’ Ohio as, well, a ‘paradise’ of warm suburban families, football games, Halloween carnivals … I’m ready to move right in. Hollywood so rarely tries to make the Heartland look appealing; here they actually make it look lyrical and inviting.
• Aussie Teresa Palmer nearly steals the show in the third act when she swoops in from Planet Michael Bay on her Ducati motorcycle and starts laying waste to the alien bad guys. Even though she looks to be about 85 pounds – and has a thin, raspy voice – she’s perfectly convincing as an ass-kicker due to the vaguely insane look in her eye (á la Jolie). Also: Aussie accents are sexy, especially when burnished by cigarette smoke.
• The alien creatures were excellent, and suitably menacing. Nice wok, as always, by ILM.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK: • The appearance of the alien bad guys. Essentially they’re 7-foot tall white guys with tattoos, pig-like faces, wearing dark trenchcoats. For some reason they reminded me of ‘Birdman’ Chris Andersen of the Denver Nuggets. It was, however, admittedly rather creepy when they walked into the high school with assault rifles near the end of the film – because they looked like the Columbine killers.
• The general sense that you’ve seen films like this a thousand times; especially films featuring white teenage guys with ‘special powers,’ who need to learn to use them responsibly, etc. Just for variety’s sake, I’d love to see someone make a movie about, say, a chubby Hispanic gal with ‘special powers’ who needs to use them responsibly. Continue reading Aliens in the Heartland: LFM Mini-Review of I Am Number Four
Invasion Alert!: Special Blonde Edition + J.J. Abrams and Jon Favreau Talk Super 8, Cowboys & Aliens
By Jason Apuzzo. • I’ll start today’s Invasion Alert! with J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg and their forthcoming alien invasion thriller Super 8. A new trailer for the film ran during the Super Bowl – and although I’m very much looking forward to the film, the trailer itself didn’t do much for me, frankly. More interesting, actually, was a lengthy interview Abrams recently gave to The LA Times, in which he discussed the small town/middle America vibe of the film, its sentimental roots as a father-son reconciliation story, and the generally Spielbergean ambience of the whole project.
It’s becoming fairly clear that this film is going to be a return to the sort of family-oriented sci-fi projects Spielberg was doing in the late 70s/early 80s with E.T., Close Encounters and his TV work (incidentally, Close Encounters is coming to Blu-ray shortly) – although I sense a trace of anxiety in Abrams’ remarks as to whether such softer fare can still sell in the era of Michael Bay and James Cameron. My sense is that it can.
Many people tend to forget that most sci-fi films from the 1950s, for example (like Invaders from Mars or Invasion of the Body Snatchers), were actually set in small towns – and were highly evocative of middle American life and its values. Those films are still beloved today, not unlike Close Encounters (E.T. has aged somewhat) and if Abrams and Spielberg have done their homework on this one, they’re likely to pull off a crowd-pleasing hit – because I don’t yet sense any home runs in this current crop of edgier sci-fi invasion projects green-lit in the wake of Avatar.
I happen to like Abrams a lot, by the way. He talks in the interview about how he doesn’t do Twitter, how he still has a tape deck in his car, how he doesn’t really like the current film scene – in which everything has to be pre-marketed, pre-branded, franchised, etc., with no mystery left by the time a film is released. This remark from Abrams seems to sum up his thoroughly old-school attitude:
“We have such a challenge on this movie [Super 8],” Abrams said. ”Yes, we’ve got Steven’s name on it and my name on it — for what that’s worth — but we’ve got no famous super-hero, we’ve got no pre-existing franchise or sequel, it’s not starring anyone you’ve heard of before. There’s no book, there’s no toy, there’s no comic book. There’s nothing. I don’t have anything; I don’t even have a board game, that’s how bad it is. But I think we have a very good movie.”
I know much of this is being said tongue-in-cheek, but isn’t it amazing that we’ve gotten to this point – a point at which a guy like Abrams, who is himself helming the new Star Trek franchise (the screenplay for the next Star Trek, incidentally, will apparently be delivered in about six weeks), feels compelled to say such things? I wish filmmakers working on the big scale would go back to telling personal stories, about actual human beings. In an era of formulaic entertainment, it’s the one formula no one seems willing to try.
• … and so now on to Michael Bay. Among the alien invasion movie Super Bowl trailers (of which there were no less than four) his Transformers: Dark of the Moon trailer certainly took the prize for spectacle, hands down. It actually looked a lot like Battle: LA, albeit in quasi-music video form.
At the recent premiere of his other alien invasion thriller, I Am Number 4, Bay actually compared Transformers 3 to Black Hawk Down – something which leads me to wonder why he doesn’t just do a movie like Black Hawk Down about our current war effort, rather than channel his energy into yet another toy franchise movie. Oh, wait! I think I know why; it has something to do with cross-platform marketing and casting Victoria’s Secret models. But that’s just a hunch.
Don’t’ get me wrong – I basically like Bay. He’s old-school in his own way. But there are reasons why he never really breaks through and has the Lucas/Spielberg/Cameron-sized hits, you know? There’s always just too much marketing there, and never enough imagination.
On the marketing front, incidentally, Bay and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley were out helping to hawk new Transformers toys recently (toys which seem to be revealing plot details about the movie), and Rosie finally talks about the project herself, here. So far she isn’t calling her director Hitler yet, unlike certain prior Transformers leads …
• Brooklyn Decker, of the forthcoming $200 million alien invasion thriller Battleship, is basically everywhere right now – appearing in the stupid Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston movie (two people who need to disappear for about five years), and now, of course, she’s on the pages of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Did you really think we were going to miss that here at Libertas? Not a chance, amigo.
Also: the Hollywood Reporter just did a big feature on her, and you can watch the video associated with her SI photoshoot here. The video is probably NSFW (Not Suitable For the Workplace) – but at the same time, if your workplace doesn’t want you watching an American blonde prancing around in a bikini, perhaps you should simply work someplace else. This isn’t Iran.
• Cowboys & Aliens also had a Super Bowl trailer, and it was terrible – even though it featured the obnoxious Olivia Wilde going semi-topless. I’m getting the strong feeling that this film is going to be the turkey of the lot. If Jon Favreau’s got anything else to show us from that film, he’d better show it fast …
… although actually, he is doing that, as the LA Times followed Favreau recently to the Alamo Drafthouse where he showed the first two reels of Cowboys to an audience that apparently liked it a lot. Go figure.
One enthusiastic fan apparently even remarked, “You made Harrison Ford kick ass again!” Actually, Ford kicked alien and commie ass to the tune of $750 million worldwide for Indiana Jones 4 – but after all, who’s counting …
Also, Favreau recently talked to EW, and revealed some important clues as to his alien invasion film’s larger ‘meaning’:
EW: Instead of “cowboys and Indians” it was “astronauts and aliens.” So the idea of visiting an indigenous culture, invaders who in the Westerns would be the pioneers and settlers, is it reversed in this story? Are the cowboys essentially the natives and aliens are like the conquering Europeans?
Favreau: Yeah, in the frustration of not having the technology to allow you to prevail. It’s always the low-tech culture that feels powerless when faced with an enemy that has technology on their side. And of course the culture with technology on their side feels like it’s manifest destiny: They’ve been granted this gift by the divine and intend to use it. So yes, it is a bit of a flip, because the cowboys find themselves as the low-tech culture. And what’s also fun is it allows the cowboys and Native Americans to come together, which would be impossible had there not been a greater common enemy. It sets the Western up in a very classic way and then turns it on its ear.
I’m a little uncomfortable with this line: “[T]he culture with technology on their side feels like it’s manifest destiny: They’ve been granted this gift by the divine and intend to use it.” Why do I think he’s talking about us, when he uses the phrase ‘manifest destiny’? I thought Favreau was on our team; perhaps he’s now gone Eastwood/off the reservation.
In any event, it’s interesting – and somewhat grating – that from Avatar through to Cowboys & Aliens, V and Battle: Los Angeles, ‘imperialism’ and ‘oppression of indigenous populations’ are obviously emerging as key themes in this genre.
• The rumors have now been confirmed: Charlize Theron will be joining Noomi Rapace in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus; and, also, there is further confirmation – from cast member Michael Fassbender – that Prometheus is more-or-less going to serve as an Alien prequel. Fassbender says there is a “a definite connecting vein” in the film with the Alien series.
Incidentally, I’m not a fan of Charlize Theron – she’s a bit frosty and left-wing to my taste – but she can project intelligence and I’m otherwise glad to see that Scott is keeping the Alien franchise focused on compelling female characters. Prometheus may do Avatar-type business, if he plays his cards right.
• Speaking of blondes, Aussie blonde Teresa Palmer – who plays “a fearless, Ducati-riding alien” babe (every film should have one) in the Michael Bay-produced I Am Number 4 – talked to the Wall Street Journal recently; also check out this interview with I Am Number 4‘s highly perky blonde Dianna Agron.
• One of the other big alien invasion projects with a Super Bowl ad was, of course, Battle: Los Angeles – and Battle: LA also has a new extended trailer and a new TV spot.
The best thing this film has going for it, though, is this cheeky, History Channel-style documentary short about the original ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ from World War II. The video features Bill Birnes of UFO Hunters and is a real hoot. Check it out below.
The marketing campaign for Battle: Los Angeles has been nearly flawless, even without any blondes. We’ll see if the film itself matches up.
• In other Sci-Fi/Alien Invasion News & Notes: Men in Black 3D is experiencing more shooting delays, and the script is being re-written mid-shoot (ouch); Steven Spielberg’s/Fox’s hugely expensive Terra Nova TV series had an ad during the Super Bowl, and it looked like ridiculous Avatar-style liberal claptrap; Shawn Levy will be directing the James Cameron-produced 3D Fantastic Voyage remake; Logan’s Run is getting re-made; Roland Emmerich may be taking on Isaac Asimov’s acclaimed Foundation novel series, which he apparently would do in 3D, plus he confirms that there’s no action currently on an Independence Day sequel; Jerry Bruckheimer apparently wants to do a new space adventure film, to be written by the guy who wrote the first draft of what became Prometheus, and who also wrote the forthcoming alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour 3D; Roberto Orci talks here about his hoped-for adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s alien invasion epic Ender’s Game; the indie alien invasion thriller Attack the Block will be showing at the SXSW film festival; and, finally, for some unknown reason, Gareth Edwards’ indie alien invasion thriller Monsters – which hardly made a dent at the box office, and which nearly bored me to tears – may still get a sequel or even a TV series, although Edwards himself won’t be involved.
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … you would think that with Brooklyn Decker writhing around the beach in a bikini for Sports Illustrated, she would be today’s official pin-up. Or perhaps the prickly Olivia Wilde, who goes semi-topless in the latest Cowboys & Aliens trailer. But the alien invasion genre has a deep bench, my friends, so instead I go today with Alice Eve, who just joined the cast of Men in Black 3D – playing a younger version of Emma Thompson’s character. Oddly enough, though, I don’t remember Emma Thompson looking quite like this in her youth …
And that’s what’s happening today on The Alien Invasion Front!
Posted on February 17th, 2011 at 7:30pm.
Meet The New Wonder Woman + First Look Look at The New Superman
By Jason Apuzzo. Hey! Word broke today that Friday Night Lights‘ Adrianne Palicki will be the new Wonder Woman in David E. Kelley’s reboot of that TV series for Warner Brothers. My first reaction? So far, so good – at least in the looks department. I assume, incidentally, that Ms. Palicki will be playing the role as a brunette (she’s worked previously as both a blonde and as a brunette).
Whether this new TV series will be in any way working off the D.C. Comics reboot of the character, a reboot which sparked a controversy last year (which we covered extensively here at Libertas), is unclear. Here, however, is how the series is described over at Deadline:
In the reboot, from Warner Bros. TV, Wonder Woman/Diana Prince (Palicki) is a vigilante crime fighter in L.A. but also a successful corporate executive and a modern woman trying to balance all of the elements of her extraordinary life.
So there it is. We apparently can have successful female corporate executives on TV, by the way, but not in the Governor’s office in Sacramento.
And on that point, since Diana Prince is now going to be a corporate executive, I definitely advise her not to bother doing business here in California, where Warner Brothers is based – because it’s too expensive. Try Texas or Arizona instead. Or perhaps she could tie the ‘lasso of truth’ around our new/old California governor, and get him to admit that we’re all going to be living out of garbage cans if he raises taxes? Perhaps they could put that in the pilot episode!
In other superhero news, incidentally, we’re also today getting the first, semi-official look at the new Superman, Brit actor Henry Cavill, in the latest edition of EW.
There’s been a certain amount of controversy lately over the fact that he’s a Brit playing an iconic American character, but since America seems to be outsourcing everything these days, why not our Superman? [Sigh.] My choice for Superman would’ve been Mark Sanchez.
Posted on February 17th, 2011 at 10:46am.
Atlas Shrugged as Science Fiction
By Jason Apuzzo. I’ve been trying to crystalize my thoughts on the Atlas Shrugged trailer since seeing it Friday. As a coincidence, I recently finished reading Atlas Shrugged – for reasons other than the film’s release, as it turns out, but which nonetheless put me in the mood to see the trailer and get a sense of what the filmmakers had done with the material.
On seeing the trailer, something occurred to me that I’d mentioned to director Paul Johansson when we were on the film’s set – which is that Atlas Shrugged, which was first published in 1957, takes place in a kind of alternate, indefinite future. The precise nature of that future, its look and feel, struck me as being something that a filmmaker could exploit to great advantage, particularly in so far as Rand’s novel veers strongly toward dystopia late in the story – depicting death rays, fascistic military police, optical refractor beams, and the like. Reading the novel, it seemed to me that Rand’s story was rife with possibilities to create a filmic world similar to that of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner – albeit of a different, less nightmarish cast.
What complicates matters, of course, is that our vision of ‘the future’ circa 1957 was much different from our vision of the future today. Rand’s novel deals primarily with the railroad and steel industries, for example, industries that have lost their futuristic sheen amidst the successive eras of the Jet Age, Space Race and Information Age. (In fact, trains and steel had already lost their glamor, so to speak, by the time Rand wrote her novel.) Suffice it to say that today’s Hank Rearden would not likely be pouring steel; nor would Dagny Taggart likely be operating a railroad. Indeed, I suspect Dagny would be somewhere in Silicon Valley pushing forward the boundaries of the Information Age, while Rearden might be in a clean-room designing next-generation microchips.
This, ultimately, is why I think Atlas Shrugged – in order for it to be faithful – is probably best set during the 1950s, albeit in an ‘alternate’ version of the 1950s. I’m thinking here of something like the alternate version of the 1930s presented by Kerry Conran in his flawed but interesting fantasy epic from 2004, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
In that similarly low-budget effort, Conran used digital technology to create a stylish, alternate 1930s of flying robots, advanced Nazi superweapons, airplane-submarines and flying air bases in order to bring to life a fanciful story of how World War II ‘might’ have been fought, had a few scientific super-geniuses had their way. This, it seems to me, might’ve been a interesting approach to take with Atlas Shrugged. Ultimately, however, Paul Johansson never really had the opportunity to contemplate such an option – in so far as he was hired to direct Atlas Shrugged just over a week before cameras rolled, an extremely challenging situation for any director, let alone someone charged with a project of this scale.
I don’t think such a retro-futuristic approach would’ve made the film more expensive to do. It is, in fact, quite possible these days to create realistic sci-fi dystopias on a budget. To show one recent example of this, I’ve embedded below the trailer for award-winning writer-director-ILM visual fx designer Grzegorz Jonkajtys’ recent film The 3rd Letter (previously titled, 36 Stairs), about which I’ve posted here at Libertas previously.
The 3rd Letter takes place in a polluted, dystopian future-metropolis in which human beings depend on bio-mechanical alterations in order to withstand the deteriorating climate. The full film is about 15 minutes long, quite lavish in its visual design, and was apparently made on a budget of around $7000. The film quietly speaks volumes about where independent filmmaking is headed, in terms of how technology is currently able to support highly expansive visions.
Contrary to what many people have been saying, I don’t believe Atlas Shrugged is a project that needed a $200 million budget or the participation of Angelina Jolie/Charlize Theron to do it properly. What the film did need, in my opinion, was an audacious cinematic vision to match Rand’s own.
We’ll soon see if that’s what it got.
[Editor’s Note: It also occurs to me since writing this post that, if one were to ‘update’ Atlas Shrugged to the world of today, it would be interesting to have Dagny working in the post-9/11 airline industry, with Rearden providing lighter, stronger metals for her airplanes. Plus: imagine the fun one could have depicting the TSA.]
Posted on February 16th, 2011 at 11:26am.