By Jason Apuzzo. Tomorrow brings Tron: Legacy, Disney’s $320 million attempt (including marketing costs) to ‘reboot’ a sci-fi franchise that never was. Naturally we will be reviewing it here at Libertas.
In the meantime, I’m wondering whether Tron will even be as good as this relatively quiet little sci-fi short above, called “Modern Times,” that was apparently made by some UK filmmakers for peanuts. It just arrived on Vimeo about a week ago.
And below, incidentally, I’ve put the Tron-ified Modern Times from Charlie Chaplin that filmmaker Nick Tierce did recently for the AintItCoolNews contest.
By Jason Apuzzo. We’ve gotten out of the habit here at Libertas of showing you short films, and I wanted to get back to that when we have the opportunity.
This new short film above from a group of Indian animation students has won a variety of awards, and was just uploaded to Vimeo about two weeks ago. Its subject matter is terrorism, and fears associated with the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. The film is interesting, and unpredictable. Make sure to watch it all the way to the end.
The premise of the film is simple and powerful, as with any good short film. A guy is traveling home on a late night Mumbai train. The passenger car is empty, except for one sleepy passenger. Suddenly, a man who matches a description of a terrorist – carrying a briefcase – boards the train and decides to sit directly in front of our protagonist. Suspense ensues …
The interesting question the short seems to raise is: whose expectations are being played upon here – the passenger’s, or the audience’s? Another way of putting it is: is the title intended ironically, or not?
For more information on the film, visit its Facebook page.
By Jason Apuzzo. • Tron is approaching, a wave that’s looking smaller as it approaches shore. The film is tracking poorly; it’s also getting mixed reviews thus far (see here and here) … oh, and the total cost of the film, with marketing? Apparently around $320 million. Plus, people are starting to scratch their heads about the fact that this is the debut feature for the film’s director, Joseph Kosinski (see interviews with him here and here), whose background is in architecture and design rather than in drama or literature – you know, those old-fashioned disciplines that involve human beings.
Boomer New Age morality tale?
So, what are we about to get here with Tron? I’m guessing something stylish and dull – with a dash of retro-liberalism (of the anti-corporate variety) to keep the Boomers happy. (Incidentally, there’s some speculation that this new film may already be subtly setting up the corporate villain for the sequel … )
In the meantime, Olivia Wilde continues to flaunt herself (see here), and otherwise make herself out to be the face of the production. As annoying as she is, that’s probably a good idea given how flat Garrett Hedlund seems, and how spaced-out Jeff Bridges seems in his interviews about the film (see here). Somewhat more fun are the Daft Punk guys, whose “Derezzed” video just hit.
More sinister, however, are inferences from several people (see here and here) that Disney is psuedo-suppressing access to the charming, old version of Tron while the new film gets its marketing binge. That’s certainly an ironic development for a movie that’s supposedly a sub rosa critique of ‘fascism’ and enforced sameness. (In fairness, the old film just got remastered and will be getting a Blu-ray release in 2011.)
Incidentally, whatever happened to that Path to 9/11 DVD, Disney?
Beau Garrett in "Tron: Legacy." Maybe she knows where Disney's "Path to 9/11" DVD went.
I’m not sure how much juice the Transformers series still has, really, but we’ll probably learn something from that trailer. Footnote: Megan Fox is really seeming out-of-sight/out-of-mind right now.
Also, Nikki Finke noticed today that the one-sheet for Dreamworks’ Cowboys & Aliens looks a lot like the one-sheet Dreamworks’ other alien invasion thriller, I Am Number 4. Oops.
They’ve since put out a new poster, although it still has the same feel.
I’m getting bad vibes about this project. Cowboys right now is looking like one of those All Star teams in basketball or baseball that looks great on paper but doesn’t play well. We’ll see.
• Ridley’s Scott’s Alien prequels have been pushed back to 2013 and 2014. What’s more annoying, however, is that Olivia Wilde is suddenly in the mix to play the lead. PLEASE STOP CASTING THIS PERSON. She’s already in Tron, Cowboys & Aliens and the Logan’s Run knockoff Now (which also just halted production) … and now Alien? Look, I haven’t seen Tron yet but I’ve seen enough of House to know that she’s not that good, besides which she’s almost as abrasive as Natalie Portman.
The new poster for "Apollo 18."
• I Am Bored by I Am Number 4, but it’s marketing binge has begun. This alien invader thriller – also from Michael Bay – has a new poster, the film will apparently be converted to IMAX (why?), and there are new interviews out with the director (here) and babes Teresa Palmer (here) and Dianna Agron (here). Basically this looks like another movie about a WASP teenage guy with Special Powers. Never seen that before.
• On the Creature Invasion Front: Troll Hunter will be having its world premiere at Sundance; besides having one of the greatest titles in the history of the cinema, Piranha 3DD now also has a release date (September 16th); and David Ellis’ untitled 3D shark thriller recently got picked up for distribution. So there you go: sharks, piranhas and trolls.
• In the time since our last Invasion Alert!we’ve lost the great Leslie Nielsen from Forbidden Planet. Our condolences to his family; he certainly will be missed.
• On the Home Video Front, some classics from Roger Corman are finally coming to DVD: Not of this Earth, War of the Satellites and Attack of the Crab Monsters (not as bad as it sounds). Also: have I told you people that I caved and bought the whole first season of the new V? I’m definitely enjoying it thus far (here, by the way, is a review of the Complete Season 1 on DVD).
• It was both funny and sad to read about the Skyline guys’ surprised reaction to the torrent of abuse that film received on-line. Apparently they couldn’t understand all the trash-talking because, as they put it, “Brett Ratner liked it!”
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … I finally got around to watching the sci-fi music video “The Ghost Inside” that Christina Hendricks did this summer (see below). It’s a little odd, and slow … but it’s got Christina Hendricks in it as a robot with detachable parts, so how bad could it be – right?
And that’s what’s happening today on the Alien Invasion Front!
By Jason Apuzzo. So that you can get a feel for the man, I wanted to share with everybody some interviews that recently appeared on-line featuring my late friend and mentor Irvin Kershner. The interview above, which he did about a year ago, deals with making The Empire Strikes Back. It’s classic Kersh, in full storytelling mode. (You can see Part Two of this interview here.)
Kersh with Carrie Fisher.
One of the things I should have mentioned in my remarks about Kersh from Monday was his tremendous sense of humor, which you get a flavor of above. His humor was typically of the earthy, Jewish – and occasionally ribald – variety, and it’s what kept you hooked on the man, even if he’d just given you a verbal pounding.
I’ll never forget a time when Govindini and I had been up to his place, and Govindini had accidentally left behind a sweater, a blue cardigan. We asked Kersh later if he still had it. “No,” he said, with a wry grin. “I sold it to the Rag Man when he came by.” Classic Kersh. (With a cheeky grin, and with his typical old World courtliness, he then gently brought forth the sweater – neatly folded.)
Anyway, Kersh (born ‘Isadore’ Kershner) certainly came a long way from his youth in Philadelphia in the 1920s, when his Ukranian father supported the family selling fruits and vegetables from a street cart. It’s nice seeing him finally get his due right now in the media. It would’ve made him feel good, although – ever industrious, ever motivated – he wouldn’t have liked it distracting from his work …
Here are some of the better quotes I’ve seen about Kersh over the past few days:
George Lucas: “I considered him a mentor,” Mr. Lucas said in a statement after Mr. Kershner’s death. “Following ‘Star Wars,’ I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want to direct the second movie myself. I needed someone I could trust, someone I really admired and whose work had maturity and humor. That was Kersh all over.”
“I didn’t want ‘Empire’ to turn into just another sequel, another episode in a series of space adventures,” he said. “I was trying to build something, and I knew Kersh was the guy to help me do it. He brought so much to the table. I am truly grateful to him.”
Francis Coppola: “We all enjoyed knowing Kersh, learning from him — and admired his creative spirit and indomitable will,” Coppola said in a statement released by Kershner’s publicists. “It was always exciting to talk with him about all aspects of cinema and life.”
Barbra Streisand: “He had the most incredible spirit, an exuberance for life. Always working, always thinking, always writing, amazingly gifted and forever curious. We met doing ‘Up The Sandbox’ in 1972 and remained friends ever since. I loved him,” she said in a statement.
Billy Dee Williams: “[A]n extraordinary mountain of a man with whom I’m proud to have shared the world of art.” “I bet he’s smiling at us right now with that wonderful impish smile,” Williams said in a statement.
Matthew Robbins: “To many, he represented the best in what American film making could do with its enviable resources and catholic traditions,” Robbins said. “He believed in emotion as the basis for all dramatic storytelling. For him, the worst cinematic crime was flatness, or lack of feeling. “Few who encountered Kershner either on the set or in the classroom will forget his almost ruthless pursuit of honesty and recognizable, complex human motivation,” Robbins said.
The interview below, conducted in his wonderful living room – full of artifacts from his many travels – is a more personal interview that deals with his youth, and his development as an artist, covering some of his early period as a painter and a photographer.
Part 2 of this interview can be seen here. I’ll be reviewing The Making of the Empire Strikes Back in coming days.
By David Ross. Between 1961 and 1968, Rolling Stone co-founder and music critic Ralph Gleason hosted twenty-eight half-hour episodes of Jazz Casual on public television. There wasn’t much glitz: Gleason would say a few words of introduction and his musical guest would be off to the races. Even so, Jazz Casual was probably the purest dose of cool ever delivered by American TV. In 2006, all twenty-eight episodes – 840 minutes worth – were released as a DVD box set titled The Complete Jazz Casual, but the set is now, alas, unavailable. Netflix offers three episodes – Basie, Gillespie, and Coltrane – on a single disc, as well as discs devoted exclusively to Coltrane, Brubeck, and B.B. King.
John Coltrane & Miles Davis.
Coltrane, of course, is like some astral event that comes around only once in many lifetimes; to see and hear him is to witness something epochal.
Jazz aficionados should also make a particular point of viewing, via Netflix, Miles Davis: Cool Jazz Sound (2004), a 25-minute dose of the Miles Davis Quintet – Davis, Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb – filmed in New York in April 1959. Davis and Coltrane are such spectacularly paired opposites, the former’s angular reserve balancing the latter’s delving, groping virtuosity.
By Jason Apuzzo. A really hilarious and courageous little comedy called The Infidel, starring the talented and irrepressible Omid Djalili, just got its DVD release on the new Tribeca Films label. We really loved this film here at Libertas (see our glowing review of it here), and we recommend that everyone pick up a copy today.
The Infidel tells the story of an unassuming Muslim guy in the UK who discovers, by happenstance, that he was actually born Jewish. This wouldn’t be such a problem, except for the fact that his daughter is about to marry the stepson of a radical, jihad-promoting imam from Pakistan.
And that, as they say, is when the hijinks begin.
I’ve embedded the scene above in which Omid finds out about his true heritage. It’s a gas. Enjoy!
