REVIEW: Prometheus

Ridley Scott is a name synonymous with science fiction brilliance after his two behemoth fan favourites - Alien and Blade Runner. Don't get me wrong, he's considered an 'all-round' director, but his other features - Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster and Body of Lies - are all great films, but are completely eclipsed by his early career dabble in sci-fi. Luckily for us, Scott returned to the genre and has turned out a fantastically eerie shocker in Prometheus.  His latest space outing has taken a critical mauling all over the place, but as a fanboy and a sic-fi nut, I can only recommend you ignore or avoid the critical masses, as Prometheus is a bloody great movie. 

The film begins with a controversial genesis to life on Earth - disputable for Christians like myself (and Dr Shaw), but believable and extremely well-filmed, we see a giant humanoid alien drinking a black mass and disintegrating to form a biogenetic bond with other cells creating life on Earth. It's easy to miss the point of this opening, and a I noticed a few people scratching their heads, but it's all there and easy to catch if you think about it. I don't want to be spoilerific, but this opening is integral to the plot, as we then fast forward thousands of years to 2089 where scientist doctors Shaw and Holloway (Noomi Rapace and Logan Marshall-Green) are discovering new cave paintings and markings showing humans worshipping a giant human(oid) pointing to a particular planetary constellation. Like Kubrick's 2001, the film starts with a trail of clues on Earth, and seeing this as an invitation, a team of scientists (and canon-fodder) head to planet LV-223 to find these giant beings or Engineers (we know them from the dead 'space jockey' discovered in the ship at the beginning of Alien), and more importantly, the origins of the Xenomorph - the most feared creature to ever enter our screens.

Prometheus works as a mystical counterpart to Alien rather than just an origins tale. Both films work nicely in instilling fear and discomfort into its viewers, and the atmosphere in Prometheus - although not quite up to the benchmark set by in Alien (the most atmospheric film ever!) - is still chilling and spine-tingling. Scott has worked with some very creative design techies, as the aliens featured in his latest are quite something - realistic and horrific; skin-crawling stuff. There is more room for variety here, as the black mass we saw the Engineer drinking earlier is obviously some kind of biological weapon, which when mixed or nurtured with different substances or in certain environments will begat a new alien each time - giving the team a lot of room for some creative thinking. 

We were told in the almightily PR build-up that there would be something to parallel the shock and awe of John Hurt's chest-burster scene in Alien, and boy they weren't kidding! Introducing us to a medical pod early on - a booth in which the user can undergo complicated surgery without additional human assistance - was a stroke of genius, as there's no way such an invention was going to be used for anything mundane or predictable.  

In showing us this bleak pod early on, Scott allows the tension to build until 'that scene' (certainly the most memorable in the film), and he doesn't disappoint. Your imagination can nay run wild until you see Shaw's harrowing experience inside the capsule. And that isn't all, there are plenty of alien shock-scenes (immediately thinking of four shockers off the top of my head), and this is where Prometheus pulls away from Alien territory, as Scott is showing us another world of creations and reactions, somewhere so far and different from our planet that there was no way an scientists, archaeologists or doctors could possibly have predicted what would happen. The outcome: total carnage and annihilation; as Dr Shaw points out in the trailer voiceover - "we were wrong, we were so wrong". The human/alien conflicts in Prometheus are something of a cinematic revelation - especially on the IMAX - with some gruesome and unpredictable outcomes for our new crew. 

Speaking of the crew, Scott's casting is somewhat muddled, with one stand-out performance surrounded by some underused and frankly paper-thin characters. As has been written on the walls, Michael Fassbender is a revelation in Prometheus, as well as all other films he's been in, and his part as David the android is one of his best acting roles, if not his very finest (yeah that good, and yes, I've seen Shame and Hunger). The androgynous and calculated David is the ship's maintenance man, and during the crew's 3 years in cyber-sleep, we follow David (in an excellent continual panning shot) as he forlornly moves around the ship occupying his time and carrying out vital tasks for the upkeep of the ship. The scene is a master-class in cinematography and camerawork, and Fassbender's calm demeanour and precise actions mirror his idol, Peter O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia, whom he models himself upon. The ship's captain, Janek, is played by the sterling Idris Elba, although sadly he is grossly underused here, although always a pleasure to watch Elba in action, as he brings so much more charisma and swagger to a role than many of his peers. Charlize Theron as Meredith Vickers - a character so devoid of any personality or charm, that one can only assume the casting call described the role as: stereotypical corporate ice bitch. She doesn't do a lot other than propel the plot forward as the 'corporate suit' in charge of the mission. 

After these leads (of which I've already mentioned lead scientists Shaw and Holloway), the casting turns a little to canon-fodder, with the excellent Rafe Spall as biologist Millburn, and the God-awful Sean Harris (a man completely devoid of any talent as an actor other than as a psychopath) as geologist Fifield - the most annoying cast member and a very contradictory character, followed by a load of forgettables who we may or may not learn their names....
Like Alien before it, Scott has entered new territory and broken down boundaries in the name of science to produce a wonderfully imaginative and seductive piece. Prometheus may not have all the answers, but science-fiction by it's very nature is the element of unknown and will always remain inconsistent with what we know from Earth. Space truly is the final frontier, and our brains can't begin the fathom the mystical secrets of otherworldly species and substances, which gives Scott a perfect quip to all the plothole-hunters out there. Admittedly, there are many questions to be answered when considering Prometheus in the Alien universe (both on different planets by the way) which is likely why Scott started to distance the pieces from each other in the run-up to Prometheus' release date. 

Deconstructing a film due to a few paper-thin characters (never hurt any of the classics - see Predator, Aliens, The Thing) and some questions left unanswered, is an unfair assessment. The simple fact is that as a stand-alone science-fiction film, Prometheus is a superbly visceral and imaginative piece which can sit up there with some of the greats. Certainly the best proper science-fiction of recent years (think Avatar, Moon, Inception, Source Code) and one that actually concerns itself with strange lands, grotesque aliens, and a combination of big questions, huge ideas and massive shocks - a perfect recipe for cinematic enjoyment.

REVIEW: Avengers Assemble

Marvel’s latest behemoth has become the biggest grossing movie of the year so far (over $1bn), with (in my opinion) only three films yet to be released  to contend with Joss Whedon’s caper crusader: Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit. Avengers Assemble (I preferred the title The Avengers) is the climax we have been building towards with cross-overs and cameos galore in the previous Marvel features – Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America  - displaying the Marvel world as one all-encompassing entity. Avengers Assemble cranks it up a notch by having the titular team at the front and centre, each character having their own moment of glory.

The team is made up of Iron Man (Tony Stark), Captain America (Steve Rogers), Thor, Hulk (Bruce Banner), Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff), Hawkeye (Clint Barton), Loki, and Nick Fury. We also have Pepper Potts and Thor’s scientist Erik Selvig making a reappearance. The plot sees Tom Hiddleton’s Loki, last seen at the end of Thor on Earth stealing the Tesseract – a super powerful energy cube, plot the destruction of mankind by using the Tesseract to open a portal to his world letting he Chitauri alien race invade. Lo and behold, Nick Fury decides the only plan of action to stop Loki’s dastardly scheme is to make a superhero team comprised of the aforementioned heroes.

The sheer delight of Avengers Assemble lies not in the huge setpieces and charged action sequences, but in the rhetoric pitter patter between the heroes, each one more arrogant and headstrong than the last; we hear Captain America ask Tony Stark, ‘Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?’, to which Stark replies, ‘Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist’, and on another occasion we hear Tony Stark refer to Thor as ‘Point Break’ due to his blonde surfer locks. Even the all-serious Thor gets some comedy, as he defends his brother Loki to Natasha Romanoff she responds ‘He’s killed eighty people in two days’, to which he quips, ‘He’s adopted’ – again a sign that Whedon was indeed a safe pair of hands on script duty (and very reminiscent of the wit in his past efforts, Firefly and Serenity).    Whedon’s script is excellent, and he manages to hit all the buttons with inter-character chatter – which is at the forefront of the script – as well as creating an interesting-enough (although hugely overdone) plot thread for the story (owed more to Zak Penn’s contribution). 

It is without a doubt that Iron Man, Cap and Thor get the best lines, but the real scene-stealer is Hulk, with Mark Ruffalo’s shy and unassuming performance perhaps showing the best acting in the whole piece. Hulk is a headstrong, angry juggernaut, destroying and crushing everything in his path, like some kind of agile bulldozer. Iron Man and others question Banner’s ability to control the rage and ‘the other guy’, and his secret isn’t revealed until the end of the film – and what a reveal. He gets the best action sequences and even saves the day after one of the team makes a huge sacrifice to try and close the portal oozing nasty-looking aliens. When Loki baits the Avengers with his threats of an army, Stark points out quite aptly, ‘We have a Hulk’, and boy does Loki not see what’s coming. The two most memorable beatings are both delivered by the green giant on Thor and Loki, tossing and battering one of them like a rag doll before quipping, ‘puny God’. This is the Hulk which Lee and Letterier failed to deliver in Hulk’s two cinematic outings, less controlled and more fierce and angry than his previous incarnations. It’s no wonder there’s been public outcry for another Hulk film. 

Aside from the final action sequence – a massive setpiece in downtown Manhattan – there are a number of excitable moments and great punch-ups, the next most-memorable being a Thor-Iron Man-Captain America challenge in the woods. As can be told from this review, Black Widow and Hawkeye don’t quite pack the punch of their co-stars, but rather than a hindrance this actually works rather well. These two are different from the other heroes as they are both special agents, extremely skilled and gifted agents, but not really superheroes in the same vein as the others. Loki as the villain was an inspired choice, and is one of the best villains the Marvel universe (on film) has known. Dark sinister looks, check. Super powers, check. Hellbent on destroying mankind, check. Alien army, check. Daddy-issues, check. The fact that his brother is on the opposing side helps develop Thor’s character arc, initially defensive over his brother (feeling only he has the right to judgement) and finally motivated by vengeance. 

Joss Whedon has done a fantastic job for Marvel and fans alike, and has certainly raised the bar for Marvel movies (still doesn’t quite reach the level of Nolan’s Bat-universe though) slated for the future. I only hope that The Avengers aren’t turned into caricatures of themselves – easily done – and Marvel/Hollywood keep the balance between comedy and action, chuckles and grimaces. I for one would certainly be front of the queue for The Avengers’ next outing.

Django Unchained

For those who noticed my lack of mention of Tarantino's newest offering - his Western tribute Django Unchained - in my last post, this is because the film is now set for an 18th January 2013 release over here in Old Blighty. Having read the script, I can say that this is Tarantino at his best, paying homage to countless Western, Blaxploitation, and Historical movies, and showcasing some fantastic dialogue and brutal violence atypical of the director.
To whet the appetites and have something cool to goggle at, here are a few official pictures from the good folks over at  Django's marketing and PR office. Looks like DiCaprio's Calvin Candie will be dishing out some harsh hammer punishment, and our two heroes - Django and Schultz - are looking like a couple of eccentric gunslingers - each embodying their own style in their attire.

Once Upon a Time in the Deep South.....

At The Movies

For the past two years I have written a list of 50 films In my Moleskine notebook that I must see that year - preferably at the cinema. Inevitably, I didn't quite manage to see all the films on the list for 2011, with about ten of the entries left with a green scrawl saying 'DVD' beside them. This year I've managed to strike 13 from the list, (Carnage, Shame, Haywire, Descendants, MMMM, Woman in Black, Safe House, Rampart, Headhunters, John Carter, Hungerr Games, We Bought a Zoo, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), but between work and married life, it becomes impossible to catch everything you want to (believe it or not, my wife isn't phased by films at all) especially with the brief spells some of the smaller films get - I think Lockout was on the local Odeon for only a week! Of course, there are those occasions when a film is so huge that you put off seeing it thinking it'll be around for ages, and then suddenly it's gone. For me, this was The Artist. There are also six more films labelled with that ignominous 'DVD' scrawl, A Dangerous Method, Coriolanus, Wild Bill, Contraband and Lockout. Although slightly annoyed I missed them, I don't feel they'll lose too mich of charm or enjoyment on DVD, whereas some of the big hitters to come, are complete must-sees on the big screen. (I'm seeing The Avengers this weekend!)

So, the real biggees to come...... PROMETHEUS(!!!!), which looks like it's going to be the greatest sci-fi movie ever made in the whole frakkin galaxy; THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, anticipated to be the best superhero movie ever and hopefully be the worthy ending to Nolan's Gotham trilogy masterpiece; LOOPER, the much-anticipated time-travel action from Rian Johnson, mastermind behind indie classics Brick and Brothers Bloom,the script is razor sharp and the cast is brilliant, this'll be your new favourite film; SKYFALL, Sam Mendes does Bond, boy is this going to be brilliant, it has the usual duo of Craig and Dench along with some of my favourite actors, Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes and Javier Bardem, it's going to be uber-awesome; and finally, THE HOBBIT.....where it all began....Can't. Wait. Now, briefly imagine one of those eighties movie trailers with famous names or cheesy lines or stoccato narrative flying at the screen faster and faster.....okay.....now here are the other films to watch out for, TED, KILLING ME SOFTLY, THE WETTEST COUNTY, ARGO, TOTAL RECALL, COSMOPOLIS, STOKER, DREDD, MOONRISE LINGDOM, THE RAID, THE DICTATOR, THE BOURNE LEGACY, THE GANGSTER SQUAD, THE MASTER & WORLD WAR Z!!!! Fu£king A!!

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

Philip K. Dick's short story We Can Sell It For You Wholesale is the origins story for both adaptations of Total Recall. The story sees Douglas Quail, a regular guy who has become bored with his existence, start to long to visit the colony on Mars. Unable to afford the trip for real he goes Rekal Inc. - a company that implants memories, known as extra-factual memory, into the subject to give them the belief they have visited somewhere/done something/been someone etc. In an attempt to implant memories of Quail as a secret agent - an exciting prospect he likes the sound of, it becomes clear that Quail actually is an undercover government agent, who has possibly already been 'rekalled' into believing he isn't. Before he knows it, nefarious characters and Interplan agents are on the hunt to kill Quaid before he learns too much, but being a trained killer, he manages to elude or kill his potential captors. However, a bug inside his head is being used to read his thoughts and track him, and with nowhere to turn, he surrenders to Interplan and decides to get new memories in which the memory of his real Mars mission as an undercover agent is replaced by a false memory of his deepest desire - that as a boy, he saved the world from a Martian invasion, and his continued survival will prevent any such invasion occuring again. However, just as these new memory implants are put in place, it is revealed that this also was a true event from Quaid's past.

Philip K. Dick has written so many awesome sci-fi stories, and We Can Remember.... is only one from a repetoire of excellent works, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Adjustment Team, The Man in the High Castle and The Golden Man.

Paul Verhoeven's version of Total Recall is a nineties classic, embodying all the craziness of the original story and the era it was filmed. Like the book, the story included Mars and martians, two features which have been removed from Len Wiseman's Total Recall 2012. Like The Terminator, The Running Man and Alien, the original film is a cherished classic and there's been more than a dummy or two ejected from the mouths of geeks the world over at the news of an updated version.

Although a sceptic in most cases, I have to say that I am really looking forward to this 2012 update, and from the footage so far, it looks like Wiseman has certainly captured an amazing vision of a future world - with New Shanghai and Euroamerica looking absolutely stunning - in fact, possibly the best dystopian backdrop since Blade Runner. With flying cars (which look like DeLoreans), hot ladies in the form of Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel, Bourne-like action sequences, epic backdrops and Bryan Cranston, hopefully we'll be in for a real treat here.

Below is the poster fand trailer or the new Total Recall, which has a definite similarity with Source Code - another film with a mind-boggling implant concept. Hopefully, Total Recall 2012 will be a tonal mish-mash of Source Code, Inception and Blade Runner. I guess we'll see come August!

Ted

Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, has been spending the last few years working on his live-action and film debut Ted. The story centers around Mark Wahlberg as John Bennet, a regular Boston guy with some odd baggage in the form of Ted - a crass, smoking, drug-addled teddy bear who came to life as a result of a childhood wish and has not left him since. For 27 years John has always had Ted around and the two are inseparable friends, proving a strain on John's new found relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis). The trailer has some fantastically quirky dialogue and some side-splitting humour, so is definitely riding high on my list of anticipated films. The premise is so simple yet brilliant, and Wahlberg is perfect casting, proving his comedy chops in I Heart Huckabees and The Other Guys - he's definitely an actor who has grown over the past few years.

Here's the new poster:

Ted is voiced by Seth MacFarlane, who will be covering some old ground from his vocal work as a plethora of characers from Family Guy - namely Peter, Brian and Stewie. Ted actually has some similarities with Brian, a womanising martini-drinking dog and I'm sure MacFarlane and co had a real laugh working on the production. The red-band trailer for Ted has been released recently and plays out as a traditional love story until a hilarious scene which sees John and Ted's method to brave a thunderstorm - onc of the best songs ever!

The trailer (below from youtube) is full of laugh-out loud moments, namely the thunder song (you'll see!), and also the conversation between the buddies about proposing. In typical Family guy fashion, MacFarlane has opted for very adult dialogue within a child-friendly premise making the laughs so much more outrageous. Definitely one to keep an eye out for.

Ted is out on 3rd August 2012.

Review: The Hunger Games

Like Harry Potter or Twilight, The Hunger Games is an extremely popular book franchise which teenagers all over the world claim is like "so totes the best thing ever". As was expected, Hollywood came calling and adapted the first novel in the series into a big-budget blockbuster. It's the biggest cinema earner in 2012 thus far (although big-hitters like The Dark Knight Rises and Prometheus are yet to be released) and with its appealing cast, big action sequences and great CGI, it's easy to see why.

The plot sees a futuristic state, Panem, where the inhabitants live across twelve districts with the wealthy Capitol controlling the population. As a form of penance of past uprisings against the Capitol, two teens from each district are randomly selected to participate in the Hunger Games, a reality TV show which sees them contend in a fight to the death against each other in order to produce one winner/survivor. Using fighting, surivival skills and cunning, the youths must outwit each other whilst trying to survive in a hard terrain with the Capitol constantly throwing new challenges and threats at the participants in order to keep the show entertaining. The story's hero, Katniss Everdeen, a tough and experienced hunter, chooses to nominate herself in her young sister's place, and so begins her race for survival.

The plot has been done before, with Battle Royale, Gamer, The Tournament all being of a similar premise, but The Hunger Games certainly has the kiddy-apeal. Firstly, our leads are all easy-on-the-eye all American charmers, with Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson and Alexander Ludwig leading the pack amidst a plethora over other attractive kids. It can sometimes look a little too sugary and All American, and by casting such leads impacts the film's genuity, but simultaneously draws in the crowds, so is to be expected with a tweeny franchise.

Unlike Twilight, The Hunger Games actually has a bit of grit, and offers something more for the male viewers. The plot is very rich prior to the titular event taking place, with at least an hour of texture and background revealing some Panem history and a look at the various districts. This works very well in the film's favour, and was quite refreshing to see - a clear sign that Hollywood was looking to do further instalments from the get-go, hence making the first film as textured as possible. The tragic and shocking prospect of a fight to the death is allowed to linger on the mind before the games are reached, and this technique of suspense allows us to really get behind Katniss rather than simply feeling obliged to support a protagonist. The film's "goodies" so to speak, Katniss, Peeta, Gale, Haymitch and Rue are all more believable and understated compared against the villains (aside from Donald Sutherland who is great as the President) such as Cato, Clove, Glimmer, and Seneca Crane who are all caricatures of themselves and are far too transparent to be convincing. Nevertheless, The Hunger Games was hardly going to be the philosphical journey that it's plot perhaps warrants, and still manages to remain in the realm of intelligent action rather than just being pretentious codswollop. Whether it's a comment on reality TV, state control, financial dominance by the few, feminism, or even the class system, it doesn't really matter, because The Hunger Games lets these themes just wash over you rather than ever focussing on any details behind any of them.

The central performance from Jennifer Lawrence (who wowed me in Winter's Bone) was the foundation on which the film rests, although it is the sheer scale of the story which keeps the viewers piling in. Katniss is equal parts love interest and action-hero; although at times shy and withdrawn, she is also stong, motivated and willful - like a young Ripley. Her appearance is sexy yet tough, she is in a way a contradiction, or even an engima for the most part. If it weren't for the formulaic plot of these kids of films, then you'd be left wondering if she could in fact beat some of the tough opposition she's facing - even though she's extremely effective with a bow and arrow, her prowess is at times drowned by her vulnerability. I've been told by fans of the books that the violence had to have been seriously edited to make the 12A certification, which is a shame, as the impact and horror of the plot would have been carried home far better with a bit more gratuity - like Battle Royale. Nevertheless, it's a great one for the kids, and although it's certainly deeper than John Carter, Twilight and Harry Potter, but it still doesn't quite cut it as an adult film. This will be loved by the younger generation of cinema-goers, but keep the older siblings and parents fairly nonplussed.

The Boys

I am currently reading the awesome Garth Ennis comic book series The Boys, about a CIA-backed group who police the superheroes in a time where ‘supes’ are made by huge corporations by using the special Compound V. All righteousness, honour and courage have gone out the window, and the superheroes are basically allowed free reign, with sex, drugs and complete abandonment being on the menu most days! They embody debauchery at its most depraved and heinous. However, thanks to our five heroes, these super-beings are taught their lessons the hard way, for The Boys have also been injected with a super-drug giving them the strength and agility to match their super enemies. Clad in black trenchcoats and quick with an insult, The Boys consist of Billy Butcher, the gang’s tough British leader, Mother’s Milk (MM), the brooding black heavy of the gang with an intriguing backstory, The Frenchman, a French war veteran with a penchant for ultra-violence, The Female (of the Species), the gang’s only woman – a young mute girl with a dark past whose competence at killing is slightly disconcerting, and the newest addition Wee Hughie, a street-smart Scot (based on Simon Pegg) taught the ways of superhero policing after his girlfriend becomes collateral splatter amidst a superhero fight. Each of the team have their own personal grudge or vendetta against the supes making them a formidable and vengeful enemy for superheroes all over the world. The origins stories are dark, textured fiction, and the series has more balls and brass than almost any other comic book series I've read (except maybe Preacher).

Adam McKay, he of Anchorman and Step Brothers fame has been trying to get a film adaptation off the ground for a while, and although he doesn’t seem like an appropriate choice, it’s good that someone is keen to get this thing green-lit. Of course, I'd much rather David Fincher or Neveldine & Taylor were shouting the orders, but we'll see. On that note, I thought it would be cool to assess who would be the best casting choices for the lead characters. See what you think and as always, it’d be interesting to hear any thoughts below:

Billy Butcher

 

Ray Stevenson - big, British, brooding, a great casting choice.

Tom Hardy - perhaps too young, but certainly got the chops and brawn for it.

Clive Owen - very British and very mean if he needs to be

 

Mother’s Milk 

Denzel Washington – class, charisma and general master of badassery.

Idris Elba – definitely got the detective skills, presence and size for MM

The Frenchman  

Vincent Cassel – is there really any other choice?! Cassel is Frenchie!

Matthias Schoenaerts – the next big thing after Bullhead, Matthias can play tough and go psycho rather well I've heard.

The Female of the Species

Yang Ziyi – martial arts guru who keeps her screen presence without speaking

Devon Aoki - great in Sin City, Aoki looks great doing a bit of uber violence

  

Wee Hughie

 

Simon Pegg - Ennis based Hughie on Pegg, so.......

Movie News

There's been some recent changes to the blog due to a number of reasons...blogspot nuisances, Apple/Window compatability, boredom (I could go on...). Despite this, please bear with me and keep checking in to have a look, it'll be fleeting at best, and the final design will be in polace within the next couple of weeks if indeed it does change again). Also, if any of you do want a Black List script, please comment your email and something will be sent over - Looper? Django? Dredd? Wettest County? Broken City? Seven Psychopaths? All You Need is Kill?

Anyway,there's been a couple of interesting bits of movie news (collected from Empire and The Guardian and the blogvine), and rather than try and compose some interesting articles revolving around each piece of information, it seems more appropriate to just get it on here for the weekend. Firstly, it has been revealed that Wes Anderson's latest outing, Moonrise Kingdom, will be opening the Cannes Film Festival 2012, and to mark the occasion, here is the magical new poster for the feature...

Featuring Anderson regulars Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, alongside Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel and Frances McDormand, it's perhaps Anderson's most serious cast to date. The story sees newcomers Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman as Suzy and Sam, two young lovers who run away from home together in 1960s New England. This then causes a local search party to start the search aided in main by a large group of scouts (to whom Sam belonged) and their leaders. It's got the ingredients of an Anderson classic (all his films are instantly classics in my book) and the trailer is very funny, showcasing some heavy weight actors in kooky comedy roles. It has been scheduled for a 25th May UK release date.

Also today we have seen Jerry Bruckheimer tweet the first image from Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger, which sees Armie Hammer (the Winklevi brothers from The Social Network) as the titular hero, and Johnny Depp as his Indian sidekick Tonto. The Lone Ranger looks crisp and tough, like the younger brother of Seth Bullock, and Tonto looks like a (psychopath) gothic cherokee, giving an interesting twist on Disney's latest blockbuster (reported budget is $250m). Let me know what you think of the image? Liking the style? Hammer look too young for Reid?

Lastly, there are finally some sneak peeks at the style for the new Judge Dredd film under the working title Peach Trees, to be released as Dredd. Karl Urban plays the Mega City law enforcer who works in an apolocalyptic futuristic world as a street judge - a cop who acts as judge, jury and executioner. Like Carpenter's pulp masterpiece, Assault on Precinct 13, Dredd sees Judge Dredd and new recruit Anderson getting stuck inside Peach Trees - one of Mega City's most notorious and villanous Mega Blocks - whilst crime boss Ma-Ma (played by Lena Heady) and her gang of cronies try and cut them down. A Mega Block is like a whole town inside a skyscraper,housing tens of thousands of people, as well as having all the amenities a town would have - schools, shopping malls, hospitals, places of work etc.

I finished the script last night, and aside from the basic premise above, there is a drug at the center of the story called Slo-Mo, which makes the user see everything in slow motion. There are some great scenes utilising this effect, and kudos to Alex Garland for coming up with such an inventive way of justifying the slow motion action scenes! Ma-Ma, the drug kingpin in the Mega Block, is the head of this syndicate and she runs a gigantic gang called the Clan, most of whom experience first-hand the punishment of Dredd and his psychic sidekick. The script couldn't hold up against genre pics Looper and Django Unchained, but is a tight screenplay for a hollywood blockbuster, with some gritty dialogue and great action sequences (from reading the script, I can't see it being rated less than 15 or 18). Enjoy the pics below:

In the Looper

 

 

o A spec script (speculative screenplay) -  a screenplay for a movie that is shopped or sold on the open market, as opposed to one commissioned by a studio or production company.

My time of late has been occupied reading and getting copies of some of the Black List spec scripts which Hollywood producers rate as being the pick of the crop. It started about 7 years ago with a Producer struggling to find good screenplays by emailing his friends in the industry and having them email him a list of their favourite unproduced screenplays. This list has contained titles such as Juno, The Social Network, The King’s Speech and The Descendants. You can view each of the Black Lists on www.blcklst.com

Of the still unproduced screenplays, the following seem to be generating some serious buzz, many of which are already in pre-production. The best of these titles include Looper, Django Unchained, Peach Trees, The Last Son of Isaac Lemay, Cogan’s Trade, The Wettest County, Broken City, Big Hole, Seven Psychopaths, Stoker, The Dogs of Babel, Killing on Carnival Row, Kitchen Sink, Y: The Last Man, All You Need is Kill, White Jazz, Killing Pablo, The Gunslinger, The Counselor, The Imitation Game, Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, Jackie, College Republicans and Bethlehem. I have only touched on the last couple of years of chosen scripts, and there are many more which could be worth a look. The aforementioned are the most exciting I have seen based on their two line description. Many of the scripts from the list have been analysed on ace blog site ScriptShadow.blogspot.com for your perusal.

So far, I have only ever read a handful of scripts, my first being Inglourious Basterds a couple of years back before the movie was released in the UK. Since then, I have also read Brick, Looper, Django Unchained, and am currently reading Peach Trees – Alex Garland’s reworking of Judge Dredd (named after one of the ubiquitous Mega Blocks). I can tell you now that Looper and Django are absolutely superb – Looper just pipping Django to the post. Rian Johnson’s futuristic hitman movie is a real treat: *light spoilers* the titular Loopers are present day assassins who are sent their targets by the mob 30 years in the future. This works well for the mob, who live in a time when time-travel is available (although illegal) and the disposal of bodies almost impossible. The time travel assassination process is the perfect answer to their needs. The Loopers wait in a set location and using their blunderbuss’, and pop a cap in the ass of whoever arrives at the spot in a whirlwind of time travel. Then dispose the bodies in a furnace. Easy. However, this process becomes complicated when one of the mob of the future become implicated in their illegal activities and have to ‘close the loop’. This involves sending the older Looper back in time only to be killed by their younger self. The young Looper receives a large retirement payoff, knowing they now only have 30 years left to live. When the protagonist Joe accidentally lets his older-self escape from closing the loop, the city Gatmen (mob enforcers) headed by the macabre Abe are after him; both his younger and older self.
The plot is so fantastically-well constructed that it has moved to my Number One Most Anticipated Movie of 2012. I won’t go into more detail about the plot at risk of having some studio bigwig blow up my blog, but things get messy and the narrative focus shifts between different characters as the plot unravels.

Tarantino’s latest, Django Unchained is definitely one of his best works. Before going on to give a bit of information, below are my Tarantino films in order of preference:
1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Kill Bill
4. Kill Bill 2
5. Reservoir Dogs
6. Jackie Brown
7. Death Proof
Once Django Unchained is released, I can see the above titles all moving down one spot.
*light spoilers* The story sees Django, a black slave in America being saved by a German Dentist Bounty Hunter named Dr. Schultz (a part so clearly written for Christoph Waltz) after being bought and chained at a local slave market. After helping Schultz Django sets his heart on going to save his imprisoned wife, but first he must learn to fit. The two become partners roaming America as the Doctor teaches Django the skills of bounty hunting, and he soon becomes a sharp as shit gunslinger. Eventually this leads to the main task at hand, rescuing Django’s wife Broomhilda from the evil clutches of slave-driver and pimp Calvin Candie, from his despicable ranch, Candyland. Our two heroes set off on this quest, and Tarantino really falls into his stride. The supporting characters are awesome (and the names rock – Kurt Russell is playing Ace Woody, Leo DiCaprio is Calvin Candy), and like his previous works, there are plenty of great tidbits in the script akin to the famous ‘burger chat’ scene in Pulp Fiction. It’s an excellent story with a great ending – fans of the auteur director won’t be disappointed with Tarantino’s true Western outing.

Following on from the script talk above, below are my Most Anticipated Movies of 2012 (subject actual release date being this year!):

1. Looper
2. Prometheus
3. The Dark Knight Rises
4. Django Unchained
5. The Last Son of Isaac Lemay
6. The Wettest County
7. Cogan’s Trade
8. Peach Trees (aka. Dredd)
9. The Gangster Squad
10. Moonrise Kingdom
11. Skyfall
12. The Hobbit
13. The Master
14. Argo
15. Total Recall

Once I have finished reading Peach Trees (and then The Wettest County or Seven Psychopaths) I will do a similar report on the gist of the film(s) and how they’re looking. It goes without saying that many of these scripts will be rewritten to death before production, but then again, they may not. There are however scripts that neither love, money (nor huge amounts of web time) will help you find – The Last Son of Issac Lemay being one of them. The tagline: “An aging outlaw convinced that there is evil in his genes goes on a journey to kill off his offspring. In the process, he discovers that his last remaining son is a terrifying manifestation of his worst fears.” ScriptShadow reports that the film is very bloody and violent, with a few Tarantino-esque moments by the sounds of things, but that tagline just makes me shiver with expectation. I’m pleased that I can’t get hold of the script, because it sounds very visceral and gritty, so may be better watched on screen for the first time. The same goes for plenty of other future films – Prometheus, The Hobbit, Dark Knight Rises – which I wouldn’t even try to get the scripts for; some stones are better left unturned. Drop your email below and I will get a brother of a mate of a mate to maybe possibly email you a script…