Halfyard is finally back from his tenth vacation of the year and ready to bring us the skinny on the sights and sounds of Fantasia. Also, fair warning on a fairly lengthy rehash of Batman 3 in which Andrew feels vindicated from last week. We also talk about the new Todd Solondz film, Dark Horse before snuggling up to the virtual campfire with our weekly Watch List, including flesh-eating jungle dwellers, Nazi spy fantasy fulfillment and the seeming demise of Guy Pearce’s career [choices]. It’s a packed to the gills show, so stay sharp.
As always, please join the conversation by leaving your own thoughts in the comment section below and again, thanks for listening!
http://rowthree.com/audio/cinecast_12/episode_267.mp3
Full show notes are under the seats…
IN-HOUSE BUSINESS:
– New mobile app (coming soon)
– Don’t forget about the current app (download here)
FANTASIA RECAP:
– For Love’s Sake | Kurt’s review
– Headshot | Andrew’s review
– Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below
– Mondomanila
– Amok | Kurt’s review
– Zarafa
– Cold Steel
– Wrong | Kurt’s review
– Warriors of the Rainbow
– Lloyd The Conqueror
– Funeral Kings | Kurt’s review
– Starship Troopers: Invasion
– Sushigirl
– Jackpot | Kurt’s review
– Black Pond | Kurt’s review
– Reign of Assassins
– Resolution | Kurt’s review
– As Luck Would Have It
– Toad Road | Kurt’s review
MAIN REVIEWS:
– Dark Horse
– Beasts of the Southern Wild
THE WATCH LIST:
Kurt
– Cannibal Ferox
– Dark Knight Rises
Andrew
– Shining Through
– Lockout
DVDs/NETFLIX INSTANT NOW AVAILABLE:
Jandy’s DVD Triage
NEXT WEEK:
Total Recall
PRIVATE COMMENTS or QUESTIONS?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below, or email us:
feedback@rowthree.com (general)
andrew.james@rowthree.com
kurt@rowthree.com
FOLLOW US:
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Kurt: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
Matt: Twitter, LetterBoxd
RowThree: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
Kurt, did you make a pact with the devil? You have more vacation days in a year than large percentage of the USA population has in a decade.
You turned off comments on that other thread so I am going to pose these here instead:
1. To turn your often stated less is more back on you I would say that Kubrick makes 8 marines and 1 Sniper more hard hitting in FMJ than all of Saving Private Ryan put together.
and
2. Yojimbo is the better Action Movie to Die Hard and is in many ways its ultimate grandparent.
That discussion was great and has me combing my head for what would be in my 10.
Neuromancer is so outdated that a faithful, film adaptation would not work. I still do not why they are adapting it; the only timeless aspect of the novel is William Gibson’s prose. Everything else about the novel has been done so much better in other artworks, including films. Heck, in my opinion, I prefer The Matrix over Neuromancer.
I think the Matrix has basically killed any live action Cyberpunk film chances. That being said I prefer Neuromancer to The Matrix. Ghost in the Shell (anime and manga) or Appleseed too. Might be one of the problems with it being a mash-up if you find pure enough original works that it borrowed from they tend to trump it every time.
The Matrix is amazing for the cinematography, lighting and action but outside that it is is a pretty standard film.
I love Appleseed.
I agree that a completely faithful adaption of Neuromancer wouldn’t work today. That said, while it’s been a long time since I’ve read it, I think it’s possible to update parts of the story so that it doesn’t feel outdated and make an interesting movie.
One of the major problems for a Neuromancer adaptation is that the novel does not have well rounded characters; rather, it has cyberpunk archetypes. While the archetypes were groundbreaking — and they truly were groundbreaking — that is no longer the case in 2012.
Another major problem with an adaptation is that one of the key strengths of the novel is in its depiction of a futuristic metropolis. There nothing astounding anymore with a cyberpunk setting, as is evident with Len Wiseman’s (a hack filmmaker) Total Recall remake. The cyberpunk setting has become one of the de facto settings for science fiction films.
And the last major problem with an adaptation is that the main plot of Neuromancer is thin, at best; the novel is primarily a mood piece. Guess what, Blade Runner already did this 30 years ago.
I think the last time I re-read Neuromancer was around the mid-90′s, so my memory is fuzzy on the more finer details of the novel and so it’s hard to debate what needs to be changed. That said, I do agree that the cyberpunk setting is more common and they will need to do more to make it interesting. Jon Carter of Mars had similar problems in being adapted, in being too familiar to people.
Also looking up info about the Neuromancer movie, it only has a $60 million dollar budget which is pretty small for a sci-fi movie. Not sure if they will be able to pull it off with a budget like that.
You are flat wrong sir. Gibson’s description of that city is far beyond what film has been able to translate into motion.
His language is so evocative and colorful and people always take that in the wrong directions.
I just want to see the Zionist Zero-Gravity MOON set-piece realized convincingly into film. I agree however that many of the plotting elements are going to be obvious in our post-Matrix world, in the same way that Fassbinder’s WORLD ON A WIRE didn’t offer many surprises in the plotting department, but plot aint everything, execute NEUROMANCER with style, and I’ll be a happy boy.
It would have to be like a Tarantino level of style. Then again I don’t think he has any interest in Science Fiction.
Note that AMC was bought out by Chinese conglomerate called the Dalian Wanda Group in May of 2012 and sold their Canadian theatres to Cineplex in July. So it looks like this group did a survey of the chain and for whatever reason decided to get out of Canada. Apparently, the remaining AMC theatres are still up for sale. It’s just Cineplex didn’t want those particular theatres, most likely because of how close they were to existing Cineplex theatres.
I do like the fact that apparently Cineplex is going spent money on updating these the AMC theatres, adding more digital projectors, possibly reserved seating and/or VIP screens.
One concern that I do have, is that the AMC theatre nearby me would sometimes play smaller independent movies and documentaries. Generally they would only be playing one of these movies at any given time, but it was still better than nothing and if it was a movie you wanted to see (like last summer with Attack the Block) then I wouldn’t have to make the trip downtown Toronto to see it. I hope with Cineplex taking over they don’t stop doing this.
Thanks for the specifics, Matt. I am still lamenting the ‘loss’ of the AMC-WinstonChurchill, here, where I did get to see quite a few arthouse, indie
and foreign films in a multiplex. I also liked that the cinema was still a 35mm majority, I do prefer 35mm in most cases, so I knew I was almost always going to get that at this cinema. Also, no video crap, no time-play (ugh!), no fast food in the lobby, and a $2-3 cheaper ticket price were all great things.
Now we are entering the MONOPOLY days of Cineplex, and I fear the worst.
Yeah, AMC Winston Churchill was the one that I was talking about as I live close by to it in Mississauga. I hope that with so many screens in that theatre that Cineplex keeps playing these smaller films, but I doubt it.
I STRONGLY doubt it. Cineplex is run by business oriented rubes.
Kurt, Susanne Lothar was actually married to Ulrich Mühe, i’m fairly sure they met and then married after they made Funny Games. Muhe was 54 and Lothar only 51 when they died.
I think Kurt nailed my thoughts on all of Nolan’s output with “Emotionally Unengaging”
Also Kurt if your going to claim someone as the hottest woman on the planet it’s best to make sure she is the hottest woman in the film first
Salma > Bang
Nope. I’ve met Salma Hayak in person (back in 2000, during the TIFF screening of Figgis’ HOTEL), and she looks sort of like my mom (and is under 5 feet tall), but for some reason, when on film she almost always looks amazing, but I’ve also seen Ms. Bang in person (2010 TIFF – THE LAST CIRCUS screening), and she brings the room to a standstill when she is in it.
Actually, AMC did eventually start playing a preshow, though I don’t remember when they started.
I actually scoped out the AMC Yonge/Dundas since the conversation took place and they only thing Cineplex has done so far is switch to their ticketing system (i.e. all the signage still says AMC).
It’s definitely going to be confusing for TIFF, which has the theatre as one of the venues.
I saw The Pact when it screened as part of the Toronto After Dark Summer Screenings.
Kurt didn’t miss much.
Albeit, I skipped THE PACT for StarShipTroopers Invasion, which arguably was the dumbest movie I saw at the fest, and in the running with SushiGirl for the most offensively banal.
I was looking through the effects credits of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD and I think those giant boars (their called Aurochs BTW) were done practically (i.e. there are puppeteer credits).
It’s sort of funny how we always automatically assume CGI these days.
Wow, we were both way off…………
The Aurochs are Costumed Pigs!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ZAcmIIfZE
They looked like costumed pigs to me, but the green-screening used to integrate them with some of the live action scenes was pretty poor so spoiled the effect a bit for me. I need to listen to the podcast to see what you thought about the film. I loved it, but it is quite flawed so I can see why people wouldn’t like it.
I didn’t hear your main Dark Knight discussion last week as I hadn’t seen the film at that point. On the basis of your mini discussion this week I agree more with Andrew.
I thought there were some great set pieces, Wally Pfister demonstrated what a great cinematographer he is and the ending was great, which I emotionally engaged with.
However it dragged a lot in the first two thirds, so for me it’s a good movie, not a great one. I probably won’t buy it on blu ray, unless it hits £5, but I’ll watch it on TV.
My main thought after seeing the film is that it could’ve said everything it said in 2 hours.
Nolan is clearly a great director but hasn’t honed his writing skills yet. For me Inception could’ve been 2 hours too.
It would be interesting to see him work with a truly great writer who has economy in writing off pat.
THE PRESTIGE script is damn near perfect though.
Hey Gerry, when you’re done with this episode, you should go back and listen to 266. It was Andrew vs. three. Basically I was pointing out all of the problems Kurt was in this one and then we hashed them out. So in essence, Kurt and I agree almost completely on #TDKR.
Yup. When I had to stop listening I thought you were nearly finished the discussion but after listening further Kurt had a chunk of TDKR bashing.
The ironic thing is that I REALLY liked a good chunk of BATMAN 3, it looks amazing, has real visual weight, feels like it exists in the real world (They realistically sell that BATWING!) and I like all the actors doing their thing.
My beef is that while THE DARK KNIGHT hung together on the virtuouso post-911 terrorist thing, I never really felt like Nolan could wrestle RISES to the ground for either thematic coherence, or emotional engagement.
It’s an impressive spectacle to watch, and everyone is across the board excellent (OK, Marion Cotillard is waaaay under used) and I absolutely LOVE the IMAX format for these films.
Like PROMETHEUS (which I liked more), there is a lot to love and a lot to simply shake your head at because it don’t work. Overall they are both technically astounding works of cinema with not-quite-perfect screenplays.
So crazy answering of Plot-Hole nitpick time? Okay.
I think the story in Rises makes a ton of sense it is just going at Mach 2 which I LOVE.
1. The Stock Market scene is there for 2 reasons. 1 is because Daggard thinks he is control and wants to control Wayne. 2 is to push Bruce into a corner so he confides the location of the reactor to Talia to avoid all his toys going into the hands of the on the surface evil competitor guy.
2. Alfred left because he wanted to stop enabling his pain, and he knew rightfully so that if he was always around fixing Bruce and lifting him up he would never crash hard enough to want to leave it all behind. It is addict treatment behavior.
3. Selina wanted to get away from the life she got herself in, and that meant stealing for certain people because they promised her things they might have been lying about.
4. I will ask this of both Andrew & Kurt. Let us say you are watching a Football game, a madman steps onto the field after imploding it, he has this other guy explain that the device behind him is a bomb and that he is the only one who can stop it. The guy then breaks his neck. The masked man then says anyone leaves the city we blow the bomb, and likewise when going to the last bridge that wasn’t exploded there is the National Guard their threatening to shoot anyone who wants to cross.
What would you do in that situation? Would you be on the street constantly? I think the fact that they so sparsely show people makes the city so Alien and different from all other points in the trilogy that exclamation points the situation.
5. The allegory is not specific because it is up to interpretation. This movie isn’t about Occupy as much as it is about how groups with ill defined agendas can be caught in the wake of a charismatic leader who ‘seems’ to believe what you do.
Oh almost forgot. If you are having a VISCERAL reaction to something that means it is working on you deeper than intellect / craft regardless of what you want to say. It is kinda the definition of the word.
Yeah, in terms of plot Rises is actually pretty tight. I’d argue it has an issue with too much plot, and because of that you can lose sight of what is going on. It’s kind of been the way Nolan has been progressing as a filmmaker, as he seems to not trust his audience to follow what he is doing.
In terms of #4 I think it is even simpler then that. People are being rounded up (possibly at random) and being executed. Why risk the exposure of being out on the streets where you are more likely to be found and killed?
#5 is totally right. Bane even explicitly states that (there goes Nolan over plotting again) is what he is doing when he leaves Wayne in the prison. His goal is to manipulate the masses into following him so when he destroys the city it will be that much sweeter.
Forgot another one, Talia set the device to freak out when it was accessed again which is why I only flooded when Morgan Freeman tried to turn it on.
Stock market scene is like one of these bad computer hacking scenes where the “hacker” is working in 3D space trying to break through.
1) You wouldn’t need someone’s finger prints to make a trade. Such illegal trades would be obvious and reversed. If anyone was killed in any stock market, the market would close down immediately. Even if it’s argued that no one was doing anything while Bane was there, as soon as he left it would have been shut down.
2) Yeah, but it’s out of character for Alfred. It’s like Batman suddenly killing villains with guns. Like walking up the Bane and just shooting him in the face. Yeah, you could try to justify why that would happen, but it’s just very much out of character.
4) People would riot for food, water and weapons. I think some people would risk leaving, figuring that perhaps they could leave even if the bomb went off in the city. Garbage would begin to pile up, electricity, news and other things would likely fail. Yet, everything feels very fake like no one is there.
I’ve mentioned before, in generally the movie feels very cartoonish. Sometimes a superhero movie can get some leeway in this area, but after the first one set the tone of being very realistic, the tone just feels really off.
5) Not an argument against this point, but remember that Occupy movement started with it’s first protest on September 17, 2011. Global protests didn’t happen until 15 October 2011.
Filming of the Dark Knight Rises started May 2011 and most of it wrapped up in August. Then there were a few additional shoots in November wrapping up on November 14, 2011. So there was very limited amount of time to take advantage of the Occupy movement as the majority of the movie was shot by the time the movement was picking up steam.
Once you bring in hacking, you bring in the preventing them from stopping it and they mention it the next day about how they can make an appeal but it will take time.
And again we disagree on the ‘realism’ that this series of movies goes for. Just because there isn’t Mr. Freeze doesn’t make the movie Heat.
Stock trades are one of the most tracked things in the world. There are programs where you can zoom into the milliseconds of a trade to see how the price changed to see how your trade was sold or bought at what price range. Yes, they mention how an appeal would take time, but that is once again throwing realism out the window and giving the audience some gobbledygook and trusting that a small part of the audience knows anything about how stock trades work.
They could have Catwoman steal Bruce Waynes security token and figured out his user name and password and made the trades remotely. However, then there would be no chase scene (which was quite cool). Also when you put in an order, no matter how huge the order, it happens instantly, even if it takes a bit longer for the trades for a trade to happen.
It’s typical of Hollywood & tv networks to make things up that anyone with experience with that industry will see through. Also I could be a bit more forgiving of that scene if everything else still held up.
I saw the movie again tonight, because the first time I saw it without my wife who wanted to see it. So I was stuck seeing it a second time, but I saw it in IMAX this time which made it a different and interesting viewing.
Figuring out all the reveals & plot beats by the end of the 1st act didn’t bug me as much since it was second viewing. Still, it had all the workings to me of a stupid action movie. The scene with the cops running down the street and criminals armed with automatic weapons all shooting at the street & sidewalk, hitting perhaps 3 cops still annoyed the hell out of me. Once again, it feels like the various Batman cartoon series had more realism than this movie.
#4 is the biggest problem for me (well, that and the prison sequence). Not completely for unbelievability, but mostly just because the world feels hollow and lifeless; like a movie set – it’s boring. But yeah, this is essentially New York City. EIGHT million people don’t just hang out in their penthouses for 5 months and wait it out. They gotta eat, get water, ammunition, get news and word out to family etc. Not to mention the hundreds or possibly thousands of other “hotheads” out there that would inevitably form some sort of resistance. I’ve seen “V” and I’ve seen enough movies about the Polish ghettos in Nazi Germany to know this.
Going back to the Daybreakers argument, Gamble thinks that when an entire society of rich people all of a sudden have their food taken away, they’ll behave totally calm and wait in lines for the food truck like good little boys and girls. Of course as he was saying this the news in about three different countries were reporting food riots. So yeah, people will risk getting “caught” for food and other necessities.
I don’t think the movie has time to show that and I also think in that case Nolan trusts the audience to go, Oh right the other people who were in all the other scenes are not going to let themselves starve. He is aware of all the movies that have shown those scenes to know that, you know that, I know that, everyone watching knows that those are happening all over the city. Also some people are totally lining up for food trucks.
Still a 5month period people will get into a cycle and with armed militia and prisoners later I don’t think a majority of those people would just be out on the streets, that would be REALLY dumb.
WARRIORS OF THE RAINBOW! Thank you Kurt for talking up this movie because my god.
It’s something pretty damn wonderful, isn’t it? 4.5 hours of awesome. NOW picture it on a huge screen with one of the best sounds systems (and room acoustics) in the country (Concordia’s HALL theatre) and you can be a bit jealous.
If you haven’t pick up the 2 disc full on International Blu Ray (not available in Canada, got it with my also US version of The Raid)
The behind the scenes on the second disc is UNBELIEVABLY GOOD
A few of the Fantasia films Kurt talks about in this episode have just been announced to be part of this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival:
- Wrong
- Lloyd The Conqueror
- Sushi Girl
The line-up will also include DOOMSDAY BOOK, which won the best film at Fantasia, as well as the Canadian Premieres of REC 3: GENESIS and UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING.