Live for Films Movie Club – Bond…James Bond

With the future of the next Bond movie on indefinite hold now is the time to look back on what makes Bond great. As you can see from the poster starting next week Live for Films is having a Bond Themed Movie Club.

It is going to be the first film for each Bond…apart from George Lazenby.

15th May – Dr No

22nd May – Live and Let Die

29th May – The Living Daylights

5th June – Goldeneye

12th June – Casino Royale

Of course you can watch any James Bond film you wish, these are just to get you started.

The Live For Films Movie Club works by a load of people around the World watching the same movie on the same weekend and then heading over to the LFF Forum to discuss the film. Who is your favrourite Bond? The best looking? Best Bond girl? Who has the best one-liners? Greates escape? Best Villain? Best location? Coolest Gadget?

The James Bond LFF Film Club can be found on the Forum here.

Thanks to Another Zen for sorting out the excellent poster. Please feel free to post it on your sites to help spread the word.

Higlander to get the remake treatment

I love the original Highlander. Christopher Lambert’s Scottish / French accent. Sean Connery as a Spanish Egyptian with a Sean Connery Accent and Clancy Brown as the awesome Kurgan. A perfect mix for any film involving sword fighting immortals. Then there were sequels but we don’t talk about them in these parts.

Now the news is out that there will be a reboot / remake of the original film which is really cool. Then you read they want the people behind Fast and Furious to make it which is not so cool. Fast cars and immortals are a tad different. Does this mean Paul Walker and Vin Diesel will be taking over the original parts. Dear Supreme Being of your choice I hope not.

SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT HARNESSES FILMMAKING TEAM BEHIND FAST & FURIOUS FOR THE STUDIO’S RE-IMAGINATION OF HIGHLANDER

Acclaimed Action Director Justin Lin and Producer Neal H. Moritz Join IRON MAN Screenwriters Marcum and Holloway, Original HIGHLANDER Producer Peter Davis on Board

Los Angeles, CA September 22, 2009 – Summit Entertainment announced today that it has tapped the filmmaking team behind this spring’s hit film FAST & FURIOUS – director Justin Lin and producer Neal H. Moritz – to direct and produce respectively the studio’s re-imagination of the cult film HIGHLANDER. Summit’s HIGHLANDER is being written by IRON MAN screenwriters Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. Peter Davis, long time producer of HIGHLANDER, will also produce the film. Summit acquired the rights to remake the cult classic from Davis – Panzer Productions, Inc. in May of 2008.

Summit’s film will expand on the original HIGHLANDER’s core mythology of immortals battling amongst us, hunting each other through the ages by tapping its newly minted creative team to take its re-imagination to new heights. Plans call for the re-imagination to spur a new franchise for the studio.

“We are privileged to have this amazing opportunity to reinvent one of the great franchises,” said Patrick Wachsberger, co-chairman of Summit Entertainment. “Neal and Justin have proven more than once that they can deliver an entertaining and exciting blockbuster.”

Added Peter Davis of Davis-Panzer Productions, “Justin and Neal are an exciting directing/producing team and I am confident that they will deliver a truly dynamic film while being totally respectful of HIGHLANDER Legend.”

In HIGHLANDER, after centuries of dueling to survive against others like him, Connor MacLeod, an immortal Scottish swordsman must confront the last of his kind, a murderously brutal barbarian, who lusts for the fabled Prize.

Justin Lin most recently directed the hit action film FAST & FURIOUS, the fourth film of the FAST & FURIOUS franchise. He also directed THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, and BETTER LUCK TOMORROW.

In addition to FAST & FURIOUS, Neal Moritz and his Original Film banner have produced a myriad of action films including the upcoming FLASH GORDON and THE GREEN HORNET as well as I AM LEGEND, 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.

Sci-Fi Western Outland to be remade

One of those weird coincedences that crop up now and again. I was talking about this film with PJOwens over on the Live for Films Forum just the other day.

Variety have the news that Warner Bros. and Hollywood Gang Prods. have got Michael Davis (Shoot ‘em Up) to direct Outland, a remake of the 1981 Sean Connery sci-fier. That was of course an update of the classic Western High Noon.

The drama revolves around a police marshal stationed at a remote mining colony on Jupiter’s moon Io, where he uncovers a murderous conspiracy threatening the entire Outland with collapse.

The new version will take place in an orbiting city around the moon, where a cop uncovers a conspiracy endangering the entire city. With a week before his retirement back to Earth, he has to choose between walking away with his wife, or taking on an army with his ex-partner and wife’s former boyfriend.

“We loved the original sci-fi film with Sean Connery,” Nunnari said. “At its core, ‘Outland’ is a version of ‘High Noon’ in outer space, as two courageous people take a stand against a gang of ruthless conspirators at the highest level.”

Davis, who wrote as well as directed the Clive Owen action film “Shoot ‘Em Up,” said, “We’re staying true to the thematic heart of ‘Outland’ while expanding the space frontier concept.”

I really enjoyed both High Noon and Outland , but I think a remake of it will be most welcome. It is a classic story and with good action sequences it could be one to watch.

Do you want to see a remake of it? Who should play the main character?

Classic Fight Scene Part 18 – From Russia With Love – Sean Connery vs Robert Shaw

Thanks to Bob Lock for suggesting this one.

Leave a comment on this post below.

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Classic Fight Scene Part 18 – From Russia With Love – Sean Connery vs Robert Shaw

Thanks to Bob Lock for suggesting this one.

Leave a comment on this post below.

HOME

You know Alan Moore doesn’t like comic book movies don’t you?

Total Film have a great interview with the genius that is Alan Moore. Here are a few snippets from it. Be sure to check the rest of it out.

Comics don’t work as films.

“The main reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the film industry is an accountant.
These people may be able to add up and balance the books, but in every other area they are stupid and incompetent and don’t have any talent.
And this is why a film is going to be a work that’s done by dozens and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people.
They’re going to show it to the backers and then they’re going to say, we want this in it, and this in it… and where’s the monster?”

Comics are better than blockbusters.

“There is more integrity in comics. It sounds simplistic, but I believe there is a formula that you can apply to almost any work of modern culture.
The more money that’s involved in a project the less imagination there will be in the project, and vice versa. If you’ve got zero budget, you’re John Waters, you’re Jean Cocteau, you’re going to make a brilliant film.”

Films are a waste of money.

“If you’ve got a 100 million – that’s what they spent on the Watchmen film which nearly didn’t come out because of the lawsuit, that’s what they spent on The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen which shouldn’t have come out but did anyway. And that is what it would take to sort out Haiti.

Put like that, do we need any more shitty films in this world? We have quite enough already. Whereas Haiti could do with sorting out the civil unrest. And the books are always superior anyway.”

Movie contracts are ridiculous.

“The League film cost 100 million because Sean Connery wanted 17 million of that. And a bigger explosion that the one he’d had in his last film. It’s in his contract, that he has to have a bigger explosion with every film he’s in.

In The Rock he’d blown up an island, and he was demanding in The League that he blow up, was it Venice or something like that? It would have been the moon in his next movie.”

Discuss in the Forum

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 2003. DVD Review

Director: Stephen Norrington
Starring: Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran, Stuart Townsend, Shane West, Jason Flemyng, Richard Roxburgh, Max Ryan.
Running Time: 110 minutes

Score: 3/10

People who know me will be aware that am a big fan of comic books and comic book movies. In particular I enjoy those comics written by the genius that is Alan Moore (Watchmen, The Killing Joke, Swamp Thing etc) who wrote the mini-series upon which this movie is based. I could review this film by comparing it to the comic book, but I won’t as the differences are too many and painful to list.

When I first watched this when it first came out I really enjoyed it. There was a pulp novel sensibility to the proceedings and the many characters meant there was always something else to look out for. However, having it watched it again on DVD (for the purposes of later comments I’ll mention the fact it was a normal DVD played on an Upscaler DVD player and viewed on an LCD TV) I realised that it is an absolute travesty of a movie.

Basically, a few fictitious characters (Allan Quartermain, Capt. Nemo, Mina Harker, an Invisible Man, Mr Hyde, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer) are recruited by the British Empire to combat the villianous plans of the mysterious Fantom (Richard Roxburgh).

The characters are all introduced bit by bit and say something humorous and then an bit of action happens. All the characters appear to speak with the same voice with a constant quipping at every encounter. Their lines could be pretty much interchangeable. There is also no consistency with their characterisation. For example, Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) is at first all distant and mysterious about what happened then at the first sign of trouble she Vamps up and rips out the neck of a generic guard. She then whackily licks the blood off her hand while tidying herself up in a compact mirror. There is a tiny bit of exposition about this and then on with the story as if nothing much happened. It just doesn’t make for a convincing character portrayal. The characterisation of all the characters is similarly poor.

Then there is the all pervading presence of Allan Quartermain (Sean Connery) who basically sorts everything out while the rest of the team don’t do much apart from take out the generic guards and be the source of copious amounts of exposition.

The effects, particularly the CGI, are pretty much rubbish and stick out like a sore thumb which good effects should not do. The compositing of the building blowing up near the start of the film is atrocious. As for the Mr Hyde costume/effect, at first you think it is pretty well done, then the more you watch it the more you realise how embarrassingly stupid it really is. It looks like a load of balloons covered in skin. The Invisible Man (Tony Curran) effects aren’t too bad until you notice that the white face paint he applies to make himself visible keeps changing from a few bits slapped on his face to his whole head being covered and then back again (plus if he is naked when invisible why does he leave bootprints in the snow?)

The sets themselves are okay and quite detailed, particularly the portraits in M’s meeting room that show previous incarnations of The League. However, Dorian Gray’s (Stuart Townsend) library appears to have been designed purely for the arrival of gun toting generic guards to stand in the gaps between the bookshelves. This is lazy plotting and design to make the environment fir the fight scene. Just one of those faults that niggles at you.

All of this could maybe have been lifted if the bad guy had been a great one. They don’t really come much better than the criminal genius of Professor Moriarty, but this film would make you think the total opposite. At first Richard Roxburgh plays him as The Fantom a basic 1 dimensional scarred bad guy and then shows no menace whatsoever when he shows his true face. I assume this was the start of Mr Roxburgh’s career suicide which was completed during his camp portrayal in the dreadful Van Helsing movie.

I could go on about how Tom Sawyer (Shane West) was shoe horned in to give Allan Quartermain a surrogate son and also appease the American audience by giving them an American hero, or how they wasted the character of Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) by having him do a bit of kung fu but whose basic function is to get the team from point A to point B. I could go on but I won’t. I think you get the picture.

Needless to say the reported conflict between Sean Connery and the director during the making of the movie will have contributed to some of the disaster that appears on screen, but the scriptwriter, effects people and other actors must take some of the blame.

Phil