The Black List For 2011 is announced, and the "winner" for best unproducedscreenplay of the year is
THE IMITATION GAME by Graham Moore The story of British WWII cryptographer Alan Turing, who cracked the German Enigma code and later poisoned himself after being criminally pros- ecuted for being a homosexual..
At one point, there is a song called “Muppet or a Man,” and I thought, “That sounds like ‘Flight of the Conchords’”. Sure enough, Bret McKenzie was the movie’s music supervisor.
Click through to see this fascinating, massive infographic on "every 3d movie ever made"..
The most interesting point is missed by Sony, that 3D becomes "popular" whenever cinema feels threatened by another medium, in the 50's with Tv, in the 80's with video, and now in the 00's with the internet. Audiences have never suddenly demanded 3D, Hollywood imposes it upon the audience. Perhaps that's why it never takes off...
I few minutes ago i broke the hearts of many a geek by announcing that TRON Legacy was awful. Before i'm lynched for this, i thought i'd give a few reasons why.
TRON Legacy starts well with an amusing boardroom scene at the dastardly ENCOM, a company that seems to inherit all the worst traits of Microsoft and Apple. While the directors meet, our hero Sam Flynn breaks into the building Ethan Hunt style, and performs a largely pointless prank. Cillian Murphy is fantastic in an uncredited cameo that is all too brief.
So we meet the hero, a plucky young thing who can ride the hell out of a motorcyle. Remember that, it could come in handy later. He seems engaging enough, even though he looks a little too close to Anniken Skywalker for comfort. Soon enough he's sucked away from this interesting set-up and into the shit boring, neon heavy world of TRON.
Creator of TRON and mentor to Sam is his father, Kevin Flynn, played by Old Jeff Bridges. Old Jeff Bridges is great. His character is half The Dude, half Obi Wan Kenobi. It's an interesting mix, and Jeff looks like he's enjoying himself but the pages of exposition he is forced to read are dull and make little sense.
CG Jeff Bridges as the villan is just this side of the uncanny valley. In wide shots his head is passable, but any close-ups immediately shatter the illusion and feel like a cut scene from a video game. Animating hard consonants, d's, p's and b's seem especially difficult. This wouldn't be a deal breaker, the movie is set in a computer so in a better movie I could've excused the head as a stylistic choice. But this isn't a better movie.
Oliva Wilde has nothing to work with. Her character is somewhere between The Matrix and Minority Report, says fuck all and is somehow the saviour of the world. To be honest, i stopped paying attention to her story, but she sure looks pretty in latex and neon.
Michael Sheen has a bizarre cameo, channeling David Bowie from The Labyrinth as he struts around his Matrix Revolutions nightclub. It's actually embarrassing to watch, but the cameo from Daft Punk is amusing enough.
When all is said and done, TRON Legacy tries too hard. All it had to do was have a vaguely passable plot and a shitload of light-cycle scenes and i would've been happy. Instead, all the TRON action we came for is in one confused slow scene at the start of the film, then the next hour and a half is spent watching these terrible characters talk. And talk. And catch a train. Then talk some more. The final battle steals much from Star Wars (the good ones) in action and cheekily enough, set design. But with neon.
The few action scenes are a dark, badly shot mess. You really can't tell what's going on or who's life is in danger, and for the most part you just don't care. No character is real anyway, and certainly none are interesting enough to worry about whether they'll live or die.
There's a reason i've peppered this review with references from so many other movies. It's because TRON Legacy plays like a show reel of scenes from the better movies. The only movie it forgets to steal from, it seems, its the fun cheesy glory that was TRON.
Oh, and the 3d adds nothing.
But who cares, TRON will no doubt make a squillion bucks. TRON opens Next Thursday in cinemas everywhere.
Sean Byrne’s acclaimed horror film The Loved Ones Madman Entertainment failed to capture the Australian box office, opening outside the top 10 with a screen average of $1,586 $141,152 from 89 screens.But it’s not like Australians reject torture on film; a different kind of physical abuse did reach the top of the box office, with Jackass 3D Paramount earning $3,582,884.
I don't normally post the press releases I'm sent, but this one caught my eye:
New 3D shark attack action picture begins filming in Australia today
Arclight Films' wide release 3D shark action movie, BAIT 3D commenced principal photography this week at the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast in Australia. The film represents Australia's first Singapore/Australian coproduction following the recently signed treaty and pioneers the filmmaking relationship between the two countries.
BAIT 3D follows a group of tsunami survivors trapped inside a flooded supermarket with a pack of man-eating sharks...
Paradoxically, 3D pros hail Warners decision as an important step forward for 3D. For the first time, the argument goes, a studio has drawn a line over quality, preferring no 3D to bad 3D.
