All Things:Science Fiction/Fantasy

I ran across someone in the "guilty pleasures" thread who mentioned "The Fifth Element." I would vehemently argue with anyone who says it is not a good movie. Hell, I have the French poster for it on my living room wall. Here's someone who argues that the movie is a perfect example of a very French farce. I've never thought of it as being overtly "French," but it is an interesting take.

GROOVY MATTER: The Fifth Element

P.S. I'm so getting this:

fig,white,mens,ffffff.jpg


P.P.S. A laugh courtesy of the Urban Dictionary

[TABLE="width: 485"]
[TR]
[TD="class: index"]1.[/TD]
[TD="class: word"]Aziz, Light![/TD]
[TD="class: tools, align: right"]19 up, 3 down[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="class: text, colspan: 2"]From "The Fifth Element"

1. Synonym for "Turn on the light"
2. Turning on the lights to find something scary or ugly
Some Dude: Dude the lights are out!
You: Aziz, Light!
Some Dude: What?
You:Turn on the lights!
Some Dude: Nobody gets your obscure movie references
You:*mumbles* Fifth Element is ****ing boss
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
 
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I ran across someone in the "guilty pleasures" thread who mentioned "The Fifth Element." I would vehemently argue with anyone who says it is not a good movie. Hell, I have the French poster for it on my living room wall. Here's someone who argues that the movie is a perfect example of a very French farce. I've never thought of it as being overtly "French,"...
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I love the movie but the costume and hair design was either Chanel or Chanel inspired(main reason for the French accusations). It has aged well but it certainly alienated a lot of potential audience at first because it really is a strange feeling movie. From Chris Tucker's histrionic performance(great or grate depending) to BWillie with peroxide hair to the overall Moebias(Heavy Metal) production design not exactly mass market kind of stuff. BTW...Gary Oldman just KILLS it and Tiny Lister as the President...BRILLIANT. He has my vote.
 
jerseydevil said:
I love the movie but the costume and hair design was either Chanel or Chanel inspired(main reason for the French accusations).
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I think the main reason for the French accusations is that it is a French movie. :) It was written and directed by Luc Besson and was produced by Gaumont, a large French production house which has produced other Besson films like La Famme Nikita and The Big Blue. IMDB lists France as the country of origin of the film.
 
santiclaws said:
I think the main reason for the French accusations is that it is a French movie. :) It was written and directed by Luc Besson and was produced by Gaumont, a large French production house which has produced other Besson films like La Femme Nikita and The Big Blue. IMDB lists France as the country of origin of the film.
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Well, of course. In addition to...just was looking past the obvious but I should have stated that as well.
 
Well, this...



branded.jpg


Looks like a sortof update of They Live with a ton of social commentary re:consumerism. Probably going to be a hot mess...but it's on my radar now.
 
Sequel To Monsters Gets Misfits Director, New Screenwriter | Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

Vertigo Films have been planning some kind of spin-off from Monsters pretty much since that film landed a couple-few years back. At first we didn’t know if they were planning a sequel film, a TV series or possibly both because, as far as I could see, they hadn’t quite made their mind up either. Then, at last year’s Cannes, some firm details bobbed up.

At that point, the plan was for Brent Bonacorso and Jesse Atlas to direct “a Heart of Darkness-style story” featuring a pair of brothers as the two lead roles, one of them going full-on Captain Kurtz in monster territory. We were promised a wider variety of CG aliens than in Garth Edwards‘ first installment, in typical sequel fashion. The budget was set at around $5 million, which doesn’t sound like much but absolutely dwarfs the costs of part one.

But much of that seems to have changed.

Screen Daily (via Shock Til You Drop) are reporting that the film has been handed to new creatives, Jay Basu and Tom Green.

Basu co-wrote Fast Girls, which is currently in UK cinemas, so you can check out his credentials with a quick trip into town. Meanwhile, Green has directed several episodes of Misfits.

The film now has a subtitle – Dark Continent - which doesn’t preclude it from having the same plot as last year, but doesn’t confirm that the story is sticking, either.

Of course, this is all assuming that the two projects don’t co-exist. Perhaps they do. And perhaps one of them is a TV show. There’s nothing 100% clear in the original story. Hopefully Vertigo will announce something soon.
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Should go in sequels...but Monsters is such a niche flick and this thread does it more justice. If you haven't seen it you should. It's deliberate and you don't get money shots till the last couple of minutes. But if you go in knowing that it really is a great little slow burn with the aforementioned nice payoff.
 
Blu-ray Review: John Carter | Geeks of Doom

Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars is the first book in the John Carter of Mars series, which tells the story of a Civil War veteran transported to Mars.

For nearly 100 years, Hollywood has failed in its attempts to bring Burroughs? classic science-fiction fantasy to the silver screen, though the ideas presented were borrowed by countless other works.

Burroughs? John Carter of Mars series is so old that it actually influenced other influences. From Robert E. Howard?s Conan the Barbarian series to the pulpy Flash Gordon serials of the ?30s and ?40s that inspired George Lucas?s Star Wars, the themes and elements of Burroughs? work have been mined so thoroughly that most moviegoers will find Disney?s live-action film adaptation, John Carter, to be rather irrelevant ? but that?s not to say it isn?t entertaining.





From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Finding Nemo), John Carter is a sweeping epic of action and adventure set on the mysterious world of Barsoom ? a planet the inhabitants of Earth know as Mars. The film follows [you guessed it!] John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who wakes up on Mars and becomes entangled in an age-old conflict amongst the planet?s inhabitants, including Thark warrior Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the absolutely bad-ass Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins).

Dejah Thoris is an extremely influential female character in science-fiction fantasy history ? a template for later heroines like Princess Leia, Red Sonja, and Ripley. She?s a brilliant scientist, a fierce warrior, and it doesn?t hurt that she?s drop-dead gorgeous either. When I first saw Return of the Jedi as a boy and laid eyes upon Princess Leia in that metal slave bikini, I knew I liked girls. In that same way, Lynn Collins will no doubt ignite an entire generation?s Bad-Thoughts-Machine as Dejah Thoris, who wears a ceremonial wedding gown like no other.



Taylor Kitsch, on the other hand, isn?t terrible as John Carter, but he?s just all wrong for the part. Kitsch is a young, handsome guy ? he looks like an underwear model, not a grizzled Civil War veteran haunted by a broken past.

Ultimately, John Carter suffers from a lack of consistency ? it?s completely unbalanced. At one moment it?s silly and comic, with a ten-legged dog-monster that speeds around the martian deserts like The Road Runner. Other times the film wants so desperately to be serious and somber ? simultaneously assaulting you with action sequences that, while thrilling, have been done before.

Don?t get me wrong, the monsters and the airships and the landscapes are fantastic, but any time John Carter jumps and skips across the surface, it feels wrong ? it reminds me of Elektra?s rooftop jumps in Daredevil ? it feels fake, even in a world where we can breathe on Mars and there are Great White Apes roaming about.
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FRANCHISE ME: Alien Resurrection | CHUD.com

Nice breakdown. Honestly, I don't think this is THAT bad of a movie. In fact, pretty much all of the Alien flicks bring something to the table. They mirror Dark Horse comics series' in the fact that they take the source material in completely different directions. And, I was not at all aware that Joss Whedon had written this.
 
Little-known sci-fi fact: The incredibly filthy joke hidden in Willy Wonka | Blastr

We've known for decades that Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a wonderfully subversive film, littered with nuggets that'd never find their way into a children's film today. But imagine our surprise to find an incredibly dirty joke hidden in plain sight. Or, rather, plain sound.

Here's the deal: In 1979, Roald Dahl, the same bloke who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 15 years prior, wrote a decidedly adult novel called My Uncle Oswald. As Cracked describes it:

The equally witty and disgusting story revolves around Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, the titular uncle and "greatest fornicator of all time." Along with his sexy accomplice Yasmin Howcomely, he devises a complicated get-rich-quick scheme that involves Howcomely seducing Europe's most famous men and then selling used condoms full of their spent semen to women wishing to birth famous progeny.
Hurm. Well. So, there's a passage in the book where Ms. Howcomely details her encounter with George Bernard Shaw and her difficulties in getting the noted author to wear a prophylactic:

"There's only one way when they get violent," Yasmin said. "I grabbed hold of his snozzberry and hung onto it like grim death and gave it a twist or two to make him hold still."
Let's keep the word "snozzberry" and its definition for Roald Dahl in mind when watching this clip from Willy Wonka:


"The strawberries taste like strawberries! The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!" What used to be a perfectly innocent nonsensical coinage has been defined, by the author, as something entirely naughty.

In other words, Willy Wonka has made a candy wallpaper that tastes like penis ... and encouraged adults and children alike to lick it as if they'll win a prize.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled, decidedly less icky programming.
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santiclaws said:
That doesn't make sense. Just because he used a made-up word in a book in a dirty way, doesn't mean it was intended to be dirty when he first made it up fifteen years previously. That's a reach (around).
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Maybe...but I am going to allow it, simply because it's so funny/cool that I NEED it to be true.
 
Bandito Brothers Release THE PROTOTYPE Teaser Trailer

The Bandito Brothers, the production company behind the commercial hit Act of Valor have released a teaser trailer for their sci-fi attempt, The Prototype. The story follows a humanoid robot (or a roboticized human) from a government program that goes rogue. As is the case when your superhuman test subjects break free, anything goes in the attempt to bring them down, regardless of how much money you pumped into their creation. The Prototype, written and directed by Bandito Brothers’ Andrew Will, stars Neal McDonough (Captain America: The First Avenger), Joseph Mawle (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) and Anna Anissimova.
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Producer blames John Carter's failure on Disney's 'mistakes' | Blastr

Despite its initial box-office failure, John Carter has rallied to post very respectable numbers in DVD sales, and most fans say the movie isn't half bad. If interest continues to swell now that the film is available on DVD, Andrews said he wouldn't be surprised to see a sequel greenlit someday—and if it is, he'll be ready:

"It's going to get its legs back and me and Andrew aren't done with that story yet and we really want to do two and three. There's some great stuff for John Carter as a hero to deal with in the future. We're ready to go. As soon as somebody from Disney says, 'We want 'John Carter 2,'' we'd be right there."
What do you think? Did Disney's marketing confusion doom the theatrical opening? Will a sequel ever happen?
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OhPleaseOhPleaseOhPlease.
 
China and British Warriors Will Battle What At ‘The Great Wall’?! | | Bloody DisgustingBloody Disgusting

It was reported last week that Benjamin Walker (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), Henry Cavill (Superman: Man Of Steel) and Ziyi Zhang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) in The Great Wall, to be directed by Ed Zwick (About Last Night, Blood Diamond). We can also add that there’s strong interest in casting “True Blood” hunk Alexander Skarsgard, although no offers have been made.

It was originally reports that the pic is set in 15th century China and about British warriors who happen upon the hurried construction of the massive wall. As night falls, the warriors realize that the haste in building the wall isn’t just to keep out the Mongols — there is something inhuman and more dangerous.

Bloody did the usual digging and scored some more information! In some exclusive inside info we can report that the movie will follow two former English Crusaders who will help the Chinese defend the Wall and their land against the invading Genghis Kahn and the even more dangerous T’ao T’ieh monsters!

The T’ao T’ieh is the face of a mythical animal with a gaping mouth appearing as a motif in ancient Chinese art.
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Ed Zwick makes beautiful looking movies(Glory/Legends of the Fall/Last Samurai) so this is already on my must see list. Like the fantasy slant added to his usual historical fiction standby.
 
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