Spielberg delivers the T-Rex money shot in "Jurassic Park".

(Steven Spielberg, 1993)

November 26, 2009

by Joel Crary

For my money, no modern director is as consistently reliable as Steven Spielberg, who approaches a wide variety of genres with a seemingly tireless eagerness to make exemplars for each. The first three-quarters of “Jurassic Park” is superb adventure filmmaking of the highest order. One scene, in which a Tyrannosaurus Rex breaks free of its enclosure and attacks a group of tourists, remains among one of the most harrowing ever filmed. Before the 21st century Spielberg, who elected to go all George Lucas on a re-released “E.T.” that toned down its scarier material, his younger self had no qualms with putting children in harm’s way.

As a child, I loved him for it. Sixteen years after I saw the film in theatres, there is still a palpable sense of terror to the T-Rex scene as it nearly crushes the children under a sunroof before flipping the car and grinding it into the muddied road like a finished cigarette. In that scene and others in which dinosaurs are majestically portrayed as having returned to roam the earth after 65 million years, the boy in Spielberg is apparent, using all of the tools at his disposal to recreate the wonder he must have felt at a young age when flipping through illustrations in a grade school science textbook.

I had a first or second row seat for my first viewing of “Jurassic Park”. People crammed into theatres to see it , the result of a marketing campaign that spent a dollar for every year that dinosaurs had been extinct. It seemed less a film that a full-on cultural event, something completely unique in light of most of its competition in the summer of ‘93, which included “Super Mario Bros.” and “Last Action Hero”. Merchandise and ancillary products dominated store shelves. Toronto named their new basketball team after a dinosaur that no one had so much as heard of three years prior.

Most significantly, “Jurassic Park” was the film that changed the movie-making landscape with regard to CGI. Sequences such as the running of the gallimimus herd and the brachiosaurus encounter, animated by the effects creators at the still teenaged Industrial Light & Magic, opened up doors of possibility for animators still working within the limitations of stop motion on productions. After “Jurassic Park”, unreal creatures began to move more fluently, extending the possibilities of the corporeal onscreen.

The film’s strongest effects work, however, remains in the realm of animatronics, which have always trumped CGI. The T-Rex is actually there in the frame, screaming like something out of a nightmare as it tears an electric fence to pieces. The potency of “Jurassic Park’s” dinosaur scenes comes from the effort of the effects team to study the creatures’ behaviour and apply it to their movements. The filmmakers are aware that all most of us know about dinosaurs comes from what we have retained from lessons and theories learned in childhood – the T-Rex can’t see you if you don’t move; the brontosaurus eats leaves, not people – thereupon building our empathy for the hapless characters as they find themselves at the mercy of natural selection.

For the most part, Michael Crichton and David Koepp’s script is wisely fueled by the awe of their characters. These days, the movie starts to lose me around the time Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) has to restore electrical power to the park. Spielberg gets a little too energetic with his camera movements, which try in vain to pump life into the film after the T-Rex scene has shattered the nerves. There are plot holes and conveniences galore, such as the scene where Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) throws a stick at an electric fence to see if it’s still working, or the fact that 13-year-old Lex (Ariana Richards) knows how to navigate a UNIX interface to restore the compound’s locking mechanisms.

“Jurassic Park” was my introduction to the brilliance of Jeff Goldblum. Viewing Ian Malcolm in the post-Brundlefly context puts a whole new weird spin on his oddly delivered observations regarding chaos theory in the evolutionary process, but he’s wasted in the film’s second half, where he is positioned in fetishistic shots that linger on his bare chest and placement akin to some kind of fallen Greek deity. Samuel L. Jackson also plays an understated role as one of the park’s technicians with an Andy Capp smoke perpetually dangling from his lips, and in his portlier days, Wayne Knight tangles with an acid-spitting dilophosaurus and loses in mucky fashion.

The character I’ve come to enjoy most is Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck), who lived in Crichton’s book but dies in the film. In spite of his fatal error in hunting velociraptors, he’s the one guy out of the lot I’d trust to escape the island with, as he’s the only one who seems to acknowledge exactly what the dinosaurs are capable of. Had he survived, I believe he could have single-handedly prevented the next two installments in the “Jurassic Park” series, or at least brought some much needed good sense to “The Lost World”.

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the showman, cares little for the science behind his attraction. I like his bit of dialogue about the flea circus, pregnant as it is with the idea of trading in things we can’t see for things that are too big to imagine, overwhelming ourselves with our own power simply to see if it can be done. “Jurassic Park” is about ambition and a desire for capital triumphing over good ideas, told with an excitement for the scientific method and what becomes possible for the adult who never fully grows out of his childhood fantasies. Spielberg clearly never has.

Ghost Town è un film del 2008 scritto da John Kampse e Davdi Koepp e diretto dallo stesso David Koepp.

Leggi altre notizie su: | Ricky Gervais | Greg Kinnear | David Koepp | Téa Leoni

There’s a new high-concept, big budget thriller coming our way courtesy of Jurassic Park and War Of The Worlds writer David Koepp.

The screenwriter, and Steven Spielberg’s go to guy these days, is set to film Premium Rush, based on a script he co-wrote with John Kamps. This will be Koepp’s fifth directorial outing, after Ghost Town, Stir Of Echoes, Secret Window and The Trigger Effect, but marks the first time he has attempting a high action flick. The story revolves around a bike messenger who picks up a parcel so important that he’s chased through a city by a corrupt cop, who wants its contents badly.

So then, it’ll just be one continuously long chase scene then? Fine by me. I’m hoping that it’ll be done in real-time, or even better shot all in one take a lá Russian Ark. Just to get the adrenaline blood pumping you understand. Koepp certainly knows action, having scripted Mission: Impossible and the first Spider-Man but is he write to direct? Hopefully the main man Steven will be about to lend a guiding hand.

Sony are fast-tracking the production, but no actors have been attached as of yet. Expect to see the movie in cinemas summer to late 2011.

What did we do to deserve David Koepp’s ‘Premium Rush’?

David Koepp, who is responsible for some great movies (Carlito’s Way, Jurassic Park, The Shadow) and some abysmal dreck (The Lost World, Secret Window, Snake Eyes) is going to subject the world to the awful sounding action flick, ‘Premium Rush’.

PR involves a New York City bike messenger who picks up “the wrong package” and is chased all over the city by the crooked cop who wants it back. Unfortunately, even though this sounds like a low budget thriller in the mould of ‘16 Blocks’, something we could easily ignore, it’s apparently a big budget action movie featuring “the kind of elaborate chases associated with a William Friedkin pic”.

I can’t wait to see some kid in a porkpie hat chasing a subway train on his BMX.

Droopy Dogs little bro gets his ‘Source Code’.

Persian prince Jake Gyllenhaal has signed on for the sci-fi thriller ‘Source Code’, to be directed by David Bowie’s kid, Duncan Jones.

Gyllenhaal will play a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown commuter and is forced to live and relive a harrowing train bombing until he can determine who is responsible for it.

Sounds a bit like the movie ‘Déjà Vu’ to me. I liked this more when Topher Grace was attached and Billy Ray hadn’t done a rewrite.

Harvey Keitel reunites with Robert De Niro for the first time since ‘Mean Streets’

‘Little Fockers’ is the sequel to the sequel that absolutely no one seems to be asking for. But that doesn’t stop Hollywood from hedging their bets and utilising their best talent to make yet another bland, forgettable “comedy”.

So here you have De Niro, Keitel, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Laura Dern all involved in a soulless cash-in at the expense of the untold number of genuinely good unproduced screenplays.

Anyhoo, Hollywood comedy is pretty much dead so expect more of the same. I’m just surprised Vince Vaughn hasn’t squeezed his giant, melon head into this flick.

Dante Harper follows the breadcrumbs to ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

Harper has been hired to write Tommy Wirkola’s ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’, which centers on the traumatised siblings, who, 15 years after their experience at the gingerbread house, have become bounty (witch) hunters.

It’s a concept that unfortunately sounds like the abysmal misfire ‘The Brothers Grimm’, but hopefully Wirkola, who made ‘Dead Snow’, can make it work.

Ghost Town (2008)
Directed by David Koepp
Starring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, and Tea Leoni

Let’s face it: Ricky Gervais is one funny human being. The man has great comic timing, a natural ability to make a written line seem like a throwaway statement, and a mischievous grin that is always charming even when he’s playing a complete jerk.

Because of his supreme natural talent, Gervais is the main reason why Ghost Town is such an enjoyable movie to watch.

Ghost Town, for those who haven’t seen it, is the story of a cranky, humanity-hating dentist Bertram Pinkus (Gervais) who has a near-death experience during surgery and wakes up with the newfound ability to see ghosts.

The ghosts that Grevais sees aren’t gouls or spectres. In fact, there’s not one scary moment in the film. Instead, the ghosts are lost souls who aren’t sure what to do with themselves. They turn to Gervais for help because he is the only human who can see and hear them. But Pinkus wants nothing to do with them. He just wants to be left alone.

One particularly persistent ghost (Greg Kinnear) promises to keep the other ghosts away from Pinkus if Pinkus will help him break up the pending marriage of his widowed wife (Tea Leoni). Pinkus reluctantly agrees, and comedy ensues.

That’s pretty much the premise. You’ll see where it goes from there.

In this Monkey’s opinion, Ghostown is remarkable for what it doesn’t try to do as a modern romantic comedy. Namely, it doesn’t try too hard on either end.

There are no over-the-top comic set pieces, no real sidetracks into grossout humor for cheap laughs, and even the plot itself isn’t twisted and turned through the predictable machinations of a romantic comedy just so we can arrive at the same ending we always get to.

Sure, there is a little bit of conflict here and there. But the filmmakers wisely realize that you don’t have to spoonfeed the audience every step of the way.

It would be interesting to read an original draft of the script to see how much Gervais added to the role, and how much was there on the printed page.

Screenwriter & Director David Koepp has taken his share of abuse from movie fans in the past. (Most recently for his role in writing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

But here his work is tactful, understated and suited perfectly to the cast and the material.

Here’s the trailer for the film. If you watch it, let this Monkey know what you think.

• I think this is the sort of movie where if you don’t get Ricky Gervais’s humor then you wouldn’t like it. I, however, think Ricky Gervais is hilarious and so think this film is hilarious.
• Yes alright, it was predictable, it wasn’t the most fantastic movie of all time but it still makes you laugh and in a comedy, that’s pretty much all you need .
• I loved it .

Review by Todd Murphy www.allaboutmovies.net

Directed by David Koepp — Starring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni

RATING: 6/10

Click Here for the original review

BOTTOM LINE: Although billed as a comedy, “Ghost Town” is more a light-hearted character drama which may disappoint those looking for more from Ricky Gervais who puts in an understated performance in this talky and slower-paced film.

THE GOOD: What makes “Ghost Town” a different take on the usual for the genre is that the ‘ghost’ idea is merely a device to set up interactions between selfish dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) and his unwelcome encounters with people, dead or alive. Learning that he died for seven minutes after a routine operation, Pincus suddenly finds himself with the ability to see dead people… and they annoy him. Predictably, this leads to some funny situations, such as the naked ghost sitting beside his bed while he sleeps, or the ethnic mob guy who wants him to do a hit on someone he dislikes. Ultimately, Pincus has most of his encounters with a ghost who was also a formerly selfish man in Frank (Greg Kinnear). Pincus strikes a deal with Frank that if he helps Frank, then Frank will get the ghosts to stop bothering him. This entails getting involved in the life of Frank’s former wife Gwen (Tea Leoni), whom Pincus starts to fall in love with. In the end, Pincus learns to be more giving and Frank learns some truths about his misdeeds and Gwen. “Ghost Town” is a bit of a surprise; the previews suggested a more silly comedy with Gervais’ brand of humour, but the resulting film is somewhat more cerebral and subtle than that. In some ways this is a plus, leading to some more character-driven sequences than what you would otherwise expect. Ricky Gervais carries the film very well and proves he is quite adept as an actor, and is somewhat restrained here in his performance. Kinnear and Leoni are also quite solid in their respective roles. David Koepp shows his flair as a screenwriter with some very good dialogue between the characters, leading to some funny and tender moments. Perhaps the best part of “Ghost Town” is that it does not over-use its high concept premise, and for much of the time it feels more like a character piece rather than a genre film.

THE BAD: The film does not quite know where it sits; it is not a comedy, nor a supernatural film, nor a drama or a character piece, yet it tries to fuse all of these disparate elements together but with less than satisfactory results. Pincus is setup as a virtual stereotype from the outset, yet somehow he manages to catch the attention of Gwen with an insult which subsequently starts his heart-warming transformation that feels more arbitrary in the first instance rather than natural. This arbitrary transformation also abruptly changes the tone of the film from its ‘comedy’ origin to a more ‘indie’ flick feel. The film is very talky, which slows the pace of the film down considerably. This might not have been a bad thing if the filmmakers did not feel they had to put some comedy in to the film with some awful sequences, starting with the scene where Pincus and his doctor continually interrupt each other in the hospital, or the more shocking and slapstick-style quality of the scenes were both Pincus and Frank get hit by a bus. “Ghost Town” has a high concept comedic premise which has been executed by a director who has a more cerebral and dialogue-driven sensibility and the marriage between the two is uncomfortable at best.

Click Here for the original review

Todd Murphy is a film analyst and staff writer/reviewer for the film and DVD review web site, ALL ABOUT MOVIES.NET.

I watched “Angels & Demons” expecting escapist entertainment, because really, expecting anything else from a film based on a Dan Brown novel is just silly — I have not read “Angels & Demons”, but I read “The DaVinci Code” and if there’s one thing it teaches us, is that there is such a thing as an overwritten plot (and that, okay, bashing the Catholic Church is fun). I fully expected that for this film, with fast-paced editing to hide all the holes in it and expositional dialogue to make sure the audience could keep up with all the mythology and symbology, because it’s a well-known fact the audience is fully comprised of utter morons like myself who need arrows pointing to the screen in a movie theather so they know where to look at.

And even with my hopes low enough to be capable of withstanding an Aaron Seltzer/Jason Friedberg spoof flick for five or six minutes before slamming my own head with a car door, “Angels & Demons” still managed to fall many miles below said hopes and the more I think about the film, the more its quality approaches the center of the Earth.

In the film, scientists have managed to produce antimatter with the Large Hadron Collider. Right after they do it, the capsule containing the antimatter is stolen by a hired gun. Soon, the battery keeping the antimatter suspended in vacuum will run out of power, which will result in a huge — yes. In other words, the movie simply uses the antimatter as a glorified (and very preposterous) nuke, and the only reason it’s antimatter and not any other kind of powerful bomb is because the plot needed an explosive device that could be made by the Large Hadron Collider (which, in real life, it can’t make anyway), for the sake of pretentious “Science vs. Religion” symbolism (something Ron Howard very subtly depicts by interrupting the flow of the movie to show a bunch of cardinals using cameras and cellphones like that’s a groundbreaking revelation or clever irony). How the hired gun knew the antimatter experiment would be successful, and why he didn’t look for a less complicated bomb, is cleverly left unexplained by the film, since any attempts to actually explain it would certainly result in utter embarassment. Shame the film stops caring about not embarassing itself in a matter of minutes.

The Vatican is about to choose the next fanatic moron to lead them and wear that remarkably goofy hat, since the previous pope has just died. However, the four favorite cardinals have been kidnapped by the same hired gun who stole the antimatter. He claims he will kill one of them every hour, starting at 8 pm, until the battery of the antimatter capsule runs out at midnight. Cry your heart out, Anton Chigurh. You spend an entire movie hunting a redneck with a briefcase and meanwhile this guy steals antimatter and kidnaps four cardinals in the first minutes of the film. However, I think this is because Chigurh is a character in an actually good movie with a believable plot. Also, the Swiss Guard are not depicted as very intelligent or efficient people in “Angels & Demons”, since their reaction to finding a cardinal immediately after he’s attacked is to stare at him dramatically as he dies instead of hunting the killer who is very possibly still around.

With the antimatter stolen and four cardinals kidnapped, the Swiss Guard turns to Robert Langdon, a symbologist who seems to think everyone around him is retarded, judging by how he finds it necessary to use Italian terms mixed in with English sentences and then translate said terms to characters who either speak or are Italian. This is especially dickish of him since he’s a religious symbologist who, in two scenes, needs help to read Italian and, for fuck’s sake, Latin. Granted, all the characters in the film have this overpowering urge to explain everything. Every time someone mentions a religious term, someone else describes it. Or the character himself does. A particularly hilarious moment is when Langdon says “You didn’t tell me they were the preferiti — the favorites to be named the next pope”. And when your character feels the need to explain what the preferiti are to the Swiss Guard — your dialogue is shit. That or your character is a pedantic asshole.

But really, I should have realized that this being a film co-written by Akiva Goldsman, I’d have to be dead and in Hell to enjoy it. Yes, the usually very competent David Koepp is the other writer, but according to imdb.com, he was hired to re-write the script. My guess is that he read it and realized the only way to re-write it would be to throw it in the fire and start over, but probably there wasn’t time for that, so he threw in one or two passable lines of dialogue and called it a day — hopefully moving to a better project that is more suitable to the man who wrote my favorite film, “Carlito’s Way”.

It isn’t only the dialogue being absurdly badly-written and the plot preposterous that ruins this film — it’s also extremely predictable. And the really pathetic part is that it tries its best to hide who the villain is — and that’s precisely why it’s so easy to figure that out. (Rest of this paragraph might reveal the villain, so spoiler warning, if you care) The writers pretty much put a halo in his head and treat him as a complete saint, while making the other characters unreasonable by contrast. They even go as far as hiring an actor who usually plays good guys for said role, while the other ones have played proeminent villains in other productions. And if you’ve ignored the spoiler warning and this reveals who the villain is for you, really, I doubt the movie would be more successful in fooling you. If it is, maybe you’ve hit your head recently.

However, what truly destroys this film and makes it such a disaster is how pretentious it is. It actually thinks it has something relevant to say about the ongoing debate (and in several cases, war) between Religion and Science. In fact, the characters feel the need to spell the movie’s simplistic message out for us, the poor misleaded audience, in case we have failed to grasp it. And at the same time, “Angels & Demons” ignores that it has invalidated its own message — and if at this point you still care about spoilers, don’t read the rest of this paragraph (or the entire review, since I’m not being too careful with spoilers anyway) — it is revealed the Illuminati do not exist in this film and are used as a deception by the villain, who is a Catholic fanatic. In other words, this whole mess has originated within the Church and there is no war between Science and Religion at all. The blame falls squarely on the Catholic Church alone. This explains why, in the ending, when a character says there is room for Religion and Science in the world, I wanted to claw my own eyeballs out.

There’s also the plotholes, of course. The executions of the preferiti are supposed to be public in order to achieve the desired effect, and yet most of them would have gone unnoticed if Langdon hadn’t found the bodies; the Great Elector says there will be no election without the preferiti, and half an hour later there he is trying to elect the new pope without them; and not only the movie fictionalizes some Vatican procedure (the Camerlengo is not as powerful as the pope during his absence, as depicted), but it fictionalizes science as well. Not only the depiction of antimatter is very dodgy, but for the love of Albert Einstein, since when taking a nuke (or antimatter that acts like a nuke) about a mile above the ground is a way of preventing destruction? Nukes detonate on the air for maximum impact — otherwise the ground soaks up a good portion of it. So when a character takes the nuke/antimatter/whatever to the skies in a helicopter, the other characters should have been trying to shoot it down with an RPG or something — but maybe then they remembered they’re in a film written by Akiva Goldsman based on a Dan Brown novel and relaxed.

The movie adds another interruption to the story so the Camerlengo can deliver a speech about Science vs. Religion that once again reiterates the film’s stupidity. “Who is more ignorant: the man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its natural awesome power?”, like you cannot both define it and respect it — and in fact, it’s thanks to attempts to understand electrical power that there is such a thing as a lightning rod. But the real gem is “There are things Science is too young to understand,” — and meanwhile the Bible claims the world was made a few thousand years ago. By an invisible man in the sky.

All this and I haven’t even talked about the technical aspects yet. I will avoid talking about the cast, since not a single actor receives a good character to play in this film. All I’ll say about the actors for having accepted their roles: are you all idiots/not rich enough yet?

Director Ron Howard continues his partnership with Akiva Goldsman by directing the film which as much ability as Goldsman writes it. Howard insists on spinning his camera around the characters while zoomed in on them, which causes that epic visual effect: the object or person focused by the camera spins slowly while the unfocused scenery behind them pans much faster. This, I presume, was Howard’s desperate attempt to make up for the endless talking and explanations. He does not restrain himself and as a result his job lacks subtlety — although the script (and Hans Zimmer’ overdone chorus-filled soundtrack) already did, but still. In fact, in two occasions, when Langdon is arriving at the possible location of a murder, he is startled by sounds that could be gunshots but are revealed to be perfectly innocent sounds from the crowd — this happens twice, consecutively.

The cinematography is not bad, although it overuses lighting coming from windows in otherwise dark rooms to shadow the many, many, many dialogue scenes. But considering this film happens in the Vatican, I can’t blame it for that, really. However, the cinematography is sabotaged by the inconsistent special effects, which reach their lowest by failing to depict the flight of helicopters convincingly — but to be fair, this might be due to Howard’s overdone camera movements.

Predictable and repetivive with only one action scene worth a fuck (the shootout in the church with a man being burned), “Angels & Demons” basically believes itself relevant and smart while at the same time believing the audience to be idiots, and the final shot is so nauseatingly optimistic and so horribly misses the point I could feel the bile trying to corrode its way out of my liver.

PS: I leave some room for the possibility of the movie being actually against the Church and pretending it’s not, in a satirical fashion, considering that the plot is pretty much revealed to be the Church’s fault alone — but this does not in any way enrich the film, since it’s never brave enough to admit its beliefs or even do satire properly, if that’s indeed the case.

Ghost Town * * *
Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni Largest digital music Directed by David Koepp
THE FALL MOVIE SEASON ACHIEVES

comic liftoff thanks to Ricky Gervais,Track mp3 a master of deadpan hilarity playing a den-tist who sees dead people. If you don’t know Gervais from the original Brit TV ARTIST version of The Office or HBO’s Extras, then you are an idiot and deserve root-canal surgery without Novocain. Wait, I’m starting to sound like Bertram Pincus, the Scrooge in a dental smock for whom hell is other people. (Listen, he does live in Manhattan.) When a colonoscopy gone wrong gives Bertram a taste of death, he wakes up with ghosts popping up every which way demanding things from him. It’s Sartre’s A[o Exit played for laughs.
Cheers to David Koepp, who writes blockbusters (Indy 4, Spider-Man), di¬rects occultish thrillers (Secret Window;, Stir of Echoes) and finds a beguiling com¬fort zone with this zesty, twisted fun. Bertram reluctantly helps dead cheater Frank (Greg Kinnear) – he dies great! -earn forgiveness from his widow, Gwen (Tea Leoni). But in doing so he falls for Gwen and discovers his inner romantic.
It sounds sappy, and sometimes it is, but director Koepp and co-writer John Kamps stay alert to the humor and pathos of Bertram’s isolation. With expert help from Kinnear and the irresistible Leoni, Gervais rides the hurdle of his first big-screen leading role in high style. Gervais is my kind of comic hero – not even a town full of ghosts can scare him sweet.

Short and sweet thoughts.

Coming off the twitsted, style-heavy duo of Se7en and Fight Club, David Fincher’s Panic Room wasn’t exactly the next logical step.  It’s a straightforward, claustrophobic thriller; a “tiny” film in the Fincher spectrum that is often written off as his least accomplished film (for those who forget  Alien³, that is).  But with a top notch cast, maticulous direction by Fincher, and a border-line pornographic look at architecture, Panic Room is great entertainment.  We only get a few details about each of the character’s lives (Jodie Foster’s divorced and disconnected from her daughter, Forest Whitaker is just looking for a break in life, Jared Leto’s an idiot looking to make a quick buck, etc.), but that’s all we really need to know to experience this moment of fear in their lives.  It’s surface level, but never cheap.  A satisfying thrill ride worth another look from those who’ve dismissed it.

The Shadow | Dir: Russell Mulcahy | 1994 | 7/10

Back in 1994, while every other 9-year-old was probably out watching Disney’s The Lion King singing Hakuna Matata, I was sitting in an almost empty cinema watching The Shadow humming Jerry Goldsmith’s catchy score.

Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston starts off in Asia running an opium trade with an iron fist going by the name of Ying Ko in a scene reminiscent of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now (1979), but his corruption is about to be tamed and undone by some mystic holy man who teaches him to fight for good by using his shadow to cloud mens’ minds. So Cranston was apparently an American soldier fighting in World War I who somehow rose to power in the far East and turns into a sadistic baddie bent on power and opulence. This sounds a lot like Pinhead’s back story in the Hellraiser movies. Did the first world war really have that effect on veterans?

Anyhow, jumping seven years later to New York City in the mid-1930’s, Cranston returns with his new secret identity as the city’s elusive superhero – the Shadow, along with a whole network of agents at his disposal. How he gathered these agents in a short space of time is anyone’s guess, he just saves peoples’ lives, gives them a flashing signal ring, and presto, they’re agents of the Shadow because they “owe him their lives”. Imagine if Superman did that to everyone he saved, there was an episode of Lois and Clark that dealt with that idea when some guy who got Supes’ powers sent people a bill for saving them. I don’t get it, didn’t Cranston become the Shadow for the sake of his own redemption? If so, then why the hell in his mind would anyone owe him anything?

The Shadow himself isn’t an ordinary superhero, naturally he has a dark past and isn’t a goodie-twoshoes, so he has no qualms about killing bad guys, and thankfully fans don’t complain about him killing anyone or at least inflicting a great deal of harm on his enemies when he needs to. This is all done with tongue-in-cheek humour, so he’s not a stiff. However, what the hell is it with his face changing when he becomes the Shadow? He looks like he’s turned into Stephen Baldwin when he’s in the hat and cloak! It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry was dating a girl who looks fabulous in certain lighting, but then looked like a hobo in other certain lighting. Maybe she was also a student of the Tulku.

The villain, Shiwan Khan (John Lone), the supposed last descendant of Genghis Khan (which is a lie because he allegedly has descendants all throughout the Asiatic peoples), is a real scene stealer. He’s another Shadow who can cloud men’s minds, so he’s a perfect nemesis to Cranston, along with his desire to rule the world and finish the job of his great-great 40³² grandfather by blowing the city sky high with an atomic bomb. Are we sure he’s not Persian? I heard Iran called, they want their bomb back. Almost everything the guy says is hilarious with lines spoken with that creepy hypnotic stare like “In three days, the entire world will hear my roar, and willingly fall subject to the lost empire of Shan Kahn. That is a lovely tie, by the way. May I ask where you acquire it?”

Then there’s the lovely Penelope Ann Miller as Cranston’s bleach blonde love interest Margot Lane who has the natural ability of telepathy. This freaky psychic power she has is just a real turn-on for Cranston as he’s always looking just a bit further down than her clever neckline than what any woman in reality would be comfortable with, but it also happens that her colour-blind father (Ian McKellen) is building the bomb under Khan’s hypnosis. One thing I didn’t get about this is that Cranston can’t cloud her mind no matter how hard he tries. At first, I thought it was a literal thing that he could only cloud “mens’ minds”, but then that didn’t make any sense as Khan was able to hypnotize her with that bizarre cigarette billboard that could change into his own face puffing smoke rings. Is this a typical David Koepp script blunder or is Cranston just clueless with dames?

It’s a shame this lavish movie bombed at the box office. Despite its plot holes and elements of style over substance, I’ve always had a great affection for its pulp serial look and structure, as well as Goldsmith’s music, which is really such a fun and textured work that you wouldn’t hear in a movie of this kind these days. I’ve heard some critics say that the The Shadow doesn’t take itself seriously enough and should have been more like Batman Begins (2005) – you’ve gotta be kidding me, that movie was an ultra-serious bore with a tone that wouldn’t work for the 30’s serial style of this film. Just no. The colourful cheese factor in this film is welcome.

If you want to see Alec Baldwin tear the skin off his face to find someone else underneath, I recommend The Shadow as an almost forgotten cult classic. That’s really some kind of mystery.

my younger self

This photo actually mis-represents this post but its the -only- pic from my childhood I like so tough.

As you can see, I was like every other kid who went to a Christian Summer Camp at Butlins… Okay, maybe I was slightly different.

My journey into The Biz began earlier than this, when I first saw a snippet of Jurassic Park on VHS. Spielberg became my hero overnight, the only kid in Nursery School who knew what a director was (kinda). Instantly I’m determined to work with Dinosaurs and make videos too (when seeing The Lost World: Jurassic Park in the Isle of Wight’s only cinema my ambitions grew to big-screen distribution).

Flash Forward, Year 6 (final year of Primary School) and I’ve just taken the beginning of a story from our teacher, killed off her well-put-together-character and replaced it with aliens & an Arnie impersonator. Her response, “You’re gonna grow up to be a movie producer.”

There it was, I had a title to aim for. I was no longer Spielberg, I was Frank Marshall. Overnight, I had a new goal.

Next few years were dull – dedicated to growing up, getting that photo taken and watching The Matrix way too many times. In fact, things stayed relatively normal until Year 11 (last year of compulsory education – GCSEs). Parent-Teacher night, once again a time to shrink in my chair as my French Teacher called me a Dark Horse.

This time though, I was more worried about my English Teacher’s possible comments. Parent-Teacher night was some time in February, late enough for me to f*ck up but early enough for my Rents to get involved. October, the year before, our class is told to write a short story and hand it in before the end of the year. Come P-T night and my short story was 112 pages long and imo not finished. My English Teacher’s comments; “He’s got real talent here, if he keeps it up.”

Now I want to become Spielberg+Marshall+Koepp…

Out of compulsory education, I had a plan – A levels. Media Studies (marketing/audience awareness), Film Studies (who’s made what), English Lang.&Lit. (my spelling is still awful) and a short spell of Psychology (Character, Character, Character).

Easy right?…Right?

P-E-P-S-I-K-I-D

Jack Carney (Hart Bochner) considers himself something of a Renaissance Man, able to do what needs to be done — however strange the task — with a pinch of flair. “I should have been a chiropractor,” he jokes to his roommate Adrian (Colin Firth). Problem is, he uses that line after he cracks a dead woman’s back to fit her body inside a trunk. That Jack, what a jokester. And such a showman to boot.

Viewers, gird thy loins for a venture into the murky world of this beguiling sociopath in Martin Donovan’s “Apartment Zero,” the most unbelievably tense and profoundly unnerving thriller to slip past everyone in 1988. Donovan, who cowrote the screenplay with “Jurassic Park” writer David Koepp, creates a deliberate and slow exploration of Jack, a drifter who charms his way into the life of socially awkward loner Adrian LeDuc, who runs a failing revival theater in late 1980s-era Buenos Aires, and everyone who lives in LeDuc’s building. The unknown circumstances surrounding Jack’s arrival and his disturbing ability to play all things to all people form the sticky heart of “Apartment Zero,” and it’s not long before we find ourselves snared in that complicated web.

Adrian, too, finds himself swept up in the inescapable mystery of Jack, an amiable, handsome stranger who shows up on Adrian’s doorstep looking to rent a room. Since running his crumbling theater has emptied his bank account, Adrian agrees, though not without hesitation — he’s an emotional shut-in who despises his prying neighbors, particularly Margaret (Dora Bryan) and Mary Louise (Liz Smith), a pair of nosy gossip hounds. Jack, however, begins to draw out his nervous roommate, bating him with talk of classic movies and, at times, openly flirting with Adrian. The two develop an unusual bond — one with definite homoerotic undertones — but things go sour when Jack starts chatting up the neighbors. He seduces each individually, exploiting their weaknesses with such ease it’s clear he learned Lesson No. 1 in the art of seduction: Assess your target, then act accordingly. 

Here, in the midst of all these romances, is where Donovan sneaks up from behind and quietly loop the wire around our throats. With claustrophobic camera work, he lets us glimpse snippets of the truth behind Jack’s real reason for showing up in politically tumultuous Argentina. There’s a disappearance here, a body there, and Jack never seems to be accounted for when people start to ask questions. None of these murders take place on camera — violence implied has twice the scare power — and no one can be sure if or how Jack’s involved. Is he a political assassin? A serial killer? An innocent man? Though Jack plays cool, Adrian can’t shake his suspicions. But as the credits close in, “Apartment Zero” reveals itself to be a thorny whodunnit with no easy answers, a movie that keeps us guessing and squirming until the final minutes.

Much of this unease comes from Donovan’s structure and his eye for details. His decision to eschew bloody murder scenes is a wise one, since it allows viewers’ imaginations to run wild. We guess, we assume, we form our hunches, but we cannot be certain without visual evidence. Oh, what crushing weight that doubt has. The cinematography, with its focus on dark corners and lingering shots, adds much to this tense atmosphere. The camera work gives us clues and yanks them away in equal measure.

Neither do the actors give much away. People trickle in and out as apartment dwellers or victims, but “Apartment Zero” belongs to Bochner and Firth. Why this role didn’t give Bochner his big acting break is utterly baffling, for he conveys impressive menace and serpentine charm as Jack. We know virtually nothing about this man, and yet Bochner makes him the kind of character who haunts our dreams. The only person possibly more troubling is Adrian LeDuc, who, as Firth plays him, is so repressed it’s shocking that he hasn’t turned inside out. A repressed man is a dangerous man, we know, and it’s an excruciating wait to see how Adrian will melt down. We know “Apartment Zero” will do the same. Not since Hitchcock has a thriller this spare been so exhilarating.

Grade: A

According to Variety, Spielberg has snagged another property for development:  Michael Crichton’s final novel Pirate Latitudes.

The novel tells the story of a 1665 pirate raid on Port Royal Jamaica in search of the treasure from a Spanish Galleon.  The novel will hit bookstores on November 24, 2009.

Spielberg will produce and/or direct film.  David Koepp is slated to pen the adaptation.

According to Variety, Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks are planning to bring Michael Crichton’s first posthumous novel – “Pirate Latitudes”, to life.

Tasked with adapting the novel is David Koepp, a familiar Crichton and Spielberg collaborator. Koepp adapted and Spielberg directed “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World”, both based on the Crichton novels of the same name. No word yet on whether Spielberg will also direct this film, but he is set to produce.

The New York Times, reporting in early April, said that “Latitudes” was found on Crichton’s computer by his assistant and required very little editing. HarperCollins plans to publish the novel on Nov. 24, while they are working on finishing another book Mr. Crichton was working on when he passed away from cancer in November.

Set in 1665 around the Caribbean, “Latitudes” is an adventure story that focuses on a pirate, Captain Edward Hunter, and his scheme to infiltrate a nearby Spanish island named Matanceros and steal the Spanish galleon, El Trinidad, rumored to be ported there. With the help of the Jamaican governor, Hunter gathers a group of bandits and plans to attack the Spanish infantry and the cutthroat commander Cazalla, tasked with guarding the fortune of gold in El Trinidad. However, hijacking the galleon is only the beginning of Hunter’s adventure.

ComingSoon reports that they will wait for the Koepp script to be finished before setting sail on the project.

Steven Spielberg se ha propuesto adaptar Pirate Latitudes, novela aún no publicada de su amigo Michael Crichton, tristemente fallecido el año pasado. La novela, que aparecerá en Noviembre, será adaptada por el guionista estrella David Koepp, que ya hizo lo propio con las novelas de Parque Jurásico presicamente para que fueran dirigidas por Spielberg. El libro de aventuras sitúa la trama en el caribe de 1.665, donde un grupo se propone infiltrarse en el riquísimo Port Royal para hacerse con un galeón español cargado de grandes tesoros. Dreamworks ya está vendiendo la película como una reunión entre los tres artistas, quienes según la compañía comprtieron en su día su amor por los relatos de aventuras. En la fotografía, Spielberg y Crichton dialogando durante el rodaje de Parque Jurásico, allá por el 93.

According to USA Today, Steven Spielberg is currently putting together a film based on the novel Pirate Latitudes from the late author, Michael Crichton.

They worked together when Spielberg adapted Crichton’s ever popular Jurassic Park novel. The new book comes out November 24.

David Koepp, who who wrote the screenplay for Crichton’s Jurassic Park and the sequel The Lost World, is going to be handling screenwriting duties here. Spielberg will produce and might even direct this project.

The story is being described as “a daring plan to infiltrate Port Royal, one of the world’s richest and most notorious cities, and raid a Spanish galleon filled with treasure.”

“Michael wrote a real page-turner that already seems suited for the big screen,” Spielberg spoke of Pirate Latitudes. “Michael and I have had almost two decades of solid collaborations. Whenever I made a film from a Michael Crichton book or screenplay, I knew I was in good hands. Michael felt the same, and we like to think he still does.”

DreamWorks will wait and see how Koepp’s screenplay shapes up before putting together a schedule.

How do you feel about Spielberg making a pirate movie?