Peter Jackson asegura en entrevista que el guión para la tan esperada película del Hobbi,t ya está terminado. Así lo expresa en sus porpias palabras:

El Hobbit será dos películas y ya hemos terminado de escribir el primer guión y lo entregamos al estudio, donde al parecer están bastante contentos con el resultado.  Estamos entonces ahora a mitad de camino, y con Philippa, Fran y Guillermo nos estamos divirtiendo mucho siguiendo con el segundo guión. Es bastante interesante ya que han pasado 8 o 9 años desde que escribimos los guiones de El Señor de los Anillos, y tenia miedo de que fuera bastante incomodo o difícil volver a hacerlo, pero apenas comenzamos a escribir los guiones fue muy divertido, y muy fácil.  Información – y traducción supongo- de El Hobbit al cine.

Tanto Peter Jackson, como Guillermo del Toro, director del film, trabajaron con los guionistas  Fran Walsh y Philippa Boyenshan, en el esqueleto principal del film desde hace casi medio año. Por ahora entonces, se tiene  el pilar narrativo definitivo del primer film, así que habrá que esperar a que el correspondiente al segundo film tome forma.

I was just looking for trouble picking this one up. But it had three things working in its favour. It was filmed in British Columbia. It had a female director. And, Guillermo del Toro’s name was on the cover as a producer. The man knows how to make a movie. With an impressive list of films including Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth, I figured maybe he knew a good thing when he saw it. PEE-U! This film is a stinker! Generally I do my best to stay away from spoilers, but sometimes it’s necessary. If you are dying to see this film, you will want to stop reading now. I can’t possibly describe my issues with this film without giving something away.

The story is about Della, loving mother of two children and unhappy wife of an abusive husband. It turns out she has run out of wrapping paper and needs to make a Christmas Eve run to the mall. On the way, her cell phone dies while talking to a friend. When she arrives at the mall, it is parking chaos. When she spies a car taking up two spots she feels impelled to leave a note calling them a “selfish jerk”. While shopping she runs into an acquaintance from school who makes her reflect on her life. She gets a tea from Starbucks where the woman behind the counter spells her name with one “L”, and her credit card is declined when she purchases the wrapping paper. Apparently, Della is having a bad night. When she gets inside her vehicle, a car pulls up behind her. She gets out, and is immediately confrontational with the group of four males. Apparently they did not care for her note. A security guard shows up but is shot in the head by one of the boys. Della uses the opportunity to get back in her vehicle and drive over a curb to get out. She gets a decent head start on them but crashes her vehicle in an empty subdivision under construction. They manage to track her down and she heads out on foot with a red toolbox she pulled from her trunk. The boys pursue her through the partially built homes and the surrounding woods.

The story is just plain sloppy. In the films opening scene they paint Della as being meek. Based on the age of her children it would seem she has been in this loveless abusive marriage for some time. She is immediately confrontational with these four guys. She starts shoving them and swearing at them right away. The films tagline is “Everyone has a breaking point. Tonight, she reaches hers”. Apparently a trip to the mall on Christmas Eve pushes her over the edge. Did this woman just move to suburbia? When she walks out of the mall there are plenty of people around including a group of carollers. By the time she walks to her car the place is deserted. Seriously! Where the hell did all the people go? What about the people who work in the mall? No one heard the security guard get shot? Where the hell are all the freaking people?? This is only the beginning of the film and I’m already irritated.

The balance of the film is the pursuit. She gets a pretty decent head start but gets off of a main road to see if she can find anyone in a gas station. With no one about she decides to go up a different road. She plows through a road barrier and drives into a huge metal pipe. She attempts to tinker under the hood and get her vehicle started. She gives up when she sees their car approaching and pulls out her red toolbox. The boys seemed to have no trouble catching up to her. That stupid red toolbox just about drove me to drink. She prances about holding this clunky toolbox by the handle. A toolbox that was practically empty except a couple tools and a flair. The box barely made a noise, as she was moving about. It must have been some manner of magic toolbox. Why the hell did she not just take out the two tools and carry them? Or at least put them in those giant coat pockets? She never once uses the toolbox itself as a weapon, so why the hell did she continue to carry the stupid thing? I could not get past the box!

It seems obvious that Della will survive pretty much from the get go. It becomes more apparent after the first kid is killed by one of his buddies. The jerk steps on his friend’s head and breaks his neck! The alpha dog of the group sends his two boys off to find Della and heads out solo. While Della is tiptoeing through the forest with her toolbox the two boys have dragged their dead friends body out into a clearing. Apparently conducting an impromptu memorial service complete with beer and loud music. When the alpha male appears, he gives them hell and they go back to their pursuit. Bloody hell! Really?! I couldn’t help but laugh at that scene. The character interactions get more ridiculous and implausible as the film moves along. Even though they are hunting in a group, each time they get close just one of them steps up for the attack. So she has only one attacker at a time to fend off. These boys are not too sharp. Inevitably she uses her tools against each of them. One tool for each boy. There are so many irritating little bits, I could probably ramble on for another three paragraphs. This is more typing than this film deserves and I think I’ve made my point.

I can’t really rag on the performances. I think the players did what was asked of them. I had so much trouble with every other aspect of this film I’m not sure I really noticed how the acting was. ‘While She Was out’ is terrible. A complete lack of suspense or thrills, an overused premise and a weak story riddled with clichés and terrible dialog. Absolutely, not recommended!

Dungeon Rating: 1.5/5

Directed By: Susan Montford

Starring: Kim Basinger, Lukas Haas, Craig Sheffer, Jamie Starr, Leonard Wu, Luis Chávez, Luke Gair, Erika-Shaye Gair

…and I promise it won't make you sparkle in sunlight. Love, The Alchemist

Cronos (1994) is a Mexican movie filmed in English and Spanish directed by Guillermo del Toro. It is different from any vampire movie you’ve seen, and bonus! No angsty teenagers. It begins with the following creepy narration:

In 1536, fleeing from the Inquisition, alchemist Huberto Fulcanelli disembarked in Veracruz, Mexico.  Appointed official watchmaker to the Viceroy, Fulcanelli was determined to perfect an invention which would provide him with the key to eternal life.  He was to name it the Cronos Device. Four hundred years later, one night in 1937, part of the vault in a building collapsed.  Among the victims was a man of strange skin, the color of marble and moonlight. His chest mortally pierced, his last words: “Sua tempore.” This was the Alchemist.

The introduction has a bit of a steampunk and clockpunk feel as does the antique shop of the old man (Federico Luppi) who stars in the film. Yes! An old man can star in a vampire film, and it can be good thank you very much.

Eventually the owner of a shady corporation, De la Guarda (Claudio Brook), finds the instructions for the Cronos Device and fixatedly seeks the device itself that has been lost. All he knows is that it is in an angel statue. His nephew, foulmouthed and oddly obsessed with rhinoplasty Ángel de la Guarda (Ron Perlman), is in charge of searching for any angel that might have the device within.

Our old man Jesús Gris lives a conventionally boring life with his dancing instructor wife Mercedes (Margarita Isabel) and little granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath) who has an endearing relationship with Jesús. He finds the Cronos Device, and not knowing what he is doing, activates it. He starts to feel more energetic and looks younger, but at a price of course- he starts craving blood. Since he doesn’t have the instructions, he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing and he seeks answers. Gris and the elder De la Guarda’s complementary searches clash violently as we unravel the mystery of the device.

The movie has a very international feel with the use of different languages in signs, buildings, and newspapers. It is set in 1997. The names of most of the characters have interesting meanings and have deep symbolism relevant to the story. Their use is typical of magical realism and the use of Christian imagery in Latin American fantasy. To not spoil anything I will just say that literally, Jesús Gris is Jesus the Gray, and Ángel de la Guarda means guardian angel, Mercedes is short for María de las Mercedes (Mary of Mercies), and Aurora means “dawn.” Knowing those meanings may enhance your enjoyment of the film. Or confuse you a bit.

Besides the unusual (for Hollywood) protagonist, the movie doesn’t depend on cheap thrills to scare you, uses plenty of dark humor throughout (the cremation scene is particularly funny) and realistic dialogue. This movie’s been around some time so forgive me if I’ve just discovered it- have you seen it? What did you think?

Fact and fiction bleed seamlessly into one another in Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro, whose filmography includes amongst others Blade II, Hellboy and The Devil’s Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo) masterfully creates a phantasmagorical world of magic-realism which is both credible and terrifying. The story revolves around Ofelia (played by Ivana Baquero), ‘n young girl who accompanies her pregnant mother to live with her new Fascist stepfather, Captain Vidal. A magical world unfolds against the grisly backdrop of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War – Ofelia is guided towards her fate by a faun called Pan that she meets in the forest. He gives her three tasks to perform before the moon grows full and the viewer embarks on this quest with Ofelia, destabilised by the uncertainties: Will Ofelia succeed? Can Pan be trusted? What fate awaits the characters touched by war?

What was most striking to me, was the fact that Del Toro blended fantasy and reality with such credibility and conviction. In the past, I have often watched films wherein the director tries to marry fantasy and reality, but fails miserably, and rather emphasises the seemingly “irreconcilable” differences between the two worlds. Pan’s Labyrinth flows effortlessly from fact to fiction and vice versa, whilst many other filmic attempts at magic-realism unconvincingly fragment a film and break its natural flow.

I have to admit though, that the explicit violence of the film was quite unexpected and shocking, and at times even, what I felt, unnecessary. Believe you me, Pan’s Labyrinth is not described as a fairy-tale for grown-ups without good reason. I do not believe that Del Toro uses violence as a vehicle for sensationalism in this film. I believe he uses it for a definite purpose – to emphasise the stark contrast between the imaginative world of childhood innocence and the atrocities committed by adults in reality. Sometimes fact seems stranger and more incomprehensible than fiction, especially with cruel atrocities like the Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s or the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that plague our history.

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT YET WATCHED THE FILM! Ofelia’s magical quest becomes an allegory for the timeless universal value: do not fight hate with hate, or evil with evil. Dissolve hate with love and evil with goodness. In this film, self-sacrifice is the key to Ofelia’s redemption and the redemption of the whole community. Ofelia becomes the “Fisher King” who is sacrificed as scapegoat to make healing possible for the nation and the land, a new history can now be written and continued through the blood she has spilled, the blood that is tied to and now lives on in her half-brother. Pan’s Labyrinth is deeply rich in imagery and symbolism – a prospect for a fruitful analytical article, thesis or study.

Genre: Fantasy / Drama / Thriller
Running time: 119 min
Country: Spain / Mexico / USA
Language: Spanish with English subtitles
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writing credits: Guillermo del Toro
Producers:
Alfonso Cuarón
Guillermo del Toro
Cinematographer: Guillermo Navarro
Music: Javier Navarrete
Distributed by: Picturehouse
Main Cast:
Ofelia – Havana Baquero
Carmen Vidal – Ariadna Gil
Captain Vidal – Sergi López
Mercedes – Maribel Verdú
Pan – Doug Jones
Dr. Ferreiro – Alex Angulo

Hace poco me enteré que Guillermo del Toro (el director de “El Laberinto del Fauno”, no el actor) está produciendo una película llamada “Mamá”, basada en el cortometraje del mismo título del director Andrés Muschietti.

“Mamá” fue realizado en el 2008 y cuenta la historia de una niña que despierta a su hermana, le avisa que su madre llegó a casa y deben escapar.  Desde su salida ha acaparado la atención en festivales europeos, elogios de la crítica y el interés de Del Toro.

Tanto revuelo me dió curiosidad, me puse a buscar el corto y aquí lo tienen. A mi me dio bastante miedo….

Arrechísimo, ¿no? Impresionante ver que todo está resuelto en un mismo plano secuencia (aunque muchos aseguran que está empatado digitalmente como algunas largas secuencias de Children of Men) pero todo está muy bien cuidado, la actuación de las hermanas es precisa y se logra esa sensación de freakishness que te mantiene al borde de la silla.

De Muschietti no pude encontrar mucha información, sólo que es un director de larga trayectoria en comerciales de televisión, que emplea a su hermana Bárbara como productora de sus proyectos y que será el director encargado de llevar “Mamá” al cine.

Ahora, me da miedo cómo lleven esto a una peli de una hora y media…a menos que le aporten muchísimo al background de la situación del corto, puede ser otra cagadota hollywoodense. ¿Ustedes qué dicen?

NOTA: Seguro lo bajan pronto, así que véanlo pronto. Son sólo 3 minutos y valen la pena.

The One Ring (theonering.net) is a little concerned that Hellboy director Guillermo Del Toro could go kid-oriented when he directs the upcoming Hobbit movies. Personally, I don’t think anyone who’s seen The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth or even Hellboy 1 or 2 would think Del Toro the type to go that way, so it’s clear TheOneRing is playing this one tongue-in-cheek, but the list it’s come up with is awesome. You can read the whole thing here, but here’s an excerpt…

3. Keep Leonard Nimoy Away From the Soundtrack!
Yes, Nimoy’s version of “Bilbo Baggins” is the greatest music video in history (except perhaps for the DaVinyls “I Touch Myself”). But it’s also exactly the wrong note for the new Hobbit movie.

This is exactly the light-hearted silliness that makes The Hobbit fun to read as a child, but hard to sit through in a feature-length film. Unless Nimoy plays Gandalf. No offense to Ian McKellen, but that would be awesome.

Naturally, they include this video as a chilling reminder…

And in other Hobbit news, remember those bones that were found a couple years back? Small and humanoid, they were dubbed ‘hobbits’ and had even archaeologists and their ilk scratching their heads. Well, a little bit of the mystery has been solved: They weren’t humans at all! The Mirror explains…

Hobbit-like creatures who lived 18,000 years ago were a lot less like us than we thought, say scientists.

Researchers have decided the 3ft 6ins tall tribe from the Indonesian island of Flores are an unknown sub-species of modern man. Their remains caused a sensation when unveiled five years ago and they were dubbed Hobbits after the elf-like creatures in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Some researchers argued they were modern humans with a disorder called microcephaly accounting for their tiny brains.

But analysis of the most complete skeleton, of a female called Flo, suggests she was a different branch of human. Anthropologist Dr Karen Baab said: “Dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo Floresiensis.”

It is thought the little folk were wiped out 12,000 years ago by a volcano.

And that’s all, it seems, for real-life Hobbit news and the fantasy Hobbit-news we’ll of course be keeping up on–especially when WETA starts sending out the merch! ‘Til then, we do have a wide selection of Lord of the Rings figures and collectibles still available, which of course feature a couple Hobbit/LOTR crossover characters. Look out for ‘em.

Fúria de Titãs (Clash of the Titans) é um remake com lançamento no próximo ano, 2010. O original é de 1981. Perseu (Sam Worthington), filho de Zeus, é criado entre os humanos. Ele deve resgatar a princesa Andromeda, que está prometida para o filho de Thetis, líder das Nereidas. No meio do caminho Perseu acaba se apaixonando por Andromeda e aí o teatro está pronto para muito sangue, vinganças e um filme cheio de ação.

A direção está nas mãos de Louis Leterrier, o responsável pelo único filme do Incrível Hulk que conta, o de 2008.

Eu estou bastante animado. Sou fã de mitologia grega. Esse filme tem um pouco de 300 e um toque de Del Toro no visual. Não entendeu? Atenção ao 0:45 e você vai entender =D

Jueves/ “El laberinto del fauno” dirigida por Guillermo del Toro

 “El laberinto del fauno es una producción hispano-mexicana. Con guión y dirección del mexicano Guillermo del Toro, que se inspiró en Sleepy Hollow o los cuentos de Los Hermanos Grimm para escribirla, y dirigirla. Es la película rodada en castellano más taquillera de la historia.[1] Fue estrenada en España el 11 de octubre de 2006, en México el 20 de octubre, y el 29 de diciembre el estreno general en los Estados Unidos. Es la segunda parte de la trilogía informal de películas fantásticas ambientadas en la guerra civil y posguerra española de Guillermo del Toro. La primera fue El espinazo del diablo (2001) centrada en un orfanato acosado por un fantasma en los últimos días de la guerra civil.”

Extraído de Wikipedia.

Ver además:

http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/guillermodeltoro/ellaberintodelfauno

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/

http://www.20minutos.es/cine/cartelera/pelicula/28455/el-laberinto-del-fauno/

Los títulos seleccionados  son una muestra de los materiales actualmente en préstamo de los fondos de la Biblioteca del Instituto Internacional.

Si te interesa ver o leer ésta recomendación puedes consultar su disponibilidad en el catálogo la biblioteca del IIE.

El laberinto del fauno. [DVD] / una película de Guillermo del Toro. — [S.l.] : Warner Bros Entertainment, [2007]. — 1 DVD (114 min.) : son., col.

Idiomas : español ;: Subtít.: inglés

Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero

No recomendada para menores de 18 años

D.L. M 1336-2007

ZW .T676 L33 2006

I realize I now no longer have a claim to being a blogger.  Alas cruel fate.  I lost the time, some of the interest, and I didn’t like the sense I started developing that I owed something to my blog.  Just another task to complete.  Still, I just wrote up a quick review over on Good Reads after finishing Del Toro’s new book, The Strain, so I thought I might as well add it here.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find a way to do this again.  I’ve read a bunch of Dostoevsky since my post lo these many months ago.  Some of it is actually worth writing about.

Re. Del Toro’s The Strain.  Ok, I’m a sucker for a decent vampire thriller. I forced myself through the Twilight books as an act of solidarity with my infatuated daughter, so it was good to get back to the dark side with Del Toro’s book. If anything, Del Toro’s book reads a little too much like an immediate slap in the face at the Stephanie Meyer phenomenon. While Meyer’s Vampires are the pictures of life, health, and youth, Del Toro’s vampires are literally a kind of living cancer virus, consuming and transforming the host into undead animalistic killing machines. Clearly Del Toro the filmmaker is lurching back to Nosferatu, where the vampire is more animal than human, and hardly an exemplar of sexual seductiveness. And, indeed, there’s a lot of quotations of cinema–the armies of vampires are a little bit more like the zombies of Dawn of the Dead than the isolated and brooding quasi-intellectuals that have been a dominant strain since Stoker’s original. The bizarre but effective weaponry quotes from both Van Helsing and from Men in Black. The apocalypse that threatens Manhattan quotes from I Am Legend and from…well, almost every other movie that threatens the destruction of Manhattan. Mostly I like going with this and love it though I thought the nail gun that shot silver tipped nails was a little much and the connection to the Holocaust oddly original and overreaching at the same time–the Van Helsing of this book is a holocaust survivor on a hunt for metaphorical antisemites. And I thought a Dracula in Manhattan could have been a little more original than to have a literal coffin filled with soil, but what do I know. Still, I admit it was a good break after being very serious and thoughtful and intellectual as I made my way through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment last week. I’ll look forward to reading the next

La crisis económica también llega a la industria del cine hollywoodiense y aqueja al famoso león de la Metro

Por Raquel Cordón
Son casi 4.000 millones de dólares los que adeudan a esta compañía, que engloba a célebres obras como ‘Lo que el viento se llevó’ o ‘James Bond’. Para mantenerse a flote, la Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) ha anunciado que se encuentra en “un proceso de examen de las diferentes estrategias posibles, entre otras, funcionar como una entidad independiente, formar asociaciones estratégicas y evaluar una eventual venta de la empresa”. Asimismo, sus acreedores han aceptado ampliar el plazo de pago de esos 4.000 millones de deuda hasta el próximo 31 de enero.

En cualquier caso, desde septiembre de 2004, MGM forma parte de una corporación liderada por Sony, que engloba al operador de cable Comcast y a varios fondos de inversión. MGM también complementa a United Artists, dirigida por el actor Tom Cruise. No obstante, ahora, entre los principales candidatos a adquirir los famosos estudios de cine destacan Time Warner, empresa dueña de la Warner Bros, o el conocido magnate de la comunicación Rupert Murdoch, quien controla al grupo News Corporation, en el que se enmarca la 20th Century Fox.

Principales afectados por la quiebra
La última secuela de ‘James Bond’, aún por rodar, y ‘El Hobbit’ son los principales títulos que van a sufrir de primera mano las consecuencias derivadas de la difícil situación económica que está afectando a MGM.

El rodaje de ‘James Bond’, cuyo título provisional es ‘Bond 23’, estaba previsto que comenzase a principios del 2010, pero parece ser que no será así por encontrarse congelados los 300 millones de euros previstos de presupuesto para poder comenzar a dar forma a la película.
‘El Hobbit’ es otro de los principales afectados por la falta de liquidez de la compañía. Producida por Peter Jackson y Guillermo del Toro este film, que tiene previsto su estreno en el verano de 2011, corre una mejor suerte que el título anterior, ya que su rodaje está en marcha. Ello se debe a que sus acreedores consideran que existen muchas posibilidades de que la película pueda ser comprada, aunque bien es cierto que aún no se conoce ningún candidato.

A continuación, a través de Youtube puedes ver los logos que esta compañía cinematográfica ha tenido a lo largo de la historia, desde su creación en 1924:

Fuente: http://www.abc.es/20091115/espectaculos-cine/metro-goldwyn-mayer-ruge-20091115.html

"The Witches" as illustrated by Quentin Blake. Photo: Roald Dahl Store website

Double, double toil and trouble …

Acclaimed director Alfonso Cuaron is slated to produce a remake of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s novel, “The Witches.”

Anjelica Huston (“Ever After”)  starred in the 1990 movie, which was about a boy who stands up against witches who kill children for the heck of it.

Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth,” Hell Boy”) is said to direct and write the remake, which will be in stop-motion animation in the same vein as “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

I think the film could have worked with live actors, but in the age of “Shrek” and “The Incredibles,” animated movies are in a league of their own. Nonetheless, I would have preferred it if one of my favorite directors, Cuaron (“Children of Men”), was at the helm instead of del Toro.

Then again, as a Dahl fan, I’m looking forward to see how this project turns out, but it might be a while before any of us see anything. After all, “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was more than three years in the making.

Till then, Vulture.com has listed the top Roald Dahl movie adaptations. The critical hit, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” is the latest one:

Which of Dahl’s books would you like to see on the big screen? Sound off in the comments below!

//

Sometimes going back to the roots of a favorite director hurts!

Screenplay By: Guillermo del Toro & Matthew Robbins
Directed By: Guillermo del Toro

In a creature feature the most important ingredient is a group of characters, or even a lone wolf, that you can root for. I waited and waited for someone to care about in Mimic, but no one ever came. Instead I was treated to a bunch of cardboard cutouts that failed to elicit any emotion from me. Part of the blame for that resides with the flat acting but the majority falls at the feet of Guillermo del Toro. His script and his direction needed to be tighter, to work with these characters, to make them a group we cared about and wanted to see win. When Mimic was over I didn’t say, “Yea, they survived, that’s great.” My thoughts were more along the lines of, “Well, that’s over and they survived, hmph.”

It’s a minor comfort but it is interesting to see del Toro’s make-up effects in a more primitive state. They still look good, except for the CG chase scene at the subway upper level near the middle of the film that looks very fake. The refinement would come, and while they may be of a lesser quality you can see in the make-up effects of Mimic that del Toro is steps away from bringing his penchant for that field to a near level of perfection. Another positive on Mimic’s side is the atmosphere del Toro is able to create with his use of shadows and specifically the use of the labyrinthine subway system.

Despite Mimic showing some of the potential that del Toro possessed, it is a film that leaves you yearning for the better days to come. There are better creature features out there and far better del Toro films out there. Mimic is too ordinary and predictable of a film, one that is bereft of anything resembling even a B movie story. Maybe del Toro fanatics will find Mimic a worthwhile view, but I suggest you stay away from this new chain in the evolutionary process.

Rating:

**

Cheers,
Bill

With your usual host in New York it falls to Tom and Producer John to take over the show. With Sam out of the picture for an episode we decided to run a feature on video games, perhaps to rekindle the fleeting romance that was our ill-fated other podcast, the Games Overdose.

So join us for a discussion of the absurdity of The Men Who Stare At Goats, a discussion of the absurdity of Monopoly as a movie and the absurdity of Avatar’s budget of circa $500,000,000. Just writing $500m doesn’t seem to do it justice, you need to put all the zeroes in there to convey that it is half a billion dollars.

We also have a chat about some Will Smith casting news, the merits of Babylon 5 and reminisce about the good old days where Roland Emmerich was content in just blowing up small cities and monuments in Independence Day, as a precursor to his disaster porn epic 2012.

Then we get on to our main feature and discuss the dearth of video game adaptations. Where have all the good ones gone? Could Prince of Persia and the red carpet treatment of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 act as the catalysts for a new generation of video game and movie crossovers?

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 41

Un film del 2011, regia di Guillermo del Toro, con . Prodotto da ()

Fantastico / Horror

La storia di un bambino di soli sette anni che si trova immerso in un’avventura paurosa ma al tempo stesso divertente e fantasiosa in compagnia di autentiche streghe.

With your usual host in New York it falls to Tom and Producer John to take over the show. With Sam out of the picture for an episode we decided to run a feature on video games, perhaps to rekindle the fleeting romance that was our ill-fated other podcast, the Games Overdose.

So join us for a discussion of the absurdity of The Men Who Stare At Goats, a discussion of the absurdity of Monopoly as a movie and the absurdity of Avatar’s budget of circa $500,000,000. Just writing $500m doesn’t seem to do it justice, you need to put all the zeroes in there to convey that it is half a billion dollars.

We also have a chat about some Will Smith casting news, the merits of Babylon 5 and reminisce  about the good old days where Roland Emmerich was content in just blowing up small cities and monuments in Independence Day, as a precursor to his disaster porn epic 2012.

Then we get on to our main feature and discuss the dearth of video game adaptations. Where have all the good ones gone? Could Prince of Persia and the red carpet treatment of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 act as the catalysts for a new generation of video game and movie crossovers?

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 41

Directed by Guillermo del Toro (2008) and starring Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz and Doug Jones as Abe Sapien.
Okay. So. I have issues with the whole comic-turned-movie thing. I willingly admit it. It’s not just the fact that these movies have a tendency to get really silly… As you pretty much can expect from the idea of grown men putting their underwear on outside their stretchy tights. It’s more that they either do nothing with the characters or they don’t spend as dime on the script in order to blow their wad on the effects, or they don’t give a rat’s behind about the story in order to delve into the characterization of characters that have… uhm, very little depth.
So it’s surprisingly rare that you get a movie like this one that manages to do a good job of the visual as well as the story and use the characters in a clever way.
Hellboy is fantastic to say the least and it could have been blatantly cheesy and silly, but it somehow manages to tread that fine line and come out smelling like roses. Ron Perlman is all padded up, but he manages to carry the armour without becoming two dimensional and watching Hellboy and Abe get drunk on beer and sing Barry Manolow’s “Can’t smile without you” while musing on their respective love lives is just funny as all get out, seeing as how they manage to look about seventeen years old both of them.
The visuals are stunning. That’s really the only word for it. They’re right on the verge of heavy unreality the whole time, but somehow manage to seem credible as an alternate reality coexisting with ours. It’s less glossy than other similar alternative worlds I’ve seen, which is a bonus. There are a couple of things I personally could have done without, but I’m not going to gripe about that when the overall is so spectacular.
Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) is a surprisingly soft-spoken bad guy despite his sword wielding and actually comes off as someone with an agenda that isn’t as far fetched or foaming at the mouth as some villains. It makes the plot better that he has cause to be doing what he’s doing. His twin sister Princess Nuala (Anna Walton) gets caught in an impossible situation and again, this actually gives depth to the storyline.
This is all good fun in the best possible way. The bad guys are really good and the good guys are bad ass. It’s visually imaginative and down right pretty at times. Hellboy is funny and sarcastic and still just a guy, despite the skin tone and the filed down horns. There’s no dead time and you don’t find yourself looking at your watch or yawning.
As long as you take that Coleridgean leap of faith and submit to the willing suspension of disbelief you’ll have a good time.
You can’t really ask for more than that.

Mule

Director Who Looks Like A Hobbit to Appear in The Hobbit

(via topless robot)

Ya ven que se había anunciado de que Peter Jackson iba a producir la cinta “The Hobbit” basado en el libro de  J.R.R. Tolkien. Y sabían de que se la iba a dejar a Guillermo del Toro para que la hiciera, pero lo que está pasando ahorita es que aunque Jackson se queda como uno de los escritores apoyando a del Toro y a Walsh y Phillippa Boyens, se está planeando de que se pueda “unir” con las películas del Señor de los Anillos.

La trama, los que leyeron la novela, se sitúa 60 años antes de que saliera la primera cinta y cuenta de como Bilbo Baggins se hace del anillo que Gollum poseía. Originalmente querían que fueran dos películas, la primera era una adaptación de la novela y la segunda sería el puente entre la pasada y la trilogía que todos vimos hace unos años. Sin embargo, Del Toro posteó en una de las páginas de los fans del Señor de los Anillos que va a hacer dos películas pero que va a “alargar” la historia de la novela entre esas dos. Hasta ahorita todo va bien no?. Pues luego se hizo el conflicto cuando dijo que él sentía que la segunda película tendría que terminar de alguna forma uniendo a la primera película del Señor de los Anillos.

Suena entre raro y normal, comercialmente hablando, de cualquier forma, para los fans, es divertido especular que personajes de las primeras 3 películas van a terminar en estas “secuelas” por decirlo de alguna forma. Originalmente, cuando los cineastas estaban discutiendo que momentos de la cinta podrían servir de “puente” se había dicho de que les gustaría incluir el momento en que Aragorn/Strider comenzara a observar a la comarca. En la página en inglés, tuvieron la oportunidad de hablar con Viggo Mortensen, el actor que hizo este personaje mientras se la pasaba promocionando su nueva cinta llamada “The Road”. Le preguntaron a Mortenson que si estaría interesado en regresar a su papel para la película de “The Hobbit” si los productores vieran la forma de meter a su personaje.

La respuesta fue más que obvia. A él le encantaría regresar y aque adoró trabajar con el cast original y el equipo de trabajo, además de que comprende de que los jefes de este proyecto les gustaría meter a la mayor cantidad de actores de la primera trilogía en esta cinta. Simples razones de popularidad y taquilla.

Si termina dentro o no de la cinta, no hay duda de que a los fans les va a encantar ver todo esto en la pantalla grande. “The hobbit” está programada para que salga en Diciembre del 2011 con su secuela el siguiente año.

¿Ustedes que opinan? Es buena idea incorporar a los actores de la trilogía pasada?

Fucking vampires. I’ve about had it up to here with fucking vampires. Because I read them “off season” (see: after I finished my first hundred books), you were spared my thoughts on The Twilight Series. Which basically amount to this: if you cut out all the bullshit twee Romeo and Juliet by way of Wentz and Simpson professions of desperate emo love, you’d have a pretty solid novel. Instead, we’ve got kids wandering around the malls in black eyeliner drinking Clamato juice out of silver goblets they bought at Hot Topic. Worse yet are the adults who are fawning over this tepid repackaged kiddie-porn. I can understand a fucking teen falling for this shit, but really, shame on you. Tell me you read it for the articles.

What the fuck does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Nothing. Only to say this. Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan are intent on taking it back. They haven’t, not by a long shot, but they’re goddamn trying. Because the two men have created what amounts to a really well-done Sci-Fi Channel movie about biohazards that turn people into motherfucking real vampires. These cocksuckers sure as shit don’t sparkle in sunlight: they burst into flames as God intended.

A plane touches down on a runway after losing contact with the tower, and everyone save four random folks — a pilot, a rocker, a lawyer, and a computer programmer — are all dead from some mysterious unexplainable malady. The tension of the novel would have worked so much better if — similar ironically to the first Twilight novel — they hadn’t given away that it was a vampire novel. It’s set up like a 28 Days Later, where nobody has any damn idea what’s happened, if the virus is contagious, if it even is a virus, only they pepper it with a combination of old school Dracula type shit (a sinister black coffin) and some really shameful Lifetime melodrama.

The Strain takes it’s time to get into the action, kind of stumbling through the narrative set-up to get to the meaty vampire action. There are a shitton of characters to introduce: from the bioscientist hero to the rat-killing exterminator to the creepy old Eastern European man who portends ill omens when the creatures are unleashed. The characters do feel a little prepackaged, but Del Toro and Hogan give them just enough backstory and depth to raise them above mere cannon fodder or cardboard cutouts. Do I care about these folks? Eh, a little bit. But not really. It’s kind of like Heroes towards the second season. Just as you’re starting to really give a damn, someone else is introduced, and so it’s quite a bit to keep track of. But you quickly figure out who’s gonna stick it out, and who’s not long for this world.

Who you do care about are the vampires. Setting up the mythology of your supernatural is critical to any sort of zombie/vampire novel — even if the story is “we have no idea”. The vampires of the Strain are more like biological oddities, and since we’re dealing with medical professionals, there are plenty of autopsies and scientific data to make it really squishy. Rather than fangs and lack of tan, the vampires essentially develop a cancer that eats the host, turning them into a feeding machine. They develop stinger lashing tongues that shoot out and suck the life out of their victims, infecting them with the virus. They’re susceptible to ultra-violet rays and silver.

Since this is coming to us from one of the forgers of the Blade Trilogy, Del Toro knows what he’s doing. And it’s pretty disgusting and visceral and awesome. It’s a little cheesy and the dialogue gets painful — particularly their insistence on including a subplot involving a painful divorce proceeding and the custody battle. I don’t want people cramming a goddamn Ally McBeal episode into my killfest, you dig? At times, the novel feels a bit like the Jurassic Park sequels, when you want a little more Jurassic Park. There’s nothing going on in the novels that couldn’t have just been as easily set up in script form first. Del Toro’s a talented director, if a bit too overly sentimental for his own good. And since there are two authors, I’m not sure who’s really to blame for which lacks.

I’ll definitely stick with the series, as it’s popcorn fun. And it’s refreshing to remember that you don’t have to be some sort of douchey desperate teenage to be hurt by a vampire you love. It hurts even worse when your family member wants to eat you.

The cult director exclusively updates us…

Source:
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/guillermo-del-toro-on-making-the-hobbit

C’était le 11 novembre, jour férié s’il en est, que Canal + a concocté un programme fort en action pour ses abonnés. De 15H20 à 22H30, les super héros se sont succédés pour enchanter les téléspectateurs de la chaîne payante. L’Incroyable Hulk ouvrait le bal, suivi de près par l’acariâtre Hancock (incarné par Will Smith) et du richissime Iron Man, Hellboy fermant la marche des super héros dans le deuxième opus de Guillermo del Toro.

Quelle bonne journée de télévision pour moi qui adore les super héros, leurs pouvoirs étranges et leurs différences par rapport aux “simples mortels”. Pour un fan de fantastique comme moi, le programme de Canal + était sans conteste celui à ne pas rater.

Mais la bataille a fait rage parmi les chaînes hertziennes avec Shrek sur TF1 en début d’après-midi et le mélange Grey’s Anatomy - Private Practice en soirée, Et au milieu coule une rivière avec Brad Pitt sur la deuxième chaîne, ainsi que les deux Crocodile Dundee sur M6. Et aussi sur la TNT : TMC pariait sur la jeunesse avec Taram et le chaudron magique et Tarzan 2, NRJ 12 sur la comédie avec Coluche dans son rôle de Dagobert, et le film Qui veut la peau de Roger Rabbit ?

Un jour férié, c’est l’occasion pour toutes les chaînes du PAF de sortir ses plus beaux atouts pour faire de l’audience. Malgré tout, certaines d’entre elles choisissent de ne pas perturber les habitudes du téléspectateur et diffusent les mêmes programmes qu’un jour normal. C’est le cas de W9 notamment, pourtant co-leader de la TNT avec TMC.

Alors, vivement le prochain jour férié et ses programmes toujours plus attirant. Et que vivent les super héros !