Alien in 2014

Toy company NECA shared this work in progress image of a Nostromo spacesuit - part of their 35th Anniversary tribute to Alien in 2014!

Elysium: visionary design, gripping action

If you’ve seen the original series Star Trek episode The Cloud Minders, you know the setup for Elysium – the aristocratic elite live high above the Earth in pristine utopia while the great unwashed live in impoverished squalor below, toiling away on the planet’s surface. Director Neill Blomkamp has envisioned a spectacular follow-up to his 2009 debut, District 9. Elysium is definitely a companion piece that belongs on the same shelf, as both films make ample use of bleak shantytowns as the catalyst for stories of class struggle.

The titular Elysium is a vast space station of the future, always visible in the skies above the industrial ghetto of dystopian Los Angeles. Science Fiction fans, if you’ve longed to see Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama depicted as a film, the visual effects technology is ready to go, as Elysium is a giant wheel-like environment that’s absolutely photorealistic and convincing. Across the board, the effects depicted in Elysium are a marvel and stunningly well executed.

Matt Damon is an Earthbound laborer, grinding out a living in the industrial slums, building the droids that help maintain Elysium’s status quo. It’s a Bruce Willis role – a Korben Dallas (The Fifth Element) type. When events conspire to make getting to Elysium a matter of urgency, Damon’s character will have to transform himself to have even a chance at getting there. Blomkamp (who also wrote the script) must have a strong affection for Paul Verhoeven. Becoming part machine while struggling to retain your humanity is handled with a pathos and ferocity similar to Robocop. An automated parole officer recalls the “Johnny Cab” of Total Recall. Order on Elysium is maintained by the icy Jodie Foster, whose work I normally love. But Foster seems to be impersonating Cate Blanchett here, with an odd Franco-British accent that’s all over the place. Her lethal weapon of choice is deranged field agent Sharlto Copley, who steals the movie with a wildly unpredictable and unhinged performance. He’s the villain of the summer and makes one of the most physical and impulsive antagonists you’re likely to see anywhere.

Elysium is a pretty spectacular science fiction movie that never skimps on the action. Blomkamp’s films have a strong dose of social undercurrent in them. Where District 9 deftly addressed immigration, Elysium references the widening gulf between haves and have-nots; our mad dash to incorporate tech; surveillance drones and health care for all. While the messaging may be a little heavy-handed, Blomkamp’s uses sci-fi to comment on the here and now, while keeping the plot moving at a breakneck pace. It’s refreshing to see a summer sci-fi film with an actual R-rating for a change. The violence and gore are in your face and sometimes wince-inducing. William Fichtner is particularly terrific as an aristocratic citizen repulsed by the workers he has to supervise. I have to single out the design work on this film by Philip Ivey, TyRuben Ellingson and the legendary futurist Syd Mead (Blade Runner) for the highest praise. The flying vehicles on display not only look absolutely credible, but they’re some of the most striking designs I’ve seen in ages. Wait ‘til you see the “Bugatti” Fichtner’s executive uses.

There are parts of Elysium that will definitely give some viewers plenty of nits to pick. But any shortcuts or just-go-with-it moments are minor, given the suspense of the plot and the staggeringly good effects on display. This is fast-moving, action-packed sci-fi on a big scale and absolutely worth seeing in the theater. It’s wildly entertaining and Blomkamp moves up to the James Cameron/Ridley Scott league here. He’s a visionary and Elysium is absolutely eye-popping.

Breaking Bad fans: "It accelerates absorption"

Yes, that's Bryan Cranston...

Thanks, Dutch - The Legendary Elmore Leonard

The sun has gone down on legendary writer Elmore Leonard, who has died at 87 after complications following a stroke.

A former advertising man, Leonard's crime novels have been adapted into countless movies such as Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, 3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, Get Shorty and the TV series Justified.

Leonard's dozens of novels were inhabited by realistic conmen, killers, lawmen and dark humor - he knew the rhythms of the Western better than anyone. After writing several pulp Westerns in the 1950s and '60s, his first crime novel The Big Bounce was rejected 84 times before it was published as a paperback in 1969. Modern TV audiences have been devouring Justified, featuring Timothy Olyphant as cool under fire U.S. marshall Raylan Givens, on which Leonard also served as executive producer.

I can think of no better tip of the hat to Elmore Leonard than to share his all too wise Ten Rules of Writing - which anyone even remotely interested in crafting fiction would do well to take to heart:

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues.

3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10...

"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

Iron Throne of the mind's eye

Nervous about sitting on the Iron Throne? You ought to be! But if you think the throne depicted on HBO's Game of Thrones would give your posterior pause, George R.R. Martin recently revealed on his blog that it's a mere cheese grater, compared to what he actually envisions - and he points towards the work of illustrator Marc Simonetti.

Here's Martin, from his blog:

The HBO throne has become iconic. And well it might. It's a terrific design, and it has served the show very well. There are replicas and paperweights of it in three different sizes. Everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves.


And yet, and yet... it's still not right. It's not the Iron Throne I see when I'm working on THE WINDS OF WINTER. It's not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books... HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court... my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and assymetric...

The HBO throne is none of those things. It's big, yes, but not nearly as big as the one described in the novels. And for good reason. We have a huge throne room set in Belfast, but not nearly huge enough to hold the Iron Throne as I painted it. For that we'd need something much bigger, more like the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, and no set has that much room. The Book Version of the Iron Throne would not even fit through the doors of the Paint Hall.
 

Hooray for The Hollywood!

No, giant Kaiju did not attack the Hollywood Theater – that demolished look is evidence that the old marquee has been removed and a brand new marquee is about to be installed! Thanks to a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign, a new marquee based on the theater’s historic past is about to take the stage.


Over the last year the Hollywood has been busy – they’ve installed new seats in auditoriums, added tables to some, put in a new screen and sound system, plus you can cover all the food groups at once with pizza and beer. This is all great, but the core of the Hollywood is their widely expansive film series – Cinema Classics, Kung Fu Theater, B-Movie Bingo and Grindhouse are just a few of the Hollywood’s many offerings.

Then there’s Hecklevision, coming at you on August 23rd – in a truly inspired stroke, the Hollywood will screen (shudder) Star Trek V – The Final Frontier (bring your own Mylanta), with audience jokes, heckling and commentary encouraged as Texts (!), appearing instantly on screen! Guest hecklers will include the cast of Portland’s own Trek in the Park! Where else are you gonna find that kind of experience?



The old marquee, recently removed


Built in 1926, the Hollywood is constantly renovating and improving, while fulfilling their mission as a not-for-profit engine of entertainment and education, showcasing modern and vintage independent and classic films that might otherwise never see the light of day. Watch this space for an update when the new marquee makes its public debut – in the meantime, go support this theater – they deserve it!

Favorite comic book cover of the day

Go figure: Hasbro sneaks Thor: The Dark World

Loki

We still have a ways to wait until November 8th, but our pals at Hasbro have already revealed what some of the figures in Thor: The Dark World will look like - feast your eyes! Clearly Kurse is the must-find, as his embodiment by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Oz, Lost) destines this bad boy for greatness!

I'm excited for this Thor sequel, as director Alan Taylor is a veteran of both Game of Thrones and The Sopranos, and it's nice to know we don't have to wait for spring to enjoy a new Marvel movie.

With any luck, these will start to appear on shelves next month! Plan to celebrate their arrival accordingly!

Thor

Kurse

                                                                            

Wife-beater Thor

Dark Elf

Trek in the Park's Five Year Mission Warps Out!

With temperatures a little milder today, we decided to grab our tricorders and head out to the farewell season of Trek in the Park, the uniquely Portland pop-culture phenom - Portland's version of Shakespeare in the Park and the brainchild of Adam Rosko's Atomic Arts (Rosko also plays Kirk). Beginning with Amok Time in 2009, Atomic Arts has presented Space Seed, Mirror, Mirror, Journey to Babel and now they conclude their 5-year mission with crowd-pleaser The Trouble With Tribbles. 

Trek became so popular after its third year (and appearance on Portlandia) that they had to move to a larger park - which in many ways has lessened the fun factor a bit. Now enormous crowds fill the park and unless you're willing to get there hours early, you're going to be pretty far back and strain to hear most of the dialogue. People, can you please leave your pit bulls at home?!? 

Still, Trek in the Park is undeniable. The cast is a joy (though I think we had a new McCoy this year) and the fealty to old school Original Series Trek is a pleasure to behold. I'll miss Augusts with this crew, but they've earned a break and its exciting to consider what they'll undertake next - as they've made it clear that after five years, their mission is over. If you haven't seen Trek in the park, warp over to Cathedral Park weekends through August - as a wonderful slice of Portland history is about to beam out of here.

FREE TO THE PUBLIC. ALL AGES WELCOME.

Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00pm

AUGUST 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25
Cathedral Park Amphitheater

Kirk under an avalanche of tribbles!

Take a bow, crew - you've been awesome!

Mean Spirited: Evil Dead 2.0

In other news, the newly “reimagined” Evil Dead made it to disc recently. It performed well in theaters and received surprisingly decent reviews, so at some point, I knew I’d have to open the box. Make no mistake, I have serious love for Sam Raimi’s original gonzo trilogy – and like many fans, it seemed blasphemous to me to tackle any kind of redo of The Evil Dead. The films are unique and of their own time – and if you think Evil Dead, you think Bruce Campbell. Newcomer Fede Alvarez (Panic Attack!) chose (I think pretty wisely) to avoid having any kind of an Ash (Campbell) counterpart character, as any comparison to Bruce would be pretty much doomed. The new Evil Dead is even produced by Raimi and Campbell, so Alvarez pretty much had the nod from the Vatican to proceed.


Evil Dead starts off as a fun rental. The same cabin-in-the-woods dynamic – the same dark forest where evil dwells. It starts off with a terrifically twisty prologue that tweaks the original while evoking its own shocks, then moves along with a younger generation of Cabin Fever characters…which brings us to Eli Roth. There’s a lot to like in Evil Dead – it’s fantastic looking with dynamite cinematography by Aaron Morton and a really sensational score by Roque Baños. Alvarez cuts together some great sequences (with editor Bryan Shaw) – if your unfamiliar with Raimi’s originals you’re probably in for some genuinely brutal scares – and therein lies most of the problem. Raimi infused his films with abundant sly winks and his own unique, surreal sense of humor. Alvarez in contrast is very definitely working in a post-Hostel, post-J-horror vocabulary. Evil Dead is much more sadistic and mean-spirited than the films that inspired it. There’s little relief from the escalating carnage and getting through the final act feels burdensome. The dead here are more the shaggy-haired neck-jerkers of The Ring than what we’ve seen previously. The cast seems to have been chosen due to their resemblance to other actors – one seems more like Brad Pitt, another looks like Joaquin Phoenix – and for the most part they’re fairly disposable – which is how the film treats them. The standout is Jane Levy as Mia – in the film’s most inventive departure, she’s come to the cabin to try and kick heroin – a cool idea the film doesn’t go nearly far enough with. Levy does terrific work here – she ought to get a medal for what she goes through.

For me, if I’m going to recommend a film that best delivers on horror tropes, I’m going with The Cabin in the Woods. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon always remembered that a good horror movie never stops being fun. Alvarez and his gang certainly gave this their energetic best – this is a very creative group and they deserve high marks for seeming to completely ignore CGI in favor of old school practical effects – which are as sinew-popping as imaginable. If Alvarez and company tackle a sequel, I’d love to see them go even further in their own direction and drive off the reservation when it comes to remaking what’s come before. I’d also suggest they go back and watch The Descent, Neil Marshall’s spectacular subterranean shock-fest. It remains one of the best examples of how to scare the living wind out of you, while making sure you remember to give a damn about the people it’s happening to.

Europa Report - Smart, Successful, Satisfying Science Fiction

"Try as you might to prepare for everything, there will always be that unknown element." All too often, filmmakers seem to feel that in order to sell a science fiction film, you have to dumb it down. Well, meet director Sebastián Cordero, who believes in going the other direction. If you love science fiction and have ever complained about the hare-brained execution and complete dismissal of science in films of the genre, then you need to seek our Cordero's Europa Report as fast as you possibly can.

Presented as documentary footage of a space mission to the titular fourth moon of Jupiter, Cordero puts us right in the middle of things with the crew through every aspect of their journey, from the mundane to the miraculous, from the dull to the dire.

The biggest mistake you could possibly make is lump this film in the "found-footage" category akin to Apollo 18 and Paranormal Activity. You couldn't be more wrong. The film is presented with absolute realism, as though we're peeking just a few years into the future. Consultants from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Astrobiology team helped Cordero achieve the most authentic film about space flight yet made.

It takes years to get from Earth to Europa, where real world science has discovered enormous lakes beneath the moon's icy crust, along with the highest likelihood of finding life in our solar system. Cordero and screenwriter Philip Gelatt have built off of early lived-in spacecraft film environments - 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Moon - and cast actors who breathe convincing reality into the six astronauts. Michael Nyqvist (the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Sharlto Copley (District 9), Christian Camargo (Dexter, when it was still good) and Embeth Davidtz are the more familiar faces in the excellent cast. These are all intelligent characters - experienced scientists. But try as you might to prepare for every contingency, the variables of chaos when facing any harsh environment - when facing nature - can't all be prepared for. Things go wrong, but when they do, it's done convincingly and with real science. Most incredibly, Cordero shot the entire film in a Brooklyn warehouse for less then $10 million.

Europa Report is gripping, credible and compelling - the story doesn't always unfold in linear time, but in its brisk 90 minutes there is more awe, hope, science...and genuine fear than in any other science fiction film I've seen in ages. It not only entertains, but in this post-Space Shuttle era where more and more the future of space exploration seems to point to private corporations, Europa Report shows that the need to find answers and shine lights into the darkness is fundamentally human - and the film inspires. This is a film Arthur C. Clarke would have loved.

It's a spectacular achievement and Sebastian Cordero has a very bright future. If you have any fondness at all for space travel or science fiction, race out to discover one of the very best films of the year. Europa Report is in limited theatrical release and is currently also available via video On Demand and in the iTunes store. Breathtaking.

The Wolverine: It slices! It dices!

It's a sentiment that's been heard a lot lately - I enjoyed The Wolverine a lot more than I expected to. After the painfulness that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, hardcore Logan fans wanted the real deal. So excitement for this new iteration was full of grizzled optimism. James Mangold is a terrific director, with Cop Land, 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line among his many fine films. And I was definitely entertained by The Wolverine - and not simply because of its superiority when compared with Origins - because a bite of lobster tastes great if you've just been dining on spam. Mangold and screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank have crafted a script that moves along briskly, holds your attention and is much more faithful to a classic story ark, as depicted by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. It's fun and fast-paced, but it definitely left me pining.

Jackman is great, and the movie opens with an attention-getting prologue during the bombing of Nagasaki in a P.O.W. camp where Logan/Wolverine is held prisoner. Acts of compassion and honor during the phenomenal rendering of the blast set events in motion that will only come full-circle in the here and now.

Most of The Wolverine takes place in Japan, and with it's "Gaijin"-in-a-strange-land plot, the film has Jackman looking to solve a mystery - and then some - with the help of two very different women. Yukio (Rila Fukushima) is the blade for hire who brings Logan to Japan at the behest of her dying employer - to settle an old debt of honor. When he meets and falls in love with Mariko (Tao Okamoto), the film began to lose me. Mariko is "troubled," but she's also a bit of a cliche porcelain doll, in addition to being Eugene Tooms thin - she needs to eat a sandwich already. Theirs is very much a You Only Live Twice love affair, with Mariko seeming deadly dull in contrast with Yukio's capable smirks - Yukio's partnership with Logan as comrades in arms holds the film together.

There are some changes to the plot from its comic source, but they're well reasoned and effective. You will see a Silver Samurai - and he's pretty awesome to behold. Logan's climactic assault once again lends the film a strong Bond flavor.

If the film has a failing, sadly it's in the generic look of the cinematography by Ross Emery - journeyman, but lackluster. There's a lack of atmosphere to a lot of the compositions here and never has a film set in Japan felt more like Canada. Many of the initial Japanese action sequences are inexplicably sunny and cheerful, with all the menace of a strip mall:

I very quickly found myself wishing that more care was put into designing the look of the film. What's missing is the strong sense of atmosphere and culture we've come to expect from previous actioners set in Japan -take Jan de Bont's work in Black Rain, Robert Richardson's in Kill Bill - or 1974's The Yakuza...    

Where The Wolverine misses an opportunity is at making the film feel even more like a hyper-cool graphic novel by building on the legacy of those previous films - a lot of the film is shot like generic TV, and that's pretty hard to ignore. Plus, for a film as violent as it is, The Wolverine is unbelievably bloodless. With the amount of swordplay on display here, there's barely a mop to be needed anywhere! The move to dial it down for PG-13 combined with the tepid look of the film leaves you feeling less transported than you want to be. As my good friend (and noted Wolverine authority) Jonas reminded me, The Wolverine was originally going to be a Darren Aronofsky film (The Wrestler, Black Swan) and you just can't help but yearn for the mayhem he would have unleashed with someone like Matthew Libatique or Maryse Alberti at his side. It may sound like I'm carping, but to actually get to shoot overseas and not take full advantage of that visually is a blown opportunity.

Still - I undeniably had fun at The Wolverine - it's old fashioned and seldom boring and maintains a great sense of energy. I just wish it felt more like Black Rain and less like a Roger Moore Bond in places. It's definitely worth seeing and could even send you home searching for your Silver Samurai figure...