Movie News: Fantasy

Showing posts with label Fantasy. Show all posts

Crowdfunding Push: Thunder Chronicles Epic Fantasy Film

Thunder Chronicles Epic Fantasy Film crowdfunding project is definitely very self-explanatory. As the title suggests, it's aiming to raise money for the production of one of the first (if not the first) epic fantasy films which will be entirely created in the region of Southern Serbia. The project's official Indiegogo page states:

Dark goddess Morana and her bastard son, lord of blizzards Mrazlo Mecavnik bring eternal winter in Sorabya lands. The gods send rune in the tunnels of time and chose young warrior Zvezdan (Starborn) of Wildern to kill the evil lord and save his land. His companions are wizard Saladin from Devil Hamlet, leader of ancient, secret Order of Thunder chroniclers, werewolf outcast Kraguly the Damned, Elven druid Vilindar, Peruns son, half/god Zlot and Dwarven rogue Runvid the Pickpocket. They will travel across the devastated lands, to find flame sword Thunderfang and win in the biggest battle of the ancient world. If they succeed, they will save the land of Sorabia from icy and dark destruction by his hand...

The film is based on a book written by Milos Petkovic, now already a veteran of Serbian epic fantasy fiction. At the same time, the project is really ambitious because, alongside of it, an entire new production house was created. The company called Thunder Production, hopes to ignite a small but potent film industry in the same region. I think this initiative is solid, mainly because like the regions of Check Republic after the collapse of the USSR, this part of the world has a huge cinematic potential which is completely untapped by the western movie industry. As far as the Thunder Chronicles Epic Fantasy Film, the campaign is looking for a hefty $50,000 and is currently passed 1% of its goal.

Check out the Thunder Chronicles Epic Fantasy Film Indiegogo page and see if you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Crowdfunding Push: Black Angel

Epic fantasy is something that is currently really popular in many formats, especially video games. But, at the same time, apart from Peter Jackson’s not so brilliant Hobbit trilogy and many fringe, sort of fantasy young adult adaptations of successful novels, there aren’t many movies that delve straight into this territory. Now, there is a crowdfunding campaign aimed at funding a film called Black Angler that is going for the full epic fantasy feel. The film’s Indiegogo page states:

Think Game of Thrones meets Valhalla Rising, Excalibur meets Lord of the Rings. A powerful tale of ancient Celtic magic and Nordic Paganism, it’ll be gritty, dirty and heroic – everything great fantasy should be. The story follows a knight as he journeys deep into the dark underworld with the daughter of a rival king, to meet the face of evil itself and fight the Black Angel in combat. Full of drama, action and heroism, pure light is pitted against eternal darkness and damnation.

The film will be created by Roger Christian, who worked on projects like the original Star Wars and Alien. With this experience, he plans to reimagine his short film by the same name made in 1980 into a full, feature-length epic adventure. The thing which I really like in Christian’s presentation is the vintage fantasy feel that many of its concept art pieces carry with them, but the project as a whole does not seem like a futile push to bring back the “good old times”. The recent Mad Max: Fury Road is a perfect example of how modern cinema definitely has a lot to learn from the semi-forgotten approaches of the previous decades, I’m certain that Black Angle can turn out to be a really good action adventure.

The film campaign started out really well and it’s currently close to 90% of its goal. Check out the film’s official Indiegogo page and see how you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

So bad it’s good: The Hobbit - The Battle of the Five Armies

Yes, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies movie has a lot of things in it, or should I say a LOTR of things (I had to make that pun). It has a dragon, armies one, two, three, four and five, and possibly six and seven, but this is more a question for all those Tolkien strategy masters out there.

It has magical stones, magical rings and a whole bunch of magical riding animals, starting with wolves, and going all the way to riding mountain goats, moose and even riding pigs. In the story, characters fight evil Orks while they lose their footing, and then other characters also fight other evil Orks while they also lose their footing in a slightly different manner.

The film has all these things, including never-ending battles where swords are mostly used clubs or metal planks (hey, the budget of the film was enormous, but no one can make that many engaging/not silly sword fights) but in spite of all these things, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is about one thing, and one thing only – a character named Alfrid.

In short, Alfrid is a total bastard of the backstabbing kind. He is stupid, malevolent, treacherous and self-serving to an illogical and sadly comical degree. He is present throughout the film (not counting the unending last battle sequence worthy of films like Lone Survivor) and he is completely pointless. In this character, Peter Jackson demonstrated why all this stuff with Tolkien adaptation should just stop for a while and let everyone figure out what they want out of this.

This wasn’t done for the Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies film, so we got a comical piece about people fighting on plastic rocks and much more than that, about Alfrid. He is part Grima Wormtongue, part village idiot and part plain old jackass. But Jackson was glued to him like a bad horror director to a barrel of artificial blood. With Alfrid, there is nothing to be gained: we don’t see his arrival at this horrific state of total corruption (of a comical kind), and there is no redemption or resolution.

But, we do get to see him cross-dressing at one point (this was also supposed to be comical, but is much less so than Orlando Bloom’s faces when he is shooting arrows) and then he vanishes, just like any point Jackson was trying to make with these films. Compared to him, the total failure of the character Radagast in Hobbit series is a small misdemeanor.

Of course, there are many other out of place elements which make the last Hobbit film a proud entry into the So Bad it's Good category, but like the One Ring, Alfrid can truly bind all of them and rule them in the cinematographic darkness.

Film Review: Dracula Untold (2014)

If you don’t like this film, and I sure wasn’t made into its fan after I watched it, its name offers many possible puns. Like, this movie is so bad that its story should be like its title and it should have remained untold. Or, doesn’t this film kill its own name by telling the story which is supposed to be “untold”?

Granted, these puns are not that great. But, truth to be told (not untold), this film isn’t that great either. But, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I felt as someone who was robbed of 90 minutes. The key issue and the slipping point of this film is the fact that its director, Gary Shore, simply didn’t know where to take it most of the time.

The movie industry is continuously drawn to the story of Dracula and vampires in general. Psychologically speaking, there are so many good things in these tales that they are simply irresistible – sexual allusion of dominance, clothing style, the notions of unstoppable power that comes at a great personal cost – vampire have it all, and they are easy for everyone to understand them.

Shore decided to take a bite from this blood cookie (pun overload), but focused on something that films like Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula only grazed – the origin story of this famous Transylvanian feudal guy turned monster turned even bigger monster. In the film, Luke Evans plays the Transylvanian prince who was brought up in the Ottoman court. There, he became a well-known killer of Ottoman enemies, but got to go back home. The film finds him as a happy married man, but faith brings the Turks back to his feudal doorstep.

Certain that the Transylvania will lose the upcoming war, the Prince ventures to a mountain where an unspoken horror lies, only to find the slim chance of resisting the Sultan and his army.

Shore is good when it comes to directing action sequences and depicting CG eye candy (although he too often turned to darkness to mask visual problems), but on a bigger scale, the film is in a continuous state of lag. The Prince comes and goes, while his entourage, including his wife and son, do the same, occasionally meeting and then moving further. Because of this, it is hard to latch on to something while movie frames of forests and dead Turkish soldiers (who are in almost every situation both unreasonably sarcastic and unafraid) make up of 60% of all visual material in the film.

The redeeming qualities of Dracula Untold are Evans and the excellent Charles Dance. Both of them deserve much better, as Evan already showed in No One Lives, but still they managed to salvage this film from being almost comically bad to the level of mediocre. The very end of the film is especially unpleasant to watch, and reminded me of the ending to The Maze Runner, where the creators practically beg the audience to demand a sequel.

Gary Shore has a capable director’s eye, but I would advise him to steer clear of any possible sequel (apart from his personal financial reasons). While watching Dracula Untold wasn’t a devastating experience, I’m pretty sure that the sequel, especially in this form, will certainly be exactly that.

Film Review: Dead in Tombstone

I must say that I didn’t have very high expectations from this film. One look at the poster is enough for a decent plot summary, which includes a bandit coming back from hell to seek revenge on those who betrayed him.

But, honestly, I must say that I was pleasantly suppressed by the result. The director Roel Reine, who is no stranger to these kinds of films, quickly realized what the strong suits of this movie are: Danny Trejo and Mickey Rourke. First one plays Guerrero De La Cruz, the outlaw who gets killed and meets Lucifer, played by Rourke. With these two in a movie, it’s not possible to have a total flop.

Dead in Tombstone relies primarily on the western part of the story. The horror part, portrayed mainly by Rourke and his depiction of a soul-greedy Satan, staggers behind, and the action is mostly represented by gun, knife and fist fights. The production values of the film very solid for a DVD movie, and it was mostly filmed in Romania. The scenery is very nice, and the good people of Romania even built a little town in the prairie, which gets gradually destroyed in the course of the day which De La Cruz spends back among the living.

Of course, there are several weird decisions, like dubbing Rourke’s voice while he is in hell (no idea why), or using Romanian actors to replace Mexican characters (this was probably due to the budget, but still). I guess in the world of B-action movies, a contemporary Romanian is equal to a 19th century Mexican.

Danny Trejo presents his regular badass guy, this time with a pair of Wild West revolvers instead of knives or machetes. Every time I see this man on the screen I am slightly more impressed by his energy and willingness to work even at his age. In any action scene, Trejo is as good as any other character, and the man should write a book on longevity, because he obviously knows something we don’t.

Dead in Tombstone is a solid film. I believe that Reine could have even made it into a good movie if he decided to put some extra focus on the western mysticism and other horror elements, instead of making it into a regular DVD action flick.

Film Review: Nymph (Mamula)

Let’s face it, horror films are a good investment, because they are popular on every imaginable scale. Small indie films like Jug Face can even turn out to be interesting outside of the genre, while cleverly crafted blockbusters like Insidious Chapter 2 can bring in 41 million US dollars on the opening week (the entire film was made on a 5 million budget). Thankfully, someone realized this in Serbia and now we got Mamula (international title will be Nymph).

Milan Todorovic is a Serbian director who became known after his film Zone of the Dead, a horror that tried to exploit the city of Pancevo and its real toxic industry. This time, Todorovic decided to exploit a small island in the Republic of Montenegro, called Mamula. There, a small group of friends decides to explore the old fortress located on the island, including two American girls visiting their college friend. A carefree afternoon soon turns into bloodshed after the group discovers a strange, armed man pouring chopped up human remains into an abandoned fortress well.

In this film, Todorovic went for the “see horror” sub-genre, with a pinch of creature feature story format. In the first minutes, the audience can bask in the summer sun and naked (or almost naked) bodies of the main cast, before they make the mistake of visiting Mamula. The whole movie is in English, except a few short lines on local languages. This is why the actors (who don’t speak English as their native language apart from Kristina Klebe) struggle with correct pronunciation.

In fact, they struggle so much that the acting gets the back seat. While this film isn’t exactly Sharktopus it doesn’t take itself very seriously, so the bad acting isn’t a big problem. The script was also written in very broad strokes, so it’s no wonder that the plot holes are plentiful, and that the dialog isn’t exactly top notch. A lot of the times, the characters say thing just for the sake of saying them, and no relevant information is transmitted either between them or the audience.

The last third of the film gets a lot better when Franco Nero re-enters the plot. He plays a mysterious fisherman who knows what is going on Mamula, and his screen presence works wonders for the final showdown. Todorovic is really lucky he got Nero to join in the cast, because even in his seventies, the man can still act.

With a great location, a few good actors (namely Nero and Klebe) and a touch of gore, Todorovic made a solid international film that will entertain in the exact amount expected from a B-rate horror flick.

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Film Review: L'illusionniste

Sometimes a movie in which only a dozen understandable sentences are exchanged is enough to remind us about the existence of cinematic magic.

L' illusionniste (The Illusionist) is an animated film from 2010. It is based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati, a French actor and director, who was, several decades ago was, a very influential figure in the film world. Apparently, he wrote the story as a letter to his estranged daughter, with no clear idea of what kind of movie it will turn out to be (if any). But, the origin story of the movie is a little blurry, so this might be just a tall tale. Even if it is not true, I'm sure that work successfully addresses so many real feelings because of the obvious personal stamp that resulted from the difficult relationship between Tati and his child. This film, made nearly 30 years after Tati's death, is a great tribute to parenthood, no matter in what circumstances it reveals itself.

In 1959, an older gentleman, self-employed as a magician and an illusionist, leaves Paris and proceeds to London to revive his stagnant career. There, he performs at a private party where he meets a drunken Scotsman who is amazed with his craft. He invites him to travel back to Scottish highland and gives a few shows. The Illusionist agrees, and there, in the hills of rural Scotland, he meets a girl, who is also completely captivated by him. Soon, she decides to follow him to Edinburgh, where they both have to get used to the new circumstances of their shared life - the village girl lost in a big city, and an artist getting lost in the onslaught of a new era of electric entertainment.

Full of melancholy and driven by a very gentle pace, the film acts as a prophecy that will see this unusual roommates separated. Without words, the director Sylvain Chomet shows in classical animation style the illusionist's oddity and kindness, and the way he stands out in a lot rougher and more calculated world. The team that created this movie deserves a lot of praise, especially for the exterior imagery, whether it comes to barren pastures of Scotland or big city skylines from the 50's.

Equal drama and comedy, L' illusionniste tells its story in a so measured that I found myself completely disconnected from any kind of intellectual processing of the plot and events in the film, and was following it on pure emotional response. Its non-verbal narration carries the viewer on, slowly but surely. Its atmosphere is sad and cheerful at the same time, and beautifully presents the process of disagreements and separation of two human beings.

This is a fantastic movie, accompanied by almost no emotional noise and ambiguities that spoken words often carry. It talks about relationships and the indescribable warmth that they generate, even in the moments when they end.

Film Review: John Dies at the End

Imagination is awesome. Schopenhauer, interpreted by Carl Jung, argued that imagination, or more precisely it’s derivative called a fantasy (and not just the ones that involve trying to rip off Tolkien in some way) can make a bridge between the intellect and emotions, between the purely cognitive and the purely instinctive. We use fantasies (call it daydreaming if you’re still thinking about elves and dwarves) to combine our rational thoughts with different past experiences and emotions that follow them. In daydreams we can do anything. Art is a reflection of this human ability (for me, it’s closer to a superhero power), and John Dies at the End is a reflection of the pure, uninhibited artistic need in people. After ten minutes of the film, I was sure it also could go anywhere. And that is awesome.

I say this because I have a distinct feeling that not one idea was left out in this project. It started as an online collaborative effort conceived by David Wong, which later morphed into a novel. Zombies, parallel dimensions, drugs that alter reality and much more twisted stuff all resides in this multiverse of imagination. The story of two slackers that try a new street substance called Soy Sauce is only the entry point into the rabbit hole. As it progresses, the hole becomes more and more warped, because time bends and dead people give advice to the living over cell phones. It all unravels in break neck speed and things just pile one on top of the other. In spite of that, John Dies at the End isn’t convoluted at all, because it didn’t play by any of the regular handbooks of movie narration. Instead it follows its own frantic dynamic, and it works like clockwork, if the clock had been made by a brilliant engineer on LSD.

The thing that drew me the most was the fact that its director (who also adapted the novel) Don Coscarelli obviously didn’t plan to make this just another freaky horror movie. Of course, the film isn’t exactly polished. On a few occasions, the acting is a little improvised and irrelevant stuff sticks out like in a badly prepared and hastily recorded sitcom. But even that wasn’t a big minus for me. Works of art that define convention have all the freedom to look unfinished or odd compared to a regular film production.

John Dies at the End has a lot of mojo that reminded me of the films like The Cabin in the Woods or the absolutely brilliant comic book series The Invisibles. It’s unbound, and it pitches its ideas farther out in the field. In the movie Looper, one scene reminded me of this feeling, and it’s the moment when a guy that’s trying to climb a wire fence start to lose his fingers that are cut off on him in the past. It’s unusual, it’s interesting, it’s new. Unfortunately, Looper transmitted this feeling to me only on several occasions. John Dies at the End transmitted it from the beginning to the end.

Daniel Carey and Paul Giamatti (who also has a major role in the film) should be proud that they recognized the potential in this script and decided to produce it. John Dies at the End is a mind twisting 100 minutes of fun and terror, packed in a cinematic format that don’t look like many other movies I saw in my life. Other producers should learn from Giamatti and start to put their weight behind stuff like this, because we badly need it.

Film Review: The Wolverine

There is something very satisfying in the X-Men film franchise. I’m not a big Marvel fan, and I’m sure I’m not a scholar of its lore. In spite of that, I found every film in the series really entertaining.

A few years back, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was also an enjoyable experience. Gavin Hood, the artist who created the fantastic Tsotsi directed it and gave it a bit of his unorthodox, not-so-much-Hollywood touch. But this approach wasn’t a sure shot by no means.

Because the same thing backfired before - Ang Lee’s Hulk was a total flop for both big audience groups that went to see it. Those who wanted to see a green monster destroying everything got an unimpressive Eric Bana drama, while those who wanted to see something like Ride with the Devil with comic heroes got even less.

Hood didn’t fall into the same trap, and wisely joined his artistic sensibility and character development with a pure fun & action pace straight from comic books for 14-year-old.

The Wolverine has been directed by James Mangold, who further decreased any non-action, non-comic influence. Almost every superhero movie today must feel tempted to do what Christopher Nolan did with the Batman franchise and make it a bit darker and realistic. Mangold decided that Logan, a mutant who possesses an amazing regenerative abilities and adamantium skeleton, doesn’t really need to be anything like a real and gritty vigilante. Instead, the film shows a broken and disillusioned Logan lives in the wilderness. A woman seeks him out and invites him to Japan, where an old man on his deathbed wants to say goodbye to him. He accepts and this decision brings him to the land of the rising sun where ninja clans, Yakuza gangs and adamantium robots await him.

This film isn’t short. In its runtime of 126 minutes it only becomes a bit boring in the third quarter, which is all things considered, a big success for the fun department. Hugh Jackman is comfortable as the main superhero and delivers his character with ease and ferocity. Mangold did an excellent job when the script needed his help it the most, like the fight scene on the bullet train roof, which looked silly in the trailers, but turned out fine. I suspect his experience in the director seat made this possible.

Wolverine meets Japan could be an unofficial tagline of this movie. There is nothing revolutionary about it, but Mangold didn’t try to make of it anything like that. A solid director, a solid lead actor and a solid scrip together made a really good superhero movie.

Review: This Is the End

End times meet imaginary Seth Rogan and his friends is one way to sum up the whole plot of this great comedy. As apocalypse sets on Los Angeles, a party at James Franco’s new house gets interrupted – most people flee, but Franco decides to stay and begs Rogan,who came with his Canadian buddy Jay Baruchel, to do the same. Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson are also there, and so is Danny McBride, who drunkenly sleeps through the initial fires and carnage.

This Is the End play in the same league as the best films Rogan and Company worked on – it is stupid, original and refreshingly inoffensive, as the main topic covers the world of incredibly wealthy actors. Phony friendships, giant egos and widespread user mentality are just some of the hallmarks of their existence. Hardships of their new found survival isn’t easy on them, to say the least. In their circle, only Baruchel seems like he’s trying to act as a human being. The other range from pure evil or concealed malice to confused selfishness, and most of the action takes place between their conflicted perspectives on what to do next, although dilemmas include finding water and similar mundane problems, elevated by the apocalypse to a greater level.

In the cast, Craig Robinson shines the most, as he did in the Hot Tub Time Machine, while Hill had the most demanding role of the bunch, and did a decent job. McBride is extraordinary entertaining, in spite of the fact he did pretty much the same character he plays as Kenny Powers from Eastbound & Down, amped up by a notch or two.

As a comedy, the movie delivers as good as its actors do – most of the humor is trademark Rogen and Goldberg – jabs at popular culture combined with toilet humor. One of the biggest and most unexpected parts is a movie inside of a movie, which is made by the group when they decide to film a sweded sequel to Pineapple Express.

This, as well as the last 20 minutes of the film do a great job in breaking the monotony of the primary setup, in which 5 guys crack jokes in a wrecked house. This was a really smart move, and one that shows that Rogen definitely has a place behind the camera.

What amazes me about this movie the most is the way it portrays a regular story about a friendship that slowly disintegrated in spite the fact that both parties didn’t ask for it, followed by the process of unexpected and painful discovery that it’s still there. Like the way Knocked Up examined parenthood and commitments, This Is the End explores the bonds that tie childhood friends forever, even when they seem to hate each other and the end is nigh. This, and filming yourself when you for the first time try to drink your own urine.