I have a fantasy that we will one day live in a world in which films that are obviously dripping with influences will no longer need to have titles. They’ll just be called ” Earthquake meets When Harry Met Sally ,” or ” The Godfather , but in space,” and filmgoers will be able to make split second decisions about seeing it without having to be advertised to. For instance, the upcoming British sci/fi horror film Storage 24 . Directed by Johannes Roberts and co-written by/starring Noel Clarke of Doctor Who fame, it has a couple who’ve just broken up meeting at a shared storage unit to divide their possessions. The meet ends in science fictional tragedy when a top secret British cargo plane crashes in London and its cargo, a scary-ass alien monster, escapes. The monster finds its way to the public storage facility in question where, so we assume, everyone inside is picked off one by one because that’s how extraterrestrial serial killers roll. The new red band trailer has just premiered, and while it does indeed suggest that Storage 24 is awesome, they could have done much more to guarantee my ass in the seat by simply calling it Die Hard + Alien + Storage Wars and forsaken the trailer altogether. See for yourself: Storage 24 is currently available on VOD, and hits theaters January 11. [ Source: i09 ] Follow Ross A. Lincoln on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings screenwriter Philippa Boyens is back for another romp in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth playground with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , and she recently sat down with Movieline to talk about the fantasy novel’s adaptation to the screen. Boyens, who is Hobbit director (and co-writer) Peter Jackson’s foremost Tolkien expert — although Stephen Colbert would beg to differ — refers to the Middle Earth creator using the honorific “Professor” and her reverence and esteem for the author are just about as infectious (in a good way, naturally) as Gollum’s “Precious” ring. By the end of the interview, she had us referring to Tolkien as Professor too, as she discussed the changes and adaptations she and her writing partners made to the text, the sad story of Balin the Dwarf, why fans should be very, very excited for 2043, when the copyright runs out on Tolkien’s Middle-Earth compendium, The Silmarillion , and more. From a technical perspective, if you’re not going to have Smaug in this movie you need a secondary antagonist. How did you decide on Azog, and what resonance did he provide for you thematically? You hit the nail on the head because when we were first looking at this as a piece of storytelling, we wanted to get to the dragon. We did try getting to the dragon in one draft, actually. But you had to lose so much along the way. We also understood that the Necromancer is too ephemeral at this moment – too much of a shadowy character that’s not fully understood. It’s a great mystery story, but there’s a big problem because there’s no actual, physical enemy. And yet the dwarves had a very natural one and he was to be found. When Peter [Jackson] talks about taking this chance to tell more of the story, that was one of the pieces that we took — that and Moria. It’s the story of the great hatred between the orcs and the dwarves, where it came from and what was informing it. And, also, I mean, Azog the Defiler. What a great name! You kind of can’t beat that as a name. Balin is telling the story of Azog and the Battle at Moria at a point in the film. I have to be honest, I half expected him to say – I must take this back someday if I ever get the chance! “It will be mine!” It brings up the question of – well, obviously, Tolkien wrote these sequentially. You’re going the other way around. The temptation for prequelitis must have been overwhelming at times. That’s a great word. And no. But you do want some level of resonance because you know the truth is we did make Lord of the Rings first. The relationship between Gandalf and Galadriel is something I particularly loved doing. People forget that Cate Blanchett and Ian Mckellen were never in a single scene together except at the very, very end. Gandalf was fallen by the time the company got to Lothlorien. Yeah, and I think that moment – kids especially are gonna come to this and [ The Hobbit] is going to be their first introduction to Middle Earth and then they will receive the rest of the story as a sequel. And that moment where she says ‘Where is Gandalf for I very much desire to speak with him’ to the Fellowship and they have to tell her that he died is going to be incredibly powerful. So…yeah, a little bit of prequelitis. Just a smidge. And Balin. Seeing Balin’s tomb in Fellowship will have more resonance as well. After two more movies especially – And Ori! Little Ori is the one who wrote “drums, drums in the deep: they are coming.'” I think probably because we’ve done Lord of the Rings it wasn’t that hard. We had Gollum . This wasn’t Gollum that you meet for the first time. We knew him. We understood how to make that internal conflict he has with Smeagal work. We had Andy Serkis the actor. Why wouldn’t you use that? It’s the great gift. The fact that Gandalf disappears, we know where he goes and what he’s dealing with. It was interesting – a lot of pure Tolkien fans loved in Lord of the Rings that, instead of a piece of reportage, we actually followed Gandalf to Isengard. And [showed his] one-on-one with Saruman instead of merely having Gandalf tell everybody what he’s been up to at the Council of Elrond. We got to see it, and we get to do the same thing this time as he goes to Dol Godur.
Martin Scorsese is taking on the 42nd President of the United States for his next project and Bill Clinton himself is fully participating in the non-fiction film. Produced in conjunction with HBO , the film will “explore his perspectives on history, politics, culture and the world.” Scorsese will produce and direct the film. In announcing the film, Scorsese said Clinton is a “Towering figure who remains a major voice in world issues,” adding, “President Clinton continues to shape the political dialogue both here and around the world. Through intimate conversations, I hope to provide greater insight into this transcendent figure.” William Jefferson Clinton served as the 42nd U.S. President from 1993 to 2001 and was the first Democratic leader in six decades to be elected twice. He is credited with leading the U.S. to one of the longest economic expansions in American history. After leaving office, he established the William J. Clinton Foundation which aims to “improve global health, strengthen economies, promote healthier childhoods and protect the environment by fostering partnerships among governments, business, NGOs and private citizens.” “President Clinton is one of the most compelling figures of our time, whose world view and perspective, combined with his uncommon intelligence, making him a singular voice on the world stage,” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler and programming president Michael Lombardo in a joint statement. “This documentary, under Marty’s gifted direction, creates a unique opportunity for the President to reflect on myriad issues that have consumed his attention and passion throughout both his Presidency and post-Presidency.” “I am pleased that legendary director Martin Scorsese and HBO have agreed to this film,” Clinton said in a statement. “I look forward to sharing my perspective on my years as President and my work in the years since with HBO’s audience.” Martin Scorsese collaborated with the 2011 doc George Harrison: Living in the Material World . He’s also worked with the premium network with the documentary Public Speaking (2010) and the series Boardwalk Empire , in which he is an executive producer.
Given the behind the scenes false starts that seemed to plague the production of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – lawsuits, studio bankruptcy, a change in directors — it’s perhaps a tad ironic that beginning the story of Lord of the Rings before the story of Lord of the Rings was never a problem. No, for Peter Jackson , Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, the power troika behind the flick, beginning an episodic, rollicking, children’s adventure story cum three-film epic was the easy part. Deciding where to end, however… Spoilers follow. How does one pinpoint a climax for a first film in a trilogy before the whole story is even a third of the way over? With what may be the turning point of J.R.R. Tolkien’s entire massive legendarium, suggested Boyens. “We understood that you had to arrive the characters at an emotional location as opposed to a geographical location. Instead of just getting them to a geographical point on the journey, it was more important for to arrive them at an emotional place so that you didn’t continue to tell the same emotional story,” the Oscar winning scribe told Movieline . “It’s very hard for Bilbo to be that little Hobbit who has to find his courage,” she continued. “I mean, that could go on and on and on and on. [But when] the ring comes to Bilbo and in that moment he chooses not to take Gollum’s life, that has enormous resonance for the entire mythology.” Occurring almost exactly 30 percent of the way through Tolkien’s The Hobbit , the scene comes immediately after Bilbo finds the One Ring and puts it on for the first time in order to escape from the clutches of the treacherous Gollum, who he has just beaten in a Riddle Game. Perched before Gollum in front of an open doorway that promises freedom, Bilbo has a chance to kill the creature but chooses not to. The scene, sometimes referred to by fans of the series as “The Pity of Bilbo,” has consequences for the rest of the series in a literal sense, as it is ultimately Gollum who manages to destroy the Ring by falling with it into the lava at Mount Doom. So resonant is the scene, in fact, that it’s overtly referenced several times in Lord of the Rings . “The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many,” Gandalf tells Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring . “The pity of Bilbo rules the fate of all,” echoed director Peter Jackson. “Bilbo had a chance to kill Gollum. The fact that he didn’t [kill Gollum] has now created the story of Lord of the Rings , for good or for bad.” Perhaps more importantly for Boyens and Company, it represented a kind of ecclesiastical or moral totem, a crossroads from which Bilbo would never be able to return. (Gandalf believes, for example, that Bilbo was able to give up the Ring so easily because he took it in a moment of pity. “Bilbo has been well rewarded,” he tells Frodo. “Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With pity.”) Using this scene as the climax of the film then necessitated moving other things forward, like when in the story Thorin learns to trust and lean on Bilbo. From the cave scene forward in the film, Bilbo takes agency in his relationship with the dwarves, deciding to actively join them on their quest and helping to save Thorin from the orcs. “Bilbo discovers something in himself and I think that is true courage, knowing when, as Gandalf says, to spare a life,” Boyens insisted. “So we couldn’t just let that moment pass. And I think it would have gotten buried in the great morass of spider fights and other stuff that would have happened if [we didn’t end there and] kept pushing through.” The spiritual ramifications of the scene were so important to the screenwriters that they made a small but profound change in order to underline its moral importance, explained Boyens. In the book, Bilbo simply finds the Ring, as if it was misplaced by Gollum. In the movie, “[Gollum] loses it as he’s murdering someone and Bilbo receives it as he’s saving something,” Boyens explained. “So maybe that act – that unknown act without any knowledge of any greater consequence — is what Professor Tolkien wrote a lot about; [Goodness and grace] must be innate. It must be for its sake an act of charity, an act of kindness. That’s how fate works.” Is this the right place to end The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , even though it necessitated changing the text to move other things forward? Would you have chosen this spot? Sound off in the comments below. READ MORE ON THE HOBBIT : The Science of High Frame Rates, Or: Why ‘The Hobbit’ Looks Bad At 48 FPS Richard Armitage Talks ‘Hobbit’ And Thorin Oakenshield, Takes A Phone Call From Sauron ‘The Hobbit’ At 48 FPS: A High Frame Rate Fiasco? Follow Shawn Adler on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
