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.
As beloved and popular as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit has been in the seventy plus years since its publication, the simple adventure story has never been much more than prologue, a light and sunny rain compared to the epic hurricane force of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings , the transformative high fantasy quest narrative which C.S. Lewis once said contained “beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” The worst thing that could be said about Peter Jackson ‘s fourth cinematic foray into Middle Earth, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , is that it follows suit, being merely good when greatness was anticipated or expected. As with Lord of the Rings , but perhaps never more so than in The Hobbit , Jackson brings a plain earnestness to the material which matches Tolkien’s direct and straightforward narrative voice. There’s awe and wonder to be found beyond The Shire as the eponymous hobbit, Bilbo, (Martin Freeman) and a band of fierce but merry dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), embark on their adventure towards the dragon Smaug’s stronghold deep within The Lonely Mountain, but never any slyness or irony, no winks at the audience behind cynical detachment. (One earnest sequence in particular, in which Bilbo takes his leave of Gollum and then talks of what home means to the dwarves, recalls Sam’s speech at the end of Two Towers and will leave viewers’ hearts aching.) Jackson’s unwillingness to embrace anything other than earnestness in his original Lord of the Rings trilogy is in part what made those films resonate so strongly with early 21st century audiences. They contain silliness and laughter, but a silliness and laughter always carefully calibrated to service a delicate tonal balance. In those films, as in Tolkien’s original works, the story begins in Fellowship with the comical idea of an old hobbit’s birthday party, gradually elevating its register until, by the end of Return of the King , it becomes one of the greatest quest narratives ever filmed (or written). The problem with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as quest narrative, however, is that, for Tolkien, who wrote the story long before he ever put pen to paper on Lord of the Rings , that register never changes or elevates. Although in later years he would go back and make minor corrections to the original text to reflect updated plot points or characters, what starts with “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” ends quite matter-of-factly in the same style, never going much beyond a simple and unpretentious adventure story for children. Jackson, taking on the task in reverse (creating his Hobbit after his Lord of the Rings ) occasionally missteps in his desire to combine the two stories into a tonally consistent whole, bringing silliness to moments that should be of great portent, and vice versa. For example: Many will point to Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), with his jackrabbit sled and bird poop-bespotted hair, as an example of comic relief that goes too far. It doesn’t, but the general dottiness of the character comes at a moment in the film of great peril, when it is revealed for the first time that the villainous Necromancer who is troubling the borders of Mirkwood might, in fact, be the villain — the evil Sauron. Tolkien could avoid the confluence, but not Jackson, who in his fierce desire to make The Hobbit as tonally consistent with Lord of the Rings as possible mixes the two and finally pushes his finely-tuned and hard-earned cart over, unbalancing the film in this and other parts as he tries too hard to align it with his earlier work. Where Jackson might occasionally misstep tonally, he takes the reigns from the episodic original and runs with generally fantastic results through several narrative additions, all of which give the characters more agency in their own affairs. After the film’s somewhat meandering first half (which includes two separate dwarf musical numbers), Bilbo and Thorin succeed in, for instance, escaping the trolls and wargs with actual actions and choices, instead of a Deus Ex Gandalf . Though hardcore fans might scoff at the blasphemy of adding anything to the source material, even those things written by Tolkien himself in the appendixes, Jackson succeeds cinematically in pulling off the Orc/Dwarf Battle of Nanduhirion and the fleshing out of Azog as a dominant and recurring adversary. Less successful are scene additions consisting of actors reprising their roles from Lord of the Rings . While the stuff with Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Sarumon (Christopher Lee) at the White Council works like gangbusters, an early scene where Frodo (Elijah Wood) stands around and does nothing smacks of prequel-itis. Even with all these additions, or perhaps because of them (the film clocks in at a staggering 166 minutes, or about a minute for every two pages of text in the original — and there are two films left) An Unexpected Journey feels less like a self-contained narrative and more like a partial installment, in ways the Lord of the Rings films never did. Like Bilbo reflecting on his long path from The Shire and what it means to fight for a place to call your own, however, returning to Middle Earth feels right . And if it doesn’t quite soar as high in transformative joy or ecstasy as we thought it might… it’s still home. Note : I saw the film in 3-D at 24 fps. The 3-D adds nothing to the film, and is a surcharge to be avoided. READ MORE ON THE HOBBIT (In theaters December 14): ‘Hobbit’ First Review: 48 FPS Is ‘Eye-Popping,’ But Watch Out For The Jar Jar Binks Of ‘LOTR’ WATCH: Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Video Reveals Over Ten Minutes of Behind the Scenes Footage Shawn Adler is a film writer and interviewer based out of NYC. For his in-depth writing on genre films, Shawn was once called “The Harold Bloom of superhero trailers” by the “Hollywood Reporter.” It would be a mistake to simply think that nobody cares about that now. Nobody cared about it then either. You can follow him on Twitter @Lethrup . Follow Shawn Adler on Twitter . 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The people behind The Hobbit are no fans of what they perceive as imitators. Warner Bros., New Line Cinema and MGM as well as Hobbit producer Saul Zaentz are taking backers of low-budget pic Age of the Hobbits for trademark infringement. The plaintiffs say that movie label The Asylum, which is behind a slate of “mock-busters” that spoof Hollywood movies, is “free-riding on the marketing campaign of Peter Jackson’s upcoming string of Hobbit pics, beginning next month with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . Producers of the Jackson film called Age of the Hobbits an “international and willful attempt to trade on the popularity and goodwill” of the filmmaker’s The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, according to BBC. And producers are not looking for any compromise either. They are asking for all “infringing and ad materials and packaging for The Asylum’s Hobbit to be destroyed, claiming it may “divert customers and potential customers away from the Hobbit films.” The Zaentz Co which controls the trademark rights to the Tolkien book has also threatened legal action. Age of the Hobbits is due for a DVD and online release December 11th, just three days before the U.S. opening of Jackson’s Hobbit . “Age of the Hobbits is about the real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia, which have been uniformly referred to as ‘Hobbits’ in the scientific community,” noted Asylum in a statement, adding that it is therefore “protected under the legal doctrines of nominal and traditional fair use.” Aylum also said a Google search of ‘hobbits’ and archaeology would turn up a dozen of disparate articles. Asylum’s previous “mock-busters” include Transmorphers , based on Michael Bay’s big budget movie Transformers , and The Da Vinci Treasure , which took its name from The Da Vinci Code , directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks. [Source: BBC ]
Breaking Bad got the Comic-Con treatment ahead of tonight’s ultra-anticipated season premiere, with stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn and others joining series creator Vince Gilligan in San Diego to talk over all things Walter White — including how television has usurped movies’ standing as the home for serious storytelling for adults. But what of the oft-discussed feature-film treatment that might be in the offing as the two-part final season commences? Movieline pal Grace Randolph was there to talk it over with the Breaking Bad team; click through for her video report. Read more of Movieline’s Comic-Con 2012 coverage here .
Man of Steel enjoyed one of the more bonkers receptions at this weekend’s Comic-Con, culminating in — what else? — a teaser poster just for its San Diego coming-out party. They’ve thought of everything. It doesn’t reveal much of Henry Cavill’s Superman, however, which led Movieline pal Grace Randolph to hit up costume illustrator Phillip Boutte for more details about the look of Zack Snyder’s upcoming blockbuster. Click through for the poster and video.
After bringing 12 minutes of The Hobbit to Comic-Con — where Peter Jackson purposefully did not present footage in the 48 frames per second/3-D presentation that perplexed audiences at CinemaCon — the Lord of the Rings filmmaker spoke further about his desire to explore even more ground in the fantasy universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien. One possibility may be a third Hobbit film culled from Tolkien’s expansive LOTR notes and appendices, though Jackson admitted that the author’s posthumously published Silmarillion might present more of a challenge. Familiar faces filled the screen in the Hobbit preview, which gave Comic-Con fans glimpses of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel, Ian McKellan’s Gandalf, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, and new cast member Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in the two-parter, which will hit screens in December 2012 and 2013. Speaking with press, Jackson acknowledged his choice to present the footage in 2-D rather than the 48 fps that earned mixed-to-negative buzz at CinemaCon. “We have to try to figure out ways to make this cinematic experience much more spectacular, more immersive,” he said. “But you know, Hall H isn’t the place to do it.” Neither is showing just ten minutes of footage in 48 fps an adequate way to introduce the format to thousands of uninitiated fans who may not even be used to big screen 3-D, he insisted. CinemaCon seems to have also taught Jackson not to let 48 fps overshadow the actual film at hand. “I didn’t want to repeat the CinemaCon experience where literally people see this reel and all they write about is 48 frames a second. That doesn’t do us any good. It doesn’t do 48 fps any good. To accurately judge that, you really need to sit down and watch the entire film.” Meanwhile, Jackson and collaborators Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh are in the early stages of looking at a potential third Hobbit film based on the vast 125-page appendices in Tolkien’s Return of the King , some of which was used to flesh out The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again . “Philippa and Fran and I have been talking to the studio about the other things we haven’t been able to shoot and seeing if we can possibly persuade them to do a few more weeks of shooting — possibly more than a few weeks, actually — a bit of additional shooting next year,” Jackson said. “There are other parts of the story that we’d like to tell that we haven’t had the chance to tell yet.” Jackson looked to the additional Tolkien notes to fill in certain character backstories and events missing from the primary texts. “For instance, in The Hobbit where Gandalf mysteriously disappears for chapters on end and it’s not really explained in any detail where he’s gone, much later Tolkien fleshed those out in these appendices,” he explained. “It was altogether a lot more dark and more serious than what was written in The Hobbit . And I do want to make a series of movies that run together so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all together in a row, there will be a consistency of tone.” A completist’s cinematic tour of the LOTR world might include Tolkien’s Silmarillion , a collection of universe-building mythology edited and posthumously published by Tolkien’s son Christopher in 1977. The problem, Jackson says, is in who controls the rights to the work. “ The Silmarillion is the big volume, but that’s owned by the Tolkien estate,” he said. “It’s not owned by Warner Bros. or MGM — and I don’t think the Tolkien estate are very fond of these movies, so I wouldn’t expect to see The Silmarillion any time soon.” Read more from Comic-Con 2012 here. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Ten years ago this week The Fellowship of the Ring was released. Peter Jackson’s first Tolkien adaption silenced a great many naysayers who said J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels could never be properly translated to film. It also fostered a mainstream interest in fantasy movies that continues a decade later. The development of a film based on Tolkien’s original Middle-Earth novel, The Hobbit, was the subject… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : /Film Discovery Date : 21/12/2011 03:50 Number of articles : 4
NASA this craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien#39;s #39;The Lord of the Rings#39; or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination. The NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaotic activity atop a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buri
