Category: 1. Jason Apuzzo

Hollywood Round-up, 9/22

Grace Park of "Hawaii Five-0."

By Jason Apuzzo. • Reviews are starting to come out for The Social Network (see The New York Times, Variety, Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter). I’m actually trying to avoid them, because I feel I already know a bit too much about this project.

Suffice it to say that the film is getting a very favorable response thus far. Aside from Fincher’s skill as a director, I think that what intrigues people here the most is not so much Mark Zuckerberg himself, as much as the phenomenon which he’s assumed to represent – i.e., a socially alienated America, and the new, anonymous social networking technologies that give people a simulacrum of community/intimacy in their lives. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never felt especially alienated, nor lacking in intimacy, that these technologies have meant very little to me over the years. Nonetheless, I think people do find uses for the internet that are valid and legitimate in terms of creating communities based on shared interest – Libertas is obviously one example among many of that – and also in terms of sharing aspects of their lives with others.

A friend of mine here in LA recently sent me a link to an interesting blog called the Talk to Strangers Blog. The basic purpose of the blog is spelled out in this post; essentially, it’s written by an amusing, ironic guy here in LA in his late 20s who decided at some point to stop feeling alienated and angry all the time and start interacting with strangers – to actually get to know people, start placing names with faces, learn about people’s lives around him in a programmatic way. The idea driving the blog appears to be social networking based on actual social contact, rather than the ersatz form of the internet – and the guy doing it takes his whole enterprise as an experiment, one that does not yet have any clear outcome. I only mention this site because I think that the impulse behind it is more or less similar to what drives millions of people to Facebook and Twitter each day – a desire, in effect, to connect … when our lives might not otherwise feel very ‘connected.’ I’ll have more to say about all this down the line. Right now I have to get back to my usual subjects of alien invaders and supermodels.

• Wall Street 2 just had its big, swanky premiere party in New York. You can see pictures of this event here and here, and I wonder if it occurred to anyone present that the party looks just like the sort of ritzy gala thrown by filthy capitalist pigs. Ironies abound.

Odette Yustman of "You Again."

• Hawaii Five-O beat out The Event in the ratings, albeit only by a nose. Hooray hot Hawaiian chicks fighting terrorists on The Big Island! Boo pro-Obama/anti-CIA propaganda! I was too busy to watch either show in progress, actually, because I was trying to find out what happened to Reggie Bush’s leg.

• Inception has crossed the $750 million mark worldwide, and Christopher Nolan apparently has plans underway for an Inception video game spinoff. I thought such vulgarities were beneath a tony director like Nolan; apparently not.

• I’ve been thinking of doing totally separate ‘alien invasion’ updates. I never quite pull the trigger, though, because each day I keep thinking that surely this trend must end, right? Wrong. Today we learn that Orson Scott Card’s pseudo-alien invasion novel Ender’s Game (a somewhat liberal take on Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers) may finally be getting a big-screen adaptation. Also: Steven Spielberg has always been serious about alien invasion, but now he’s apparently getting serious about a robot invasion; we learn today that rumors of Spielberg’s interest in bringing Daniel H. Wilson’s forthcoming Robopocalypse novel to the big screen are true. And finally, the people responsible for the forthcoming Godzilla reboot talk today about the project and its current status at Legendary Pictures.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … in the spirit of Godzilla, alien invaders and the like, we thought we’d take a look today at actress Odette Yustman, who starred in Cloverfield and will be appearing this Friday in the comedy-drama You Again.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on September 21st, 2010 at 6:48pm.

The Cold War Returns with a Sci-Fi Twist in Pioneer One

By Jason Apuzzo. A special hat-tip goes today to my LFM colleague Joe Bendel for covering an interesting new web series called Pioneer One that just appeared on Vimeo and YouTube, and is also showing right now at the New York Television Festival. Pioneer One is essentially a crowd-funded webseries that went from concept to finished pilot in three months, on a budget of about $6000.

The premise of Pioneer One is this: a mysterious object falls from the sky, spreading radiation over North America. Fearing terrorism, Homeland Security Agents are dispatched to investigate and contain the damage. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that what they find there involves elements of sci-fi, contemporary anxieties associated with terrorism, and the political history of the Cold War. And while the politics of the series seem a bit murky, based on what I’ve seen thus far it’s safe to say that the series’ creators take a dim view of Soviet communism.

You can read Joe Bendel’s full review of the Pioneer One pilot episode here, and I’ve embedded that full, 30+ minute episode below. If you just have time to watch the series’ brief trailer, you can catch that here.

All summer long here at Libertas we were covering a variety of subjects – sci-fi alien invasions (see here), a return of Cold War/anti-communist themes (Salt, Mao’s Last Dancer, Farewell, etc.), and crowd-funded indie sci-fi projects (Iron Sky, The 3rd Letter, Mercury Men) – all of which categories, interestingly, Pioneer One fits into.

Having watched the full pilot episode, my feeling is that the team behind Pioneer One has a great premise they’re working from – one that only becomes clear by the end of the episode. Writer Josh Bernhard and director Bracey Smith are doing a very nice job, cleverly providing a sense of scale and suspense to the story, even if the pacing of this first episode is perhaps a bit relaxed. I hope this series takes off (it already has, to a great extent – the pilot has been downloaded and streamed over 2 million times) because if it goes where I think it’s going … it should be a great deal of fun. Bravo to the whole team behind Pioneer One.

[UPDATE: Congratulations to the team of Pioneer One for winning the “Best Drama Pilot” award at the New York Television Festival.]

Posted on September 21, 2010 at 4:34pm.

New Alien Invaders, Jack Ryan to Fight Terrorists & John Hamm Fights the Tea Party: Hollywood Round-up, 9/21

By Jason Apuzzo. • The Affleck movie won the weekend at the box office. I’ve generally been pro-Affleck, but The Town didn’t grab my attention at all. Also, I didn’t like the advertising for it; even though my Catholic days are long in the past, the ugly nun masks really turned me off, in so far as they were being used as an advertising ploy. In any case, Affleck’s career now appears to be resuscitated, so now we can look forward to that Daredevil sequel we’ve all been waiting for.

Aly Michalka of "The Roommate."

• There’s always James Cameron news, isn’t there? And so today we’re learning more details about the new Avatar DVD, with its 5,000 hours of extra bonus features, 900 deleted scenes, new sequences set in the Amazon rainforest, etc. Who has time for this? There might even be a plan to halt global warming in the box set, for all I know. In any case, I only wish there was this type of set available for Aliens, which is still Cameron’s best film in my book (the Blu-ray for Aliens is coming out soon, btw, and apparently looks fabulous). And guess what? This Avatar content-dump will all get re-released again at some point down the line in 3D for Blu-ray, so get used to the fact that this film is never going away.

• In related Avatar news, Stephen Lang has been cast as the lead in a new sci-fi TV series called Terra Nova, which is apparently about “a colony of humans from 2149 who take a second chance at building a civilization by going back 85 million years.” That sounds like what Congress will be doing after the November elections. Finally, on the Cameron front, ABC has apparently picked up his True Lies TV series. As a side note, ABC also just picked up a series called Good Christian B*****s, which has the distinction of being the first network series the title of which I can’t even put on this site. Nice work, ABC – you’re breaking important new ground, there.

• Mad Men star Jon Hamm apparently believes that the Tea Party has a secret “racist” agenda. This is so disappointing to report, for all the obvious reasons. Thanks, Jon! The illusion is now shattered. One gets the sense that you’ve completely missed the point of your own show. [Sigh.]

• As usual, there’s a lot of news on the ‘alien invasion’ front: if you can believe it, it looks like we may be getting a Voltron movie – a Voltron movie, for goodness sake! … so check out some of the production art for this project at the top of this post; there’s also some new Iron Sky casting news; plus there are some intriguing new set photos out from the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg alien-on-the-loose thriller Super 8, which is slated for next year. I’m expecting that film to be the best of this new alien invasion wave, chiefly because the guys doing it have a lot of practice at this sort of thing. Based on the set photos, the setting for this film is obviously supposed to be ‘middle America,’ which used to be where Spielberg set all his stories. It’s nice to see him return there, as I think that’s where he’s at his best.

Monica Cruz.

• Perhaps the most unusual news on the ‘alien invasion’ front, however, is that there’s apparently a new version of the old Space Invaders video game coming out – and even that’s now been redesigned for 3D. See the Wall Street Journal’s report on this subject, plus we’ve put the trailer for the game above. The ‘alien invasion’ trend is obviously cross-platform at this point. [Footnote: did you know that Halo: Reach made $200 million on its first day on sale … although even that was still shy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which made $310 million on its first day last year. I’m in the wrong profession.]

• The Jack Ryan reboot Moscow starring Star Trek’s Chris Pine apparently has a new screenwriter … and we’re learning a few more details about the project. Not surprisingly, the movie is set in Moscow, and will feature “terrorist acts as a backdrop.” It is also apparently about Ryan’s early career – I don’t know if that means it’s set in the past, though, or in the ongoing present a lá Bond. We’ll keep an eye on this one.

• We now have a Psycho Hottie College Roommate From Hell Movie coming out (The Roommate, see the trailer here), complete with shower scenes and subtextual lesbianism. Perfect for the start of the academic school year! [Jess Franco retired too early.] This should give parents a lot of confidence as they pack their young daughters off to college. Academia sure isn’t what it used to be! Footnote: saucy Aly Michalka from Hellcats is one of the co-stars, so that’s a plus.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Monica Cruz, Spanish TV star and younger-sister-of-Penelope made a splash the other day at the new Aire collection event in Madrid, and some wags are now asking whether she’s better looking than her famous sister. Even my trained eye isn’t sure, but I’ll bet double-dating with those sisters must’ve really be something back in the day … En Fuego!

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on September 20th, 2010 at 6:38pm.

Never Let Me Go: ‘Devastating, Dystopian’

By Jason Apuzzo. I’m not sure we’re going to have time today to review director Mark Romanek’s new adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let Me Go – which recently debuted in Toronto and opens in limited release nationwide today, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield (the new Spider-Man) – so I thought I’d post an excerpt from Andrew O’Hehir’s interesting review over at Salon.

From Salon:

You could describe “Never Let Me Go” as set in an alternate-history version of postwar Britain, but as with all really good alternate histories, the changed universe really isn’t the point. Director Mark Romanek captures the slightly seedy and rundown reality of ’70s and ’80s British life in astonishing and even tragic detail; this is more like a period piece than a science-fiction movie. In fact, it resembles a Merchant-Ivory tragedy about doomed love in a war zone, except that the doomed love involves human guinea pigs and the war zone is not some tropic zone but the alleged good intentions of medical science.

Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley in "Never Let Me Go."

There’s no way to write about “Never Let Me Go” without at least dropping hints about the ultimate destiny of Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley), the romantic triangle who meet as children in a dreary, peculiar boarding school called Hailsham House. If you don’t want to know any more about that, stop reading now. This is really never a secret in the film, although it’s concealed at first under a mask of horrifying euphemism — as an adult, Kathy becomes a “carer,” who works with “donors” until they reach “completion” — and I had read Ishiguro’s unforgettable novel and knew what was coming. Still, there’s a scene about 20 minutes into the movie when a sympathetic teacher named Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins) finally spells out what the Hailsham children need to know about their future if they’re to have “decent lives,” as she puts it, and Romanek dramatizes this hammer-blow, life-changing moment with such power that I don’t want to undermine it.

Screenwriter Alex Garland, who is himself a novelist, sticks close to both the letter and spirit of Ishiguro’s novel; this movie is a veritable clinic in precise literary adaptation. He incorporates snatches of dialogue and even voiceover (read by Mulligan) straight from the book, without swamping the human drama or overwhelming Romanek’s astonishing visual evocation of a bygone Britain. His innovations are limited, but they help set the stage in important ways: The big medical breakthrough came in 1952, we are told in an opening title, and by 1967 life expectancy exceeded 100 years. This came at a price, of course, and “Never Let Me Go” asks us to consider that price in all its dimensions. Continue reading Never Let Me Go: ‘Devastating, Dystopian’

ATTN: Mr. Democrat Challenges the Iranian Regime

By Jason Apuzzo. I wanted Libertas readers to have a chance today to see an extraordinary short film by Iranian filmmaker Farbod “Fred” Khoshtinat called, ATTN: Mr. Democrat. The ‘Mr. Democrat’ of the title is an ironic reference to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who actually claims to preside over a democratic republic in Iran.

Fred Khoshtinat with Hillary Clinton.

Khoshtinat is a multi-talented filmmaker who edited the music video sequences in a poignant movie I really admired this past summer called No One Knows About Persian Cats (see my review of that here).

ATTN: Mr. Democrat is a short film that created a big splash recently by winning the State Department’s ‘Democracy Video Challenge,’ in the Near East and North Africa category. Khoshtinat was given the ‘Democracy Video Challenge’ award for this short this past week by Hillary Clinton.

Dissident filmmakers like Khoshtinat will always have a ‘virtual home’ here at Libertas. We wish him the best in his future endeavors, and hope the success of his film opens up another tiny crack in the Iranian regime.

Posted on September 17th, 2010 at 12:43pm.

Living with the Infidels Episode 5 – “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”

PLEASE NOTE: Living with the Infidels Episode 5, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” features adult language and situations. If that might offend you, please don’t watch the webisode. Otherwise, enjoy.

By Jason Apuzzo. Here is Episode 5, the final installment of Living with the Infidels. We hope you’ve enjoyed the series. This episode may be the best. It is genuinely hilarious – in large measure because it’s dominated by the terror cell’s raging narcissist, Psycho Ali, who delivers the funniest riff on a terror video I’ve ever seen – Four Lions included. Watch him as he struggles to find his ‘actor’s moment.’ Enjoy!

Posted on September 16th, 2010 at 10:15am.