As always, thanks for reading ... and May The Force Be With You!
Let it be known that truly great films not only stand the test of time but usually establish some kind of culturally precedent: they're "firsts" in a world usually more greatly occupied with followers and imitators. George Lucas's Star Wars was the first Science Fiction film to receive a nomination for the Oscar of Best Picture. While it didn't win, it certainly began the trend of having Hollywood studios and beyond ramp up their efforts to garner a piece of that box office action, and -- for that -- fans are forever grateful.
As always, thanks for reading ... and May The Force Be With You! Indeed, it's starting to look a lit like NBC's Timeless might be bulletproof!
After NBC executives announced that the show would be cancelled and not returning to the airwaves in 2018 to pick up where it left off with a significant cliffhanger, the show's fans put on a shock-and-awe campaign to convince the peacock network a renewal was warranted; impressed by the turnout, the brass changed their minds, granting the time travel yarn a reprieve as a summer series on the channel. Well, an article on Deadline suggests that the show dodged yet another bullet, that of a kinda/sorta "intellectual property" lawsuit from creators of El Ministerio del Tiempo (The Department of Time), a Spanish-language drama with essential the same formula and format of travelers correcting events gone astray in time. I remember reading about the lawsuit near the start of Timeless's first season and was curious what had become of it. It looks like all interested parties reached a resolution outside of court, and that's definitely another positive development for NBC. As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper! Stardate 05.26.2017.A: ... And Winter Is Still Coming With Game Of Thrones Seventh Season!5/26/2017
Well, kids, in order to help build some excitement for the return of the HBO Fantasy Drama to the boob tube, the cable company recently dropped a trailer for the ambitious seventh season onto the Information Superhighway. As usual, this one doesn't really reveal all that much but continues to promise that winter is coming, Peter Dinklage is 'da boss,' Jon Snow still knows nothing, and dragons rule. Take a gander at it in all of its streaming glory! As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
Hmm. I guess maybe this distinction makes up for the fact that in the original film (Star Wars) neither of the droids were properly recognized during the medals ceremony for the parts they played in the destruction of the Death Star. I get that maybe the necklaces wouldn't have looked right on Artoo anyway, but it is what it is.
For those wanting to explore the Robot Hall Of Fame, you can find it online right here. As always, thanks for reading ... and May The Force Be With You! Huh. Not too sure how this one is going to work, but the folks behind Judge Dredd and IM Global are hard-at-work bringing the judge, jury, and executioner to the small screen in a "Mega-City One" project. Now, for the uninformed, Dredd isn't what one might deem a mainstream-style property. The book was always a bit subversive -- a bit on the outside of regular comic books -- taking a dark and grim look at what awaits mankind in the future. Some of the humor was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but a lot of it was just kinda/sorta bizarre though grounded in satire. There isn't a lot of detail available at this point, and I suppose that's because this thing is definitely in its early stages; but thankfully they're talking about tying it thematically back to what was accomplished in the Dredd film staring Karl Urban from 2012. In any event, check out their YouTube.com announcement regarding the project. As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
Sorry, folks, but despite the lushness of Luc Besson's visuals I'm really having a hard time getting excited about the forthcoming Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Now, some of this is owed to the fact that it's a Besson project to begin with (never been a big fan of his storytelling style), but I attribute some of the fault due to the flat delivery of its leads, Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan. (Were they both on prescriptions of Ambien throughout the filming?) Now don't hate me. I've always said that I'm not a big fan of trailers to begin with, but here's hoping that Besson pulls a rabbit out of his hat with this one. I'll keep my fingers crossed. As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
This is a little tidbit I'd never known (about where these names for the Starfighters come from in Star Wars: A New Hope), and I'm honestly not entirely certain I believe it. It seems to me (though I could be wrong) that the term "X-wing" was used the Marvel comic book adaptation of the motion picture, but age clouds the mind and perhaps I'm 'blending' things together. In any event, I'll accept it at face value, and I'm thrilled to share it with readers today.
As always, thanks for reading ... and May The Force Be With You! All right, kiddies, buckle up because the blockbuster summer release for Spider-Man: Homecoming is almost here (it drops into megaplexes on July 7th), and in anticipation of the next installment of the popular rebooted franchise the knuckleheads pushing the advertising have given mankind yet one more last-ditch trailer. I'll post it below for those of you who are interested, so be sure to check it out and like and share judiciously! As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper! Culturally, we’ve always been obsessed with stories involving time travel. Largely, I think the appeal is grounded in a very human conceit: which of us wouldn’t want a do-over? I’m certainly not talking about reliving an entire life but rather getting the chance to correct a bad or lesser choice made in the past. Indeed, such an inviting proposition has fueled motion pictures from Terry Gilliam’s dramatically visionary Twelve Monkeys (1995) to Robert Zemeckis’ comical Back To The Future trilogy (1985, 1989, 1990); so a little ditty like Prisoner X certainly begins from a position of universal appeal. However, getting from start to finish would appear to be trickier than you’d expect if writer/director Gaurav Seth’s finished product is any indication. And must it be so lethargic? (NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely from the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last few paragraphs for my final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …) From the publicity materials: “As the world rages in war and civil strife, CIA Agent Carmen Reese arrives at a secret underground prison to interrogate a captured terrorist with links to recent attacks on American soil. But the prisoner is more than he appears – he has arrived from the future with ninety-eight other time travelers who are still at large and wreaking havoc across the globe. Now it’s a race against the clock as Carmen and the prisoner engage in a battle of wills to see whose version of the future will triumph.” Cerebral ideas don’t always make for invigorating experiences. Even NBC’s suits back in the mid-1960’s told no less than Gene Roddenberry himself that his first pilot for Star Trek needed a do-over, thus giving the creator the opportunity to pack a bit more sizzle onto his steak. Since then, films like Gattaca (1997), Snowpiercer (2013), and Predestination (2014) all share the requisite DNA to make for didactic storytelling but – in each of their day – they still failed to build an audience that embraced them in such a way as to make them fiscally profitable. The bottom line? People rarely want to “think” about their entertainment, and Prisoner X’s various plot points jump across nearly a twenty-year timespan with barely enough explanation why so many trips were absolutely necessary … but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Writer/director Seth sunk his creative teeth into “Truth,” a Hugo-nominated novella by author Robert Reed. (For the record, I’ve never read it, but I come away from Prisoner X feeling like I should have before tackling this film.) As some of the best Science Fiction does, “Truth” pulls inspiration from the headlines of its era, postulating a future wherein Islamic jihadists travel back in time in order wreak havoc on early twenty-first century Earth with their future tech. Into this world comes a CIA interrogator tasked with unraveling one terrorist’s secrets before mankind suffers the big goodbye. Theatrical mechanics being what they are, the premise is undeniably appealing. All of the required pieces are certainly present. You want an evil villain? Check. You need some fantastic technology? Check. You desire a flawed central hero to root for? Check. Still, Prisoner X fails to come together in any meaningful way, and – like so many esoteric SciFi thrillers that have come before it – the fault lies chiefly tied to the fact that so very little of it is relatable. Michelle Norden’s Carmen Reese (the hero) spends far too much time nursing her personal demons though exactly what they are and why they persist never quite gets the cinematic epiphany required for an audience to take her past struggle and aptly apply it to her interrogations. Romano Orzari’s Ramiro (the time-hopping terrorist) possesses so little charisma here it’s hard to imagine him as a legitimate terrorist with the machismo necessary to lead others in some global conflict; he occasionally seethes hatred the way cinema bad guys do but never consistently much less convincingly. Julian Richings and Damon Runyan are largely wasted with too little screen time for viewers to care about much less accept that each would’ve personally given fifteen years of their lives over to “interrogating” (presumably) this solitary subject while gaining (apparently) so little from him. For those still watching, director Seth does throw in some fanciful artistic flourishes with camera angles and shadows, much of which had me wondering what purpose they served in this tale that should perhaps have been better grounded in reality, especially given the timeliness of its subject matter. Under Seth’s watchful eye, much of X looks great but ends up meaning so little. When you don’t care about your protagonist, then her journey has no impact. When you’re asked to accept that the villain as evil but never given sufficient proof, then he’s as much a victim of the story as you are. When these two together never generate the level of electricity required to bring it all to life, then you’re left with actors delivering words from the page. X’s best scenes – the various interrogation sequences – feel more a product of a good screenplay (a solid performance piece) than they do a series of legitimate exchanges brought about by two master chess players trying to outmaneuver one another. No matter how good they sound, they’re still just “words off a page.” Also, dare I question what drew the writer/director to the property in the first place?
Prisoner X takes a convincing central idea – that time travelers cannot ‘change the past’ but instead create new timelines – and then pretty much does nothing with it in order to tell this story this way, seemingly justifying its own reality. Why? What for? Unless you’re in the business of making “torture porn” for interested Jihadis, what purpose does Prisoner X serve? A twist ending of this size wasn’t big enough to warrant the ninety-minute run time, and it was easy to see coming from a mile away. If you’re sending a villain back in time to destroy us, what difference does it truly make since he’s only building a different world? Does he not care about the fact that he’s maybe no hurting those he intended to hurt? And he’s only spending his time incarcerated anyway? So many questions … For the record, I’ve read that the film has played and has been well-received at some genre-specific festivals, and of that I have no doubt. Audiences found in those places include folks who like this kind of thing because it gives meaning to their various perspectives as well as fuels their artistry. Certainly, I can see academia and the general film intelligentsia embracing Prisoner X’s dour dissertation on war, humanity, and politics. Out here where films are chiefly vehicles to entertain and educate, parts of X play like so much of the usual anti-American propaganda … but kudos to those involved for accomplishing that at a fraction of the cost! Hollywood, take notice: you don’t need to pay Jessica Chastain so much to bash the U.S. Or Matt Damon. Or George Clooney. In denying a universe its various paradoxes, Prisoner X poses the existential quandary of why should this story even exist in the first place except for being told. That’s just not enough for this simple-minded knucklehead. I've always found it amazing the lengths to which the creative folk behind-the-scenes will go in bringing an entire universe to glorious cinematic life, and those thinkers who aided George Lucas in birthing even the background creatures of Star Wars really proved their worth (at least so far as the growing fan base is concerned). The Sandpeople ended up being tied very closely to the Skywalker family, and I think it would even be pretty spiffy to see an expanded story on them.
As always, thanks for reading ... and May The Force Be With You! |
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