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All the reports that I’ve read have said that director Neill Blomkamp and Wingnut Films elected to do ‘District 9′ while they were in a holding pattern while they were waiting on a green light from Microsoft to do a live-action adaptation of the Halo video-game.

Imagine a couple million dollars of filmmaking equipment, and empty studio and several tens of state-of-the-art technicians waiting on some Seattle lawyers, and you get the idea. though the film is a little more substantive than  that. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Fantasy, Film, Foreign, Horror, Meta-fiction, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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I didn’t read ‘X-Men’ as a kid (I was more of a ‘Fantastic Four’ nerd myself) so I can only judge this film based on how well it hews to the bible it has already set up in the first three ‘X-Men’ films. By that standard, ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ succeeds…mostly.

Wolverine is by far one of the more interesting of the first-generation X-Men. He’s cranky; he carries his own moral code around like an invisible cloud often circumventing plans and strategies to do what he believes is right; he’s confident, and he’s practically indestructible. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Comic Book, Film, Sci-Fi by Anne Dougherty
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I’ve long since quit my enthusiasm for things Trek, but J.J. Abrams has made a much-needed and refreshing reboot of the franchise; however this renewal seems to owe as much to the original Star Wars trilogy as it does Trek.

Granted that Abrams and his writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman add a little time travel quirk that creates an alternate reality for this new Trek, it does come off with a bit more verve than the original series had some 40 years ago. Both the writing and the SFX have improved, just as Desilu Studios never gave Roddenberry $75M to shoot a single episode. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Drama, Fantasy, Film, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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Not just another X-Files knock-off. Really.

Before that damnable show went off the air 6 years ago, all of the major broadcast networks — NBC, ABC and CBS each tried to catch some of Chris Carter’s alt.conspiracy.ufo fire.

Fringe‘s distinction is that the show is hard science-fiction, a rare event for network television — HARD science-fiction, is based on real science, not fantasy, not urban mythology and not old Saturday matinée fare. Though there are plenty of whiz-bang moments in there, most of the spectacle on Fringe is derived from current available technology. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi, Television by Victor Sparrow
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Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight‘ is the latest addition to the trend of painfully overplotted comic book movies. I’m not exactly certain when the habit of inflating a paper-thin pulp story into a full-blown bildungsroman. But since the late ’80′s it’s been necessary for each comic book movie to have at least two villains and as many as 4. (Notably, Tim Burton’s 1989 movie only had one villain, The Joker.)

While this installment of Batman seems to be the most successful commercial film since James Cameron’s ‘Titanic‘, you’d think that such a movie would have to have a simple storyline to keep selling tickets at such a rapid pace, week after week. Not so, here. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Comic Book, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Film, Sci-Fi, Thriller by Victor Sparrow
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John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog‘ (1980) was, of course, one of seminal horror pictures of the 80′s. ‘The Fog’ was Carpenter’s third feature film to be followed by ‘Escape from New York’ in 1981 and his remake of ‘The Thing’ in 1982. Shot for $1 million 1980 dollars (300% the value of 2008 dollars) it would have made $63,000,000 if released today. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Film, Horror, Thriller by Victor Sparrow
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‘Hancock‘ started it’s journey to the screen 12 years ago as a spec-screenplay by first-timer Ny Vincent Ngo, titled ‘Tonight He Comes’.

I first learned about Ngo’s screenplay through some fanboy site like Harry Knowles’ AintItCool.com. Ngo’s script created something of an uproar in Hollywood despite comic book properties being at a fallow moment after Joel Schumacher’s assumption of the Batman franchise with ‘s ‘Batman Forever‘ (1995) and the revolving door that the title role became after the departure of Tim Burton and Michael Keaton.

‘Tonight’ launched a bidding war and got Ngo signed by CAA, jump-starting Ngo’s screenwriting career and several premium-cable writing gigs. But along the way, the script also got the attention of Writer-Producer Akiva Goldsman who bought the script and subsequently doctored it to fit his number one screen-doctoring client, Will Smith. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Comedy, Comic Book, Drama, Film, Meta-fiction, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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aka ‘Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull’

Was this worth my $10?

Is it really necessary to summarize the plot of an Indiana Jones movie? Apparently it is, at least that’s the impression I walked away from ‘Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull’ with: the story turned in David Koepp (script), George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson (story) hits just enough notes to remind you that you’re at an Indiana Jones movie but it hits enough of them sour to make it impossible to miss the fact that this isn’t a movie for movie’s sake but a franchise reboot and a launching platform for the next generation.

Set more than 15 years after ‘Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade’, this film opens as all of these kind films do, in the middle of some adventure.
[Read more →]

Tags: Action, Fantasy, Film, Thriller by Anne Dougherty
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Was this worth my $10?

While most superhero origin stories are simple – the protagonist has a life, something happens to change that life, and the protagonist dedicates the remainder of his or her life to a new cause as a result – they don’t have to be simplistic. The best origin stories grapple with the complexities of both the human condition and with our often conflicting motivations. Unfortunately, despite all the high-gloss special effects, ‘Iron Man’ fails to embrace those subtleties and instead looks at the world from that either/or perspective that has been so popular in America in the last decade. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Comic Book by Anne Dougherty
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Now don’t get me wrong, here — ‘The Mist‘ (2007) was adequately executed, beautifully shot and well cast, but Frank Darabont ought to have done more to haul the premise of Stephen King’s novella out of the ’50′s.

I used to be a King fan way, way back and read a good few of his books back in my junior HS days. I even followed some of his adaptations for a while — his adaptations from other people’s ideas and other people’s adaptations of his work — but that was before Frank Darabont started making his filmazations. [Read more →]

Tags: Action, Adaptation, Drama, Horror, Meta-fiction, Sci-Fi by Victor Sparrow
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