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| Fireball | Film review Fireball is a combination of basketball and the freestyle form of martial arts known as muay thai which permits punching, kicking, butting, elbow-jabbing, knee-jerking and, in this case, eye-gouging. Bangkok police apparently turn a blind eye to the sport, staged by gangsters for gamblers in informal venues, and the only thing players aren't supposed to do is carry on the violence off the court. The film turns upon Tai coming out of prison to discover his identical twin Tan is in a coma after entering the game to spring Tai from jail and falling foul of criminals. Tan has also paid for his girlfriend Pang's education and, suffering from what one might call pangs of conscience, she encourages Tai to enter the fireball business and pursue his brother's assailants. This plot is a pretext for nonstop, bone-crushing mayhem of a mind-numbing kind, and I suppose that if it was remade in the west it might feature Jean-Claude van Damme and Vinnie Jones as guest players with the Harlem Globetrotters.Action and adventureDramaWorld cinemaPhilip Frenchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Is Pierre Morel the best man to remake Dune? | Week in geek The French director has promised to be respectful to Frank Herbert's original novel, but does the man behind District 13 and Taken have the chops for the job?It's common knowledge that Hollywood studio executives are not, for the most part, excessively imaginative. After the barnstorming box-office success of The Dark Knight in 2008, it looked for a while like every comicbook franchise under the sun would be shoehorned into a sombre, noirish mould reminiscent of Christopher Nolan's Batman sequel. Today, the pre-eminent movie is James Cameron's Avatar, and perhaps we can expect a slew of movies depicting a mysterious, semi-messianic stranger who galvanises the native population of an exotic planet into action against their more technologically powerful aggressors.Which brings us to Dune. It's hardly surprising that a remake of David Lynch's 1984 film, based on Frank Herbert's 1965 book, is being rushed into production. Frenchman Pierre Morel, a cohort of Luc Besson's who is best known for last year's slick but dumb Liam Neeson revenge thriller Taken, now looks set to take the reins, and he spoke to MTV earlier this week about his plans."[My movie] is all about the first book," said Morel. "I'm trying to be very respectful to the original novel, but it's a challenge; there's a lot of expectation, all the readers will be waiting for me with their shotguns."All the non-readers will also be waiting for us, because it's such a complex, rich novel and you have to make it accessible to those who have not read the book. So, it's a tough challenge but I'm very excited about that."Morel said his film would be very different to the earlier version. "As a David Lynch movie, I loved it," he said. "As a Dune fan, I was not such a big fan."Lynch's Dune fell foul of the novel's expansive timeline – it takes place over several years, not great for building tension. Moreover, the use of internal dialogue to describe hero Paul Atreides's vital visions of the past, present and future, as well as to let the audience know what pretty much every other character of note was thinking, created a laughably clunky script that made a mockery of the talents of its fine cast. For me, there was nothing much wrong with the film's oft-criticised art direction – it's admittedly lurid, but that fits the novel's decadent warring clans perfectly.Given that Lynch is considered one of the world's best film-makers, if one whose method has become increasingly idiosyncratic and quixotic as time has gone on, one wonders exactly what Morel has in his arsenal that has got Paramount convinced he can adapt what many consider an unfilmable work.Of course, unfilmable books have existed before. Peter Jackson did a fine job on The Lord of the Rings, and Zack Snyder's Watchmen proved last year that directors with hack reputations can show previously unheralded vision when given the right subject matter. Yet Morel doesn't immediately seem to be cut from the same cloth as either of the above.His District 13 was a snappily shot Gallic crime thriller which nicely shoehorned the fiercely watchable art of parkour into an entertaining, if throwaway, action movie, while the otherwise pretty hideous Taken's superb fight sequences at least proved Morel's abilities as a sharp shooter of close combat to rival the likes of the Bourne films' Dan Bradley. Yet a successful film adaptation of Dune is going to require more than technical nous.It looks likely that the Frenchman will be working from a completed screenplay by (the previously planned director) Peter Berg and Josh Zetumer, so it may be that workable methods or devices are already in place to work around the novel's inherent snags. Morel will work to hone the script, but given that he has no great screenwriting experience and came up through the ranks as a cinematographer, one has to wonder if he's the man for the job. Surely Dune requires an auteur film-maker, a writer-director who can furnish us with a unified vision worthy of what remains the bestselling science-fiction novel of all time.Finally (and here's the clincher) Morel is the director behind forthcoming John Travolta spy thriller From Paris With Love. It's often foolish to badmouth a movie on the basis of its trailer, but this one looks like it may actually rival everyone's favourite Scientologist's previous career low, Battlefield Earth, for sheer pompous, cheesy vapidity.What are your views? Is Dune inherently unfilmable, and if not, is Morel the man to successfully take it on? If not, who would you rather see directing the movie?Science fiction and fantasyBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
King of the Globes: Cameron's Avatar Takes Golden Globe Glory The sci-fi spectacular stakes a significant claim to rule at this year's Oscars after laying down a sizable, early marker feedproxy.google.com |
Can Pixar's midas touch transfer to live action films? They've taught Disney a lesson in how to make widely loved, and wildly successful, animations. Now Pixar are moving into live film-making. Will their success story continue?When the Walt Disney company bought Pixar three years ago and installed the latter's head honcho, John Lasseter, as the new chief creative officer of the animation departments for both companies, the move raised more than a few eyebrows. Here was the Mouse House, an animation powerhouse of legendary status, pinning its hopes for 21st-century success on a film-maker who it had once sacked for daring to pitch Hollywood's first all-CGI movie. It seemed that the world had turned on its head: Nemo had, effectively, swallowed the whale.Of course, in the 25 years since Lasseter was fired for proposing a CGI film based on the children's tale The Brave Little Toaster, he had picked up two Oscars, been nominated for three more, and overseen countless award-winning Pixar projects, as well as spectacular box office success. Meanwhile, Disney's animation department had descended into producing second-rate "sequels" to the best known films of its glorious heyday, before finally ditching hand-drawn animation altogether in the mistaken belief that Pixar big hitters such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc had destroyed public interest in movies made using traditional hand-drawn techniques.Ironically, since taking up his position Lasseter has moved smartly to rehire a number of the artists who were let go by Disney as part of a deliberate scheme to reintroduce hand-drawn animation to the business. He's also infused Pixar expertise into Disney's own attempts at CGI film-making. The latter move resulted in last year's excellent Bolt, a visually spectacular, joyous and genuinely warm-hearted film about a dog who believes he has superpowers, while the former was instrumental in the development of The Princess and the Frog, Disney's first hand-drawn animation in six years. It arrives in the UK on 5 February after proving a critical smash in the US.Pixar's success was predicated partly on the California-based company's early adoption of CGI as a revolutionary film-making method, but also on the coming together of a then-youthful team of creatives with something to prove, added to an "anything goes" attitude in which ideas were paramount. So far, those dynamics seem to be reinvigorating Disney's animation department, but it may just be that the spirit of Pixar is capable of transforming the wider company.Earlier this week, Disney announced that Andrew Stanton, the Pixar stalwart behind the Oscar-winning Finding Nemo and Wall-E, has started production in London on a live-action film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs's pulp hero John Carter of Mars. The project looks likely to fit a mould somewhere between Avatar, which also has its roots in similar planetary romance territory, and Flash Gordon, Mike Hodges's trashy yet terrific 1980 space romp. Stanton has effectively been "loaned" to the wider Disney business from Pixar, and it will be the first time he has taken charge of a live action movie. In fact, check the credits of any of the major Pixar film-makers, from Lasseter to Up's Pete Docter or The Incredibles' Brad Bird, and you'll find very little on their CVs that transcends the animated arena.Stanton therefore carries a rather large weight on his shoulders. With the exception of a couple of lukewarm projects, such as 2006's Cars, Pixar has barely put a foot wrong since blasting on to the scene in 1995 with Toy Story. It's an almost unprecedented record, and observers will be keen to see if Stanton can continue this rich vein of form in a new discipline.If John Carter of Mars is a success, it surely proves what many have been arguing all along, that the men and women of Pixar deserve to be counted as among the greatest film-makers the world has ever known. Movies such as Wall-E and Up, respectively the best-reviewed films of 2008 and 2009, would almost certainly have been battling it out for the best film prize in each of those years had the Academy not made the decision to compartmentalise them in the best animation section. Failure, on the other hand, would indicate that Pixar's success is based on collective talents operating within a niche field, rather than individual genius capable of bearing fruit in multiple milieus.Personally, I'd love to see Docter get his hands on a live-action adventure romp, or even a melancholy indie comedy along the lines of 500 Days of Summer or Garden State. Alternately, how about a comic book caper directed by Bird - The Incredibles' action sequences were, after all, superior to those of any superhero tale ever filmed.The director also has his own live action project on the go, a film about the great San Francisco earthquake titled 1906, though there appears to be some doubt about whether it's going ahead.Does the idea of Pixar - or rather, Pixar's people - moving into live action appeal to you? And do you expect to see Stanton thrive in his new arena, or struggle to make waves outside his natural habitat? Is the wonder of movies such as Up and Wall-E all in the animation, or do you, like me, suspect that these are works of unparalled dynamism and verve, filled with deceptively simple ideas that might just transform the wider film-making world?AnimationPixarWalt Disney CompanyScience fiction and fantasyBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Poet wins UK's Costa Book of the Year prize LONDON (AP) -- Poet Christopher Reid was awarded Britain's Costa Book of the Year Award on Tuesday with a poetry collection written in tribute to his late wife.... hosted.ap.org |