#hes him but in 3d and a feature length film performance

[fruitsofhell]

Shadow the Hedgehog is such a cool and interesting fucking character. The Sonic movies aren't ACTUALLY peak or anything, and always the more I think on them the more cracks form in their quality (as well as I find more little details to like) but they're definitely good at bringing out what's fun about the universe as a whole.

I'm just happy to see Shadow on screen, I'm happy to see his origins played upon in a different light than usual, I'm happy to see a new portrayal of him. But I also miss Sonic Adventure 2 which is actually by all definitions the peak of video games even if it's 65% dogshit hdhdhdjdjd. I need a refinement of it so bad but at the same time there is no one out there I trust enough to do that. Especially not Sega lol.

It and Shadow are genuinely just of a different age and it's so gratifying to see reverence for that return but I don't know if we (Sega and Paramount) can ever truly return...

[introvertguide]

10 Game Changer Films

Over the past century, there have been many movies that were marked with quality acting and quality story telling. Some movies are genre defining and remain memorable long after the movie is released. Some movies are perfect little 2 hour pieces of art. And beyond that, there are movies that transcend genre and change the way that movies are produced and viewed. Here is a list of ten movies the changed Hollywood cinema. There is no way to rank them in order of importance because they all shaped the way movies were made and presented at the time, so 10 are listed in order of date. Feel free to add suggestions for game changer movies in the comments. This is a list of American films and doesn’t come close to all game changers, but these 10 stick out in my head whenever I am asked for examples:

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The Jazz Singer (1927):

The movie that marked the end of the silent era, this was the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized recorded music and lip-synchronous singing and speech. It is has six songs performed by Al Jolson. It is the story of a Jewish boy who wants to become a singer despite the traditions of his devout family. The boy is caught singing and decides to run away from home, change his name, and become a famous jazz singer. He tries to disguise himself while performing at one point and makes the unfortunate choice of putting on black face. It is kind of hard to watch, but the advent of the “talkie” changed the way audiences enjoyed movies from that point on.

Steamboat Willie (1928):

This was the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound with a fully post-produced soundtrack. It is also considered to be the debut of Mickey Mouse. The layered drawings have a realistic feel and are impressive today despite being almost 100 years old. Also, nothing beats that iconic opening sound of the film in which you can hear the film reel behind the sound of the lead character whistling. Animation became a genre at that moment and has done nothing but grow and improve, but this seems like the seed that started it all.

The Wizard of Oz (1939):

Generally considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, this juggernaut of a film was not considered best Best Picture nor was it even a financial success on first release. It was re-released and played on TV in 1956 and is now considered the most seen film in movie history. What really makes the film a game changer is the moment when Dorothy lands in Oz and she steps out her sepia/black & white home and walks into a world of Technicolor. Although many great black and white films where made after this film, it was a symbolic change for audience preference for color films. Kansas was so grey and bleak and the world of Oz was so bright and beautiful...it really is an unparalleled moment in film.

Citizen Kane (1941):

Considered by many to be the perfect film and the best Hollywood film of all time, this film is on the top of many “Best” lists. Director and lead actor Orson Welles used “deep focus” to make all aspects of the picture pop out at the audience. He was having difficulty creating some of the film angles to create this effect, so he would lay on the floor and even break into the stage to create the perfect shot. He also took the camera up to the stage light walkways to create others. The entire narrative was told in flashback from a group of unreliable narrators and the main character dies within the first 2 minutes of the film. The use of lighting and storytelling is an amalgamation of different techniques from around the world of film at the time, including some aspects made up on the spot. Watching the film now, it seems apparent that the bar for movies was raised 90 seconds into the film when the main character says “Rosebud.”

Shane (1953):

This film is not really known for being the very best acted, but it came out right when a bunch of audio and video technology improved simultaneously. The film was shot in standard ratio, but, due to the beautiful shots along the American Plains, was selected by Paramount to debut widescreen format. To get out the word, the film was played at Radio City Music Hall on a specially fitted 30ftx50ft screen. Not to let the visuals overshadow the sound, a new stereophonic soundtrack was recorded and played on an interlocking 35mm magnetic reel in the projection both. The sight of the sweeping landscapes and the echoing ring of gunshots was unlike anything that audiences had ever experienced while setting the standard for movies for years to come.

Jaws (1975):

From the opening scene with a young girl being attacked while skinny dipping in the ocean, the film caused legitimate panic amongst film goers. It also created the summer blockbuster which continues to affect how movies are released 45 years later. Spielberg became a household name and the use of the dolly zoom to represent a sudden realization became part of movie language. Along with the films simple and iconic score that made up for a constantly malfunctioning prop, this revenge story made thousands of wanna-be directors realize that it didn’t take a who lot to make an extremely successful movie. Camera trickery, good sound, and a descent plot could make any budding director into a millionaire.

Star Wars (1977):

Arguably the most successful film of all time, this story of the classic hero’s journey is epic and yet simple. There are few movies I have seen with better pacing because the time always flies by. The characters are relatable despite being robots, aliens, and wizards. The aspect of the movie that really made it was the special effects by Industrial Light and Magic. The famous “trench run” on the death star was something that was like a roller coaster on screen. How easy it was to get sucked in to the film is an influence on directors and movie production to this day. 

Toy Story (1995):

This was a film that was actually the accumulation of over a decade’s worth of computer graphic technology. It is the first completely CG film and it is excellent. The film score is amazing, the graphics were far better than any audience had seen or ever expected, and it created an entire new way to manufacture a film world. This was also the first film for Pixar, which made far and away the best family films over the last quarter century. 

The Matrix (1999):

This film might be somewhat arguable as a game changer, but one aspect of the movie is globally known whether you have seen the movie or not: bullet time. The fight scenes and the wire work for stunts along with the speeding up and slowing down of the film was revolutionary. That moment when Neo dodges the bullets that were shot at him while the camera rotates to show how close the misses were is phenomenal. The action set pieces are frequent with loud pumping music and it influenced audience expectations for how massive a fight scene could be. The judo fight between Neo and Morpheus, the rescue of Morpheus from the agents, the subway fight, and Neo’s enlightenment are all epic fights worthy of an entire film. It was an introduction to cyber punk that kicked in the door for a mass of violent and loud sci-fi films that continue to be cool to this day.

Avatar (2009):

A movie that was 15 years in the making due to a world created completely with computer graphics that interacts seamlessly with human characters, this probably the best looking theater film ever created. The story is not so great, but the world that is created is made specifically to envelop a theater audience. It is a two hour experience like no other and needs to be seen in a full 3D theater with surround sound. It made all other films up their visual game and is the second most lucrative movie in straight dollar amount and the second most lucrative film adjusted for inflation (despite being only 10 years old).

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This count of 10 is obviously debatable and many films are worthy of a spot on a list like this. This is a list of the 10 that amazed me and made me think that audiences would have changed their expectations of the film experience after seeing the film. If you have movies that have had this effect on you, please list them for others to enjoy.

[satoshi-mochida]

Gematsu recently spoke with Yoshihiko Toda, supervisor of the Nippon Ichi Software Second Production Division Development Department and director of the upcoming Destiny Connect, in an e-mail interview where Toda shared new insight into the time-themed RPG.

Get the full interview below.

The first thing one might notice about Destiny Connect is its unique art style compared to other Nippon Ichi Software titles. What was the inspiration behind this style?

Toda: “The goal for early production was to keep the feel of ‘90s Japanese Super Nintendo Entertainment System RPGs. It was also intended to keep the nostalgic feel while promoting highly unique 3D graphics (specifically EarthBound, Chrono Trigger, and other classic RPGs).

“Therefore, this project purposely employs a relatively unrealistic art style with cartoon-ish expressions. For example, you might see buildings rendered realistically, but the colors palettes are calm, few in number, and high in contrast.

“The art direction wasn’t particularly derived from any single inspiration more than it was a product of trial and error.

“The director intentionally emphasized the notion of actively avoiding the same aesthetic style as other Nippon Ichi Software games. He believed other directors were capable of creating games following the Nippon Ichi style, so for him to create this game as his own unique creation was a product of his creative deviation.”

The art style reminds me quite a bit of an old American computer animated television series called The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Have you ever seen it?

Toda: “Sorry, I actually didn’t know of this until I was asked. I had to go look up Jimmy Neutron online. The game does feel like it has similar aspects, but it was not intentionally drawn from. As mentioned, the style wasn’t targeted directly as a result of external influences, but was a product of several unrelated contributing factors.”

Who is the main art designer and composer on the project?

Toda: “The art director is our company’s 3D designer, Yu Inaba. Our composer, Yukinari Irumagawa, works with an external company.”

When did development begin? Can you give us an idea of how the pitch went for this project?

Toda: “The early conceptualization began at the end of 2016. Our company, who usually specializes in 2D games, initiated the project with the decisive vision of making a 3D game. It was also during this time the art direction and the time travel concepts were developed.”

What kind of RPG is Destiny Connect? For example, is it hub-based with fields that players access by opening a map?

Toda: “The fundamental gameplay of Destiny Connect is an RPG where the user gets to control the main character, Sherry, through Clocknee Town. The stage unfolds in Clocknee Town, with the underlying objective of exploring the town. The story will unravel as you travel through the present, past, and future of the town.”

Destiny Connect uses a turn-based battle system. How did you approach adding flavor to combat while still trying to evoke a sense of nostalgia?

Toda: “Command battles have been around for a while, I felt that the core system remains loyal to the classics, and from there, we designed battles to include Isaac’s ‘transformation’ and unique ‘skills’ to effectively carry out battles in a manner that’s refreshingly nostalgic.”

Were there any specific video game-related inspirations for Destiny Connect in terms of gameplay systems?

Toda: “I didn’t really draw inspirations from any single games directly… It was more of an accumulation from an entire era of RPGs that formed a single amalgamation that was the nostalgic feeling from reminiscing about my youth playing those games.

“For Isaac’s transformation, however, I did draw inspiration from the Japanese TV hero-drama Kamen Rider and how they transformed, shifting abilities for each of those different forms.”

What were your goals in terms of creating the cast of Destiny Connect?

Toda: “The main characters being a girl and a robot was established in early conceptualizations. There was a base story of the girl and a robot facing dilemmas together, and from there, we added her friends to give more substance to the story.”

Can you speak to the overall length of the game?

Toda: “Playing normally, it will take roughly 20 hours to complete the game.”

Will there be any additional activities outside of the main story, such as sub-quests?

Toda: “In early production, we did have sub-quests that strayed from the main story, but many things happened, and we needed to focus on development of the main story. For that reason, there are no sub-quests in the game. If an opportunity arises in the future for a sequel, I would definitely like to include them.”

Isaac can change forms, which in addition to specialized abilities grants him different outfits in battle. But will there be additional outfits for the human characters?

Toda: “Only the main character, Sherry, will have a ‘changing’ feature where she will be able to change her appearance. You will be able to unlock a number of outfits for Sherry by collecting items throughout the game.”

Will Destiny Connect have voice-acting?

Toda: “Unfortunately, voice acting is not planned at this time.”

Can you speak to the game’s performance on each platform? What resolution and frames per second is each platform targeting?

Toda: “Both PlayStation 4 and Switch run at 30 frames per second.”

What do you hope players will take away from Destiny Connect?

Toda: “I’m sure all of us at some point experienced excitement as children, reading adventure books and watching movies (they vary from person to person, but some common ones include: Back to the Future, The Goonies, and The NeverEnding Story). I would like people to play this game with the same intent of re-experiencing those classic adventure films and books, and would be overjoyed if people felt the same sense of nostalgia as if reminiscing on their childhood experiences.”

And of course, we have to ask: are there plans to release Destiny Connect in the west? If so, can you share an expected release window?

NIS America Staff: “Please look forward to announcements from NIS America.”

Thank you for your time!

[oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch]

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” Movie Review

When Sony decided to allow Marvel Studios to put Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many were relieved, citing Sony’s missteps with their previous two Amazing Spider-Man live-action outings as sufficient evidence that Marvel Studios would better handle the character in their universe and that it was time for Sony to let go of the character. Sony would maintain creative control of the property, but they would no longer be able to make live-action Spider-Man films, at least not ones featuring that character (hence their Venom franchise, which is off to a surprisingly lucrative start). Without the most popular version of their largest tentpole franchise to bring in the big bucks, Sony would have to innovate with a fresh new idea if they hoped to keep it going.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, then, is Sony’s first ever feature-length animated film with the title character, only this time, there’s a slight twist to their usual formula: there are six of them. Yes, in this iteration, there are six Spider-people all running around New York City at once, trying to save the world. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? The film begins by giving us a glance into the life of Miles Morales, a scrappy Afro-Latino high school boy from the streets of Brooklyn who’s not super jazzed about going to a Charter school due to having won his spot in a lottery. When a radioactive spider from another dimension bites him during a little subway adventure with his Uncle Aaron, Miles gains the powers of Spider-Man, and following a tragic event involving an inter-dimensional portal built by Kingpin, five other Spider-beings show up in his universe, all seeking a way to get back home. With very little training from a roughed-up Peter Parker and a whole host of family issues to deal with, Miles must train to become a new Spider-Man, and send all these other Spider-people home before this universe is damaged forever (and that’s about as much as I can say without giving away spoilers).

I loved this movie, a lot. Of course, there’s always a market of people like me waiting for a new Spider-Man story (the original 2002 film is what got me into acting, after all), so I may be going into this with the tiniest bit of fanboy-ism running my energy levels, but as a film critic attempting to give as objective a review as possible to any material I happen to view, I still genuinely loved this movie. In fact, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that this is perhaps the third or even second best Spider-Man film ever made (theatrically), and that’s not hyperbole. As much as I enjoyed Homecoming, I think it’s a far stronger high school comedy than it is a Spider-Man movie, and to that film’s credit, it works well enough for what it had to accomplish in terms of the MCU’s full-length introduction to the character. Into the Spider-Verse, though, truly understands the fundamental staples of what makes the character compelling, those being guilt, consequences, and most importantly, differences.

Part of what works best about this film, which was written by Phil Lord and produced by himself and the other half of his creating team, Chris Miller, is that it doesn’t see the differences between the different Spider-beings as reasons why other kinds of people can’t occupy the costume or wear the mask. One of the most prominent lines in the entire movie is Miles telling the audience that anyone, no matter who you are, can wear the mask. And instead of having anything to prove anything, or thinking that it owes anyone an explanation as to why there’s a black Spider-Man this time, or a Spider-Woman, or an anime Spider-girl named Peni Parker, or even a literal Spider pig called Spider-Ham (voiced by my favorite stand-up comedian of all time), the script just assumes that this is normal because it should be. Anyone being able to wear the Spider-Man mask, not despite but because of their differences, is one of the film’s main themes, and the script takes pride in that rather than treating it like a chore to get over and done with (which a surprising amount of films do).

The film is also genuinely funny, with trademark Lord & Miller humor sprinkled in just the right amounts throughout the film’s runtime, the recaps of each Spider-person’s origin providing some of the most consistent and uproarious laughs of the bunch, particularly during the recap of Peter Parker’s backstory. Part of what makes the story in Into the Spider-Verse not just fun, but compelling as well, is that even within this humor, there are real life lessons being taught, sometimes ones that even adults need to learn from. And that’s what makes a great animated film great, when it can transcend that line between children and adults and have something everyone can learn from and take away from the experience of watching it. So many animated films this year have failed to send messages as compellingly as this one, and yet Into the Spider-Verse makes it look so effortless that one wonders why other films fail to do it so often (it’s because it’s not effortless; it’s genuinely hard to make a movie, but the people who worked on this really put in the effort and it shows).  

The voice talent work in this film is fantastic, from what I’ve already mentioned with Jake Johnson as Peter Parker and John Mulaney as Spider-Ham, to Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, to Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy (she’s having a great weekend for early screenings, huh?), to smaller parts like Brian Tyree Henry as Miles’ father and Mahershala Ali as his Uncle Aaron, and of course, the great Nicolas Cage as Spider-Noir. Each performance is full of heart and fun, and there are many moments where one feels that only that actor’s voice could deliver that line in that way, and it is perfect. Perhaps the only true flaw in the movie is Kingpin’s characterization (since he kind of acts like a cutout cartoon character still despite what they give him to work with, but then again it is animation), but that has more to do with the writing than the voice casting. Major kudos to the casting directors on this one.

And yet in all of this, I have yet to mention the animation, which is astounding. Each time an exaggerated sound effect or a narration happens in the film, a little comic book style text or text box appears on the screen to accompany it, and it feels genuinely conceivable that someone could have written this film as a comic book with every panel brought spectacularly to life. One would think the hybrid style of 3D modeling made to look like a come-to-life comic book panel should have been by now one of the most obvious techniques in animated history, but then again, we just got CG-Lego hybrids only 4 years ago and photoreal animation from Jungle Book only 2 years ago, so maybe there’s still more to be realized in this medium (I, for one, can’t wait to see if there is).  

I was looking forward to this movie from the moment I saw the first trailer drop, but what I didn’t expect was that I would genuinely love it this much; the more I reflect on it, the more I find right with it, and the less it’s very few flaws bother me at all. This is perhaps the greatest Spider-Man movie since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, and by far the best animated film of this year – certainly the most unique in terms of animation style, story, humor, and charazterization. Lord & Miller are one of the world’s greatest creative forces in the cinematic landscape, and if there were any movie this year I actually wanted a sequel to, it’s this one (stay for both credits scenes; it’s 100% worth it).

I’m giving “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” a 9.1/10

[hrkerlon]

The maze runner

#The maze runner series#

Minho shows Thomas a hand-constructed model of the Maze that is based on previous explorations. However, Newt, the group's second-in-command, instead designates Thomas as a Runner. Gally claims that Thomas has jeopardized the fragile peace between the Gladers and the Grievers, and wants him punished. Thomas, Minho, Frypan, Winston, and Zart enter the Maze, locate the Griever corpse, and remove a beeping mechanical device from inside it. The three manage to survive the night and return the next morning.Ī girl arrives in the elevator, with a note saying that she is the last one to enter the Glade, and recognizes Thomas, but he cannot remember her. Thomas lures a Griever into a closing passageway, which causes it to be crushed. Thomas runs into the Maze to help, which leaves all three trapped. Minho reappears late in the afternoon dragging Alby, who has been stung, but are unable to reach the closing entrance in time. Alby, the leader, and Minho, the lead Runner, later retrace Ben's steps inside the Maze the following morning. Ben is forced into the Maze and left to die as a direct consequence of his actions, along with there being no cure for his condition. The next day, he is attacked by Ben, a Runner who has been stung and left delirious by a Griever, one of the techno-organic creatures that roam the Maze at night. After a competitive fight with Gally, the boy remembers his name is Thomas. During the day, designated Runners search the Maze for an escape route and return before nightfall when the entrance closes. The boy learns that a vast Maze surrounding them is the only way out. The "Gladers" have formed a rudimentary society, and each assumes specialized tasks. A third and final film, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, was released on January 26, 2018.Ī teenage boy wakes up inside an underground elevator with no memory of his identity, and greeted by several male youths in a large grass area, called the "Glade," enclosed by tall stone walls. A sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, was released on September 18, 2015, in the United States. The film earned over $348 million worldwide at the box office, against its budget of $34 million. The film was first at the box office in its opening weekend, grossing $32.5 million, making it the seventh-highest-grossing debut in September. Critics considered it to be better than most young adult book-to-film adaptations. The film received positive reviews, with praise for the performances and tone. The Maze Runner was released on September 19, 2014, in the United States by 20th Century Fox. Principal photography began in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on and officially concluded on July 12, 2013. In 2012, Ball was hired to direct the film adaptation after presenting a 3D computer-animated short film titled Ruin with a similar tone and was initially considered for a feature-length adaptation. The story follows sixteen-year-old Thomas, portrayed by O'Brien, who awakens in a rusty elevator with no memory of who he is, only to learn that he has been delivered to the middle of an intricate maze, along with many other boys, who have been trying to find their way out of the ever-changing labyrinth – all while establishing a functioning society in what they call the Glade.ĭevelopment of The Maze Runner began in January 2011 when Fox purchased the film rights to Dashner's novel with Gotham Group, Temple Hill Entertainment, TSG Entertainment as producers and Catherine Hardwicke intended to direct. The film stars Dylan O'Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee, Will Poulter, and Patricia Clarkson.

#The maze runner series#

The film is the first installment in The Maze Runner film series and was produced by Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, and Lee Stollman with a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers, and T.S. The Maze Runner is a 2014 American dystopian science fiction film directed by Wes Ball, in his directorial debut, based on James Dashner's 2009 novel of the same name.

[wyatt85wyatt-blog]

Aquaman

Aquaman is a 2018 American superhero movie based mostly on the DC Comics character of the exact same identify, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

Aquaman Plot

From Warner Bros. Photographs and director James Wan will come an action-packed experience that spans the large, visually spectacular underwater entire world of the seven seas, Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa in the title role. The film reveals the origin tale of 50 percent-human, 50 percent-Atlantean Arthur Curry and will take him on the journey of his lifetime—one that will not only power him to face who he really is, but to learn if he is deserving of who he was born to be…a king. If you want to look at totally free Aquaman 2018 movie, you ought to use that url - https://yogaasanas.science/wiki/Aquaman, just click on it an enjoy movie night time.It is the sixth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Directed by James Wan, with a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, from a story by Geoff Johns, Wan and Beall, it stars Jason Momoa as the title character, with Amber Listened to, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Kidman in supporting roles. It is the 3rd reside-action theatrical film featuring the title character, following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) and the 1st entire-length characteristic movie centered close to the character. In Aquaman, Arthur Curry, the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, need to step forward to guide his people against his half-brother, Orm, who seeks to unite the seven underwater kingdoms towards the floor globe. Advancement of an Aquaman movie started in 2004, with a number of ideas falling via above the a long time. In August 2014, Beall and Kurt Johnstad ended up employed to publish two competing scripts and the film was officially introduced in Oct 2014. Wan signed on as director in April 2015 and in July 2016 it was announced the film would move forward with Beall's screenplay, though Wan, Johnstad, Johns and Johnson-McGoldrick all performed different rewrites. The principal cast was confirmed all through 2016 and early 2017. Principal photography began in Australia on Might 2, 2017. Most of the film was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland, with generation also held in Canada, Italy and Morocco, and wrapped on October 21, 2017. Aquaman experienced its world premiere in London on November 26, 2018, and is scheduled to be launched in the United States by Warner Bros. Images in True D 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018.

Synopsis

Arthur Curry, the hesitant ruler of Atlantis and King of the Seven Seas, finds himself caught amongst a surface globe consistently ravaging the sea and Atlanteans searching to lash out in revolt, but dedicated to safeguarding the whole globe.

Growth

In 2004, FilmJerk.com noted that Dawn Entertainment's Alan and Peter Riche planned to deliver Aquaman to the massive screen for Warner Bros. with Robert Ben Garant composing the screenplay. Nonetheless, the film fell through. In July 2009, it was documented that Aquaman was in improvement at Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way. Warner chairman and CEO Barry Meyer explained that the Aquaman film was in development. A source from Warner Bros. told The Wrap that they ended up discussing the prospects, with the mention of far more Guy of Steel movies as nicely as a Superman/Batman movie, a Surprise Woman movie, and an Aquaman film.[28][29][thirty] Geoff Johns advised Selection that Aquaman is a precedence character for the organization. It was announced on August 12, 2014, that Warner Bros. experienced employed screenwriters Will Beall and Kurt Johnstad to pen two separate scripts for an impending Aquaman movie. The movie was currently being produced on twin tracks, indicating that two scripts ended up composed, 1 by Beall and one by Johnstad, but only the greater model would go forward. On April ten, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter described that James Wan was the frontrunner to direct the film. In June 2015, Wan was confirmed to direct the movie and forget the screenplay by Johnstad. On November twelve, 2015, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick was hired to create the script, however it was unclear whether or not he would be producing a different script or doing work with Wan. It was then unveiled that earlier script programs had been scrapped and that each Wan and Johns prepared to shift ahead with a new script composed by screenwriter Will Beall. Later on, Johnson-McGoldrick was introduced again to the task to operate on a rewrite of Beall's script. On March 2016, it was announced that the activities of Aquaman will be set after Justice League. Wan confirmed later on on Twitter that cinematographer Don Burgess, who previously worked with Wan on The Conjuring two, will serve as cinematographer for Aquaman. Pre-production began in Australia in late November 2016.

Casting

On October 20, 2014, in an job interview with ComicBook.com, Jason Momoa revealed that the Justice League movie would be coming initial and which is what they had been getting ready for, and he didn't know if the solo Aquaman movie would occur before or right after Justice League. He imagined it may possibly be the origin, the place Aquaman came from. Warner Bros. introduced Aquaman as a part of the DC Prolonged Universe, with Jason Momoa starring. In December 2014, it was revealed that Momoa experienced signed a 4-photo offer with the studio and DC, and he desired Zack Snyder to immediate the solo Aquaman movie. On January 13, 2016, The Hollywood Reporter introduced that Amber Heard entered negotiations to play the female lead position of Mera, Aquaman's love interest her casting was verified two months afterwards. In April 2016, Willem Dafoe was cast in an undisclosed part, afterwards uncovered to be Nuidis Vulko. On December 12, 2016 it was confirmed that Patrick Wilson will enjoy the villainous Ocean Learn, the 50 %-brother of Aquaman. On January 31, 2017, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was included to the cast as the villain, Black Manta. That identical working day, the press reported that Nicole Kidman experienced entered talks to play Queen Atlanna. Two months later, Kidman confirmed her participation in the film. By February 2017, New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison entered talks to enjoy Thomas Curry, Aquaman's human father. On April twelve, Dolph Lundgren was forged to engage in Nereus, king of Xebel. Ludi Lin was forged in the movie on Might fifteen, 2017. Practically two months later, Michael Beach, who voiced Satan Ray, a character loosely dependent on Black Manta in Justice League Endless, was solid as Black Manta's father. In Oct 2017, Graham McTavish unveiled that he has a function in the movie. In April 2018, Randall Park was cast as Dr. Stephen Shin. In July, Djimon Hounsou, Natalia Safran and Sophia Forrest ended up solid as the Fisherman King, Fisherman Queen and the Fisherman Princess. In November 2018, it was revealed that Julie Andrews has a voice part in the movie.

Filming

Principal pictures began in Australia on Might 2, 2017, beneath the functioning title Ahab. A majority of the film was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland with manufacturing also held in Newfoundland, Canada, as well as Sicily and Morocco. Between Might and August 2017, manufacturing also took spot on place all around a variety of locations of the Australian Gold Coast like Main Seaside, Coomera, Southport and Amity Level in North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, as effectively as Hastings Position in New South Wales. On filming underwater sequences, Wan said that "the underwater world is tremendous complex" and "it's not an effortless shoot". On August 11, 2017, filming started on the Arthur Curry Lighthouse established at Hastings Stage and finished later on that thirty day period. In September, for the duration of an job interview with Kiss Radio, actor Ludi Lin described Wan's eyesight for the film as 'Star Wars underwater'. That identical thirty day period, filming took location in Newfoundland and Labrador. Willem Dafoe finished up his element by late September. On Oct 13, James Wan introduced that Patrick Wilson wrapped on the movie. Filming on place took area in the deserts of Morocco by mid-October, which incorporated the metropolitan areas of Merzouga and Erfoud. Principal photography wrapped on Oct 21, 2017.

Audio

On March seven, 2018, Rupert Gregson-Williams was introduced as the composer for Aquaman. Gregson-Williams formerly wrote the rating for Surprise Woman, the fourth movie in the DC Prolonged Universe. The soundtrack will be introduced by WaterTower Songs on December 14, 2018.[69][70] The album will attribute an unique song by American musician Skylar Gray entitled Every thing I Need to have, prepared by Grey and Elliott Taylor.

Launch

Aquaman experienced its world premiere at the Empire, Leicester Sq. in London on November 26, 2018. It is scheduled to be released in the United States by Warner Bros. Photographs in RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018. It was formerly set for July 27, 2018, and then moved to October five, 2018, before settling on its December launch date. Internationally, the film will be introduced in China on December 7, 2018, in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2018, and in Brazil and Russia on December 13, 2018. On November 19, 2018, Atom Tickets was announced that Amazon Primary members in the United States would have early access to tickets for a December 15 screening of the movie at decide on Regal, Nationwide Amusements, ArcLight Cinemas, and AMC theaters.

[holcombhviid8-blog]

Aquaman

Aquaman is a 2018 American superhero movie dependent on the DC Comics character of the identical title, distributed by Warner Bros. Photographs. It is the sixth installment in the DC Prolonged Universe (DCEU). Directed by James Wan, with a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, from a tale by Geoff Johns, Wan and Beall, it stars Jason Momoa as the title character, with Amber Read, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Kidman in supporting roles. It is the 3rd live-action theatrical film showcasing the title character, following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) and the very first full-length characteristic movie centered about the character. In Aquaman, Arthur Curry, the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, must phase ahead to lead his folks towards his fifty percent-brother, Orm, who seeks to unite the 7 underwater kingdoms in opposition to the floor entire world. Advancement of an Aquaman film began in 2004, with numerous programs slipping by means of more than the a long time. In August 2014, Beall and Kurt Johnstad were hired to compose two competing scripts and the film was officially announced in Oct 2014. Wan signed on as director in April 2015 and in July 2016 it was declared the movie would move ahead with Beall's screenplay, though Wan, Johnstad, Johns and Johnson-McGoldrick all performed different rewrites. The principal forged was confirmed throughout 2016 and early 2017. Principal photography began in Australia on Could 2, 2017. Most of the movie was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland, with production also held in Canada, Italy and Morocco, and wrapped on October 21, 2017. Aquaman experienced its planet premiere in London on November 26, 2018, and is scheduled to be launched in the United States by Warner Bros. Photographs in Actual D 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018.

Synopsis

Arthur Curry, the unwilling ruler of Atlantis and King of the Seven Seas, finds himself caught in between a area globe continually ravaging the sea and Atlanteans looking to lash out in revolt, but committed to guarding the total world.

Advancement

In 2004, FilmJerk.com documented that Sunrise Entertainment's Alan and Peter Riche planned to deliver Aquaman to the huge monitor for Warner Bros. with Robert Ben Garant writing the screenplay. Even so, the film fell through. In July 2009, it was reported that Aquaman was in advancement at Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way. Warner chairman and CEO Barry Meyer explained that the Aquaman film was in development. A source from Warner Bros. told The Wrap that they have been talking about the choices, with the point out of far more Man of Steel motion pictures as nicely as a Superman/Batman movie, a Question Female film, and an Aquaman movie.[28][29][thirty] Geoff Johns informed Range that Aquaman is a priority character for the firm. It was announced on August 12, 2014, that Warner Bros. experienced employed screenwriters Will Beall and Kurt Johnstad to pen two individual scripts for an approaching Aquaman movie. The film was being created on dual tracks, which means that two scripts had been prepared, 1 by Beall and one by Johnstad, but only the better version would move forward. On April ten, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter noted that James Wan was the frontrunner to immediate the movie. In June 2015, Wan was confirmed to direct the movie and forget the screenplay by Johnstad. On November 12, 2015, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick was hired to compose the script, however it was unclear whether or not he would be creating a separate script or functioning with Wan. It was then exposed that prior script plans had been scrapped and that each Wan and Johns prepared to go ahead with a new script prepared by screenwriter Will Beall. Later, Johnson-McGoldrick was brought back again to the project to function on a rewrite of Beall's script. On March 2016, it was announced that the functions of Aquaman will be set soon after Justice League. Wan verified later on on Twitter that cinematographer Don Burgess, who beforehand worked with Wan on The Conjuring 2, will serve as cinematographer for Aquaman.

Aquaman Plot

From Warner Bros. Pictures and director James Wan comes an action-packed journey that spans the vast, visually amazing underwater globe of the 7 seas, Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa in the title part. The movie reveals the origin tale of 50 percent-human, 50 %-Atlantean Arthur Curry and takes him on the journey of his lifetime—one that will not only pressure him to face who he genuinely is, but to uncover if he is worthy of who he was born to be…a king. If you want to watch cost-free Aquaman 2018 motion picture, you must use that link - https://www.watchmovies365.com/aquaman-123movies/, just simply click it an get pleasure from motion picture night time.Pre-manufacturing started in Australia in late November 2016.

Casting

On October 20, 2014, in an interview with ComicBook.com, Jason Momoa uncovered that the Justice League film would be coming initial and which is what they had been getting ready for, and he failed to know if the solo Aquaman film would appear just before or following Justice League. He imagined it may possibly be the origin, the place Aquaman arrived from. Warner Bros. introduced Aquaman as a part of the DC Prolonged Universe, with Jason Momoa starring. In December 2014, it was uncovered that Momoa experienced signed a four-photo deal with the studio and DC, and he wanted Zack Snyder to direct the solo Aquaman film. On January 13, 2016, The Hollywood Reporter declared that Amber Heard entered negotiations to play the female direct function of Mera, Aquaman's enjoy interest her casting was confirmed two months afterwards. In April 2016, Willem Dafoe was cast in an undisclosed role, later exposed to be Nuidis Vulko. On December 12, 2016 it was verified that Patrick Wilson will engage in the villainous Ocean Master, the fifty percent-brother of Aquaman. On January 31, 2017, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was additional to the solid as the villain, Black Manta. That identical day, the push reported that Nicole Kidman experienced entered talks to perform Queen Atlanna. Two months afterwards, Kidman verified her participation in the movie. By February 2017, New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison entered talks to play Thomas Curry, Aquaman's human father. On April 12, Dolph Lundgren was solid to perform Nereus, king of Xebel. Ludi Lin was forged in the film on Could fifteen, 2017. Practically two weeks afterwards, Michael Beach front, who voiced Satan Ray, a character loosely based on Black Manta in Justice League Unrestricted, was cast as Black Manta's father. In October 2017, Graham McTavish exposed that he has a position in the movie. In April 2018, Randall Park was forged as Dr. Stephen Shin. In July, Djimon Hounsou, Natalia Safran and Sophia Forrest ended up solid as the Fisherman King, Fisherman Queen and the Fisherman Princess. In November 2018, it was unveiled that Julie Andrews has a voice role in the film.

Filming

Principal pictures started in Australia on Could 2, 2017, beneath the doing work title Ahab. A vast majority of the film was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coastline, Queensland with creation also held in Newfoundland, Canada, as nicely as Sicily and Morocco. Among Might and August 2017, creation also took area on area about a variety of places of the Australian Gold Coastline like Main Beach front, Coomera, Southport and Amity Level in North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, as effectively as Hastings Level in New South Wales. On filming underwater sequences, Wan stated that "the underwater planet is tremendous complicated" and "it's not an effortless shoot". On August 11, 2017, filming commenced on the Arthur Curry Lighthouse established at Hastings Point and ended afterwards that thirty day period. In September, for the duration of an job interview with Kiss Radio, actor Ludi Lin explained Wan's eyesight for the movie as 'Star Wars underwater'. That exact same thirty day period, filming took area in Newfoundland and Labrador. Willem Dafoe concluded up his portion by late September. On October thirteen, James Wan announced that Patrick Wilson wrapped on the film. Filming on location took place in the deserts of Morocco by mid-October, which provided the metropolitan areas of Merzouga and Erfoud. Principal photography wrapped on October 21, 2017.

Tunes

On March seven, 2018, Rupert Gregson-Williams was introduced as the composer for Aquaman. Gregson-Williams beforehand wrote the score for Surprise Female, the fourth movie in the DC Prolonged Universe. The soundtrack will be unveiled by WaterTower Tunes on December 14, 2018.[69][70] The album will feature an unique song by American musician Skylar Gray entitled Every thing I Require, created by Gray and Elliott Taylor.

Launch

Aquaman had its planet premiere at the Empire, Leicester Square in London on November 26, 2018. It is scheduled to be launched in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures in RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018. It was earlier established for July 27, 2018, and then moved to Oct five, 2018, before settling on its December launch day. Internationally, the movie will be launched in China on December seven, 2018, in the United Kingdom on December twelve, 2018, and in Brazil and Russia on December 13, 2018. On November 19, 2018, Atom Tickets was declared that Amazon Primary customers in the United States would have early obtain to tickets for a December fifteen screening of the film at pick Regal, Nationwide Amusements, ArcLight Cinemas, and AMC theaters.

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Aquaman

Aquaman is a 2018 American superhero movie dependent on the DC Comics character of the very same name, distributed by Warner Bros. Images. It is the sixth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Directed by James Wan, with a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, from a tale by Geoff Johns, Wan and Beall, it stars Jason Momoa as the title character, with Amber Read, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Kidman in supporting roles. It is the 3rd reside-action theatrical film that includes the title character, adhering to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) and the very first full-length feature film centered all around the character. In Aquaman, Arthur Curry, the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, must action forward to lead his folks in opposition to his 50 percent-brother, Orm, who seeks to unite the seven underwater kingdoms towards the area world. Improvement of an Aquaman movie began in 2004, with a number of programs slipping through above the several years. In August 2014, Beall and Kurt Johnstad have been employed to create two competing scripts and the film was officially declared in Oct 2014. Wan signed on as director in April 2015 and in July 2016 it was introduced the film would move ahead with Beall's screenplay, although Wan, Johnstad, Johns and Johnson-McGoldrick all done various rewrites. The principal cast was confirmed throughout 2016 and early 2017. Principal pictures began in Australia on May two, 2017. Most of the film was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coastline, Queensland, with production also held in Canada, Italy and Morocco, and wrapped on October 21, 2017. Aquaman had its world premiere in London on November 26, 2018, and is scheduled to be released in the United States by Warner Bros. Photos in Genuine D 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018.

Synopsis

Arthur Curry, the reluctant ruler of Atlantis and King of the 7 Seas, finds himself caught among a surface area world consistently ravaging the sea and Atlanteans seeking to lash out in revolt, but fully commited to safeguarding the whole world.

Growth

In 2004, FilmJerk.com documented that Dawn Entertainment's Alan and Peter Riche prepared to carry Aquaman to the big display screen for Warner Bros. with Robert Ben Garant composing the screenplay. Nonetheless, the film fell via. In July 2009, it was noted that Aquaman was in improvement at Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way. Warner chairman and CEO Barry Meyer said that the Aquaman film was in advancement. A supply from Warner Bros. instructed The Wrap that they were speaking about the possibilities, with the mention of a lot more Gentleman of Metal films as well as a Superman/Batman film, a Question Girl film, and an Aquaman film.[28][29][thirty] Geoff Johns told Variety that Aquaman is a precedence character for the firm. It was declared on August twelve, 2014, that Warner Bros. experienced hired screenwriters Will Beall and Kurt Johnstad to pen two individual scripts for an approaching Aquaman movie. The movie was becoming created on twin tracks, meaning that two scripts have been written, one particular by Beall and one particular by Johnstad, but only the far better model would shift forward. On April ten, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter documented that James Wan was the frontrunner to direct the film. In June 2015, Wan was confirmed to direct the film and overlook the screenplay by Johnstad. On November 12, 2015, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick was hired to write the script, nonetheless it was unclear whether or not he would be composing a separate script or functioning with Wan. It was then unveiled that previous script programs had been scrapped and that equally Wan and Johns prepared to shift ahead with a new script written by screenwriter Will Beall. Later on, Johnson-McGoldrick was introduced again to the undertaking to work on a rewrite of Beall's script. On March 2016, it was declared that the events of Aquaman will be established after Justice League. Wan verified later on on Twitter that cinematographer Don Burgess, who previously worked with Wan on The Conjuring two, will provide as cinematographer for Aquaman. Pre-creation commenced in Australia in late November 2016.

Casting

On October 20, 2014, in an interview with ComicBook.com, Jason Momoa unveiled that the Justice League movie would be coming 1st and which is what they had been getting ready for, and he didn't know if the solo Aquaman movie would occur before or right after Justice League. He believed it might be the origin, where Aquaman came from. Warner Bros. declared Aquaman as a component of the DC Extended Universe, with Jason Momoa starring. In December 2014, it was revealed that Momoa had signed a 4-image offer with the studio and DC, and he needed Zack Snyder to immediate the solo Aquaman movie. On January 13, 2016, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Amber Heard entered negotiations to engage in the woman lead role of Mera, Aquaman's adore curiosity her casting was verified two months afterwards. In April 2016, Willem Dafoe was forged in an undisclosed part, later uncovered to be Nuidis Vulko. On December 12, 2016 it was verified that Patrick Wilson will play the villainous Ocean Grasp, the 50 percent-brother of Aquaman. On January 31, 2017, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was added to the solid as the villain, Black Manta. That identical day, the push described that Nicole Kidman had entered talks to engage in Queen Atlanna. Two months afterwards, Kidman verified her participation in the film. By February 2017, New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison entered talks to play Thomas Curry, Aquaman's human father. On April 12, Dolph Lundgren was cast to perform Nereus, king of Xebel. Ludi Lin was forged in the film on May 15, 2017. Practically two weeks later on, Michael Seashore, who voiced Satan Ray, a character loosely based on Black Manta in Justice League Endless, was solid as Black Manta's father. In October 2017, Graham McTavish revealed that he has a function in the movie. In April 2018, Randall Park was cast as Dr. Stephen Shin. In July, Djimon Hounsou, Natalia Safran and Sophia Forrest ended up cast as the Fisherman King, Fisherman Queen and the Fisherman Princess. In November 2018, it was revealed that Julie Andrews has a voice role in the film.

Filming

Principal photography began in Australia on Could 2, 2017, beneath the operating title Ahab. A majority of the film was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland with manufacturing also held in Newfoundland, Canada, as nicely as Sicily and Morocco. In between Could and August 2017, creation also took area on place close to a variety of spots of the Australian Gold Coastline such as Primary Beach, Coomera, Southport and Amity Stage in North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, as properly as Hastings Point in New South Wales. On filming underwater sequences, Wan stated that "the underwater planet is super difficult" and "it is not an easy shoot". On August 11, 2017, filming commenced on the Arthur Curry Lighthouse established at Hastings Position and finished later that month. In September, during an job interview with Kiss Radio, actor Ludi Lin explained Wan's eyesight for the film as 'Star Wars underwater'. That same month, filming took area in Newfoundland and Labrador. Willem Dafoe concluded up his part by late September.

Aquaman Plot

From Warner Bros. Pictures and director James Wan will come an action-packed journey that spans the huge, visually spectacular underwater world of the seven seas, Aquaman, starring Jason Momoa in the title role. The film reveals the origin tale of half-human, 50 %-Atlantean Arthur Curry and takes him on the journey of his lifetime—one that will not only power him to encounter who he really is, but to learn if he is worthy of who he was born to be…a king. If you want to view totally free Aquaman 2018 motion picture, you need to use that hyperlink - https://sciencewiki.science/wiki/Aquaman, just click on it an appreciate motion picture night.On October 13, James Wan announced that Patrick Wilson wrapped on the movie. Filming on spot took spot in the deserts of Morocco by mid-Oct, which included the cities of Merzouga and Erfoud. Principal pictures wrapped on October 21, 2017.

Audio

On March 7, 2018, Rupert Gregson-Williams was announced as the composer for Aquaman. Gregson-Williams previously wrote the rating for Question Female, the fourth film in the DC Prolonged Universe. The soundtrack will be released by WaterTower Music on December fourteen, 2018.[sixty nine][70] The album will characteristic an first track by American musician Skylar Grey entitled Every little thing I Require, created by Gray and Elliott Taylor.

Launch

Aquaman experienced its planet premiere at the Empire, Leicester Square in London on November 26, 2018. It is scheduled to be introduced in the United States by Warner Bros. Photographs in RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018. It was earlier set for July 27, 2018, and then moved to Oct five, 2018, before settling on its December release day. Internationally, the movie will be launched in China on December 7, 2018, in the United Kingdom on December twelve, 2018, and in Brazil and Russia on December 13, 2018. On November 19, 2018, Atom Tickets was declared that Amazon Key members in the United States would have early accessibility to tickets for a December fifteen screening of the film at decide on Regal, Nationwide Amusements, ArcLight Cinemas, and AMC theaters.

[afrikanza]

Top 10 African Movie Directors

Africa has had an important spot in the internal film industry for close to one century. In this article, we are going to feature the best African movie directors of all times since African produced films started gaining international recognition.

Related: Hottest Actors in South Africa – Top 10

Without further adieu, here are the most prolific, top ten African movie directors.

Neill Blomkamp

Born on 19th September 1979 in Johannesburg South Africa, Neill Blomkamp has had a successful string of movies directed by him since his debut in the film industry in the late 1990’s as 3D animation expert. His most famous movie is District 9, which was Africa’s best Sci-Fi film in 2009. Its success made him to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Niell Blonkamp has so far directed 18 movies with more than a dozen of them being done in 2017 alone.

Abderrahmane Sissako

Abderrahmane Sissako was born on 13th October 1961 in Mauritania. He is best known for his movie Waiting for happiness. This movie expresses the limbo encountered by the dream of most people from his native land to emigrate to France and other destinations abroad as the land of their dreams.

Sissako’s films are focused primarily on issues pertaining society, more so humanism, social consciousness, globalization, displacement of people, exiles and the intricate relationships between North and South.  In this theme, he explores the fate of Africa in the global affairs.

Souleymane Cissé

Souleymane was born on 21st April 1940 in Mali. He has won two awards – Sutherland Trophy, and Cannes Jury Prize. He was nominated for Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film.  He debuted his filming career with a medium-length film titled ‘Five Days in a Life’, which is a story about a young man who drops out of Madrassa to become a petty thief. This was followed by ‘The Girl’ in 1974, which is about a young mute girl who has been raped, becomes pregnant and is rejected by both her parents and those of the child’s father. Unfortunately, the film was banned and him jailed. However, he never gave up.

In 1974, he produced ‘Work’ (Baara) which received him several awards including Talon prize award at FESPACO. In 1987, he released Yeelen, which won him Jury Prize at the Cannes (1987). He went on to produce many other films later on.

Another must read: Most Populous Countries in Africa

Moufida Tlatli

Moufida Tlatli was born in Tunisia in 1947. She worked extensively as a film editor before launching her career later on as a film director. She is renowned for her famous film The Silences of the Palace. This depicts the story of the women sufferings in silence and secrets of the pain of the servant women during the times of the French colonial rule in Tunisia. This film was released in 1994.

Other notable films directed by her include ‘The Season of Men’ released in the year 2000 and ‘The Season of Women’ released in the year 2004.

After the civilian overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 during the ‘Arab Spring’, she was appointed as Minister for Culture in the successive government.

Dani Kouyaté

Dani Kouyate was born on 4th June 1961 in Burkina Faso.  He began his filming career with Biakoro in 1989. Before that, Kouyate had been involved in performance arts theater for quite some time prior to enrolling for Cinematography at the Ouagadougou African Institute of Cinematic Studies.

His famous film was Keïta, l’Héritage du Griot which was released in 1985 retracing the life of the founder of the Mandingue Empire, the legendary Soundjata Keïta. Inspired by its success, he directed another one ‘Sia, le rêve du python’, depicting the legend of Wagadu of the Soninke myth which was released in 2001. He has directed several TV series and short quite a number of short films.

Related: Hottest African Actresses in Hollywood – Top 10

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina

Lakhidar-Hamina was born on 26th February 1934 in Algeria. He is best known for his famous film Chronicle of the Year of Embers that was done in 1975. Lakhdar-Hamina’s early career was emblemized in the struggle for Algerian independence from France. The Algerian liberation movement – Algerian National Liberation Front., sponsored the early stages of his film career. Initially, he collaborated with others in his first film productions including Our Algeria (Djazzaïrouna), which he collaborated with Pierre Chaule and Djamel Chanderli in its production. The film was about the goals of Manquis – an Algerian nationalist liberation movement. It was produced in 1960.

Other notable films included Yasmina (1961) which was about a refugee girl, The Guns of Freedom (1961), and The People’s Voice (1962). After Algeria gained independence in 1962, the theme of his later films focused on national identity and the self in postcolonial emancipation.

Apart from the Chronicles of the Year of Embers, another film that shot to international fame is ‘The Winds of the Aures ‘which received the Best First Works Award at Cannes in 1966.  Chronicles of the Year of Embers remains the only African and Arab film to have won the Golden Palm at Cannes.

Djibril Diop Mambéty

Djibril Diop Mambéty was born on January 23, 1945, in Senegal. He was a poet, orator, composer, actor and film director. Although he directed few films, they were a masterpiece in their own right in terms of their originality and unconventional narrative style.

He entered the film industry with his famous title “A City of Contrasts” in 1968. This was followed by his second film “Badou Boy” which was released in 1970. The masterpiece that brought him to international fame was Touki Bouki (Hyenas Journey) which was revered for its sophisticated artistic narrative style. It was released in 1973.

Though he had few films to his accolades, their quality was enough to put him into the legendary records of African film directors.

You May Also Like: Richest Countries in Africa

Sarah Maldoror

Sarah Maldoror is regarded as the matriarch of African film. She is Guadalupean of African descent born in France. She dedicated most of the film towards African issues, notably, the African struggle for independence, liberation, and justice. She was feted in 2011 by the French government by being awarded the National Order of Merit in contribution to world culture.

She is famously known for Sambinzanga, a film she directed which was focused on Angola’s independence struggle and the brutally meted upon Africans, which galvanized the independence movement. He debut film was Monangambee, which was about women experiences in the liberation struggle in Angola and was done in 1968.

In her career spanning over two decades, she has over two dozen films to her credit.

A Relevant Read: West African Countries

Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane is considered the patriarch of African film. He was born on 1st January 1923 in Senegal. He was so much attached to social issues affecting Africa then, more so issues related to colonialism, newly independent but oppressive African governments and the plight of the people in those situations. He had most of his punches in literature than in the film. Several of his works were banned in French West Africa for his radical extremist approach to issues.

He had a great record of works in literature and films. His most famous film is Guelwaar (Senegal, 1993). Other notable films included Xala and Ceddo. Ceddo was the most notoriously censored film by authorities in French West Africa.

Youssef Chahine

Youssef Chahine was born on 25th January 1926, in Alexandria Egypt. The Lifetime Achievements Award granted to him at Cannes caps his career that spanned close to four decades. His career began in the 1950’s and by the time of his death, he had 44 films to his credit.

The most famous film is Cairo Station, which was recorded in 1958. He entered the film industry in 1950 with his title Baba Amin (Daddy Amin) which was followed closely by the second title Ebn el-Nil (Son of the Nile) which was done in 1951. Cairo Station was his third title. Most of his films were well received internationally but had many problems in his own native country – Egypt.

This is primarily because some of them ran counter to the political climate at the time and seemed against Islamic religious faith. He was a frequent victim of death threats from Islamic extremists. However, he too received criticism from American establishment for his film that sought to depict American foreign policy as the cause of millions of deaths across the globe.

Related: Most Popular African TV Shows – Top 10

Conclusion

Africa has a rich cultural heritage. It needs more talented film directors to drive the rich African narratives that remain untold. If Africa has to stand strong on the global arena, then, its feet must be deeply anchored in its culture and its voices made to reverberate across the globe. Thanks to these great African movie directors that pace has been set.

The post Top 10 African Movie Directors appeared first on Afrikanza.

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Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1: The Most Epic Sword Fight Ever Filmed

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When it comes to action choreography, any long take sequence that lasts more than a few minutes is an achievement. Stunts and fights are risky. They can even be deadly. The longer the scene, the more chances of an accident. But a 77-minute one-er? That’s just crazy. 

Talented filmmakers strut their stuff because the technical skill behind a good one-er demands next-level directorial and choreographic mastery. Setting up a long take scene is exponentially more challenging than a normal scene with cuts. For example, the short one-er that opens Lindsay Vonn’s new Amazon Prime reality game show series The Pack only runs a few minutes and is split by a cut in the middle, but it took 26 hours to prepare, film, and strike the sequence. Plus they had to shut down the 110 Freeway to film it.  

The extensive long takes in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman and Sam Mendes’ 1917 have won international acclaim, Oscars, and other notable awards. Asian cinema has also been delivering some impressive one-ers. Standing out among the rest is rising director Bi Gan, who blew his entire budget for his second film Kaili Blues just to create a complex 42-minute long-take sequence. He topped that with a convoluted 59-minute one-er in his last film, Long Day’s Journey Into the Night, in 3D no less. It was such a remarkable achievement in filmmaking that it was recognized by Cannes.

Making the Cut Before Someone Gets Hurt

Action one-ers are the most challenging because so much can go wrong in fight choreography. There’s no room for error. Even with regular action sequences with plenty of safety edits, stunt people can get injured, even killed. This makes action one-ers shorter, but far more intense, especially from a technical standpoint. Although there is a place for good wire-fu, martial arts fans have the highest admiration for fight scenes grounded in reality so when actors can pull off long complicated fight scenes, it’s a testament to pure skill. 

Recent Hollywood action movies have embraced long take fights with films like the Keanu Reeves John Wick films. That franchise is directed by Chad Stahelski whose background is in stunt work. Director Ryan Coogler delivered some gripping long-take scenes with the Casino fight in Black Panther and Adonis’ first fight in Creed. 

These recent one-ers stand on the shoulder of past ones, so cherished by action fans that some have their own nicknames. John Woo’s Hard Boiled included a 3+ minute single-tracking take known as the “hospital scene.” It’s a wild piece of Woo’s signature balletic gunplay that is off-the-rails ballistic and explosive. And that film was shot in 1992, long before CGI allowed such destruction to be faked. According to film lore, the scene was originally meant to be 5+ minutes but the crew couldn’t sustain it. 

Chan Park-wook’s Oldboy included a 3+ minute brutal “hallway fight” that allegedly took 17 takes over 3 days to capture. It’s an incredible piece of ultraviolence that gave new meaning to hammer usage. It’s even more impressive considering that actor Choi Min-sik didn’t come from a martial arts or stunt background. He learned his fighting skills specifically for that film. Oldboy was also recognized by Cannes for its daring filmmaking. 

Tony Jaa’s legendary 4+ minute staircase fight in Tom-Yum-Goong (a.k.a. The Protector) took a month to prepare. According to Jaa, they got it in 8 takes, but they could only attempt 2 takes per day because it was so complicated. Jaa also claims they would’ve gone longer but were hampered by the how much film their camera would hold. Today’s digital recording allows one-ers to go much longer than in the days of film. In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking long-take film Rope! was limited to one-ers under 10 minutes because that was the maximum length of film in his camera magazines back then. Digital filmmaking has no such constraints and today’s directors are exploiting this. 

The Sword Saint – Miyamoto Musashi

Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 is a fictional story about Japan’s most famous sword saint – or Kensei – Miyamoto Musashi (1585-1645 CE). The original Japanese title is Kyo Musashi (Kyo means “crazy”) and an alternate anglicized title is Crazy Samurai Musashi. However, beyond the name, this is not any sort of biopic of Musashi. The real Musashi was undefeated in 61 duels, and although that falls far short of 400, that’s the most documented victories of any swordsman in Japanese history. 

Musashi’s first duel was against Arima Kihei. Musashi accepted a public challenge from Kihei and beat him to death with a bo staff. That was when Musashi was only 13. Musashi went on to write one of the most venerated treatises on swordsmanship of all, The Book of Five Rings. 

However, if you’re looking for Musashi’s history, Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 isn’t the film for you. This film is about fight choreography. Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 clocks in at 92 minutes total running time. Subtract that 77-minute fight scene and that only leaves 15 minutes for story development. The premise is established within the first 8 minutes. 

Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi) has killed Seijuro Yoshioka, and the Yoshioka clan wants revenge. Anticipating Musashi to answer a challenge, the clan lays a trap. The new head of the clan is a prepubescent boy, Matashichiro Yoshioka (Kousei Kimura), and the clan sets him up to challenge Musashi to regain the clan’s honor. But it’s a ruse to ambush Musashi at a dueling field with 100 of their students and 300 mercenaries. A white moth flutters by. In Asian culture, white moths are messengers of death (some claim this underpins the Kaiju monster Mothra). Then Musashi enters and the sword swinging craziness begins. That’s all we get for story development. 

Anyone familiar with Musashi’s real history recognizes that Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 is loosely based upon his battle with the Yoshioka clan. In a series of duels, Musashi defeated the Yoshioka brothers, Seijuro and Denshichiro. The clan did use Matashichiro as bait to lure Musashi into a trap. A retinue of followers lay in wait to ambush Musashi, but there weren’t 400 of them. Musashi arrived late, launched a surprise attack, beheaded Matashichiro, and then fought his way out. 

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The battle against the Yoshioka clan occurred when Musashi was turning 20 and allegedly inspired him to invent his signature two-sword method of fighting known as Nitenichi (Two Heavens are One). Within the 77-minute fight, Sakaguchi does demonstrate a few instances of double sword play, however the bulk is single sword work. Two swords are twice as heavy as wielding one, so this was surely a strategy to conserve Sakaguchi’s energy so he could go the distance. 

Beyond that, Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 offers a few more Musashi Easter eggs. Most of the battle consists of hordes of hapless swordsmen rushing Musashi only to get cut down in a few strokes but there are some more notable opponents plucked from Musashi legend. Separating the horde of ambushers are a few distinguished fighters who declare themselves to Musashi before engaging him one-on-one.

His first duelist is Nanpo Yoichibei, who is mentioned as part of the Yoshioka clan in Eiji Yoshikawa’s timeless novelization Musashi.  Shishido Baiken (Akihiko Sai) is his second challenger and he fights with a kamagusari (sickle and chain). There are stories about Musashi facing a kamagusari wielding fighter named Shishido, but they aren’t verifiable. Ueda Rhohei (Kazuto Nakamura) is a fictional character from Vagabond, a popular manga based on Musashi by Takehiko Inoue. 

400 vs. 1 in a single TAK

Tak Sakaguchi often just goes by TAK (and yes, that’s in all caps). This is how he is credited in Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1. TAK claims to have been an underground street fighter until he was discovered by firebrand director Ryuhei Kitamura. Kitamura cast him in his debut role as Prisoner KSC2-303 in the zombie Yakuza cult classic Versus in 2000. Since then, TAK has worked in nearly 50 action films in roles ranging from actor, director, writer and of course, fight choreographer. Beyond several collaborations with Kitamura, he has also worked with film maverick Sion Sono. The concept for Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 came from Sono. Sono and TAK planned a project together called Kenkichi, which was to feature a long one-er, but the film was never made.

Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 is directed by Yuji Shimomura, who like Stahelski, has a background as an action director or fight choreographer. In 2019, Shimomura and TAK partnered for manga-based actioner Kingdom. They filmed Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 nine years ago. It was completed two years later, but it languished in storage until last year. Albatros, an independent distributor, showed last August in Japan, but given the pandemic, it was only presented on 50 screens. The film performed poorly at the box office and received mixed reviews. Critics who were unimpressed by fight choreography panned it and rightly so. There’s not much here beyond a marathon fight scene. 

But still, what do you expect from a film that sells the gimmick of a 77-minute one-er fight scene? Story and character development are not what this film is about. There’s minimal dialog. There’s barely a story. Even the soundtrack is sparse. There are some moments of Taiko drumming or mournful piano, but mostly it’s whistling blades, dying grunts and blood gushing spurts. It’s like sword fighting porn – hardcore porn violence – relentless and unforgiving.  

“How many more?”

Despite its shortcomings, any genuine fan of fight choreography must bow down to what TAK and Shimomura have achieved. Within the first five minutes of shooting, TAK took a hit that broke some of his fingers. In later filming mishaps, he also broke some ribs and some back teeth. Despite his injuries, he managed to fight through it all, cutting through a ridiculous number of assailants, and his pain and exhaustion is palpable.

Remarkably, there are very few moments where a digital stitch might have been inserted. A common trick with one-ers is to pan across something static like a wall. That can hide a cut in the action. There aren’t very many of these – a few walls and a shot of a dead body – but for most of the 77 minutes, moving actors are in frame. 

The fight choreography is simple, practical, and somewhat repetitive. It’s choreographed for the long haul. TAK’s Musashi usually adopts variations of hasso or waki stances which place his sword on the right side of his body. It’s an invitation for his attackers to come at him on his left side to which he responds with a lot of spanking parries. He deploys many ripostes repeatedly – a standard cut to the head or belly, a cut to the leg, a common move from Kendo where the right hand releases its grip to lengthen a strike with using the left hand. There are several scenes where about half a dozen swordsmen charge Musashi one by one, each to be cut across the gut in succession. 

This is not the sort of flowery swashbuckling flourishes shown in most sword fights. To endure for that long, TAK relies on techniques that are simpler and, in many ways, more real. If an uninitiated viewer doesn’t grasp the tremendous staying power of TAK’s performance, they will leave unimpressed. To martial arts practitioners, TAK’s use of feints and his control of distance are superb. And anyone who has worked out for an hour straight will be humbled by TAK’s stamina.

After half an hour, Musashi takes his first water break. Bamboo thermoses are stashed throughout an abandoned village where much of the fight takes place, along with snacks and fresh swords. How those got there is never explained in the film, but it makes perfect sense from a choreographic standpoint. TAK had to pace himself to make it through. The rest of the fight is choreographed so TAK gets a water break every five minutes or so.

Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 isn’t a film for everyone. As a film, its storytelling is sorely lacking. However, for genuine connoisseurs of action cinema and fight choreography, it is a masterpiece.

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Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 premieres on February 12, 2020 on Hi-YAH! and comes to Blu-ray and Digital on March 2. 

The post Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1: The Most Epic Sword Fight Ever Filmed appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: The Princess and the Frog

After the disaster that was Home on the Range, Disney wasn’t too keen on going back to traditional animation. It took them five years to release a new traditionally animated movie, and… it underperformed. Not super badly, mind you, it had great reception and solid returns, but a combination of bad marketing and going up against James Cameron’s Avatar really hurt the film. That film is, obviously, The Princess and the Frog.

This film’s pretty interesting in a lot of ways. We have our first black princess, our first American (as in, citizen of the United States) princess, we have a film set down in New Orleans in the early 20th century… this is a pretty interesting film for sure. The real question is, is it a GOOD film? Can it stand up with the best of the Renaissance, or is it a weak work that shows Disney made the right move switching over to 3D animation?

So here’s the tale Disney gave us today: Way down in New Orleans in the 1920s, a young black waitress named Tiana is struggling as a waitress to get enough cash to start her own restaurant. Things seem hard until the wily prince Naveen rolls into town, and Tiana’s rich white BFF Lottie is so into this dude she says she’ll give Tiana fat stacks of cash to cater a party so that Lottie can woo the man. But Lottie’s not the only one who wants a piece of this prince; the wicked practitioner of voodoo and sleazy conman Dr. Facilier tricks Naveen into making a deal with him, turns Naveen into a frog, and turns Naveen’s put-upon manservant into a replica of Naveen as part of a ploy to gather up souls for his Friends On the Other Side. Now a frog, Naveen goes to get kissed, like in the stories… so Tiana kisses him! And then… she becomes a frog too! Now these two clashing personalities are stuck in frog form, and embark on a journey to change back before Facilier gets his way. Can they do it, or will these two croak?

One of the best things about the movie is just how well-researched and authentic so many aspects of it are. Most importantly is the voodoo; directors Clements and Musker avoided using any real symbols so they didn’t piss off practitioners or evil spirits, but you can tell they did a lot more research on it than most do. This is most evident in the existence of the character known as Mama Odie, who is a GOOD voodoo practitioner, a shocking rarity in any film that features it. Yeah, there’s more to voodoo than the wicked pincushion dolls and black magic and chicken sacrifices you see in your typical movie featuring voodoo. Beyond that, we have New Orleans native Randy Newman delivering music that feels authentic to the locale, and we have Jim Cummings playing a character with his authentic Cajun accent he picked up working on riverboats (not the first time he has played this sort of character; he did it before in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, though, uh… Ray is a much more pelasant character than the one he plays there). Then of course there’s Ray’s lover Evangeline, whose name is a reference to a famous poem of the same name by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poem considered the unofficial national epic of the Cajun people. Mad props to this movie for going out of its way to go to such lengths to make their setting really authentic.

Sadly, this level of quality could not be packed into our main character, Tiana. She’s… alright as a character, but she’s not very interesting as far as Disney princesses go. Her major flaw is that she’s a workaholic and so has to loosen up a bit; in fact, she spends more time teaching other characters lessons than learning anything herself. And she’s completely removed from the villain’s scheming for the most part, with her only getting targeted because she’s around Naveen. The first time she meets Dr. Facilier is during the final confrontation, for fuck’s sake! I hate to say it, but she reminds me a lot of Susie Carmichael from Rugrats, being the poster child for positive discrimination. Now don’t take this as me saying she’s an awful character, or bad representation, or anything like that; there is stuff to like and admire about Tiana for sure! I just don’t find her particularly interesting, especially considering…

...how colorful a lot of the other characters are! We have Naveen, who is the jerkass egomaniac who develops as the movie goes on, becoming humbled by his experiences and learning there should be more to life than reckless hedonism; this is the kind of characterization I would have liked from my princess, and in Disney movies this is usually the case, with the princess being the character with lots of characterization and growth while the prince is just eye candy with little depth (Tiana is not that extreme a case, don’t worry). Then we have Ray, who is a divisive character, but… I like him well enough. He’s so sweet, and goofy, and voiced by Jim Cummings, so how the hell could I hate him? There’s also a certain scene with him towards the end, which I have to applaud for going against a typical trope Disney loves to use. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll know it when you see it. Then there’s one-scene wonder Mama Odie, who gets a song and very little screentime, but damn she makes her mark! This blind old lady steals the show when she struts on screen! Oh, there’s also an alligator named Louis who wants to play trumpet. He has like one good joke. I find him pointless. Moving on.

There are two characters that rise above the others in terms of how good they are. The first is, shockingly, Lottie. A rich white girl in the 1920s in a movie where the protagonist is a poor black girl… ooh boy, you’d expect Lottie to be nothing more than a self-absorbed spoiled rich bitch. But holy fuck, she is actually the sweetest, kindest, most likable rich person you will ever see in a movie! She absolutely ADORES Tiana, and just goes out of her way to help her. She is the poster child for spoiled sweet; she may be a bit ditzy and silly, but goddamn this girl’s heart is in the right place! It’s so refreshing to see a character like her; it would have been so easy to make her a snobby rich asshole, rather than the bouncy sweetheart that she is.

And then, of course, we have Dr. Facilier, the big bad of the movie. Voiced by Keith David, he is absolutely the highlight of the film. In fact, I’d go so far as to call him the last TRUE classic-style Disney villain until Tamatoa belted out “Shiny;” he’s hammy, he’s charismatic, he has an awesome villain song, he has a great performance from a great actor… he can easily stand alongside the greats like Ursula, Scar, Gaston, Frollo, Hades, and so on. If there’s any problem I have with him, it’s that they could have given a little more info on his problems with his Friends, maybe explored that a little more, but still, what we got is classic Disney villain. And as any great Disney villain, he gets an incredible, nightmarish death, rivaled only by his trippy, terrifying musical number’s visuals! Facilier has got it all! He’s easily one of my favorite Disney villains of all time.

The best way I can describe this is as a lost Disney Renaissance film. It really feels like it could fit in that era alongside films like Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast, especially in regards to the villain. Still, the film isn’t perfect, and does suffer at least a little due to our main protagonist not being quite as interesting as she should be. Still, I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who likes animation, and I most certainly believe this movie deserves better than what it got; it’s an underrated gem, not to the extent of Atlantis or Treasure Planet, but definitely a Disney film that deserves a little more love and respect than it got upon release.

[krakowergroup]

PR: Justice League soundtrack

JUSTICE LEAGUE SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 10 FEATURES ORIGINAL SCORE BY FOUR-TIME ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE AND GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER DANNY ELFMAN INCLUDES MUSIC FROM GARY CLARK JR. & JUNKIE XL, SIGRID, AND THE WHITE STRIPES FIRST LISTEN: “HERO’S THEME” BY DANNY ELFMAN LOS ANGELES, CA – October 26, 2017 – WaterTower Music is proud to announce the November 10 release of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Warner Bros. Pictures’ epic action adventure Justice League. The album features one of the industry’s most versatile and accomplished film composers, Danny Elfman, who is returning to score a DC Super Hero film for the first time since 1992’s Batman Returns. While bringing his celebrated and unique approach to the Justice League score, Elfman also gives DC fans some special familiar moments. Utilizing memorable character themes to tell the musical story, he incorporates and re-interprets iconic music from past films, including John Williams’ Superman theme, Hans Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme, and his own Batman theme. “I’m using the same thematic material that I used back then,” Elfman told Billboard Magazine. “It never actually went away.  We’ve got these iconic bits from our past and that’s part of us, that’s part of our heritage.  It just was great fun.”

The soundtrack also features a blistering version of The Beatles’ “Come Together” by electrifying virtuoso guitarist Gary Clark Jr. and Grammy-nominated and multiplatinum producer, musician, and composer Junkie XL; along with Norwegian pop singer/ songwriter Sigrid’s haunting and powerful take on Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” and The White Stripes classic “Icky Thump.” LISTEN: “Hero’s Theme,” by Danny Elfman from the Justice League Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (http://lnk.to/justiceleaguePR) LISTEN: “Come Together,” by Gary Clark Jr. and Junkie XL from the Justice League Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (http://ad.gt/gcj-cometogether) The 27-track Justice League soundtrack, which includes three bonus tracks, will be released November 10. A two-CD version will be released on December 8, with a double vinyl edition coming February 9, 2018. The Justice League Original Motion Picture Soundtrack can be ordered here and the track list is as follows. All music by Danny Elfman, unless otherwise noted. “Everybody Knows”                                                   Sigrid The Justice League Theme - Logos Hero’s Theme Batman on the Roof Enter Cyborg Wonder Woman Rescue Hippolyta’s Arrow The Story of Steppenwolf The Amazon Mother Box Cyborg Meets Diana Aquaman in Atlantis Then There Were Three The Tunnel Fight The World Needs Superman Spark of The Flash Friends and Foes Justice League United Home Bruce and Diana The Final Battle A New Hope Anti-Hero’s Theme “Come Together”                                                         Gary Clark Jr. and Junkie XL “Icky Thump”                                                               The White Stripes The Tunnel Fight   (Full Length Bonus Track) The Final Battle     (Full Length Bonus Track) Mother Russia       (Bonus Track) ABOUT DANNY ELFMAN Over the last 30 years, four-time Oscar nominee Danny Elfman has established himself as one of the most versatile and accomplished film composers in the industry. He has collaborated with such directors as Tim Burton, David O. Russell, Gus Van Sant, Sam Raimi, Joss Whedon, Paul Haggis, Ang Lee, Rob Marshall, Guillermo del Toro, Barry Sonnenfeld, Brian De Palma, and Peter Jackson. Beginning with his first score on Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Elfman has scored a broad range of films, including: Milk (Oscar nominated), Good Will Hunting (Oscar nominated), Big Fish (Oscar nominated), Men in Black (Oscar nominated), Edward Scissorhands, Wanted, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mission: Impossible, Planet of the Apes, A Simple Plan, To Die For, Spider-Man (1 & 2), Batman, Dolores Claiborne, Sommersby, Chicago, Dick Tracy, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Alice in Wonderland, Silver Linings Playbook, the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Up next for Elfman is the highly anticipated action adventure Justice League from Warner Bros. & DC. A native of Los Angeles, Elfman grew up loving film music. He travelled the world as a young man, absorbing its musical diversity. He helped found the band Oingo Boingo, and came to the attention of a young Tim Burton, who asked him to write the score for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. 30 years later, the two have forged one of the most fruitful composer-director collaborations in film history. In addition to his film work, Elfman wrote the iconic theme music for The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives. He also composed a ballet, Rabbit and Rogue, choreographed by Twyla Tharp; the symphony Serenada Schizophrana for Carnegie Hall; an overture The Overeager Overture for the Hollywood Bowl; Iris, a Cirque du Soleil show at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre; and most recently his first Violin Concerto, “Eleven, Eleven”, for soloist Sandy Cameron, which had its world premiere in Prague with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and its second performance at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.   Danny Elfman’s “Music From the Films of Tim Burton” had its concert premiere in 2014 at London’s Royal Albert Hall and has continued on with over 60 concert performances in over 12 countries. ABOUT JUSTICE LEAGUE Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa and Ray Fisher star in the action-adventure film Justice League. Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and the Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions. Justice League was directed by Zack Snyder from a screenplay by Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon, story by Terrio & Snyder, based on characters from DC Entertainment; Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder, Jon Berg and Geoff Johns produced the film, with Jim Rowe, Ben Affleck, Wesley Coller, Curtis Kanemoto, Daniel S. Kaminsky and Chris Terrio serving as executive producers. Set for release in 3D and 2D in select theatres and IMAX beginning November 17, Justice League will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. justiceleaguethemovie.com For more information contact KrakowerGroup[at]gmail.com, or @KrakowerGroup on Twitter

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)

The Lego Ninjago Movie isn’t as funny or clever as The Lego Movie or The Lego Batman Movie, but I recommend it for the ones it's trying to please. No one has any nostalgia for this property and the advertisements make it clear that this one’s for kids. To them, I’m comfortable recommending it.

In the land of Ninjago, the evil Lord Garmadon (voiced by Justin Theroux) makes daily attempts to take over. Opposing him is the Secret Ninja Force. When the Green Ninja, Lloyd Garmadon (voiced by Dave Franco) succumbs to emotion and fails to stop his father, the heroes must go on a mystical quest to rekindle their powers.

Basically, this is a suited hero Tokusatsu plot, but even sillier. There's a maniacal villain that, upon closer inspection, isn’t really all that bad who commands an army of ridiculous-looking minions. He’s opposed by the group of beloved color-coded teens with giant robots. They’re led by the wise old sage. What makes this film more enjoyable than Power Rangers earlier this year is that it never takes itself seriously. Whether it’s spoofing old Kung-Fu movies, giant monster films, or turning to the screen and freely admitting “we know this is thoroughly nutty”, there’s a number of laughs to be found. Some of the humor is a bit too random for my taste, but Lloyd and his father are too funny to pass up.

Like the previous Lego films, Ninjago looks great. When Garmadon busts out a new super robot, your eyes are drawn to every little detail, trying to figure out what pieces were used to bring this creation to life. The same applies to the locations. When our heroes have to travel to “The Temple of Fragile Foundations” it looks so good, you just want to pause the movie, rotate the sets and figure out how they did it. There are also some disappointments, as the 3D is only OK, and a number of times the film cheats by using non-Lego pieces to construct the forests and foliage our heroes tread through.

Ninjago opens and closes with a live-action segment featuring Jackie Chan and Kaan Guldur. I would’ve removed it to flesh out the Secret Ninja Force, who seem included only because of the toys. This is the second film this year featuring Jackie Chan as a voice actor and honestly, he's not great. Compare his performance to Justin Theroux's, who is so lively and expressive. Chan was cast purely for his celebrity status. 

The end credits feature Jackie Chan’s trademark outtakes. You’ll wish it was more Lloyd and Lord Garmadon instead. Those are the funniest and most interesting characters, the true stars. Considering how much I enjoyed the previous feature-length Lego films, The Lego Ninjago Movie is a letdown, but I do recommend it for young audiences. (3D theatrical version on the big screen, September 28, 2017)

[3s-movie-trailer]

525/ AQUAMAN   (2018)

Arthur Curry, half human half from Atlantis, goes on a trip of a lifetime. Not only does this adventure compel him to come to terms with his real identity, but it also forces him to discover whether he is entirely worthy of fulfilling his own destiny: becoming a king.

Aquaman is a 2018 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character of the same name, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the sixth installment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Directed by James Wan, with a screenplay by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, from a story by Geoff Johns, Wan and Beall, it stars Jason Momoa as the title character, with Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Nicole Kidman in supporting roles. It is the third live-action theatrical film featuring Aquaman, following Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017), and the first full-length feature film centered around the character. In Aquaman, Arthur Curry, the heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis, must step forward to lead his people against his half-brother, Orm, who seeks to unite the seven underwater kingdoms against the surface world. Development of an Aquaman film began in 2004, with several plans falling through over the years. In August 2014, Beall and Kurt Johnstad were hired to write two competing scripts and the film was officially announced in October 2014. Wan signed on as director in April 2015 and in July 2016 it was announced the film would move forward with Beall's screenplay, although Wan, Johnstad, Johns and Johnson-McGoldrick all performed various rewrites. The main cast was confirmed throughout 2016 and early 2017. Principal photography began in Australia on May 2, 2017. Most of the film was shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland, with production also held in Canada, Italy and Morocco. Filming wrapped on October 21, 2017. Aquaman had its world premiere in London on November 26, 2018, and was released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures in Real D 3D, Dolby Cinema, IMAX and IMAX 3D on December 21, 2018. The film has grossed over $1 billion worldwide; it is the highest-grossing installment of the DCEU and the fifth highest-grossing film of 2018, as well as the 35th highest-grossing film of all-time. It received praise from critics for its tone, direction, and cinematography, but criticism for its plot, dialogue, and runtime.

IMdb * 7,5

[trashartandmovies]

A Look Back at the 70th Berlinale (2020)

Was this year’s Berlinale a mistake? Should it have taken place? Did we all needlessly endanger and expose ourselves to a growing pandemic for the sake of cinema? Perhaps. Do I regret it? Not yet.

This was my first Berlinale as an accredited member of the press (thanks Cinematic Berlin!), so I certainly would’ve been heartbroken had it been cancelled. Even then, the flu was on everyone’s mind. People were finding ways to get past doors without actually touching them, ears finely tuned to pick up any hint of a nearby cough. Even in those waning days of February, which feels like a year ago, I was diligently washing my hands between every film and trying to grab the same seat in the last row at the back of the Berlinale Palast for every Competition screening. Today, I’m still not sure if I’m corona-free. But what I am sure of, as the festival glow dissipates, is that I saw a lot of good to great movies, and very few duds.

Of course, my luck being what it is, I saw around thirty movies and failed to see both the Golden Bear winner (Mohammad Rasoulof’s THERE IS NO EVIL) and the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay (The D'Innocenzo Brothers’ FAVOLACCE). However, I want to start this off by mentioning one award-winner that I did catch. In fact, it was the very first pre-festival screening I went to: Alexandre Rockwell’s SWEET THING, which deservedly won the Crystal Bear for best film in the Generation Kplus section.

Like certain American cinephiles of my age, I have deep admiration for Rockwell’s 1992 film, IN THE SOUP, featuring a cinematic duo for the ages, Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassell. It’s an utterly charming lo-fi black & white movie about a would-be filmmaker and his aging gangster producer. What is absolutely astounding is that, from the very first frames of SWEET THING, Rockwell’s signature aesthetic transports you right back to 1992, as if the past thirty years of mega-plexes and shitty 3D screenings were but a nightmarish fever dream. There’s the same softly glowing back & white 16mm frames, the same deliberate editing and pacing… I couldn’t have asked for a better first screening as it rekindled a deep affection for cinema that has been stifled from time to time over the years.

SWEET THING is continuing Rockwell’s DIY, family-affair filmmaking of late, casting his teenage kids as the main characters and enlisting friends to fill out the cast. This one features Will Patton as the kids’ well-meaning but severely alcoholic dad. When Patton gets locked up, the kids are forced to live with their mom and her predatory boyfriend. It all sounds rather tragic, but Rockwell handles it with gentle grace. The kids refuse to be victims and end up runaways with a street-smart friend, played by the remarkably charismatic Jabari Watkins. Without spoiling anything, it is feel-good cinema at its charming best.

Since I failed to cover SWEET THING during the festival, I can now segue into an assemblage of my dispatches for Cinematic Berlin, along with some stray thoughts and final impressions…

Berlinale 70 — CB Dispatch I (First Cow, The Intruder, Hidden Away, The Salt of Tears, Undine)

The 70th edition of the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, better known around the world as Berlinale, has begun. At this time every year, Postdammer Platz turns into a buzzing, glittering, highly-caffeinated hub for a ravenous collection of film fanatics. I’m sure I’m not alone in considering these eleven days in mid-to-late February something of a high holiday for the cinematically devout.

This year had some added levels of anticipation since it marks the beginning of new leadership, with Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian taking over from Dieter Kosslick, who’d been at the helm of the festival since 2002. Rissenbeek and Chatrian should already be commended for the fact that it still feels like the same Berlinale, in a good way. It’s still a festival that is extremely accessible to the general public and offers people a chance to see some of the world’s best cinema in some amazing kinos.

The most noticeable changes have been around the program sections, particularly the Competition section, which has been rearranged, so that there’s no longer the awkward situation of having Competition titles being classified as “out of competition.” Instead, we have the new Encounters section, with it’s own three-person jury. The Panorama section continues to highlight bold and personal world cinema, and the Forum is still a vital showcase for more experimental and aesthetically adventurous filmmaking.

As far as the official Competition titles go, I’ve been able to catch five of the six that have screened so far. The best of these, by a significant margin, has been Kelly Reichardt’s FIRST COW, a gently heartbreaking tale of two men (John Magaro and Orion Lee) who live on the outskirts of a fort in nineteenth century Oregon. When a new cow enters the community, the two budding entrepreneurs hatch an idea that involves secretly using the cow’s milk to bake and sell goods, which will hopefully earn them enough money to get to San Francisco.

It’s been nearly fifteen years since her breakout film, OLD JOY, but Reichardt continues to prove herself masterful at revealing the subtle dynamics of male relationships. And not unlike her 2008 film, WENDY & LUCY, she also continues to show that she can kill you softly with her love for characters that have the odds stacked squarely against them.

I also found director Natalia Meta’s EL PRÓFUGO (THE INTRUDER) to be a surprisingly fun psychological thriller. If you’re a fan of David Cronenberg’s work, and miss the skewed sensibility he brings to genre films, you may find that EL PROFUGO does a fine job of scratching that itch. The movie stars Érica Rivas as a singer and voice-over artist who may or may not be dealing with extradimensional “intruders” that enter our world through dreams and infect our bodies. Rivas’s captivating performance is reason enough to catch this one. Plus, the ending is a helluva kicker.

Less captivating was Giorgio Diritti’s VOLEVO NASCONDERMI (HIDDEN AWAY), which gives us a look at the life of early twentieth century artist Antonio Ligabue, who settled in Italy after being exiled from Switzerland due to mental illness. The movie is beautifully shot, and we could use more movies about outsider artists, but this one never really finds much to say about art or mental illness.

In the role of the volatile Ligabue, Elio Germano’s acting is turned up to 11 at all times, making it all rather exhausting (yet appealing to the jury, who awarded Germano the Silver Bear for Best Actor) even though the film never really takes us anywhere. Yet I’ll take HIDDEN AWAY over LE SEL DES LARMES (THE SALT OF TEARS), the latest from director Philippe Garrel. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if Truffaut had directed a feature length perfume ad, look no further. I honestly don’t know why this movie exists, other than as a chance for Garrel to film gratuitous (yet black & white, so, arty!) shots of young women taking showers or stepping out of bathtubs. The premise, of a ridiculously handsome man caught between three ridiculously pretty women, is literally laughable — in that one significant dramatic development was so obvious and unoriginal that it elicited a hearty round of guffaws.

But mostly this movie just made me angry. Even the impeccable black & white cinematography felt phoney, and as a story it is exceedingly stiff and boring. There is one moment when the movie tries to come alive with a bit of choreographed dance, but this is also painfully strained and far too little too late. It doesn’t help that the dance sequence is immediately followed up by a back-alley attempt at relevance that is so hamfisted it bypasses laughable and goes straight to depressing. When critics complain about pretentious bourgeois drivel, THE SALT OF TEARS is what they’re talking about. What purpose this movie could serve is beyond me.

Far more successful is the much anticipated new film from Christian Petzold, UNDINE. This one is, perhaps unsurprisingly, another twisty and enigmatic story from Petzold, whose last two films, PHOENIX and TRANSIT, have positioned him as both an heir to Hitchcock and an international sensation with the critics. UNDINE doesn’t disappoint. It’s refreshingly unpredictable and leaves you with an intricately rendered puzzle to play with, even though its pleasures are perhaps less immediate than Petzold’s previous two.

The story is of the tragic romance variety, between the historian Undine (Paula Beer, winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actress), who lectures on Berlin’s architectural and city-planning history, and an industrial diver Christoph (Franz Rogowski), who repairs the city’s underwater infrastructure. Early on, Christoph takes Undine for a dive in the river and shows us that her name is written on an old wall, perhaps put there a hundred years ago. There are many questions about the mysterious Undine and very little in the way of definitive answers. Nevertheless, as timeless love stories go, this one is pretty satisfying and it is fun to come up with your own theories on Undine’s backstory. My guess is that UNDINE will continue to deepen and reveal itself with repeat viewings.

Berlinale 70 — CB Dispatch II (Siberia, My Little Sister, Hope, Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Woman Who Ran)

There’s only a couple of days left for premiers in the Competition section, while in just the last few days nine films have been screened for critics. I haven’t yet had a chance to catch all of them (there are other sections that demand attention, after all), but I’ll share some thoughts on what I have seen.

Let’s start with one of the more divisive films of the competition, Abel Ferrara’s SIBERIA. The movie starts with Ferrara’s go-to leading man of the past decade, Willem Dafoe, tending bar out in the middle of some snowy wilderness. (His isolated tavern makes Minnie’s Haberdashery look like Cheers.) But we soon realize that nothing in SIBERIA should be taken too literally. What we’re really witnessing is Dafoe’s character, Clint, navigating his way through an emotional Siberia. The basement of the tavern contains nightmarish visions, a biter alter ego, and a bottomless pit of despair. So Clint sets out on his dog sled and begins to confront memories of his father, mother, ex-wife and his own childhood. It’s a heady trip, to say the least, but I found it to be rather fascinating and, at times, disarmingly funny -- not to mention beautifully shot.

I wasn’t expecting Ferrara to suddenly come out with his ERASERHEAD at this stage in his long and storied career, but I'll celebrate it as a minor miracle that this oddity managed to be made and released. One critic has dismissed it as “commercially irresponsible,” to which I say, Amen! Ferrara appears to be exercising his own demons in SIBERIA and I take it as a positive sign that something so personal, artistic, and in defiance of current trends, is being screened at Berlinale -- in the Competition section no less! Long live cinema.

Meanwhile, two more German films have premiered: SCHWESTERLEIN (MY LITTLE SISTER), by Stephanie Chaut and Veronique Reymond, and a new take on BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ by director Burhan Qurbani. SCHWESTERLEIN features two of Germany’s brightest stars: Nina Hoss (a regular in Christian Petzold’s films) and Lars Eidinger (who can be seen in “Babylon Berlin” and some of Oliver Assayas’s recent films). Both of the leads offer strong performances, playing twins who are coping with the fact that Eidinger’s Sven has cancer and may not have long to live.

Unfortunately, SCHWESTERLEIN doesn’t offer much more than a few choice scenes for the actors to dig into. The film's shortcomings are especially apparent since this year’s Berlinale also features a Norwegian cancer drama HÅP (HOPE), playing in the Panorama section, that digs much deeper into the relationship and familial challenges that come with receiving a cancer diagnosis. As good as Hoss and Eidinger are, I preferred the more complex dynamics between HÅP’s unmarried couple, brilliantly played by Andrea Bræin Hovig and Stellan Skarsgård.

Far more surprising is Burhan Qurbani’s BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, which revises the original 1929 story to the modern day, making the central character a refugee, instead of a German man emerging from a long jail sentence. Cinephiliacs will likely be familiar with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s monumental 15-plus hour television epic, and Günter Lamprecht’s central performance as Franz Biberkopf. This time we have Francis (Welket Bungue), a West African refugee, who gets roped into selling drugs in a Berlin park by the low-level criminal Reinhold (Albrecht Schuh). Eventually, Reinhold does rechristen Francis as a proper German with a proper German name, Franz.

Despite the unenviable task of being compared to one of Fassbinder’s major works, this three-hour modern retelling is bold, ambitious, well-written, well-acted and visually interesting. Schuh’s version of Reinhold starts off distractingly indebted to Joaquin Phoenix (à la THE MASTER) but he manages to make the character his own and practically steal the show by the time it's over. It’s not exactly an easy movie to get through but it does feel vital and alive. There is no shortage of Berlin-based movies, but few capture the city the way this one does.

Finally, I’ll briefly mention a charming highlight of the Competition section: Hong Sangsoo’s DOMANGCHIN YEOJA (THE WOMAN WHO RAN). Fans of Sangsoo will know to expect a film that leans heavily on dialog and character development. But this one is an especially clever script that breaks the minimal-to-non-existent plot down to a few conversations between Kim Minhee’s character, Gamhee, and three other women that she encounters while on a rare break from her husband. In each conversation we gradually learn about these modern Korean women and their relationships with the men in their lives.

So far, Hong Sangsoo’s film is the only one to elicit a spontaneous round of applause from the audience. And it had to do with a particularly hilarious conversation about cats, and one of Sangsoo’s choice uses of a camera zoom in the film. Indeed, a truly memorable highlight of this year’s festival.

Berlinale 70 — CB Dispatch III (Irradiates, Sow the Wind, The Assistant, The Roads Not Taken)

The 70th edition of the Berlinale film festival wraps up this weekend, and as it always does, it ends with Sunday’s “Publikumstag,” where many of the best films from the different sections will get a final screening at venues across the city. Even after catching over twenty films this year, I’ll be trying to fill in some gaps on Saturday and Sunday as well. So I’ll offer some suggestions in the form of films I can personally vouch for, as well as a few buzz-worthy ones that I haven’t seen.

Of course, the Golden Bear for best film is being awarded on Saturday. I’m terrible at gambling, but if I had to guess which film would take the top honor, I’d go with IRRADIES (IRRADIATES), the latest art-film/documentary from Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh. The movie is a devastating and unflinching look at the atrocities of war in the twentieth century, specifically the mass killings that took place in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime, the Holocaust of WWII, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It goes without saying that this is a challenging film, but Panh is a masterful filmmaker and artist, so this isn’t your ordinary talking-head documentary. For much of the time the screen is split into a horizontal triptych -- three symmetrical sections that add to the power of the images and help draw the connections between Japan, Cambodia and Europe. There is also a haunting score and poetic voiceover work from a man and woman who sometimes seem to be communicating with one another, and other times seem to be the voice of Panh, speaking directly to the audience. This is definitely a cinematic experience you won’t soon forget, and likely a film people will be talking about for years to come.

If you’re after something less overwhelming, I also enjoyed the Italian film, SEMINA IL VENTO (SOW THE WIND), from the Panorama section. The movie, by director Danilo Caputo, is about a young woman, Nica (Yile Yara Vianello), who returns home from her studies as an agronomist, only to find that the family’s long-held olive trees are at risk of being destroyed. The problem is, an invasive insect is killing olive trees throughout the area. And while Nica’s father wants to accept government subsidy to have the trees removed, Nica wants to save the trees by finding and introducing the bug’s natural predator.

One of the most impressive things about SOW THE WIND is its sound design, particularly the very special way in which it captures the sounds of trees. There is a deep undercurrent of rural folklore and the spirit world running through the film, and it causes the softly groaning sounds of swaying trees take on new meaning. Plus, there is a very talented black bird in the film (who may or may not be the spirit of Nica’s dead grandmother) that challenges the cat in THE WOMAN WHO RAN for the festival’s best animal performance.

Also in the Panorama section is THE ASSISTANT, a film that is very much attuned to the #MeToo movement in its depiction of the everyday traumas experienced by a female assistant working at a film production company. It captures a single day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner, who you may recognize from the Netflix show “Ozarks”), as she tries to endure an increasing amount of humiliations that are sometimes subtle, and sometimes not. The film, by Kitty Green (UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL), is all about the details, and there is a scene between Jane and a human resources guy that is among the more heartbreaking moments of the festival.

THE ASSISTANT was one of the films to enter Berlinale with a considerable amount of buzz from this year’s Sundance -- as was NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS, which is another film competing for the Golden Bear that I will finally catch up with this weekend. This one, by director Eliza Hittman (BEACH RATS), is about two teenage girls traveling from Pennsylvania to New York in order to get an abortion. From what I’ve heard, this is a powerful character study with a couple of amazing performances at its center.

Over the past week, critics have consistently mentioned NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS as being a favorite. But DAU. NATASHA, on the other hand, has both its champions and detractors -- yet it’s been getting enough buzz that it seems to be another top contender for the Golden Bear. This is, by all accounts, a boldly provocative work that deals with the Soviet brand of totalitarianism, its secret ambitions, and its pervasive, lingering effects. What’s more, this just happens to be one part of a project that includes the nearly six-hour art film DAU. DEGENERATSIA, which is also having its final screenings this weekend.

Finally, if you’re looking for something more mainstream (perhaps something to take mom or dad to), I enjoyed Sally Potter’s latest, THE ROADS NOT TAKEN. This stars Javier Bardem as an author in the grips of dementia, and Elle Fanning as the daughter he left behind when she was just a child. In trying to look after her ailing father, Fanning is caring for and maybe bonding with a man her mother has long written off. What’s interesting is that we’re also uncovering a mystery in Bardem’s past as his character flashes back to a couple of different points in his life, some of which cleverly parallels bits of Homer’s “Odyssey.” Ultimately, this is a brief movie that’s over in less than 90 minutes, but I found the central relationship to be rather touching (I may be a sucker for movies about kids trying to connect with their messed-up dads), and I was also impressed with Potter’s own jazzy score for the film.

Berlinale 70 — Final Thoughts (DAU. Natasha, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Delete History, Shirley, The Trouble With Being Born)

While I didn’t catch up with all the movies I would have liked to, I did pack a significant amount into the last few days of the festival. The highlight was perhaps Effacer EFFACER L’HISTORIQUE (DELETE HISTORY), a brilliantly anarchic French comedy by Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern. I suppose Berlinale has a reputation for being light on comedy. Without a doubt, this year seemed especially heavyhearted — perhaps for good reason — so it is a testament to DELETE HISTORY that it crammed about four movies worth of laughs into one, and yet is also socially conscious enough to fit right in with the rest of the Competition titles.

DELETE HISTORY is almost like an old ZAZ movie (AIRPLANE!, TOP SECRET!) in that it is brazenly anti-realist and goes non-stop in its pursuit of jokes and visual gags. The slim storyline is that we’re following three people as their lives fall apart in the age of surveillance capitalism and the gig economy. Eventually they decide to track down a hacker (who lives in a wind turbine) to help them fight the power, but things of course don’t go as planned.

Yes, the film is absurd, but we are living in a completely absurd time. Throughout Berlinale I was at press screenings filled with people who found it seemingly impossible to spend 90 minutes away from their devices. These people drove me nuts, but rather than mock these people, DELETE HISTORY sympathizes with those who know they’re being trapped, exploited and dehumanized, and finally decide to opt out. At one point, one of the characters dives her car into the middle of a roundabout, climbs on top of it and screams. In fact, the whole film feels like a much needed primal scream in the face of our current absurd reality. As an added bonus the soundtrack to the film is like a greatest hits collection of Daniel Johnston songs. Yes, this movie is fucking punk rock.

There was also some dark humor to be had in SHIRLEY, a fine, bitter pill of a biopic on Shirley Jackson, the author of such macabre books as The Haunting of Hill House. SHIRLEY follows the current trend of such biopics as 3 DAYS IN QUIBERON, SEBERG and JACKIE, by wisely focusing on one particular time in the life of its subject, rather than attempting the old cradle-to-grave approach. Here it’s the time leading up to Jackson’s 1951 book Hangsaman, when the author was living in the college town of Bennington, Vermont, and was inspired by the recent disappearance of a female student.

More than anything else, SHIRLEY plays out like a riff on WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF, which involves a young couple getting sucked into the psychosexual dramas of a bitter middle-aged college professor and his boozy wife. This is exactly what happens here, with Jackson (a perfectly cast Elisabeth Moss) and her professor husband (Michael Shulberg) playing host to a young couple newly arrived to town. While this movie doesn’t come anywhere near Mike Nichols’s directorial debut, it' does add some interesting wrinkles about the creative process and the role codependency can play within it. Director Josephine Decker (MADELINE’S MADELINE) continues to show keen insight into the messier aspects of human creativity, and I’m hopeful this one will provide her with more opportunities to further explore these themes.

One of the films to come away with a Special Jury Award was THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN, which was in the new Encounters section. Directed by Sandra Wollner, this German film is indeed troubling on many levels. Expanding upon premises that have shown up in the Kubrick/Spielberg mix-up A.I., the recent “Westworld” TV show, EX MACHINA, BLADE RUNNER, and others I’m probably forgetting, THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN takes a disturbing look at what might happen if we replaced our lost loved ones with robots. In particular, it asks, what if the person was a dad who lost a daughter and had some seriously messed up ways of coping?

Eventually, our robot protagonist parts ways with her “dad” and finds a new home filling in for a different lost love. But, like some of the robots in “Westworld,” the robot is plagued with nagging bits of data from their past life. This is all interesting enough on paper — what was truly bugging me was that the narrative of the story was chopped and shuffled for reasons that weren’t enlightening or helpful at all. I understand that this may have been in an effort to reflect the disjointed memory of the robot, but really it just made everything needlessly muddled.

But perhaps more frustrating was the dim cinematography — which is especially befuddling since others have praised the camerawork. All I found was one dim, flatly lit scene after another. Particularly head-scratching (or eye-squinting) was a scene at dusk (or dawn?) of our pedo dad searching for his robot, and while we linger on his face all we can make out are a couple of vague shadows of a head and some tree branches. Maybe the featureless face was supposed to mean something but all I could think of is why couldn’t we get someone with a reflector board to bounce some light up into that face? There’s an ongoing problem in German cinema with movies looking like TV shows (see: SCHWESTERLEIN), and with the current trend of American TV shows being dimly lit in a mistaken effort to create “mood,” the accolades being given to THE TROUBLE BEING BORN don’t bode well.

Fortunately, the final weekend also featured two impressive and deeply impactful movies. First was DAU. NATASHA, which didn’t fail to live up to its controversial reputation. It is indeed a difficult movie to sit through, as we spend a lot of time with drunk people yelling at each other, deliberately pushing each other’s buttons, and on one occasion engage in graphic sloppy sex. This is all before the disturbing prison interrogation sequence.

Like SIBERIA and IRRADIATES, this one had a fair amount of walkouts, with one woman turning around on her way to the exit to shout, “This should be happening to him! This is 2020!” It’s an understandable statement, but one that also misses the point, I believe. Another critic complained that the movie felt like intellectual wankery — suggesting that the filmmakers knew nothing of the history of Russian prisons. But to me, it felt all too real. In my limited knowledge on the subject of Stalin-era prison interrogations, what goes down in DAU. NATASHA is relatively tame, yet accurate. To paraphrase the narrator in IRRADIATES, this is some terrible shit that happened quite recently in our history, and we shouldn’t forget about it because it’s all too likely that it could happen again (if it isn’t already).

A month after the fact, I’m still not sure if I would recommend DAU. NATASHA to anyone, but I am deeply impressed with it as a cinematic art project. In fact, I’m sad that I didn’t find the time for the six-hour DAU. DEGENERATION, which sounded like it was more outrageous and less upsetting.

My last movie at the 70th Berlinale was NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS, a beautiful movie that deserves every bit of praise it has been receiving (it took home this year’s Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize). With amazing performances from the two main actors Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, this is realist cinema at its finest and for a good cause. It follows a high schooler, Autumn (Flanigan) and her cousin Skylar (Ryder) as they travel from small town Pennsylvania to big city New York in order to get Autumn’s unwanted pregnancy terminated.

While NRSA handles the subject matter with admirable sensitivity, it also looks at a young female friendship and life in rural America in a way few movies have. Generally speaking, I’m a bit tired of the usual brand of realism that gets shown on film, as it is often focused on familiar relationship dramas between people of a certain relatable age and income bracket. And, when these movies try to sound like “real people” talking, it’s often obnoxious or boring as hell (in its own extreme way, DAU. NATASHA revels in the tedium of realist dialog). NRSA avoids many of these pitfalls by observing people that are often dismissed and focusing more on what isn’t being said than on what’s coming out of the characters’ mouths. It’s a credit to the acting and the directing that so much of the experience of NRSA is in the silent gestures and in the heads of these characters — and there’s a lot going on there.

Until next year (fingers crossed)…

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I’ll try to get some reviews up for the few Berlinale films that went unmentioned here (like the amazing BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS), and for recent press screenings for films that are now caught in limbo. On the bright side, my productivity seems to have benefitted from this strangeness.

[noise-rm]

Synichi Yamamoto, Seiichi Sega & Intercity-Express "Noesis" project concept from OMNIBUS JAPAN on Vimeo.

In 2013, Syinichi Yamamoto was engaged in the project of "The Movements" which focused on visualization of big data. "The Movements" was created for the spherical display "Geo-Cosmos" installed at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation as part of the permanent exhibition:- omnibusjp.com/supersymmetry/research/project_3.html

In 2015, 2 years after the completion of "The Movements", he started the production of a 3D fulldome film entitled "The Man from the 9 Dimensions" which was released in 2016 and is been screened at the Dome Theater Gaia at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation ever since. He was in charge of the visualization of scientific concepts about superstring theory in theoretical physics and was also in charge of thevisual direction of the film:- omnibusjp.com/supersymmetry/research/project_7.html

Science and art have been getting closer in media art scene. Visualization of data and visualization of wave shapes has been actively pursued. As an extension of the above-mentioned 2 projects which focused on data visualization and visualization of scientific concepts, the project of "Noesis" represents philosophical concept visualization which visualizes the concept and thoughts of the origins of Nature, the Universe and all things from the perspective of art.

The whole duration of the work is 30mins with each track having its own theme such as: Each track with total length of 30-min has its own theme such as "view point reversal", "position invalidation", "elemental particle", "time", etc., but on track 04 "Emerging Design", the concept of "trajectory of moments" is featured as the main theme of the project as a whole which follows the trajectory of time.

Dimitris Kontopoulos, a science curator with whom Synichi has been collaborating since 2016 participated in making the concept of this project. Tetsuji Ohno (Intercity-Express) who has continued to collaborate with Synichi helped him to create the sound design of the 8 tracks.

For 3D visualization in high resolution, Seiichi Sega (superSymmetry) also participated in this project and provided not only drawings of computer generated images by physics calculations, but interactive performances using TouchDesigner.

- Premiere screening at MUTEK.JP: Because the main venue of MUTEK.JP held in 2017 was the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, we decided to create a version of "Noesis" which would be highly optimized to the 3D fulldome system of the Museum’s Dome Theater Gaia, so that viewers can enjoy an audio visual performance of the project under the specifications of the 3D dome system to the fullest extent.

山本信一は2013年に科学データに基づいたデータビジュアライゼーション作品「軌跡～The Movements」を手掛けました。 この作品は、日本科学未来館の球体ディスプレイ「ジオ・コスモス」の常設コンテンツで、球体映像作品です。 omnibusjp.com/supersymmetry/research/project_3.html

そして、ビッグデータの可視化に取り組んだ「軌跡～The Movements」の2年後の2015年から制作を開始し、2016年に日本科学未来館のドームシアターガイアで公開された３Dフルドーム作品「9次元からきた男」に参加し、理論物理学の超ひも理論をテーマにした科学概念の可視化やビジュアルディレクションを担当しました。 omnibusjp.com/supersymmetry/research/project_7.html

メディアアートシーンではサイエンスとアートが近づき、データや音の波形などのビジュアライゼーションが積極的にされてきましたが、本作はデータビジュアライゼーションや科学の概念を可視化した先の２つの作品の延長上で、今度はアート的視点から自然や宇宙、万物の根源を考えた時の概念、思想を視覚化したフィロソフィ　ビジュアライゼーション（philosophical concept visualization）作品（※）です。

トータル30分を構成する各トラックでは、それぞれ“視点の逆転”“位置の無効化”“素粒子”“時間”などをテーマにしながら、全体では、トラック04の「Emerging Design」でフューチャーしたコンセプトである”瞬間の堆積”が描き出す、時間が描く軌跡の形状をこの作品トータルの大きなメインテーマにしています。

2016年からサイエンスキュレーター・デミトリス　コドプロス氏（Mr. Dimitris Kontopoulos）とコンセプトでコラボレーションしながら、サウンドデザインでは継続的にコラボレーションをしているIntercity-Express（大野哲二氏）と8つのトラックで構成しました。

また、高解像度の3Dビジュアライズでは瀬賀誠一(superSymmetry)も参加し、物理演算によるCGイメージの描画だけでなくTouchDesignerのインタラクティブパフォーマンスを行ないました。 ※フィロソフィ　ビジュアライゼーション・・・この場合の「フィロソフィ」は、万物の根源のあり方や原理を追究して得られた知識や経験、人生観を指す。

-MUTEK.JPでのプレミア公開。 2017年に開催されたMUTEK.JPのメイン会場が日本科学未来館であったため、同館の有するドームシアターガイアの３Dドームシステムに最適化されたバージョンで、ドームのスペックを最良に体感できるオーディビジュアルパフォーマンスを計画し、公開しました。

Credit

Art work by Synichi Yamamoto + Seiichi Sega & Intercity-Express Concept and Creative Director Synichi Yamamoto Music Tetsuji Ohno（Intercity-Express） Visual Creation and Creative Technologist Seiichi Sega Concept Collaboration Dimitris Kontopoulous Digital Artist °F,Takuya Aoki,Yumiko Kasahara Sound System Technical Ryouta Wada Sound Mix Engineer Kiyoshi Okabe (Montreal version) VR Salon: Immersive Realities Curated by Maurice Jones Visual Producer Masakazu Kagami Public Relations Kumiko Inutake Co-Development Research Miraikan × OMNIBUS JAPAN INC.

Special Thanks to MUTEK Japan (Shuichiro Iwanami, Junichi Takekawa, Maurice Jones, Hanae Tamura）

Thanks to Tohokushinsha Film Corporation （Mina Ohara, Ami Mochizuki, Tadashi Uchiike） MUTEK / MUTEK MX / Miraikan / Shinjuku Creators Festa / Société des arts technologiques / JAPAN FOUDATION / Embassy of Canada to Japan / TFC plus

omnibusjp.com/supersymmetry/works/2018_1

©Miraikan ©MUTEK.JP / Ryu Kasai / Shigeo Gomi