Today's News: bunch of trailers & bunch of Razzies

So far I have succeeded in my goal to post at least one bit of news on MS every day. Here are the most recent results of that:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158620/nieuwe_trailer_avengers_age_of_ultron

Age of Ultron definitely promises to be a darker movie than the much more lighthearted and cheerful first Marvel ensemble movie that preceded it. Makes sense, in this universe of ramifications and consequences. The general audience probably hasn't kept close track of events as much as the legions of fans have (myself included), but the current state of affairs in the MCU is no cause for more playful superhero shenanigans. Serious stuff has gone down, you know. S.H.I.E.L.D. is in shambles, HYDRA has its tentacles firmly in place wherever there are power bases of mankind to be found, Loki secretly rules Asgard and Iron Man has lost most of his fortune, respect and technology. And then there's those various Avengers we haven't heard from for the least three years, not to mention several new names in their roster to shake things up. Obviously, these people have a lot on their plate and Joss Whedon has no intention of making things too easy for them. The shit is going to hit the fan and previously mounted tensions will erupt. From the look of things, Iron Man will have to take the blow of most of it, after his plan of creating artificial peacekeepers goes horribly awry and the rest of the team has to clean up his mess. However, as per the comic book lore, it seems the team will have to worry about their unpredictable and uncontrollable comrade the Hulk the most. Whatever the outcome, the team will be shaken up severely and it's conceivable that for every new member introduced, a veteran will step down. And we wouldn't have it any other way, since such dramatic results make the MCU the ever interesting place that is.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158629/remake_escape_from_new_york_van_start

This project has been in the works for many years, though it can't be said a lot of actual work was done on it. I'm not surprised it still will happen one day though. This movie has a definite high concept but is obscure enough for the general audience not to be aware of its status as a remake. And it has some clear franchise potential, allowing the main character to escape from other places once he's out of New York in any number of follow-ups. I'm glad originator John Carpenter is involved to some extent, though I know full well 'executive producer' and 'creative influence' can mean any number of things, many of which are not as involving as they sound. I'm pretty sure this remake isn't going to be anywhere near as gritty and grimy as its predecessor. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the studio notched the rating down from R to PG-13, so as to reach a wider audience for that franchise they're aiming for. Too bad, but I can live with it. I'm more interested in how this new dystopian future of theirs is going to play out. The bleak future from the original's 1997 has come and gone and it happily proved not to be as bad as advertized. Nevertheless, there's ample social anxieties in the present to capitalize on and I hope Carpenter will utilize his 'creative influence' steadily enough to ensure this new future is gonna be dirty and rotten but still a heck of a lot of over-the-top fun, as it proved in 1981.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158596/trailers_nieuwe_series_the_messengers_en_izombie

Ignoring the trailer for The Messengers, which looks like typically ludicrous Christian Apocalyptic drivel, I have to ask what's up with the current trend of making the naturally abject notion of a walking cannibal corpse a thing to be romanced and sexualized? I can understand how that works for those other undead in popular fiction, the vampires, since they're normally not in a state of decomposition and generally use their powers of hypnotism to sexually lure their victims in for their blood, which can result in a lot of sultry sex. But a rotting body hellbent on devouring brains simply ought not to be sexy, which clearly doesn't stop folks from fantasizing about it and making TV shows out of it. I gotta say, with the right blend of relative humour the concept can work, as was evidenced in the fairly hilarious Warm Bodies. Can it work over a prolonged period of time rather than a two hour movie though? iZombie will have to prove it can. I gotta say, the female protagonist sure does look cute despite being dead. The zombies in this show clearly aren't as far gone physically as the majority of their cinematic brethren. Then again, the trailer suggests the main zombie is a bit of an anomaly, as she also has kept her ability to reason. That makes the whole zombie element of the show seem a lot less alarming. Her ongoing drive for consuming human flesh apparently isn't as strongly developed, as a job at the coroner suffices to keep that necessary flow of brains coming. Or there are much more people killed in town than ought to be usual, perhaps. I hope the struggle for humanity in the deteriorating zombie brain is gonna be handled as consistently and convincingly as the skeptic would demand, rather than the show quickly devolving into a buddy cop routine or an all-out romantic comedy, as the trailer also indicates could very well be the case.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158630/michael_bay_films_grote_kanshebber_razzies

Few surprises here. It seems ripping on Michael Bay's movies - though often justified - is simply the socially expected and obligatory rather than the objective thing to do. As usual, the GRAF makes little secret of her disdain for the movies and actors she disses (though most of them deservedly so). When you list a title as 'Age of Ex-stink-tion', you can't be said to refrain from any emotional bias. I guess that just comes with an Award foundation that doesn't treat the movies it nominates, or itself for that matter, any serious. Maybe a more objective and refined sort of Worst Movies award foundation is in order to properly serve as a balance for the Oscar circus. Not that the likes of Michael Bay would care much: this particular object of movie mockery doesn't worry in the least about any damage to his reputation the Razzies may cause, considering his ongoing success at the boxoffice still has made him filthy rich and powerful in Tinsel Town. However, I would like to see some Razzie nominations that don't include Bay, Adam Sandler or Jennifer Aniston for a change. I guess the new category of Razzie Redeemers at least is a step in the right direction of the GRAF preventing making too strongly a mockery of itself.

And I'll also take a shot at predicting the winners:

Worst Movie: Transformers 4: Age of Extinction

Worst Actor: Adam Sandler / Blended

Worst Actress:  Cameron Diaz / The Other Woman en Sex Tape

Worst Supporting Actress: Nicola Peltz / Transformers: Age of Extinction

Worst Supporting Actor:  Kelsey Grammer / Expendables 3, Legends of Oz, Think Like a Man Too en Transformers: Age of Extinction

Worst Director: Michael Bay / Transformers: Age of Extinction

Worst Screen Combo: Transformers: Age of Extinction

Worst Script: Transformers: Age of Extinction / Ehren Kruger

Worst Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel: Annie

RAZZIE REDEEMER AWARD: Ben Affleck (from GIGLI to ARGO and GONE GIRL)

Snake Plissken in space

Lockout: ***/*****, or 7/10

The contemporary major Hollywood studios are not known for their originality. The abundance of sequels, reboots, remakes, reimaginings and the like, all for the purpose of building marketable and easily exploitable franchises, allows little room for any well conceived fresh ideas to swing into full production and hit theaters. New ideas seemingly remain the province of the smaller independent studios circling Hollywood, often praised for their “European” attitude towards intriguing scripts and securing finance for their smaller scaled but emotionally more elaborate set-up. However, in truth the European sensibility isn't much different at all, as proven by the European 'major' Luc Besson, who is well known for producing dynamic motion pictures similar in style and substance to their American counterparts, in typically American genres like action and science fiction. While Besson has skillfully directed a fair amount of superb European genre movies that were also accessible to overseas audiences, like Léon (1994) and The Fifth Element (1997), many of the movie projects he takes under his wing as a producer are less original. So when the credits of Lockout reveal the film was 'based on an original idea by Luc Besson', such a statement has to be taken with a grain of salt, considering the film is a highly derivative product of other movies, chief among them John Carpenter's classic Escape from New York (1981).

'In the not too distant future, a disgraced soldier is charged with a secret mission to retrieve a person of importance from an out-of-control maximum security prison, where utter lawlessness rules as the inmates are in control.' An apt short synopsis for Escape from New York, as easily applicable to Lockout. Main differences being that the prison in the former is located on Manhattan, walled off from the rest of the world, while in the latter it's literally off-world as the prison is located on a giant space station called MS One. The identity of the people in need of rescue from the clutches of the depraved prisoners are also a close match, but not quite identical. In Escape from New York the mission objective is the United States President, who very conveniently ended up in the worst place on Earth, the last place where he would want to find himself in, considering the deplorable prison is ironically the result of his administration. In Lockout, the honor of ending up in the worst place off Earth is reserved for his daughter Emilie (played by Maggie Grace of Lost fame (back when Lost hadn't written itself to death yet in a plethora of extremely convoluted plot twists, which is the exact opposite of Lockout's seemingly lazy writing process)), who chose to go up to MS One on a bleeding heart PR-trip to make sure the inmates are treated nicely. They're not of course, and when all hell breaks loose as they escape their stasis cells, the First Daughter will pay the price for the penitentiary's faults, if the escapees find out her true identity.

The stage is set, the victim is chosen and the battle lines between the angry convicts and the incompetent authorities are drawn. Enter a lone rogue, suckered into saving the government official from certain death with freedom as his reward. In Escape from New York, the rogue dispatched to enter the hell hole was called Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a one-eyed ex-special forces agent done with doing government chores, turning to an outlaw life instead so he didn't have to take crap from nobody no more, armed with a general 'fuck you' attitude and whatever guns he can his hands on. It proved to be a singularly badass character, good for a sequel with an all too similar plot, Escape from L.A. (1996). Lockout enters its own anti-hero, recently disgraced CIA operative Snow who is charged with murder and treason, planned to be send to MS One anyway for his alleged crimes (of which he is naturally innocent), until it occurs to his superiors deploying him to save the President's little girl is their best bet, while negotiators try to reason with the unreasonable bad guys for their hostages' lives as a diversion. So off he goes, sneaking into the facility, aiming to get out of the rampaging prisoners' claws himself as he figures out a way to smuggle his objective to safety. Snow, played enthusiastically by Guy Pearce, is a tough and cynical military man with his heart in the right place, despite being framed in an espionage plot. Of course he doesn't give a damn about the mission at first but eventually he establishes a rapport with Emilie, without the situation getting too typically mushy and sentimental (though with a hint of sexual tension due to possible romantic feelings interspersed throughout the whole, without feeling like an in-your-face love relationship, which would have felt contrived and inappropriate). Grace delivers ample witty remarks against Pearce's many rude and sexist comments, often with much needed hilarious effect to keep the film from revolving solely around the ensuing violence. Snow may not look and sound as iconic as Snake (the eye patch is sorely missed), but his relation with Emilie adds a dimension of character levity Snake had to do without. You didn't see him engage in sarcastic dialogue with the President.

Equally entertaining to behold is the ensemble of crazed psychopaths catching the brunt of Snow's wrath as he struggles for his life and Emilie's. Amongst the assorted rapists and serial killers are nightmarish men – the prisoners are all male, unfortunately: it might have been thoroughly entertaining to see what screwed up female convicts Besson and his directors could have concocted – you would only expect in extra-terrestrial prisons, devoid of any humanity, only out to ruthlessly maul people, including their fellow inmates. Most noteworthy is the original escapee, a true psycho named Hydell (Joseph Gilgun), sporting an emaciated physique, a dead eye and a bunch of creepy tattoos to go along with his already freaky stature perfectly. Emilie made the mistake of interviewing Hydell on MS One's living conditions first, resulting in the obsessive criminal spending the rest of the film trying to get his hands on her in order to perform whatever ungodly unspeakable obscenities on her if he gets the chance, while at the same time releasing the rest of the detainees. Equally menacing is his older brother Alex (Vincent Regan), who may lack Hydell's degenerate bodily qualities but makes up for it in full by being the hardest yet the most intelligent man on the station and as such the de facto leader of the villainous gang of thugs, killing everybody who would challenge his merciless rule while managing to keep his monstrous brother in check for a while longer. Alex and Hydell rule their conquered prize with an iron fist, the latter terrorizing the staff and their fellow prisoners while the former conceives a plan to get off the station alive, with poor Emilie at the heart of it, much to her dismay. All the while, Snow has to make his way through scores of similarly fucked up bad guys, one more vile and subhuman than the other, to ensure the pair of them get out in one piece. While Snow and Emilie drive the plot, it's the inhuman prisoners that supply the fun and the actors behind them that are shown to be the most capable performers in the piece. Snake Plissken apparently had it easy: most of the criminals he encountered weren't half as repulsive or unstable as the villains Snow has to face.

The one element Lockout cannot do without as much as Escape from New York couldn't, is action. Though Besson handed over the director's chair to a pair of newcomers to directing, James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, it's clear they studied their producer's flair for adrenaline packed stunts and fireworks intensively, adding yet another high voltage action flick to Besson's already explosive oeuvre, and of course to their own. Where action is concerned, the movie definitely should not had have to rely on visual effects work alone, since in many cases the CGI is of rather poor quality (still an often heard complaint in European films of a bigger budget). Though the establishing shots of the MS One space station look decent enough, the same cannot be said for a highway chase scene in the beginning of the movie, nor in a space battle between the penitentiary's defensive guns and a small fleet of fighter ships later on. The effects of both scenes are painfully reminiscent of any poorly rendered video game of the last few years and only show European effects departments still have a long way to go before they're on par with their American counterparts. On the action front, it's the close quarters fisticuffs that form the film's strength, pitching poor Pearce against an array of angry convicts, resulting in many a gun battle as well as hand to hand fights employing knifes, tools and bare hands as both parties try to viciously take each other out as gruesomely (and for the audience, desirably) as possible. Compared to visual effects in general this may look like crude technique, but it looks a whole lot more realistic than anything the computers contributed to Lockout and is sure an awful lot more fun to watch.

Overall, whatever Lockout's end credits claim, original this movie is not. In fact, a few minor dissimilarities with Escape from New York aside, it's as close to movie plot theft as you can get, apparently driven by the desire to make a few bucks off the story of an established cult classic that just won't get remade instead. However, it is all kinds of fun, both as a guilty pleasure for those aware of John Carpenter's previous addition to the genre and as a decent action flick for those who are not. Though Guy Pearce is no Kurt Russell and his agent Snow would never be a fair match for Snake, he carries the film with enough rude bravura and physical prowess as an action (anti-)hero to make us run along with him, while Maggie Grace adds an enjoyable new element to the mix as the damsel in distress who in the end takes to the fight herself as much as necessary in order to show there has been some progression on the gender front in the action genre in the last thirty years. Rookie directors Mather and Leger accomplish an excellent feat by accepting the thankless job of directing what's basically an Escape from New York rip-off but making it feel slick and adrenaline packed to such an extent the general audience won't notice and the film buffs won't care about their near sacrilegious undertaking all that much. However, Besson had better spend some time developing a truly original story for his future projects, instead of aiming to copy+paste Carpenter's sequel Escape from L.A. next. After all, you can only plagiarize so many movie plots before public opinion turns against you and you're send off to prison yourself.

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/lockout/