S K Y L A R K I N G: 3D Movies

Showing posts with label 3D Movies. Show all posts

Monday, September 12, 2011

STAR TREK AT 45

So Thursday was the 45th anniversary of the debut of Star Trek. The first episode aired June 8th, 1966 on NBC. I was one year old and eight months at the time. So, seeing as how I am older than Star Trek, in honour of its birthday I will put it in a headlocks and give it a noogie until it cries uncle.

Seriously, I love Star Trek and I have for as long as I can remember. I feel I should take this opportunity too say a few words about something that has been with me all of my life.

I know this is going to sound like some kind of confessional at an AA meeting or something:

Hello. My name is Mike and I am a Trekkie.

I've been watching Star Trek for as long as I can remember. I got hooked because of the animated series, believe it or not (TAS as a gateway drug to TOS?). I watched the original STar Trek through faded and badly spliced film versions through the video versions, the restored and remastered versions with the new CGI effects.

I stood in line for all the movies, and was excited for all of them, especially the last one. I watched all the Star Trek series from The Next Generation all the way through to Enterprise (which I didn't really like until its final season when it got unceremoniously cancelled),

When I was a kid I collected all the James Blish novelizations, I read many of the Star Trek novels from Pcoket books, I collected the Star Trek blueprints, arts books, the "making of" books, calendars and photonovels. I have even watched many of the Star Trek fan films which range from excellent to gadawful. I have watched all of James Cawley's Star Trek Phase 2 videos that have been released so far and I am still looking forward to more. This is how much of a Star Trek junkie I am.

Star Trek has now gone back to the beginning (sort of) with JJ Abram's STAR TREK. I am hoping the sequels will at leas live up to if not surpass that film.

Star Trek and I have grown up together. We kind of are like brothers. Sometimes my brother is really cool and amazing and sometimes he's dorky and cheeseball and sometimes he is just plain bad. None of that matters. Just like a brother, I love Star Trek no matter what. I probably always will. I am never happier or more content then when I am watching Star Trek.

Through thick and thin, through smash hits and through complete duds, I am a trekkie and likely will be one until the day I die.

I've been here and there. I've drawn a lot of pictures. I've written a bit, too. I'm not good at this self-promotion thing. Look, you want to know about me? just visit these websites. Okay?
www.mdjacksonart.weebly.com
http://mdjackson.deviantart.com
http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/mdjacksons%5Fportfolio

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

A PRINCESS OF MARS - THE MOVIE?

I finished re-reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' A PRINCESS OF MARS. As you may recall I found this copy at a garage sale a couple of weeks back and I have been reading it off and on since. I have not read the book since I was about thirteen years old.

At first I was surprised about how much of the book I remembered. That lasted up until about the third chapter. I'm not sure if that is because the earlier chapters made such an impression on me at thirteen or whether it was because I had read so many comic book adaptations after the fact. Either way, after chapter three it was like reading a whole new book.

Naturally, as I was reading it, I was keeping in mind that it is being adapted into a huge spectacle of a film by Andrew Stanton at Disney. We've seen the teaser trailer and I've read descriptions of some of the completed scenes that jive more or less with the book as written.

The book has many great action sequences that will translate well to film (in fact most of the best scenes from the book have already been filmed, but as parts of other SF and fantasy movies -- yes, I'm talking to you, George Lucas!).

Well, I know the movie will be what it will be, but there is one thing that I know and that is this: The movie that played in my head as I was reading the book will never be filmed. The book will also never be filmed faithfully, at least not by a major studio and that is for one reason only: the characters in the book are all buck naked. John Carter, Deja Thoris, the Tharks, the Zodongans, the Heliumites, every single denizen of Barsoom is described in no uncertain terms as being naked as the day they were born. How could a major studio (let a lone Disney!) ever be able to release a film where the entire cast had to be "tackle-out" for the entire film?

Even the illustrators, including Frank Frazetta, gave way to modesty and covered the characters up, even if some depictions only had their privates covered or obscured.

So, unless the porn industry were to take a stab at it (Sasha Grey as Deja Thoris?), there will never be a completely faithful adaptaiton of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A PRINCESS OF MARS. Such an adaptation would cause quite the scandal today. Maybe something like it could have been attempted in the early seventies, but not today in these prudish times. Imagine if Ralph Bakshi had tried it -- an x-rated animated adaptation? Every scene would have had nudity and many of the sequences would have been quite bloody, as Burroughs describes them.

Perhaps Ralph Bakshi's A PRINCESS OF MARS is the cult classic that never happened, but perhaps should have.

Friday, August 26, 2011

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE GAME OF SHADOWS

You know, I really liked the first one and I am really looking forward to the sequel.

Well, at least it'll be something to do between Christmas and New Years.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

BORN ON A BATTLEFIELD

You know, when you hear that Conan was born on a battlefield that sound really cool. It sounds metaphorical and menacing. But when you see it depicted on the screen it's... well it's kind of dumb.

At least that's how it struck me in Conan the Barbarian which I saw last night.

My first disappointment with the film was that my local theater wasn't showing it in 3D. There's only one 3D equipped theater in our local 4-plex and that was reserved for Spy Kids. My second disappointment was Morgan Freeman as the narrator. Now, don't get me wrong... I love Morgan Freeman, but, for God's sake, the man narrates EVERYTHING! And to be honest I kind of missed the narration that Mako did in 1982's Conan the Barbarian.

Then there was the macguffin of the One Ring that Sauron forged to enslave all of Middle Earth and... No... no, sorry that's wrong. It was the Mask of Acheron that Acheron used to enslave all of Hyboria. Yeah, that's it. And the elves... sorry, barbarians... defeated Saur... uh... Acheron and shattered the mask and hid all the pieces across the land.

Okay. So now we're in Cimmeria and we see young Conan as a sullen pre-teen. And there are the raiders just like in the 1982 film. I thought this wasn't supposed to be a remake, but here we go. Oh, wait... kid Conan kills them all? Cool! Maybe this will be different.

No, wait, here are more raiders, a whole buttload of them and they're led by a wacked-out warlord who is looking for something. So... this is a remake? No? Yes? I don't know.

You know, once the movie got over itself, once the plot started going (Zym wants Tamara, Conan wants to kill Zym and keep Tamara safe) it was not a bad as action flicks go. If they hadn't tried to do all that Conan origin stuff, tried to shoehorn Zym into the Thulsa Doom role, if it had just been a sequel -- say, CONAN AND THE MASK OF ACHERON -- it would have been a decent action flick about on the level with the old Ray Harryhousen SINBAD movies (movies which I loved as a kid and still love).

Jason Momoa is closer to Robert E. Howard's Conan than Arnold was, but this movie does not have the sturm and drang that John Milius's film did. It felt like it was trying to generate it but it just couldn't. It shouldn't have bothered.

Conan the Barbarian, far from being the epic Conan film that Robert E. Howard fans wanted, is a second rate action film. What would Robert E. Howard himself have thought of it?

He probably would have thought that it was a lot of hokum.

If you have the cash, see it, but try to see it in 3D. It will probably be better that way. If cash is tight, wait for the video.