Showing posts with label kaiju. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kaiju. Show all posts

June 27, 2014

Fuck Yeah! PACIFIC RIM 2 Will Happen in 2017! Plus An Animated Series!


The apocalypse will be cancelled.  Again.

Pacific Rim was my favorite movie of last summer, without question.  It's in extremely heavy rotation at our house, both because we bought the blu-ray as soon as it was available and because it's been playing on HBO about 4 times a day for months now.  It's essentially become our default programming choice, whether it's watching the movie the whole way through, having something on in the background while cooking dinner or just killing 25 minutes between other activities.  Why American audiences didn't turn out for this thing in droves, (yet Transformers 4 will likely emerge as the highest grossing/most terrible movie of the summer) I will simply never understand.

Fortunately the rest of the world has much better taste than us, as Pacific Rim was a MASSIVE hit overseas. And since the release of the first film, Legendary Pictures has vacated the Warner Brothers lot and set up shop over at Universal.  Those guys could use a big franchise and it looks like Pacific Rim will be it.  Director Guillermo del Toro released this brief YouTube announcement yesterday, confirming that we will be getting an animated series as well as a second film that will hit theaters April 7, 2017.


I am absurdly happy about this.  The world of Pacific Rim is so incredibly rich and detailed that it feels as if del Toro could literally take this thing in about 50 different directions, all equally badass.  And considering how the last film ended, with all the jaegers destroyed and the kaiju breach sealed, he's beholden to very little from a story standpoint.  In fact, I kind of hope that the next film takes place another ten years in the future, with a new cast and a new status quo.  Charlie Hunnam's Raleigh Becket was easily the weakest link of the first film, but he also feels totally replaceable.  In fact, the only characters that I really NEED to see return are Mako Mori and Hannibal Chau.

I'm equally excited for this animated series which will not only continue to flesh out the universe but also hopefully attract a loyal and younger following.  Pacific Rim might have disappointed at the box office, but I suspect that it's winning over more and more fans on blu-ray (and apparently HBO).  Getting a few years worth of further stories ramping up to the next film can only be a good thing.

Long live Gypsy Danger!

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May 19, 2014

Podcast Episode 15: GODZILLA Is Amazing. The Humans, Not So Much


I really want to see Godzilla again this week.  In listening to this podcast and reading a few reviews, I suspect that we may have been a little unduly harsh on the film and that it might play much better now that I know what to expect.

In our fifteenth episode, Bart (my resident Kaiju Guru) and I might focus largely on the stuff that doesn't work in this new iteration of the character, but rest assured that there's still a lot that does work, and it works like gangbusters.  The biggest oversight of this podcast is that we fail to mention the absolutely breathtaking direction by Gareth Edwards.  He absolutely kills it, so that even in a scene like the Honolulu landfall where I care very little about the humans scurrying to and fro, the action is staged so perfectly that I'm still riveted to the screen.  Anyone who's seen Edwards' first film Monsters shouldn't be surprised that he holds back on the Kaiju mayhem for as long as humanly possible, but when he finally does let loose...HOLY FUCK.  I defy you to watch the last 20 minutes of Godzilla without cheering.

The movie had the second best opening of the year so far (trailing only Captain America: The Winter Soldier) so of course Warner Bros has already greenlit a sequel.  This can only be good news as Edwards, assuming he returns, can ditch all the deathly dull humans and double down on the King Of The Monsters.  If this movie's worst sin is that it leaves me wanting MORE Godzilla, that's a sin I can live with.

Bart and I also mull over the first peek of Ben Affleck as Batman, the deaths of H.R. Giger and Malik Bendjelloul, and the future of the X-Men as Channing Tatum steps into the spicy Cajun shoes of Gambit and Bryan Singer's Days Of Future Past potentially hits the reset button on the entire franchise over Memorial Day Weekend.






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August 19, 2013

Daley Screening Podcast: Drifting With PACIFIC RIM!


"You can always find me in the Drift."
So I realize that I'm officially WAY late to the party at this point, but I really had my heart set on doing something different for my Pacific Rim entry.  I spent a solid week live-tweeting other giant monster movies in the run up to the film's release and I'd been long planning to seeing it along with my resident "Kaiju guru" Bart Devon*, who's been one of my best friends since high school and also officiated my wedding.  I really wanted the two of us to record a sort of podcast/conversation, but I quickly ran into a few scheduling snafus.  First of all, the movie hit theaters only a few days before I left for Mexico, and then right after I got back Bart went totally off the grid while he took the bar exam.  But we finally got a chance to sit down a few nights ago and, having each seen the film twice now, we had a freewheeling chat about what I think is indisputably the best movie of the summer.

Pacific Rim begs to be seem in a theater on the largest screen possible, but at this point your viewing options are pretty limited.  I can't figure out why the movie didn't seem to catch on with audiences; it got massacred on it's opening weekend by the putrid Grown Ups 2, so thanks for nothing America!  Fortunately the film's been killing it overseas, so we just might get a sequel after all.  We'll see.  I saw it once in IMAX and once as my inaugural trip to the new Showcase SuperLux theater in Chestnut Hill, and I'd just like to point out how impressed I was by that theater and its staff.  Tickets are expensive (I think we paid about $20 a person) but every seat is a super comfortable leather recliner and there's meal service at your seat, with $5 of food or drink included in the price of your ticket.  What's more the staff was extremely friendly and accommodating, going above and beyond to make sure that we were totally satisfied with our viewing experience.  Usher Lucy even brought us into the theater so we could check out the remaining seats before we bought our tickets.  It's a level of service you rarely see anymore and I never mind paying more for what amounts to a truly premium experience.  For those of you in L.A., it reminded me a lot of the Arclight - you even get to choose your own seats in advance!

I don't want to rehash our conversation here, but suffice it to say we both enjoyed the living shit out of Pacific Rim, even while recognizing that the film has a couple of weak points.  But, much like J.J. Abrams' original Star Trek reboot, the movie is so absurdly fun that you're willing to overlook the flaws.  (Sadly, the same cannot be said about Star Trek Into Darkness.)  It should also be noted that this conversation was recorded immediately after we'd finished watching The Man With The Iron Fists while drinking a bunch of whiskey, so we were more than a bit punchy and perhaps a little rambling.  (The conversation kicks off with a meandering breakdown of this year's big summer movies, but we do make our way back on topic before long.)  The occasional clinking noise you hear in the background is from the ice cubes in my drink.

But let me know if you enjoy this because I'd like to do one or two more of these audio chats and, if I get really ambitious, maybe even a video chat as well.

Click here for streaming version if you want to listen right now or right click here to save a downloadable mp3 if you want to take it on the go.  (If you're having trouble listening through Tumblr, you can stream from the second link too.)


Enjoy.

PS - The music running under our conversation is Ramin Djawadi's score for the film, which we didn't get a chance to talk about but which kicks unholy amounts of ass.


*In the podcast I refer to him as my "giant monster sherpa."  I wish I had been clever enough in the moment to come up with Kaiju guru, but at least I get to do it in print.
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Title: Pacific Rim
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Max Martini, Rob Kazinsky, Ron Perlman, Clifton Collins Junior, Burn Gorman
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theatrical - IMAX 3D, Reading + Showcase SuperLux, Chestnut Hill




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July 14, 2013

Giant Monster Live-Tweet Part 2: I Want To Be A TROLL HUNTER


"Keep your distance.  I'm about to toss out some Christian man's blood."
When I saw Willow Creek, Bobcat Goldthwait talked about the film's editing, specifically the choice that every cut in the movie would be done "in camera" as the result of a character turning the recorder on or off.  It was the only thing that made sense given the film's found footage conceit. "Who are these people," Goldthwait mused, "who are editing the footage in these movies?  What kind of grisly motherfucker takes that job?"*  It's one of the many challenges of the overall genre, trying to explain away the weird internal logic of why and how the footage was not only captured, but also presented to an audience.

This is the stuff that most severely hampers Troll Hunter and keeps it from achieving true greatness.  The movie starts with (too) many title cards explaining the video's origin: three Norwegian college students are filming bear hunters when they encounter a guy named Hans who they believe to be a poacher but is in fact a secret, government-sanctioned troll hunter.  Hans drives around the Norwegian countryside in his Range Rover, looking for giant, smelly monsters who have strayed from their own territory and into populated areas.  It's his job to keep the trolls a secret from the general public and kill them if necessary.

Let me be clear: Hans kicks unholy amounts of ass.  He's a loner tasked with a virtually impossible mission, but it's his life's work and he takes great pride in it.  Living out of a camper full of severed troll tails and buckets of "troll stench," he has a small arsenal of awesome weaponry and homemade equipment designed to protect himself and aid in the tracking of his prey.  But at the same time, Hans feels tremendous sympathy for the trolls; his retelling of a time when he was ordered to massacre a whole lair of trolls, including infants that couldn't yet walk, is absolutely heartbreaking.  There are lots of subtle clues to Hans' backstory that are merely hinted at throughout the film, all of which combine with Otto Jespersen's gruff performance to create a rich, authentic character without resorting to bashing you over the head with detailed explanations.  It's a great example of doing a whole lot with very little.

And the actual troll hunting stuff is unassailably cool, borrowing from both popular fairy tales (they literally stage the old "Three Billy Goats Gruff" story) and modern science to explain the habits and behavior of trolls.  The individual creatures all look tremendous, each one getting a very distinct design and zoological history.  And since trolls are all about scent, they all have these giant noses that make them look equal parts friendly and menacing.  The methodology behind Hans' tracking and hunting gets only gets more impressive as the film goes on and the efforts of the TSS (Troll Security Service) to cover up the evidence of trolls are generally pretty clever.

The real problem is all the baggage that comes with Troll Hunter being a found footage movie.  The three college kids are boring at best, annoying at worst.  The editing is weirdly haphazard, especially on the front end when the story seems to skip entire days at a time.  And what's worse, the film's beginning and ending strain both the viewer's credibility and patience.  This is where we find all the stuff crucial to selling the found footage conceit and it just doesn't work.  However, the documentary aesthetic is very effective and I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I just wish they had approached it from a different angle...perhaps a training video for future troll hunters?  Or a fact-finding mission on behalf of the TSS?  Hell, one of the questions I kept coming back to was whether or not the trolls only live in Norway.  What if the college students were replaced with a troll hunter from another country coming to document different hunting methods, to learn from the great Hans?  It's a simple change but it would alleviate a lot of the film's narrative problems.

I know trolls aren't really kaiju, but Troll Hunter is a movie that's been sitting in my Netflix queue for ages and I'm happy to have finally caught up with it.  Once the film gets going, it's fucking blast and I look forward to sharing it with others.

On with the tweets!
















































































Next up, Q: The Winged Serpent!


*I'm paraphrasing here.  I didn't intend to see Willow Creek that day so I didn't have a recorder or a notebook for Bobcat's Q&A. 


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Title: Trollhunter
Director: Andre Ovredal
Starring: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Tomas Alf Larsen, Hans Morten Hansen
Year Of Release: 2010
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant - TV





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