Highlander is just not a movie that stands up. I loved this movie when I was in high school, and it became the font of all quotes in university, but even during the latter, I could see its failings. It was a good-bad movie. It had fuckin’ Sean Connery in it! How could it be that bad?

Well, it’s not that bad, it just isn’t that good. The premise, the ideas, even the plot all work in its favour. It is a fantastic conceit—that immortals walk among us and they can only be killed, like some zombies, by a head-ectomy, and that the dead immortal’s power then flows into the killer, assuming it’s another immortal.

There was some artistry evident. I had a particular fondness for some of the scene transitions. Certainly there were reasons I loved the movie as much as I did, even with all its failings. And I could watch it over and over again.

No longer.

The love is still there. It is still a must-have movie for me. I’m just not going to be watching it on a regular basis. The sword fights just simply aren’t that epic any longer (kind of like Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in Star Wars!). The villain is too simplistic. The hero too clear and clean—for a man who has watched so many die, who has seen so much, Nash/Macleod really doesn’t seem touched by any of it.

It doesn’t help that studios continued to try to make money out of it long after it had proven to be a fluke—though I do hear that the TV series had its moments, I watched the pilot and watched nothing more. Christopher Lambert was also an unfortunate choice to play the iconic Highlander. He does not have the dramatic weight to pull it off. He simply can’t deliver in those scenes in which Maclead is supposed to show how much the past has touched him.

I think I should have just let it sit in the back of my brain, as a memory. I knew, of course, that re-watching it would be folly. Still, sometimes one just simply must touch the burner to see if it really is hot.

Clancy Brown, however, remains awesome. I even forgive him for Pathfinder.

The Wikipedia page for Highlander can be found here.

Some of my thoughts on Highlander and gaming can be found here.

It seems that John Woo may be back to form. Anyone who has seen the outstanding Red Cliff will know that Mr. Woo’s most recent movie is both astounding and from China. Woo left Hollywood, and I am very glad he did.

Now here’s news on another movie coming out of China, with John Woo as producer and co-director. This one looks like a period actioner, possibly wuxia, but I didn’t notice any wirework in the trailer. It’s called Reign of Assassins, and includes Michelle Yeoh (oh yeah!) and Jung Woo-Sung (the Good, the Bad, and the Weird). It looks pretty good.

Chances of me seeing it in theatre? Nil. Chances it’ll get wide release in Canada? Nil. Chance it might come to a repertory cinema near you? Hopefully high. I’ll definitely find this one and check it out.

The article from Twitch, including trailer, is here.

The IMDB page is here.

If you like spy or special operations stuff, I think you’ll dig Hard Graft, a webcomic. I read a bunch of it over lunch, and I’m ordering the book.

Yes, I’m going to pay for a physical copy of something I read free over the internet. Why would I do that? So Peter Vine et al continue to put it out.

You can find Hard Graft here.

Okay, so here’s the latest brainstorm, courtesy of the Crystal Method’s Vegas album, but more specifically supported by Keep Hope Alive, the awesome tune that intro’d Chow Yun Fat in the fun but ultimately forgettable Replacement Killers. That movie remains a go-to movie for me because it has Mr. Chow, it has Mira Sorvino being all hot and action-y, and it tries to bring John Woo’s Gun-fu to North America along with Mr. Chow. Unfortunately, it just isn’t a great movie.

In any case, on the way to work this morning and I’m on the bus, listening to tunes. As has happened so often in the past, that leads to the plotting out of a movie and even a couple of scenes.

The elevator pitch? The cast of the Guild as a team of extra-terrestrial technology recovery specialists called Echo Transit 1.

You need more details before you decide to invest in this movie/mini-series/TV series? Why certainly.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m pretty sure I’ve gone on record as being a fan of the Chronicles of Riddick, and I am mildly excited about another Riddick movie (though, given my track record, I won’t be watching it in the theatre). Given that, I was very interested in the article in Collider about concept art being used to get the needed cash to make the movie.

It looks like an attempt to get back to the Pitch Black style of Riddick, which is fine. I know I’m not in the majority, but I really did love the world/universe building that was going on in Chronicles.

I’m interested because it’s a Riddick movie, and because I’ve liked the other two movies in the series. There is nothing, however, about the concept outside of this that really makes me take notice. As such, my excitement remains only mild.

Because fate just wants to kick me in the junk, soon after reading that Hollywood has planted a big steaming dump on Allan Quatermain, it’s time for D’Artagnan and the boys to get their share.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that there are at least two versions of the Three Musketeers that may be filmed soon, one by Doug “Bourne Identity” Liman and one by Paul W. S. “Oh God He Sucks!” Anderson. Guess which one is going to principal photography first.

If you chose the one that has any hope of being good, you’d be wrong.

Seems the distributors want ATM in theatres next summer, so Anderson is filming this summer.

It truly pained me to write that.

We’ll see what happens, but when two projects are scheduled so close together, something bad usually happens to one of them. A rival Sherlock Holmes production got dropped when the Robert Downey Jr. one was released. Back in the day, Fox rushed the Patrick Bergin Robin Hood out on TV to beat the Kevin Costner abortion to the punch.

If ATM hits all the notes first, will Liman even bother to start the song?

I really didn’t think Hollywood could get under my skin any longer. I thought I had built up a psychic barrier against the insane amounts of bullshit that issue from it. It seems, however, that they have found the weakness in my armour.

They are shitting all over Allan Quatermain. H. Rider Haggard’s awesome Victorian hero of King Solomon’s Mines and a collection of other novels and stories is being turned into intergalactic hero of the future .

WTF?

No, I’m sorry, that’s not enough.

What. The. Fuck?

Listen, I have no problem with adaptations. Sometimes, you’ve got to change things in a movie because it wouldn’t work visually, it would be too expensive to film, or the literary work is too long and you need to tighten it up. I get that. I understand that. This isn’t adapting. This is taking a name and attaching it to something totally different.

Imagine if George Lucas had written Star Wars (as in A New Hope), but instead of Obi-Wan Kenobi, he made the character Sherlock Holmes. Oh, and Darth Vader? In this version, it’s actually evil King John. Now there might be people who would think “awesome!” I am not one of those. Sherlock Holmes belongs in late Victorian England. Allan Quatermain belongs in Victorian Africa.

Why not simply call the movie something else? There’s no connection—not even the most tenuous—to the character or his setting. Heck, even Quatermass would make more sense—at least he is a science fiction character. When Sergio Leone re-made Yojimbo and moved it out of Shogunate Japan, he changed everyone’s names and called it Fistful of Dollars (and made an awesome movie, by the way). When Walter Hill wanted to movie it to Depression-era America, he didn’t call it Fistful of Depressing Dollars, he called it Last Man Standing.

Heck, there’s reason to believe Yojimbo itself was inspired by Dashiell Hammet’s Red Harvest!

I would really like to know why Hollywood has to do stupid shit like this. It can’t be name recognition. Seriously, how many of their preferred demographic have a clue who Quatermain is? That is, unless their preferred demographic are fans of the awesome comic League of Extraordinary Gentleman (which maintained Quatermain in his natural habitat) or the shitty adaptation “LXG” (which, shitty as it was, still didn’t turn the group into intergalactic superheroes of the future).

Yes, I am aware that in general, Hollywood is run by the 3 As, accountants, agents and assholes. That still doesn’t excuse this shit.

The Hollywood Reporter feels it important to inform the world about Paul W. S. Anderson’s adaptation of the Three Musketeers. Of the two that are in the works (Anderson’s and Doug Liman’s), I’d go with Doug Liman’s. The thing is, I can pretty much say with absolute certainly that they aren’t going to touch Richard Lester’s the Three Musketeers and the Four Musketeers. It ain’t going to happen, especially with Anderson.

Has he ever directed anything of quality? Some of his stuff has been mildly entertaining, but I can’t imagine ever buying a DVD of his stuff.

In any case, the cast for the Anderson Three Musketeers (hereafter ATM): Logan Lerman as D’Artagnan, Ray Stevenson as Porthos, Luke Evans as Athos, Matthew Macfadyen as Aramis, Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu, Mads Mikkelsen as Rochefort, and Milla Jovovich (Anderson’s wife) as Milady de Winter. Oh, and Anderson wants Orlando Bloom to play the Duke of Buckingham.

About the only thing there that gets me excited is seeing Ray Stevenson as Porthos. I’d be happy with him as Athos as well, but I guess then they’d need a pretty big boy to play Porthos.

This isn’t a bad cast, by any stretch of the imagination, but—again—the cast of Lester’s duology is so iconic, this crew has got a huge, huge mountain to climb before even making a dent in their characters.

Noticeably missing in that list? Constance, D’Artagnan’s paramour. Who’s got that job?

Seems that along with Paul W. S. Anderson (this man is still directing? Won’t somebody please think of the children!??!), Doug Liman is onboard to direct an adaptation of the Three Musketeers. Variety is saying that this is going to be “updated” and a “re-invention . . . in the same manner as Sherlock Holmes.”

That was done before. It wasn’t the worse Musketeers movie—that would be the Musketeer—but it didn’t even begin to measure up to the astounding Richard Lester’s the Three Musketeers and the Four Musketeers.

As much as I have enjoyed the vast majority of Liman’s work, do we really need another adaptation? Sure, I guess it can’t hurt, as long as no one destroys every copy of Lester’s duology (the subsequent the Return of the Musketeers maintained the story but was far-removed from the original two).

For the love of God, though, stop Anderson. Stop him from making ANYTHING!

It seems we may have a synopsis for the next Riddick movie, apparently just titled Riddick. According to Shock Till You Drop,

Betrayed by his own kind and left for dead on a desolate planet, Riddick (Diesel) fights for survival against alien predators and becomes more powerful and dangerous than ever before. Soon bounty hunters from throughout the galaxy descend on Riddick only to find themselves pawns in his greater scheme for revenge. With his enemies right where he wants them, Riddick unleashes a vicious attack of vengeance before returning to his home planet of Furya to save it from destruction.

I had read that they were going back to Pitch Black, and while it sounds like much of the action could be tighter focused, like PB, the story and backstory provided in the Chronicles of Riddick are being retained. Given that I am actually a fan of tCoR, that makes me happy.

This isn’t official, and it isn’t even very widespread, so it is possible the story will be totally different. Let’s wait and see.