Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

In the world of media, few can only dream of having the power and the influence that filmmaker and producer Rodger Corman has had. Most of you may not know who Rodger Corman is, but everyone has been exposed to him in someway. He has been a moviemaker since the mid 1950’s and has done the atomic science fiction (It Conquered the World, Swamp Women), teen pictures (Rock all Night, Teenage Doll), Gothic Horror (The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum), 1960’s counter culture films (The Wild Angels, The Trip) and many other genes though out his long and powerful career.  If like to watch campy films that will end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, he has made them. If you like films are truly pieces of history, he has them. If you want to watch a very tasteless gory and smutty exploitation film, he has made a number of those. If which to see an Italian art house pictures, he has his name on a few of those. As a film writer, director, distributor, and producer for nearly half a century, his has made a huge influence and cult following in of himself.

But his influence also comes with a number of people who had worked for had worked for him.  Some of the actors that had gotten their starts with Roger Corman include Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Robert De Niro, Pam Grier, and Bruce Dern. Directors that have worked with him include Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Hill, Joe Dante, James Cameron, and Francis Ford Coppola.

With all these facts in place, a new documentary has been made about him and it is a must see for anyone who has any interest in entertainment should watch this movie. It details his movie career from his start at 20^th Century Fox and to his current projects. The film is called Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel and it fully live up to this title. It shows his efforts making his own kind of movies. It includes interviews with some of the names mentioned above and fans of his work. I firmly encourage all the media students to watch this documentary at least once. 

Sources

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel. Roger Corman. 2011. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Corman

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000339/

Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal

In the late 1970’s, Heavy Metal Magazine had just hits the stands. An adult comic book magazine that was focused darker stories, creepy and weirder plots, and yes, a lot of erotica. Today, the current publisher is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman and releases only a few issues each year. The stories range from really interesting to the lowest common denominator in entertainment. However, the magazine is one of the main influences in the more adult story telling in comics.

In every 1980, one of the magazine’s readers was filmmaker Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Meatballs, My Super Ex-girlfriend) decided to create a feature film based some of the stories in Heavy Metal Magazine. What was made were the following stories:

1)   An Original Story about a New York City taxi driver Harry Canyon in a film noir style alien mafia crime story set in 2031.

2)    Richard Corben’s Den, the story of a skinny teenager being sent to a another planet and is transformed into one of the strongest persons one the planet and he is then on a quest to save the love of his life.

3)   Bernie Wrightson’s Captain Sternn. A comical court case set on a space station.

4)   B-17. A World War 2 boomer fight and unseen enemy and then the rising dead.

5)     So Beautiful and So Dangerous. The government has meeting about whether or not aliens are real and aliens abduct a scientist and a stenographer. The aliens are basically stoners, the scientist dies on entry, and the stenographer begins a relationship with a robot.

6)    All the other stories told to everyone by a huge source of evil called the Loc-nar and the final story is how he influenced a huge number of people to destroy the citizens on this planet and one warrior named Taarna is out to kill them all.

One of the reasons that I like this film is due to the sound track. It has a great original score and some of the acts on the sound track include Black Sabbath (when Dio was in the band), Journey, Grand Funk Railroad, and Devo. While these scream 1980’s, it is very nice to listen to. Also, because Reitman needed to get many independent studios to animate each section of the film, it does have a look that say low budget, but it still very impressive to look at. For any fan of animation, this is a must see.                

Sin City

Sin City 

In the world of films based on comic books, one of the most beloved and celebrated examples is Sin City. The film is three stories that are based on three stories of the Sin City series written and drawn by Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns). It had done well in the theaters and was well liked by the critics for a reason. Not only does it have the hard pounding, heart racing, mind-blowing action and mystery, it is very artistic and a great piece that shows new innovations in movies.

The film has a very stylized look for a reason; Robert Rodriguez wanted to bring Frank’s characters, images, words, and tone to the big screen and that is what he did. The images in the movie are made to look as close as you can get to the pictures that Frank himself had drawn. Not only that, the lighting to made to match the lighting in the books. The actors look like the characters in the books almost to a tee. All of this brings out Robert’s love of new technology in which to tell his stories.

This brings us to the next great thing about this film, the special effects.

There are scenes in the film were it looks like the actors are in the same room. First of all, the only true set that was build was the bar that is the center piece of the film, most of the other pieces of scenery are computer generated and they look as real as real can be. Also, there are scenes in which the actors would have a month time difference in which they shoot their pieces in the film.  All of which appear to be seamless and well put together.  

It is one of the finest motion pictures in recent history, and fans are really longing for Sin City 2. So now, after more than five years after the theatrical run of the movie, It has been announced that Sin City 2 is in production and about to be shoot this year. Hope it goes well for all.

Sources

Douglas, Edward.  Sin City 2 & Machete Kills to Films this Year.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/169855-sin-city-2-a-machete-kills-to-film-this-year. March 14, 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_City_2#cite_note-14

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/

Sin City.  Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Mickey Rourke, Dimension Films. 2005.

Reasons to See the 2011 Muppet Movie

Reasons to See the 2011 Muppet Movie

If there is one film that I think lived up to the hype last year, it was the latest film version of the Muppets. I felt this movie was one of the best films I saw last year and the crowd was very fun to be a part of because the whole crowd was really enjoying the great story, the funny characters, the fun songs, and the funny jokes. If you need more of reasons to see this film, here are a few.

1)                   This movie is a labor of love. Jason Segel, one of writers and star of this picture, had pitch himself writing a Muppet movie when he had gotten some help from the Jim Henson people with the Dracula puppet musical in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It is clear that he really wanted to have a film that showed respect to the material and do a film that showed his of love of the characters and their movies and the show.  

2)                   One song gets an Oscar, but all the songs are Oscar worthy. One of the songwriters is Bret McKenzie (a member of Flight of the Concords) and each song is well done and fun to sing along to. Some of the noteworthy songs include the opening number “Life’s a Happy Song”, Chris Cooper’s villain rap song “ Let’s Talk About Me”, Kermit’s sentimental song “Pictures in My Head” and finally the feel good song the really does feel good and got an Oscar “Man or Muppet”. These songs go well with the classic Muppets songs like the Muppet show theme and “The Rainbow Connection”.  Honorable mention goes to the unoriginal songs in the film like Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City” and AC/DC’s “Back and Black”.

3)                   It is an innocent simple story, but it is not dumb, sappy, or made just for kids. The story is that the Muppets’ biggest fan is trying to help Kermit get the group back together in order to prevent an oil tycoon from destroying their old studio. That is it and there is little nothing else in the conflict. But, like as stated before, this does not have the feeling that this was a dumbed down film for kids and it does not have too many jokes that little kids will never understand. It has a good mix.

4)                   The puppetry is well done. Even if the whole product is clearly garbage, anything with Jim Henson’s name going to have some good looking effects to their fictional characters. The director wanted to keep the old style of Muppets for it and if you get of the heavy use of CGI, then this is the film for you. Each character is lively and believable in each frame of the film.

5)                   It has good balance of old and new. It was nice to see the film have a great balance in this area because if the had done to many current references then the film may seem to become dated very quickly and to many old jokes would just make the audience think “That is all you can do”.     

So here are some of the reasons you should see this move and now that it is out on DVD, it safe to say that it is worth the buy.   

Sources

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1204342/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppets_(film)

Go see John Carter Of Mars

John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) is a former civil war officer who is in search of a cave of gold. While rebelling against those who wish for him to fight for their side, he stands as well known man who only works for himself type. When he does find his cave of gold, he is attacked by a member of the Therns (a magical group of people who wish to bring chaos to the planet Mars) and he is then transported to Mars. Here he discovers his increased strength from the planet's low gravity, allies himself with an alien tribe named the Tharks (they look like standard movie aliens) and gets involved in a war between two alien cities named Helium and Zodanga (these aliens look like earth people). He later fights for one of the cities, in the hope that he will find his real home.
I use the word standard a lot in the first paragraph, and that is a word that I think really does describe the story of the film. The film is based on the first in series of books about the title character written by Edgar Rice Burroughs (which I have not read). This movie does have a number of standard movie elements, the anti-hero who must become the true hero, his love interest is there can becomes his main focus by the end of the film, one of the villains is just power hungary and so on and so forth. But it is done very well.
This film is not going to change the way we see movies, but I do think that it is an enjoyable ride and a well done picture. I liked the main characters and how they dealt with the conflict  and the enemies did keep my attention. The effects ranged from very well done to fairly poorly done. The world of Mars was nice to look at.

The film cost 250 million dollars to make. It currently has made $254,510,000, which while it has made back it's budget; but, most likely,  it has not made the money Disney was hoping to earn. If it is still in theaters, go see it. If not, then get the dvd.





            

Mythbusters

On Saturday, March 24th, I went to the Warner Theater to see a show that was performed by none other then the Mythbusters. For those who do not know, the Mythbusters is a show on the Discovery Channel that features Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman as they well bust various myths. Myths like can pop-rocks and cola make your stomach explode, can you set a wooden ship on fire using a lot of mirrors reflecting sunlight on to it, can you really make the magic bullet, and is Jimmy Hoffa's body really buried in Giants Stadium. Though every kind of science and mathematics that you can think of, they and their team, go out to try any myth that can be tested by use of the scientific method and see if there is any kind of truth to the stories they hear. 

So you can only think about what they would be doing for a stage act. 

Now, while this show was not really them busting any myths, this was more a demonstration of other facts that surround the show, like facts about their machines. One of the big highlights of the show was seeing some of the machines they could make like a huge gatling paintball gun that can shot four paintballs at once and a water pump the worked by the power of someone pedaling a bike. They also showed the science of things like why you can lay on a bed of nails not have your whole body go through the bed. Also, they showed off some of their known equipment from the show like the high speed camera they use for slow down moving objects.

The crowd was a fun mix of fans ranging from young kids and older people. It felt like there was no real set age group for this show and that helped because it is nice to go to shows that you fell more people can enjoy it. This was good because there were question and answer parts of the show (one for Jamie and one for Adam) and they give good, informative, and entertaining answers to each of the questions.

It was a good show and it you wish to know more about the Mythbusters, you can see them on the Discovery channel .              

I Am Ok

I recently had seen the famous film "Birth of A Nation" by D.W. Griffin with a club that I had recently joined and we had choose to see this film for all the reasons this film is so well known. I'll save my views of the film itself for maybe a future post. The next day I was talking about the film with members of my family and one person asks me if it makes me uncomfortable to watch films like this. For those who do not know, the reason this film is so notorious is because this silent picture is one of the most racist pieces of entertainment (it was once used as a recruitment film for the KKK) and at the same time it help create the modern way stories are being told in film. It is one of the most praised films of all time and is one of the most hated films of all time. All for good reasons.
I answered the question by stating that I know the reasons why I am watching this film.
The first reason is for educated prepuces. I am a media student and my main interest is film. I do make it a goal to watch many kinds of films for different reasons and a film this reputation is a movie on a huge list of films that I feel I must see at least once in my lifetime. Also the discussions about the film, I feel are better for others, than making the film go away. This is because we are talking about subjects that most do not which to discuss, but I find it better than being silent about them.
This leads to my next reason, I do not like pretending that things did not happen just because they are depressing, sad, or uncomfortable. Somethings can be over blown and talked about to the point that the speaker has noting new to say about it, but it still keeps going. But I rather the latter then nothing being discussed.
Finally, the main reason I have no problem watching this film. I know, while I watch it, that I am not the person who believes anything that this film is saying. I am also not any of the characters shown in the film and that helps me have a good understanding of why I am watching films like this.