DarkObserver, 11. Oktober 2003 um 20:17:30 MESZ

First pics of Keanu as Constantine....

can be found at this excellent website:

www.insanerantings.com

The director is reported to have said, that they won't have Keanu bleach his hair and that John Constantine won't be an Englishman but a resident of L.A. more in the tradition of hard-boiled detective characters with some magic and mystery thrown in.

After the dreadful "League of Extraordinary Bullshit" adaption of a great DC comic book by Alan Moore, I fear the worst for the movie version of one of my favorite comic characters to date.

Well, "mates"...I'm opposed to the casting of Keanu Reeves to begin with. Let's just hope they won't totally succeed in watering down and destroying the character us Hellblazer fans have come to love -and sometimes- hate. The website mentions -I guess as a consolation of sorts- that they at least seem to have kept Constantine's taste for booze and tobacco intact.

But reading somewhere else that they want it to get a PG-13 rating I'm afraid this is bound to be another catastrophe. If you strip all the horror, perversion and downright evil contained in John Constantine's universe as depicted in the comic what have you got left? Not much.

The comic is intended for ADULTS and even among those only for the hard-boiled ones with strong stomachs and no religious or other ideological prejudice. Except maybe a certain understanding or even identification with the way of the underdog, the loner, the outcast.

I have a lot of insight in that respect and I have symathized with this particular comics character more than with any other. Just today I received the precious trade paperback containing his very first appearance ever in Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing." I'll get very angry, should the movie-makers spoil him big-time...

Here's another article brought to you by the cool guys at CHUD:

www.chud.com

 
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DarkObserver, 9. November 2002 um 17:03:40 MEZ

Movie review: Sphere

Just recently I catched the movie "Sphere" on TV. I had neither seen it when it was new or rented it later on because just about anyone -professional crtitics and friends alike- said it sucked...big time.

Well, I must say they were correct. Normally I can find something good in any film, but here I was at a loss. This movie should be shown to film students as an example of how to make a bad movie, even if you have all the right ingredients at hand. "Sphere" had a great cast (Hoffman, Jackson, Stone) and obviously no small budget. Also the story's premise -alien spaceship in deep sea is investigated by a bunch of specialists from different fields- seemed promising enough.

But if the writing is bad or the director is unable to overcome bad writing with style and his own inventions you end up with an incoherent mess like this. The movie got worse and worse the longer it went on. I really tried to like it, but the ideas -some of them evidently lifted from classics like "Alien" or "Solaris"- were crudely glued together with nothing much to keep them from falling apart.

Funny side note: In one sequence the crew sits in front of a computer screen, allegedly trying to decipher an alien code, a computer-savvy person could clearly see that they were staring at a Linux screen showing some random directory listings. How could the makers of this film so misjudge the sci-fi thriller audience which is bound to include a lot of computer geeks laughing their asses off at such a ludicrous depiction of computers?

The flick's conclusion is not very good either and leaves you disappointed, because it doesn't make much sense. If sometime in the future an American spaceship brings back this "sphere" thingy for whose powers "mankind is not ready yet", why not warn officials of this so the whole mess wouldn't happen in the future to begin with?

Anyway:This movie could have been great, but it's not. End of story.

 
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DarkObserver, 23. Oktober 2002 um 13:29:12 MESZ

Japanese cinema

Quote: "Words cannot begin to describe this film. A 55-minute hyperkinetic descent into electro-charged punk madness, set to an eardrum-shattering industrial punk/noise soundtrack, 'Electric Dragon 80,000 V' transcends film to become an overwhelming, all-immersing experience. Just hope and pray that you still have all your brain cells after you emerge from it"

Sounds like a must-see, doesn't it? I will order it today, along with the notorious "Battle Royale". I've been interested in Japanese culture and subculture for quite a while and the Japanese movie scene is certainly one of the most innovative around.

 
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