They did an excellent job rebooting this franchise, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes looks pretty exciting. Of course, I enjoyed the original set of movies when they came out, so it should be no surprise I like the new set. The advances in cinematography and 3D modeling alone make them much more visually striking, and the increase in pacing over the years allows for a much denser story. This one should be hitting the theaters on July 11th.
The Rover goes into wide release this week, but as I commented before I will probably pass on that one. That appears to be it for genre this time around, but the film version of the musical Jersey Boys is also coming out. There is one violent but interesting film from South Korea called No Tears for the Dead that looks like the best choice. An abandoned child is raised by an organized crime family to be a cold-hearted killer, but when he accidentally kills an innocent young girl he learns about guilt and remorse. The breaking point is his next assigned job; the mother of the dead girl is now being targeted by his bosses to stop her from causing trouble. But the killer starts to fall in love and wants out of the organization. Interestingly enough, the trailer you will find at that link has mostly English as the spoken language with Korean subtitles. The one place they did slip in Korean dialog did not have English subtitles, hopefully it won’t be like that in the theaters.
This short film from Patrick Kalyn looks like a trailer rather than a short, giving me the impression I will see it posted to Kickstarter, looking to be funded into a full feature film. I would consider contributing if it was, because I like what I see so far. I also think he did a nice job with his PSA and the viral design web site Don’t Do Mech attached to it. Considering he is a Visual Effects guy who’s credits include Avatar, District 9, X-Men: The Last Stand, Jumper, Dead Like Me, and King Kong, plus being writer/director on 4 projects including Mech, I think he has a shot at making something interesting. Thanks to SF Signal for the heads up on this one.
MECH: HUMAN TRIALS from Patrick Kalyn on Vimeo.
This week we get How to Train Your Dragon 2, the animated fantasy sequel. I enjoyed the original Dreamworks production and the first season of the TV show. I felt season 2 of the show had gone a bit down hill, losing touch with the stories original values in honor of getting a bigger audience share by emphasizing the adventure aspects. I am hoping that the second movie takes us back to the kind of heart and character expressed in the first one. If you are in the mood for something more serious, The Signal may or may not be an alien invasion story that some folks have compared to District 9 for originality when it was on the film festival circuit. Other folks have been less positive, but I do like the trailer, and it got nominations at Sundance, so I may just check it out. I will not be attending The Rover, partly because it is in limited release this week, but mostly because the description reads like yet another Mad Max wannabe, and I have already seen my quota of Australian post apocalypse movies. It may be better than I think it is, because it got nominated for Best Film in Cannes; and it goes into wide release next week, so anyone who is interested can catch it then.
Possibly the best Sci-Fi movie never made, Jodorowsky’s Dune spent years assembling the most amazing cast and creative talents, before finally falling by the wayside. The team he assembled included Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, David Carradine and Salvador Dali for the actors. It was set to a musical score by Pink Floyd and the art/design work was put together by H.R. Giger and Moebius (Jean Giraud). Because of this project, many of the folks involved became entangled with other Sci-Fi masterworks which would have been much poorer for their loss. Even though we will never get to see this version of the film, the documentary telling us how close we came is finally becoming available. You can see it on the big screen if you are lucky enough to be in one of those cities. For myself, it doesn’t look like I made it unless I do a 3-hour drive, so I will wait for the Blue Ray/DVD to come out instead on July 2nd.
A documentary about Studio Ghibli, and more specifically Miyazaki himself, is coming out called Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. The article the folks at Otaku USA did on it was really quite interesting, and I am now looking forward to seeing it, as soon as they release a version in English, or at least with English subtitles.