Rambling review: 15 random thoughts about 'Skyfall'

I just got back from 'Skyfall', and...

 

In short, 'Skyfall' is a Bond movie so good it's like a legitimately good movie, even outside of the franchise. A real review will follow... eventually. 

But, for now, here's 15 random, rambling, thoughts on the film:

Motherf***ing fast zombies and other things in first 'World War Z' trailer

In 2006, master comedic filmmaker Mel Brooks' son Max Brooks wrote a little book called World War Z. An oral history of an almost-apocalypse dubbed the Zombie War, told through the perspective of several survivors from around the globe, the book was written as though it was the final report of the event compiled by an unnamed interviewer/writer some years after mankind ultimately prevailed against the undead.

To put it simply, the book is/was great: sprawling in scope and masterful in its understanding and reinterpretation of the zombie genre mythos established by George A. Romero (et al). It also seemed, to many who read it (myself included), impossible to adapt as a conventional movie. In my mind, the epic and mostly episodic structure of the novel seemed perfect for a television miniseries: on premium cable of course, so the violence could still be on screen.

And yet, after a bidding war with many buyers (including Leonardo DiCaprio), the book was optioned in 2007 by Brad Pitt's company Plan B and Paramount Pictures. The film took years to make the jump past pre-production. A script by J. Michael Straczynski (creator of 'Babylon 5' and screenwriter of the Clint Eastwood-directed 'Changeling') was subsequently rewritten by Matthew Michael Carnahan (screenwriter of 'The Kingdom' and 'State of Play'). Even after the rewrite, the script was apparently problematic but production charged on anyway.

The action-packed 'World War Z' finally began shooting in 2011, under the guidance of director Marc Forster--a man predominately known for dramas, including the Oscar-winning 'Monsters Ball' and 'Finding Neverland', 'Stranger Than Fiction, and 'The Kite Runner' (this book-to-screen adaptation likely landed him the 'Z' job). Forster's first foray into action came in 2008, with the James Bond film 'Quantum of Solace', a film criticized for its incoherently-edited and directed... action scenes.

Brad Pitt was ultimately cast as Gerry Lane, the film's wholly original protagonist, an employee of the U.N. with a mysterious, maybe dark, possibly militaristic past. The segmented, multi-threaded, and interview-based storyline of the novel was largely twisted into a more mainstream arrangement. The budget set at $125 million.

In March 2012, well into shooting, diaster struck. Production was halted when the producers and studio decided and/or realized the third act of their second script just didn't work at all. The film's release date, originally scheduled for December 2012, was pushed back to 2013. The script was rewritten again, first by 'LOST' co-creator Damon Lindelof, and then, when Lindelof's schedule didn't permit him to continue working on the troubled third act, Drew Goddard (writer/producer on 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', 'Angel', 'LOST', screenwriter of 'Cloverfield', and director/co-writer of 'Cabin in the Woods').

With Lindelof-Goddard's new, perhaps improved, screenplay, production entered reshoots in September 2012 for an additional seven weeks of filming on location in Budapest. The budget is now reportedly somewhere near $200 million.

After a long wait, the first trailer for this massive (maybe mistake of a) movie is out and frankly, it's... well, going to be nothing like the book--which explicitly featured slow zombies--but I guess we knew it wasn't going to be faithful a long time ago, when Pitt's character was given a name, a wife and kids... and became the focus of the film.

So, basically, I'm not excited. Especially in light of all the production woes. Rewrites (specifically rewrites of rewrites), reshoots and delays (almost) never bode well. And the trailer does nothing to dispel my doubts about this troubled, misguided, waste of time and money, which looks like ultra-generic, fast-zombie-movie, shit.

Will I see it? Well, duh. I don't know... the book is really good, amazingly great even, but I just have a feeling the film version is kinda gonna be the opposite of that.

And I still think a faithful adaptation of the book, done as a multi-part HBO miniseries ('Band of Brothers' style), would've been amazing.

'Cloud Atlas': incredibly ambitious, ultimately imperfect, but admirable

An old man with a scared face and milky eye (Tom Hanks) spins a twisting yarn at a fireside, telling a tale of disconnected interconnectedness. His story has intrigue and action, romance, comedy, and everything in-between; politicized social commentary, overt themes of love and loss and death, life and rebirth. His mostly unseen audience, ostensibly a group of children listening to this wise old sage's contorted creation charting mankind’s journey through the ages, is intently enthralled as he speaks of this saga.

But those children matter little, and really the old man is addressing the moviegoer sitting in the theater. A moviegoer who undoubtedly marvels too, at the audacity of this story, which finds more than two-dozen characters—many played by the same actors, some so disguised by makeup and hidden behind impressive visual effects they become unrecognizable—interacting throughout several different eras. The echoes of these many people—perhaps their very souls—ripple across time, their actions and inaction affecting each somehow. Why? In what way? And for the benefit, or to the detriment, of who? Questions asked, and in ways answered, by the audience and even the characters they're watching.

The Bond blogs: 'Goldfinger' (1964)

Introduction 

A massive enterprise of books, comics, movies... even a one-off TV special. The Bond film franchise (consisting of 23 "official", and 3 unofficial, entries) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and in commemoration there's been a big blu-ray box of all 22 theatrical films from MGM (the 23rd picture, Skyfall, is on its way to theaters in November). The big Bond craze has also inspired me to write retrospectives on all of the films.

I previously covered the franchise's inaugural outing, 'Dr. No', and the first sequel, 'From Russia with Love'. Now, lets take a look at the birth of the Bond phenonenon with 'Goldfinger'.

The Bond blogs: 'From Russia With Love' (1963)

Introduction

A massive enterprise of books, comics, movies... even a one-off TV special. The Bond film franchise (consisting of of 23 "official", and 3 unofficial, entries) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and in commemoration there's been a big blu-ray box of all 22 theatrical films from MGM (the 23rd picture, Skyfall, is on its way to theaters in November). The big Bond craze has also inspired me to write retrospectives on all of the films.

I previously covered the franchise's inaugural outing, 'Dr. No', here. And now, lets look at the second (and some might say best) entry in the franchise, 'From Russia with Love'.

‘Frankenweenie’ (2012) review

ughGrooooan. 

No, that's not the sound of The Creature coming to life. That was the sound film-fans around the world, myself included, collectively made when we first heard, about 2 ½ years ago, director Tim Burton, the once impossibly imaginative mind who gave us Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, would be remaking one of his own films—a short called Frankenweenie, produced during his early days at Disney in the 1980s—expanded into the incoherent 3rd-dimension no less. Turns out, our groans were for naught, and this is one of the best things the director has done in years. But, no one would’ve guessed so when the news first broke.

'Looper' will throw you for a loop

Acknowledging my terrible title for this review of Rian Johnson's Looper, I have to say the statement is, in all terribleness, nonetheless true. The film is not quite like its--what I assumed was an over spoiler-y--trailer suggests. This is not some cheap, awful, 6th Day-esque shlock-fest disguised as a science fiction thriller. It's really not like any mainstream time-travel film, and in some ways its barely a time travel film at all.

Don't misunderstand, certainly Looper is a sci-fi action film, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis do play the younger and older version of the same character respectively, forced together via a convergence of thrilling time bending trickery. That much is explained, accurately, in the trailer. But the trailer only reveals a fraction of what the film is actually about. And it doesn't come close to demonstrating the depths of the creativity and craftsmanship at work which make Looper one of the years best.