Escape From Planet Earth

Looking at what movies are out now... Why is Escape From Planet Earth some animated movie and not a Snake Plissken movie?

The world doesn't make sense anymore.

An Iggy Pop and David Bowie biopic set in Berlin.

In the mid to late 1970's, musicians James Newell Osterberg Jr. (better known as Iggy Pop) and David Bowie moved to West Berlin, which was at the time still divided from East Berlin by the Berlin Wall. There is a biopic in the works now about their time there. The movie, called Lust For Life, is a collaboration between Altered Image and Egoli Tossell Film.

I hope the movie is good. One of my favorite books is Bowie In Berlin: A New Career In A New Town and it's probably my favorite era of Iggy's and Bowie's careers. It was a very prolific time for both men, resulting in music like Iggy Pop's The Idiot and Lust For Life, and David Bowie's Low and "Heroes", all of which were either recorded partially or completely at Hansa Tonstudio, and all of which are fantastic albums. Besides that, I really love the setting. It always seemed really cinematic to me when I imagined Iggy and Bowie living there and working there (though I do have a cinematic mind). Hansa Studio by the Wall would be a beautiful location to use in the movie.

I saw in the article I linked to above that a statement by Egoli Tossel about the movie said that "the central character of the film" would be West Berlin. It intrigued me, and reminded me of when people say that Gotham City itself is a character in Batman stories.

I'm imagining the movie being in black-and-white, much like the Ian Curtis biopic Control, but I realize now it might not be. I'd love it if it was though. It just seems like it would suit the setting and subjects. Maybe I also have a predisposition to picturing the story that way. A lot of the photography in the Bowie In Berlin book is in black-and-white, including the cover photo. Three out of the four covers to the albums I mentioned above feature black-and-white photos of the musicians as well.

It's too bad Robert Downey Jr. isn't younger. For years I've thought he would do a great job playing Iggy Pop in a biopic. He can even sing. I know he's around 18 years older than Iggy Pop was when he moved to West Berlin, but I'd still be willing to use my imagination a bit. As the audience, we would already be suspending our disbelief watching an actor play a musician we're familiar with anyway. I think it would work as long as the actor playing David Bowie didn't look a lot younger.

I'll pretend for a moment that there are people who read my blog who would actually comment, and ask... Who do you think would do a good job of playing David Bowie and Iggy Pop?

A standalone Boba Fett movie?

It has been confirmed that there will be standalone Star Wars movies focusing on specific, already established individual characters from the saga. It has been rumored that one of them will be about Boba Fett, which wouldn't surprise me at all considering how popular the character is.

If there is a standalone Boba Fett movie and Temuera Morrison plays him or does his voice, I'll probably hate it. I absolutely hated that they re-dubbed Fett's voice with Morrison's on the Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back DVD in 2004.

But if there was an official feature length live-action Lucasfilm movie where Breckin Meyer played the Robot Chicken version of Fett, I would watch the hell out of that.

I'm not sure what that says about me.

The Death Of "Superman Lives"

Between 1987's Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and 2006's Superman Returns, there were several unsuccessful attempts to create another live-action Superman movie. In the late 90's, filmmaker Tim Burton was going to make one called Superman Lives (originally Superman Reborn) with Nicolas Cage in the titular role. Jon Peters was producing, and both Kevin Smith and Wesley Strick were hired to write scripts. I was probably eleven or twelve years old at the time this movie was in pre-production, and I remember my friends and I talking about it at school during lunch or recess or whatever. I remember I thought it was weird that Nicolas Cage was playing Superman, but being a big fan of Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, and a fan of The Death Of Superman storyline (I never read the comics, but I had read the novel when I was younger), I was interested in the movie.

The movie never ended up getting made, but if it had, it would have been the weirdest Superman movie ever made. Now all that exists instead is various artifacts of the production. There is Smith's screenplay, concept art for the movie, some photos of costumes, including ones of Cage actually wearing them. The costumes kind of resemble the the style of the Burton era Batman costumes, with the rubber sculpted muscles. Here are a couple of photos.

There are also stories, like the wildly entertaining one Kevin Smith tells about his experience working on the movie, specifically working with Jon Peters, who wanted, among other things, a flightless Superman, a giant spider, and Brainiac fighting polar bears. These artifacts are pretty much all that exists, and they're scattered across the internet.

Jon Schnepp has been collecting all of these artifacts for years, and if it gets funded, will be working on a documentary called The Death Of "Superman Lives": What Happened? which compiles all of these little bits into one place for people to see. Besides that, he will be interviewing as many people as he can who were involved in the movie, including everyone I named in the first paragraph of this post. Although there have been stories about what Peters wanted in the movie, it could be really interesting to hear his thoughts coming straight from the man himself. I'd also love to hear whatever Burton and Cage have to say about the movie. Burton heard about this documentary recently and said that it "might be more interesting" than the actual finished movie would have been. I imagine Cage would have a lot to say too, considering he loves the character of Superman. He even named his son Kal-El, which is Superman's Kryptonian name.

Schnepp set up a Kickstarter page for funding the documentary, so check that out if it's something you'd like to help fund. There are currently 36 days left until the deadline, and it's funded a little over halfway. There's also a stretch goal of another $50k, and if that is reached, Schnepp also wants to film scenes from the script the way he thinks Burton would have in 1998, which could be fascinating. There's a video introduction for the Kickstarter which you can watch on the page, or watch below.