Jurassic Park 3D

I saw Jurassic Park in the theater several times when I was a kid, and I loved it. It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years. I am still amazed by how great most of the special effects look, especially the practical effects by Stan Winston. I love the characters of Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum). Robert Muldoon, the park's game warden (played by Bob Peck) is a really cool character as well. It's my second favorite Steven Spielberg movie. The first is Jaws. I was sad I didn't get to go see Jaws during its recent theatrical re-release, especially since I had never seen that one in the theater.

Jurassic Park was re-released in 3D today, and I've been trying to decide whether or not to see it. I'm leaning towards going though. I think getting to see the famous Tyrannosaurus rex escape scene on the big screen again would be a really nice experience, whether it's in 3D or not. Hearing the thunderous footsteps over the theater sound system as they create ripples in the cups of water. Seeing the reveal of that beautiful animatronic dinosaur model. Hearing the sound of its awesome roar tear through the theater. I think I could use that in my life. I think we all could.

Next time on Arrested Development...

In case you've been living under a rock (or Iraq)... After being cancelled at the end of its third season by Fox in 2006, Arrested Development is coming back this year with a fourth season. Just like the image below says, it's debuting on Netflix on May 26th.

It's one of my favorite shows, so I'm really looking forward to seeing more of it, and seeing what the Bluth family has been up to.

I think it's fascinating that all 15 episodes of season 4 will be released at the same time, so that you can watch them at your own pace. I have no idea if that has been done before, and it's a really interesting idea. It's great because when you're trying to get caught up on a show or re-watching previous seasons before a new season, you're most likely going at a pretty fast pace, possibly watching multiple episodes a day. Then you are forced to slow way down to one episode a week, and it can be quite frustrating to adapt to that.

Speaking of which, I guess I should dust off my DVD's of the first three seasons pretty soon. It's always a pleasure watching through the series again.

What I thought about Dredd, and some thoughts about the Boba Fett movie.

Judge Joseph Dredd is a comic book character who first appeared in 1977 in the British science fiction comic 2000 AD. He's part of a group of law enforcement officers called Street Judges in the violent, crime-ridden, futuristic setting of Mega-City One. These officers are a combination of police, judge, jury, and executioner, giving them the power and authority to arrest, sentence, and even execute criminals on the spot if necessary.

In 1995, Sylvester Stallone portrayed the character in a movie adaptation called Judge Dredd, directed by Danny Cannon. This was back when comic book movies weren't really handled with the respect they should have been, and (please excuse the pun) it didn't really do the source material any justice.

17 years later, in our very own futuristic setting where comic book movies are often treated like art, everyone's favorite Street Judge was adapted for film again. This time Karl Urban starred as the frowny-faced title character in 2012's Dredd (also known as Dredd 3D), directed by Pete Travis.

I saw Dredd for the first time after it was released on home media. I really loved it. Karl Urban was great, and I loved that the character never took off the helmet after first putting it on at the beginning of the movie. He almost never does so in the comic, and when he does, the reader is unable to see his face. Stallone's Dredd had his helmet off for much of the 90's movie. Something I found really interesting about the character of Judge Dredd in this movie is that there was very little character development. It would be incorrect to say there wasn't any, because there was. There just wasn't that much. Whereas that's generally a negative when it comes to movies, for some reason it really worked for this one, and it actually felt kind of refreshing. The character of Judge Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby, definitely had a lot more character development than Dredd did, and that kept the movie from feeling completely devoid of it. Seeing her so conflicted throughout the movie was great.

For some reason, the movie felt more like a fan-film to me than it did a Hollywood adaptation. But you know... actually good. The reasons for this feeling are probably the relatively small budget and the fact that the people making it probably respected the source material, as well as the way it was shot, the mostly self-contained setting, and the lack of Hollywood cliches usually forced into adaptations in an attempt to make the story appeal to a mass audience. I imagine that was intentional, because the 90's adaptation couldn't possibly be more Hollywood, and fans didn't like that much. In this day and age, I think the general movie-going public have begun to notice and get sick of those cliches.

The use of slow motion, not as a stylistic flourish as in most action films, but to actually portray the effects of the fictional drug Slo-Mo, was really interesting and quite beautiful. I also loved the use of stretched out elements in the film score during those parts. The Slo-Mo scenes made me wish I had seen the movie in the theater in 3D. Concerning the visual effects, the only thing I didn't like (and probably the only thing I didn't like about the entire movie) was the CGI blood splatter. I know it probably allowed the filmmakers more control with the 3D imagery, but it looked very fake to me. When it comes to blood splatter in movies, physical effects tend to look most realistic. Maybe they thought it wouldn't look realistic in slow motion.

I really hope they make a few sequels to Dredd, as it was one of my favorite movies of 2012. The few glimpses we got of other areas in Mega-City One at the beginning of the movie were nice to see, and I'd love to see more of it, even if it's just another relatively small area. And if they do make a sequel, I sure as hell plan on seeing it in the theater. As much as I enjoyed Looper, I wish I had gone to see Dredd 3D instead. Oh well.

When Disney makes that standalone Boba Fett movie, I think they should take some cues from Dredd, and have Fett not take off his helmet at all. One of the great things about Fett was always his mystique. Fans wondered what his face looked like under there, trying to picture something that went with his original voice (before it was changed to Temuera Morrison's for the Star Wars DVD release in 2004). Actually showing what he looks like at this point would ruin that, and Dredd proved that it's quite possible to have the main character of the movie never show his face. Fett could do without much character development as well, which would also help maintain the mystique. Rather than have young Boba Fett or something, it would be much better to just see him around the time of The Empire Strikes Back on one of his bounty hunting jobs, much like how Dredd seemed to be just a day in the life of Judge Dredd.

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.