Mashup Video from our Party last friday! Check out what you missed!

BANG BANG THE MOVIE is now officially out on DVD and Blu Ray!  Order your copy today and support independent filmmakers like us! http://bangbangthemovie.com

Everyone come out and party with us to celebrate the official Release of “BANG BANG”!! 12.9.11

The Cast and Filmmakers will be at the party and we will be giving away free Posters, DVD’s, and T-shirts!  The first 10 people at the door will get a free DVD or Blu-Ray, so come early!

Filmmaking 101 lesson 2!

How to become a Filmmaker!  

The San Diego Asian Film Festival & Halloween weekend destroyed me. But still my roommate and I, sick as a dog, walked over to Arclight and watched Anonymous, directed by Roland Emmerich.

Anonymous dramatizes the Prince Tudor Theory (Specifically Prince Tudor II Theory, more on that later), an alternate literary theory contending that the true source of William Shakespeare’s works isn’t from the mind of Shakespeare at all, but Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This theory also contends that de Vere had an affair with Queen Elizabeth I, leading to the birth of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. Wriothesley is thought by many to be the “Fair Youth.” in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Anonymous weaves these theories into an Elizabethan political thriller of the succession of the Crown that parallels the writings of William Shakespeare.

I wont bog you down with literary/historical facts and theories, which is kind of an inherent problem with a film like this. It’s hard to be really invested in the political and literary intrigue without already being interested in Elizabethan and Shakespearean politics, literature, and theory. Personally, while I admire Shakespeares work, I never identified with it and the Elizabethan era was boring to me in school. So that already hampered my experience with the film; having to keep track of who is who, and why they’re important. And they are important, as the film is littered with real-life political and literary figures of the day, each playing an important role in revealing the true nature of the origin of Shakespeare’s works (The historical William Shakespeare is depicted as an illiterate jackass actor).

I went into the film knowing that Emmerich is known for directing movies like Godzilla, 2012, 10,000 BC and Independence Day, so I’m expecting lavish and epic treatment of the subject matter. For one thing, if you’re doing a period drama and your costuming and production design is on point, you’re gonna have, at the very least, a beautiful looking film. Emmerich doesn’t disappoint in this department. Wardrobe is lush and beautiful (some of de Vere’s outfits were boss as hell, I wouldn’t mind one of his capes), as is his depiction of Royal Court life. The streets of London were believably gritty and sweeping cityscapes gave a nice look into past England (romanticized, no doubt). There were a couple of nice moments with cinematography (the theatre, scenes in de Vere’s hedgemaze), but otherwise pretty standard.

The acting fell a little flat. Disappointing, considering what was at stake (love, aristocratic status, family, the Crown of England); but I did enjoy Vanessa Redgrave’s Queen Elizabeth and Edward Hogg’s Robert Cecil.

[SPOILERS] Like similar movies, some historical fact was fiddled with to create a dramatic story. But, at the end, the writers of Anonymous decided to evoke their own version of the Prince Tudor PART II theory, in which Edward de Vere is himself the ILLEGITIMATE SON of Elizabeth I, committing (unknowingly, in the film) incest with his own mother, so that de Vere is the FATHER AND HALF-BROTHER of Wriothesley, Earl of Oxford, while Elizabeth his both his MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER. And, according to Robert Cecil, de Vere was meant to be groomed to be the future King of England, but he was too busy writing plays and poems, bankrupting his investments, screwing his mom and generally being a fuck-up for a man of his station. So if de Vere wasn’t Shakespeare, he could have been the king. But there doesn’t seem to be a reason for this twist; the plot and the characters’ motivations would have stayed more or less the same. The only reason it seems to be included is for the one-two punch of: BAM! You slept with your mom! Oh yeah and BAM! You could have been King, but (in the words of Robert Cecil) “you were you.”

In short: visually and conceptually interesting, satisfying seeing the historical Shakespeare as a jackass, sometimes barely graspable plotline (with a questionable twist), ‘eh’ acting/undeveloped characters, more fun for Shakespeare/Elizabethan heads. But enjoyable.

the San Diego Asian Film Festival JUST passed at the end of Oct, but DVDs/iTunes/amazon will drop by the end of the year.

hey sorry if it took a while to answer you; DVD/itunes/amazon will drop by the end of the year!

After realizing you can watch the 1982 version streaming on Netflix, I went out and watched Matthiis Van Heiinigen, Jr.’s The Thing the other night. But first a quick history lesson:

First came The Thing from Another World, produced/directed by the legendary Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby in 1951, inspired by the novella, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. Then in 1982 came the remake The Thing,directed by American horror director John Carpenter, with a storyline more faithful to the storyline of Campbell’s novella, and finally in 2011 Dutch Matthiis Van Heiinigen, Jr.’s The Thing, billed as a prequel to the 1982 version. I’ve now seen all three of these versions.

I can’t talk about the Heiinigen’s Thing without talking about, and comparing it to, Carpenter’s Thing. In the opening sequence of Carpenter’s Thing, a Norwegian helicopter chases a dog into an American Antarctic camp, shooting at it before crashing and killing those aboard. Later we find out that the dog isn’t a dog at all, but THE THINGGGG! Heiiningen’s Thing aims to tell the story of those Norwegians and how they got to that American camp.

Before I saw it, everyone was saying “It’s a remake. They’re calling it a prequel but it’s really a remake.” I’m not entirely sure. I can tell that Heiiningen was attempting to create a fresh, new story for the Thing, and brought in some divergent factors from Carpenter (tensions between Americans vs Norwegians, female lead, more sci-fi element) but when pretty much all of the main paramaters of the plot are the same:

1. You’re stuck in a camp in the Antarctic

2. You don’t know who is human and who is not

3. There’s an alien killing and imitating your friends

It’s pretty hard to not see the movie as a remake.

Anyhow, the new version devolved into a predictable Hollywood thriller CGI-fest, with mediocre writing and acting, relying on shocking the audience instead of plot and character development. A lot of the CGI effects were cheesy, and I couldn’t help guffawing randomly at it during the movie. As my companion pointed out, none of the characters were developed enough for us to care about them dying. “They were all just meat at that point,” he said. Compare this with the quiet, moody, almost noir-ish, well-paced horror of Carpenter’s version. The gross rubbery practical special effects of the 1982 version were more visceral and horrifying than the weird liquidy CGI, and I got to know the characters much better (even though a lot of them were 1980s stereotypes).

The plot tie-in into the 1982 version was weak and seemed thrown together last minute. They thought they were being clever by bringing back Carpenter’s score and font for that ending/credit sequence, but I wasn’t buying it. Overall, its OK for a popcorn munching mainstream throwaway date movie, but if you’re looking for something that compares to its predecessors (now deemed as horror classics), don’t waste your time guys.

BANG BANG is coming to the San Diego Asian Film Festival!! 

I went and saw Gus Van Sant’s newest, Restless, on Saturday.  I’m not hugely knowledgeable on his body of work, but I remember Van Sant from his success in both indie/arthouse and mainstream venues (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Milk); so after a good burger and a couple of beers from down the street, I walked into the theatre with a belly full of high hopes.

Restless is a story of two teens: Enoch (Henry Hopper) is a survivor of a car crash that took the lives of his parents; he likes to crash funerals. Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) is a terminal cancer patient that is given 3 months to live. The two fall in love. Ok, I didn’t know this was the synopsis of the movie, alright? I might have given it a second thought if I had known this. So its obviously some overtly tearjerker material.

The movie starts and my companion says, “its sort of like Juno.” Oh no. She’s right. Enoch and Annabel are hopelessly chic and quirky in their vintage wear and Van Sant seems more interested in this forced whimsy, referencing 60s French cinema and the Roaring 20s than in their character development, as Enoch devolves into a wretched Holden Caufield-type character who cannot face what he has fetishized. Van Sant basically uses all the other characters as a way for him to get over the death of his parents, Annabel being some kind of helpless radiant sacrificial lamb.

The film plods along, clunky with its sugariness, until Enoch has supposedly redeemed himself. After a ghost puts him in the hospital. Oh yeah, his best friend is the ghost of a Kamikaze pilot. Should have seen Moneyball instead.