The Australian animation studio Animal Logic is set to make a live-action
superhero film, based on the popular manga character Astro Boy. The makers of
past animated hits The Lego Movie and Happy Feet, have signed a deal with
Japan’s Tezuka Productions.
Chief executive Zareh Nalbandian said the plan was to create a “Marvel-style”
franchise that would be “at the very convergence of live-action, animation and
visual effects”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“There are very few characters in the entertainment world like Astro Boy that
haven’t already been brought to the big screen in a live-action movie,” said
Nalbandian.
Authored and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy was originally titled
Mighty Atom, and was a popular Japanese manga series in the 1950s and 60s. The
character found new life in the following decades as an animated television
show.
The series is based on a robot boy modelled after the late son of his
inventor Doctor Tenma, who passed away in a car accident. Astro Boy quickly
proves to have special powers and skills that he uses to fight crime and
injustice, often defending humans from other more maniacal robots.
A 2009 film adaption of the character was co-produced by American, Hong Kong
and Chinese film companies. Called Astro Boy, it had a US$65m budget, featured
the voices of Freddie Highmore and Kristen Bell, but outside of China it did not
fare well at the global box office.
Animal Logic is one of the world’s busiest animation and visual effects
studios having won several awards for its work in The Lego Movie. Fans have
suggested it was snubbed by the Oscars when the film failed to receive an
Academy award nomination for best movie.
Founded by Nalbandian and Chris Godfrey in 1991, the company’s film credits
include the Matrix series and, most recently, The Great Gatsby, Unbroken, X-Men:
Days of Future Past, Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Rover.
Testament of Youth (2014) Director: James
Kent Entertainment grade: B History
grade: C-
Vera Brittain’s memoir of her experiences and losses in the first world war
was published in 1933 as Testament of Youth. It became an instant bestseller and
remains a classic.
Youth
Before the war, Vera’s main obstacles are parents and boredom. She is played
brilliantly by the Swedish actress Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair). Her parents
don’t like the idea of her going to university: they fear that if she becomes a
bluestocking she will never find a husband. This is more or less accurate.
Brittain was bored out of her mind during her girlhood in the beautiful but
snobbish and conservative environs of Buxton. “Even at 18, a mentally voracious
young woman cannot live entirely upon scenery,” she wrote, adding that she would
have been in danger of “dying of spontaneous combustion” had she not had her
diary to write and an interesting curate in a nearby village. The film’s
screenplay might be accused of losing a little of Brittain’s wit in its
translation from page to screen, but it captures her courage and sharpness well
enough.
‘A mentally voracious
young woman cannot live entirely upon scenery’ … Testament of Youth.
Photograph: Allstar/BBC Films
Romance
Just as Vera is shouting at her father (Dominic West) that she doesn’t want a
husband, in walks hunky young Roland Leighton (Kit Harington). “Wordsworth,
Shelley, Byron. All these romantics aren’t good for you, you know,” he says,
rather patronisingly, as he helps her collect the books she has hurled out of a
window in a fit of teenage angst. The meeting seems contrived, and it is – the
two really met at dinner, according to Brittain’s memoir, and there was no
book-throwing rage or patronising putdown. Both Vera and Roland are due to go to
Oxford, until Roland announces – when they meet on the station platform to go up
together – that he’s joining the army instead. The film has, understandably,
dramatised this moment, which in real life was communicated by letter. “I don’t
think in the circumstances I could easily bring myself to endure a secluded life
of scholastic vegetation,” the real Roland Leighton wrote. “I feel that I am
meant to take an active part in this war.”
‘All these romantics
aren’t good for you, you know’ … Kit Harington as Roland Leighton with Alicia
Vikander as Vera Brittain
More romance
The film’s recreation of Roland and Vera’s courtship is sweetly done, and the
scene in which he leaves for the war – with a train full of desperate,
heartbroken women saying goodbye to the men they love – is extremely moving. It
is fictionalised, though. “We never kissed and never said a word,” wrote the
real Brittain of seeing Leighton off for France.
Heartbreak
Vera cannot live a life of scholastic vegetation either, and leaves Oxford to
become a nurse. Christmas approaches, and Roland gets leave to come home and
marry her. Vera’s parents are with her at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, and she
is already wearing a white suit – “Just half an hour to go!” Then a telephone
call comes through. She thinks it must be Roland, but it is his sobbing mother
(Anna Chancellor), with the news that he is dead. In reality, there was no
wedding scheduled – just a small reunion. The call from Roland’s mother came on
the morning of 27 December 1915, as Vera was getting up.
War
The film misses out the real Brittain’s period of nursing in Malta, skipping
to 1917 when she travelled to France to work in a field hospital. She is put to
work nursing German prisoners of war. One day, a huge number of British
casualties come in. As she walks out of the hospital hut, the camera pulls back
to show rows of stretchered men laid out on the ground. It pulls back and back,
showing more and more as Vera picks her way between them. This isn’t in
Brittain’s book, though film buffs will recognise the shot from the famous
moment when Scarlett O’Hara walks through lines of injured soldiers in Gone With
the Wind. Told that her brother, Edward (Taron Egerton), is among the wounded,
she searches frantically for him among the bodies. She finds him, and carefully
nurses him back to health. This is fictional. The real Edward Brittain was not
wounded in France, nor was he nursed by his sister.
Testament of Youth
charts the origins of Brittain’s pacifismPhotograph: Allstar/BBC Films
Verdict
A fine and moving film, if heavy-handed in places. The screen version of
Testament of Youth gilds the lily of Vera Brittain’s memoir – though fans of the
book may well feel it didn’t need so much extra adornment.
The teaser video for JJ Abrams’ forthcoming Star Wars film, The Force
Awakens, is set to be the most-viewed trailer of all time, but George Lucas
hasn’t seen it from the upcoming film, "Star Wars:
The Force Awakens," expected in theaters on Dec. 18, 2015 Lightsabers ain’t
what they used to be … JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Photograph:
AP/LucasFilm/Disney
It is on course to be the most-viewed trailer of all time, with an
estimated 52m views in its first four days online. But the man who created the
long-running Star Wars space saga, George Lucas, has not yet taken the time to
view the teaser for new entry The Force Awakens, reports pagesix.com.
Lucas told the site he would wait until JJ Abrams’ film hits cinemas. The
film-maker, who sold all Star Wars rights to Disney in a $4.05bn deal in October
2012, said he was “not really” curious about the new movie.
“I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t seen it yet,” pagesix.com quoted
Lucas saying. Asked why, he replied: “Because it’s not in the movie theatre. I
like going to the movies and watching the whole thing there. I plan to see it
when it’s released.”
The internet has not been kind to Lucas since the release of the trailer on
28 November. Wags immediately reimagined the teaser with incongruous CGI aliens,
in a reference to the remastered Special Edition versions of the original Star
Wars trilogy.
One Funny or Die video even speculated over the film-maker’s miserable
reaction to Abrams’ take on his creation. In the spoof commentary, Lucas and the
“force ghost” of Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker lament the addition of a
new, three-pronged lightsaber and complain about the absence of Jar Jar Binks’
race, the Gungans, in the teaser.
But is it
kitsch? … Amy Adams as Margaret Keane in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes.
The irony of Big Eyes, Tim Burton’s film about the authorial stamp on a work
of art, is that it is nearly bereft of what makes Burton’s work so recognisable.
The deeper implications of this are a matter for Burton and his shrink, but for
us in the audience it’s a welcome recharge from a man whose last picture,
Frankenweenie, was merely a longer version of one of his earlier projects.
Big Eyes reteams Burton with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry
Karaszewski, who collaborated on the (dare I use the M-word?) masterpiece Ed
Wood. Both films are about a misunderstood artist, but the similarities end
there. The new film tells the strange but true story of Margaret Keane (Amy
Adams), a divorcee who arrives with her young daughter in San Francisco in the
late 1950s. She’s a bit of a mystery – women simply didn’t just up and leave
their husbands back then – but she takes great pride in her paintings. Her work,
at first mostly portraits of her daughter, takes the cute but sad form of
waif-like children with dark, enormous eyes.
Margaret finds a stable provider in Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), a
real-estate man and “Sunday painter” of dull street scenes. What he lacks in
artistic spark he more than makes up for in loquaciousness and hucksterism. He
can’t get his or Margaret’s work exhibited in art galleries, so he works out a
deal to get the paintings shown in the Hungry I jazz club. When Walter argues
with the club owner (Jon Polito), he is fortunate enough to do so while the
press is watching. Amid the confusion, the paintings start selling and the next
thing you know, Walter is taking credit for Margaret’s work.
They don’t just sell a few portraits of “big-eyed waifs”; the paintings
become a national sensation. Despite the work being derided by serious art
critics as kitsch, Walter, with the aid of a columnist pal (Danny Huston), gets
it seen and admired by movie stars. He goes on television. The masses who can’t
afford a painting are soon buying cheaply produced posters. Even Andy Warhol
approves. Meanwhile, trapped in a darkened studio in their new googie-style
mansion, Margaret slaves away creating more “Keanes”.
The slow burn of Big Eyes is watching Margaret find the courage to confront
her husband, resulting in a fascinating, and funny, trial. Though it is set 50
years ago, Big Eyes is eerily a film of the moment. As we hear more testimonials
from the victims of Bill Cosby – himself a figure of Americana bordering on
kitsch – there are many who still refuse to take a woman’s allegations at face
value. CNN talking head Don Lemon’s ludicrous line of questioning to Joan
Tarshis lays bare the misunderstanding some people still have about abuses of
power. Margaret has her confidence and agency destroyed slowly and methodically.
Walter can stumble into his scheme, knowing that he’ll be able to rely on the
“woman’s place” argument when he needs reinforcement from a patriarchal system.
(A visit to a Roman Catholic confessional in which the priest tells Margaret to
just do as she’s told is among the more infuriating moments in the
film.)
The setting and the politics of the era are what keeps Big Eyes intriguing,
but much like the waif paintings themselves, the script isn’t exactly subtle.
There are many scenes in which we don’t so much get an insight into a
character’s thought processes through some deft observation, we get it because
the characters stand in a corridor and shout their inner conflicts at one
another. Shading from supporting players, even entertaining ones such as the
hipster gallerist (Jason Schwartzman) or the snobby New York Times art critic
(Terence Stamp), are really there to bark a point of view, and are not
gracefully threaded into the drama.
Tim Burton’s usual visual language peeks through sparingly. There’s that
fabulous house and then there are the paintings themselves, which harmonise
nicely with Burton’s established, playfully macabre iconography. Part of the
film’s problem, though, is that it’s hard to know if we should be celebrating or
laughing at Margaret’s work. Certainly we care for Margaret and the way Walter
has her trapped, but her character comes across as a cypher representing a great
number of issues without being a real individual. This movie wants to be an oil
painting, but ends up being more of a mass-produced, though good-quality
print.
Big Eyes is released in the US on Christmas Day, in the UK on Boxing Day and
19 February in Australia
What are the top 10 Hollywood action movies of 2013, The American Film
Industry, or the Hollywood, as is commonly known, is termed as one of the most
versatile industries in the world is also termed as decades ahead from any other
film industry in the world in terms of imagination, filming, direction and
acting. Be it action, drama, romance, comedy, science fiction, historical, theme
based or any other cinema, Hollywood makes them all and excels at them most of
the times. The number of categories being so many, it is difficult to list the
best of them altogether, hence let's has a look at the upcoming best Hollywood
Action movies of 2013 ones category wise.
The list of Top Hollywood action movies 2013 is a big comparison to last year
2012. After reviewing the movies as based on box office report, we picked the
best ones. Some of them have great action with amazing quality of visuals. As
the year goes on, the list will increase with some greatest upcoming English
movies in action category.
1. G.I. Joe: Retaliation: In this sequel of G.I. Joe rise of the cobra, that
released in 2009, Rob Moore, hired writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to write
the plot and the movie stars Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson with Channing
Tatum, Arnold Vosloo, Ray Park, Jonathan Pryce, and Lee Byung-hun continuing
their roles of the first part. The G.I. Joes have to not only fought their
worldly opponent the cobra, but they are also forced to compete with the
continuous threats from the government that bringing in danger the very
existence of their department.
2. The Lone Ranger: This upcoming action western film is directed by Gore
Verbenski and produced by Walt Disney Pictures. The leading role is played by
stars Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp playing Tonto. This action comedy revolves
around a masked hero who is brought to life via new eyes. Native American spirit
warrior Tonto narrates the countless stories that altered John
Reid, a man of the law, into a legend of justice. The two not
likely heroes have to now work as team against the antisocial elements like
greed and corruption.
3. Snitch: Scheduled to be released on February 22, 2013, this action
thriller stars Dwayne Johnson and Susan Sarandon, directed by Ric Roman Waugh.
The movie shows how a father becomes an undercover informer in order to expose a
drug supplies group when his teenager kid is arrested for drug distribution and
sentenced prison for a decade despite of being innocent.
4. Office Down: Directed by Brian A Miller, the movie is written by John
Chase starring Stephen Dorff, Tommy Flanagan and Dominic Purcell. The plot
revolves around a cop whose not so good past comes in his present and haunts
him. Now the decisions to either do what's right or to bow down to the threats
of his past connections.
We hope the above list helps you decide your watch list for the coming year.
So it's just a few more days and you can start booking your tickets for the
shows of these Top 10 Best Hollywood action movies 2013.
from the upcoming film, "Star Wars:
The Force Awakens," expected in theaters on Dec. 18, 2015
