The titan Prometheus had his liver pecked out every day by an eagle, though he didn’t have to wait 16 years for The Phantom Menace.
Ridley Scott resumes his own sci-fi career after a similar hiatus with this visually epic extra-terrestrial fable that shares more than DNA with Alien.
Prometheus isn’t an official prequel, Scott has been adamant about that and you can’t blame him when (Aliens and Alien 3 aside) the quality of the follow up movies to his 1979 space-horror has been so variable. But he won’t be able to avoid comparisons and the pressure of anticipation built up by one of the best marketing campaigns in years. Can he deliver? Yes, mostly. Mostly by design that is.
We’re in 2093 and the set-up looks much better than it reads. Scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) discovers some 35,000 year old cave paintings in the Isle of Skye which seem to support a theory that mankind has alien forefathers who could be our god-like progenitors. Luckily, she has a corporate paymaster in the form of Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) with a trillion dollars to spend on space exploration and an agenda of his own. So she joins her fellow scientist, Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), assorted crew members, company badass, Vickers (Charlize Theron), Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and the synthetic robot David (Michael Fassbender) on an exploratory trip to planet LV-223 to meet their makers.
Of course, as soon as you see a space crew with various members who aren’t played by famous actors you’re naturally waiting for their eviscerations. You won’t be disappointed. Nor you will be surprised to hear that the plot, even though it has been finessed by Lost script-writer Damon Lindelof, is basically ‘when organisms go bad’. What the production seems to be trying for is an epic fable which goes beyond the space-slasher. At times it gets there but the overall mythology is not as satisfying as the setup. There is your Lost connection folks.
Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty to enjoy and appreciate. The strong female characters, which have long been a feature of Ridley Scott’s catalogue since Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, come out well. Rapace is feisty and her character features in at least one humdinger of a scene. Charlize Theron’s Vickers is underwritten, but she portrays her tough as nails company honcho really well and she looks great; in that her physique is part of her characterisation.
For posterity though, it may well be Michael Fassbender’s David who steals the show. With his blonde rinse and slightly Hal-9000 intonation, he gives David an intensely creepy, original air. We know he is a robot and we know he’s a corporate creature, so followers of all Alien films will already suspect he knows more than his human crew mates and has dark designs. Let’s be honest though: Michael Fassbender has a visual appeal that the camera loves. His aesthetics could have been designed with the rest of the furnishings, cool space-helmets and sleek medical pods; all cheekbones and blue-eyes. Note the direct reference to an actor with similar characteristics (and voice) from the past.
The production design, by Arthur Max and cinematography, by Darius Wolski is as good as you would expect on a Ridley Scott show – and that is very good indeed, you get epic scale and wide-shots, brilliantly lit and realised. Psychoanalysis fans will also ponder the continuing influence of HR Giger with his creature designs that are often described as vaginal – analyse that!
Viewing it on an IMAX screen, I have to confess while the scale was great, I found the 3D slightly fuzzy. The was definite ghosting around titles and certain scenes. Strangely, the 3D effect seemed better on preview footage shown some weeks earlier. The film is visually gob-smacking enough that it may need a non-3D viewing to get the most out of it, especially with plenty of gloomy scenes not helped by the darkening effect of 3D glasses.
In the end how does Prometheus tally up after high expectations? It is a brilliantly designed, epic-feeling movie that has enough going for it to place it above many sequels, reboots and recent blockbusters. That said, the script is surprisingly poor in terms of character behaviour and implausibility, even within its own terms. For that reason it falls well short of the greatness its visual sheen and constituent talents promised.
My review as it originally appeared
Salacious crumbs from the cineworld by film journalist Johnny Messias
Showing posts with label Michael Fassbender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Fassbender. Show all posts
Friday, 1 June 2012
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Prometheus to polish your eye-balls in 3D
20th Century Fox unleashed around 13 minutes of 3D footage for the upcoming Prometheus, Sir Ridley Scott's return to science fiction and one of the most anticipated films of 2012.
I was in an audience that just about managed pick its collective jaws off the floor in time for director Ridley Scott with his actors, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, who all popped into the Vue Leicester Square for a Q&A.
Whereas the mechanical hardware bits in Avatar were good before you were sent down uncanny valley by Smurfs, Prometheus smacks you in the gob, and you stay hit. We saw the set-up, starting in the Isle of Skye, where scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) discovers carvings in an ancient cave that reveal (non-spoiler alert) an alien civilisation has visited Earth and left an ‘invitation’. The establishing wide shots of landscape and the photography in the cave are cinematically beautiful; this is non-gratuitous depth-giving 3D as seen in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
Shading in some scenes that have been suggested in trailers so far, we next see Charlize Theron’s character, Meredith Vickers doing push-ups on board the Prometheus space-ship. She is a real 'Meredith', a company person, sinewy and tough looking; she’s on the mission to make sure everyone tows the corporate Weyland line. It’s a nice introduction, the crew are still in hypersleep yet she is ‘up’ early to do exercises and get her arse-kicking mojo on. She looks an interesting character.
The general look and feel of both the 'habitable moon' (geeks: it's LV 223) and the ship's architecture was best in show. Imagine the sleek stylings of a Ridley Scott picture, retooled with depth and scale enhanced. It's actually hard to convey how good it looks; there are a few shots with an on-board pool table in the foreground with Michael Fassbender's David moving through the room as the ship is docking (?) that just looks really cool - conveying movement and scale. I've made it sound dull but your eyes will be in little warm jacuzzi baths of joy.
But more promising that the visuals is something Ridley (don't call him Sir Ridley) said in response to a question about how you do anything new in a science fiction film:
"Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar and the planets are similar. So what you try to do is lean more heavily on the story and on the characters, to make that really, to give you lift-off".
Fingers crossed.
Look away now if you don't want to know anything about anything. I wanted to ask about the chest-burster scene that was in the original Alien, where the actors didn't know what was going to happen to poor John Hurt.
Fassbender and Theron didn't really get what I was saying, my fault obviously. Here is the little sequence which ends with pseudo SPOILER:
Dial M for Movies: Question for the actors. Given what Ridley did to his poor actors on the original ‘Alien’. I’m thinking of a particular scene that was 'in 3D' shall we say; were you constantly living in fear everyday on set? And did you make any special preparations to join Ridley’s crew?
Michael Fassbender: What was the fear?
Dial M: The scene in the original ‘Alien’ where the actors were surprised by something bursting out of the actor’s chest. Was there an extra level of anxiety that that brought to you?
Dial M: I never knew that! So, no I was living in bliss, ignorance and bliss.
Ridley Scott: There is a scene that could be called the equivalent of that in this film. But that was private, no one witnessed that. It’s your scene [points to Noomi]. But we can’t say what it is.
Dial M: Which one was that?
Noomi Rapace: But I did! I dreamt nightmares for two weeks. I had these weird fucked up images in my head, so yes it did affect us.
Ridley Scott means business. He isn’t concerned what certificate the movie gets as long as it finds its audience. In no uncertain terms:
“I want certification for this film that allows me to make as large a box office as possible! No, I’ll tell you what, the studios wrestle constantly with these ridiculous adjustments to whether it’s PG13, PG15, you know, R, double R and it does, to a certain extent, affect the box office, which is arithmetic, which is not a cash register, it’s how they get their money back. And if studios don’t get their money back we don’t have any movies.”
David, Michael Fassbender’s android is something of an enigma, there will be some comedic moments with him and the actor watched Dirk Bogarde in The Servant, Laurence of Arabia and The Man Who fell to Earth to tune up his performance.
Ridley is chuffed with his cameraman Dariusz Wolski and the RED cameras they have used. He doesn’t stand on ceremony when it comes to 3D:
“So anyone who says, ‘Oh, you’ve got to add sixteen weeks’ means they don’t know what the bloody hell they’re doing! ‘There’s a lot to it’. No, it’s dead simple, straight forward. That [holds up finger] could be hanging in the foreground, and you can have a forty five minute discussion about something hanging in the foreground. Say ‘I hate it; get rid of it’ or ‘I love it; fuck off!’ It’s that simple!”
Refreshingly blunt he may have been, but SRS knows what he is doing. He's given science fiction fans (and wider audiences too) enough of a glimpse now to keep this title at the top of the anticipation list. Especially with the 1979 classic in its DNA.
"I must have thought about it for three or four years and thought in all of the [Alien] films nobody had asked a very simple question which was - who is the big guy in the chair, who was fondly after ‘Alien’ called The Space Jockey. I don’t know how the hell he got that name; there was this big boned creature who seemed to be nine feet tall sitting in this chair and I went in to Fox with four questions. Who are they? Why are they there? Why that cargo and where were they going or had they in fact had a forced landing?"
I was in an audience that just about managed pick its collective jaws off the floor in time for director Ridley Scott with his actors, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, who all popped into the Vue Leicester Square for a Q&A.
Colour me impressed
Whereas the mechanical hardware bits in Avatar were good before you were sent down uncanny valley by Smurfs, Prometheus smacks you in the gob, and you stay hit. We saw the set-up, starting in the Isle of Skye, where scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) discovers carvings in an ancient cave that reveal (non-spoiler alert) an alien civilisation has visited Earth and left an ‘invitation’. The establishing wide shots of landscape and the photography in the cave are cinematically beautiful; this is non-gratuitous depth-giving 3D as seen in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
In space, no one can hear you scream
Shading in some scenes that have been suggested in trailers so far, we next see Charlize Theron’s character, Meredith Vickers doing push-ups on board the Prometheus space-ship. She is a real 'Meredith', a company person, sinewy and tough looking; she’s on the mission to make sure everyone tows the corporate Weyland line. It’s a nice introduction, the crew are still in hypersleep yet she is ‘up’ early to do exercises and get her arse-kicking mojo on. She looks an interesting character.
The general look and feel of both the 'habitable moon' (geeks: it's LV 223) and the ship's architecture was best in show. Imagine the sleek stylings of a Ridley Scott picture, retooled with depth and scale enhanced. It's actually hard to convey how good it looks; there are a few shots with an on-board pool table in the foreground with Michael Fassbender's David moving through the room as the ship is docking (?) that just looks really cool - conveying movement and scale. I've made it sound dull but your eyes will be in little warm jacuzzi baths of joy.
But more promising that the visuals is something Ridley (don't call him Sir Ridley) said in response to a question about how you do anything new in a science fiction film:
"Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar and the planets are similar. So what you try to do is lean more heavily on the story and on the characters, to make that really, to give you lift-off".
Fingers crossed.
A question explained and a spoiler
Look away now if you don't want to know anything about anything. I wanted to ask about the chest-burster scene that was in the original Alien, where the actors didn't know what was going to happen to poor John Hurt.
Fassbender and Theron didn't really get what I was saying, my fault obviously. Here is the little sequence which ends with pseudo SPOILER:
Dial M for Movies: Question for the actors. Given what Ridley did to his poor actors on the original ‘Alien’. I’m thinking of a particular scene that was 'in 3D' shall we say; were you constantly living in fear everyday on set? And did you make any special preparations to join Ridley’s crew?
Michael Fassbender: What was the fear?
Dial M: The scene in the original ‘Alien’ where the actors were surprised by something bursting out of the actor’s chest. Was there an extra level of anxiety that that brought to you?
Dial M: I never knew that! So, no I was living in bliss, ignorance and bliss.
Ridley Scott: There is a scene that could be called the equivalent of that in this film. But that was private, no one witnessed that. It’s your scene [points to Noomi]. But we can’t say what it is.
Dial M: Which one was that?
Noomi Rapace: But I did! I dreamt nightmares for two weeks. I had these weird fucked up images in my head, so yes it did affect us.
So just how dark will Prometheus be?
Ridley Scott means business. He isn’t concerned what certificate the movie gets as long as it finds its audience. In no uncertain terms:
“I want certification for this film that allows me to make as large a box office as possible! No, I’ll tell you what, the studios wrestle constantly with these ridiculous adjustments to whether it’s PG13, PG15, you know, R, double R and it does, to a certain extent, affect the box office, which is arithmetic, which is not a cash register, it’s how they get their money back. And if studios don’t get their money back we don’t have any movies.”
David, Michael Fassbender’s android is something of an enigma, there will be some comedic moments with him and the actor watched Dirk Bogarde in The Servant, Laurence of Arabia and The Man Who fell to Earth to tune up his performance.
Ridley is chuffed with his cameraman Dariusz Wolski and the RED cameras they have used. He doesn’t stand on ceremony when it comes to 3D:
“So anyone who says, ‘Oh, you’ve got to add sixteen weeks’ means they don’t know what the bloody hell they’re doing! ‘There’s a lot to it’. No, it’s dead simple, straight forward. That [holds up finger] could be hanging in the foreground, and you can have a forty five minute discussion about something hanging in the foreground. Say ‘I hate it; get rid of it’ or ‘I love it; fuck off!’ It’s that simple!”
Refreshingly blunt he may have been, but SRS knows what he is doing. He's given science fiction fans (and wider audiences too) enough of a glimpse now to keep this title at the top of the anticipation list. Especially with the 1979 classic in its DNA.
"I must have thought about it for three or four years and thought in all of the [Alien] films nobody had asked a very simple question which was - who is the big guy in the chair, who was fondly after ‘Alien’ called The Space Jockey. I don’t know how the hell he got that name; there was this big boned creature who seemed to be nine feet tall sitting in this chair and I went in to Fox with four questions. Who are they? Why are they there? Why that cargo and where were they going or had they in fact had a forced landing?"
Prometheus is released June 1 2012
Friday, 23 December 2011
Prometheus trailer
It's been a week of massive trailers. First up was The Dark Knight Rises second trailer, then The Hobbit, a full year before release - both well received by excited fans. It looks like Ridley Scott may have trumped both of those with a first full trailer for his new space epic, Prometheus. Now Scott is probably one of the best visual stylists in mainstream cinema, so a return to sci-fi, and to the same universe of Alien and Aliens is quite a prospect, even in a year as jam-packed with genuine blockbusters as 2012.
How about that for editing? Who says the art of trailer cutting is dead. Love the reappearance of the Space Jockey, the mysterious giant statues of humanoid faces, and the deadly gas attack on a space suited victim. Just love the look of this movie, apart from Michael Fassbender's blonde rinse.
And what can we guess of the plot from Greek mythology? Well apparently Prometheus was a champion of mankind who stole fire from Zeus. And in revenge he was tied to a rock and condemned to have a giant eagle eat his liver every day. Nice. The key part I believe is Promy was meant to have played a 'pivotal role' in the early history of mankind. Some sort of DNA seeding, mixed with a terrible biological weapon?
Sign us up Ridley, we'll be there.
Prometheus is released 1st June 2012 in the UK.
How about that for editing? Who says the art of trailer cutting is dead. Love the reappearance of the Space Jockey, the mysterious giant statues of humanoid faces, and the deadly gas attack on a space suited victim. Just love the look of this movie, apart from Michael Fassbender's blonde rinse.
And what can we guess of the plot from Greek mythology? Well apparently Prometheus was a champion of mankind who stole fire from Zeus. And in revenge he was tied to a rock and condemned to have a giant eagle eat his liver every day. Nice. The key part I believe is Promy was meant to have played a 'pivotal role' in the early history of mankind. Some sort of DNA seeding, mixed with a terrible biological weapon?
Sign us up Ridley, we'll be there.
Prometheus is released 1st June 2012 in the UK.
Monday, 24 October 2011
LFF 2011: Shame
Michael Fassbender continues his unstoppable rise in Shame, an art film that is both hypnotic and brave even when it seems to dare you to look away. You'll come out wanting to scrub yourself with hand-gel but not in a Contagion way.
In director Steve McQueen’s second feature, Fassbender plays Brandon a young executive in New York. He is sharply dressed, handsome and seemingly successful at work; clinching deals in boardrooms with backslaps and shit-eating grins. He is also a sex addict.
If we smirked at celebrities who have claimed this addiction in the past, Shame shows you what that really means, day to day. For Brandon, it’s all chat rooms, fuck-cams, and anonymous shags in back alleys. He cannot get through the working day without digitally relieving himself in a toilet cubicle and his office computer is crammed full of porn (he somehow gets away with that one).
We quickly understand the sex is the outward expression of a terrible loneliness and sense of alienation he feels. The arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) brings this into sharp relief. She’s a session singer whose life is a mess. She needs her brother and the last thing he can do is relate to her and offer a shoulder to cry on. When she rocks up at his apartment, she invades his space and fuels his self-loathing. How can he continue his ordered life of porn, masturbation and microwave dinners with his sister just feet away from him? Between the siblings there is a hint of – well, incest is too strong a word – fraught intimacy.
It seems that Sissy being young and sexually active, and also wanting to hug her brother becomes an exquisite torture for him. It brings out violent tendencies and sends him into the streets of New York. In an memorable scene Sissy takes Brandon’s boss back to the apartment for sex and her brother is spewed out into Manhattan; as the camera follows his long-stride jogging for what seems like an extraordinarily long tracking shot through several NY blocks. Steve McQueen’s fluid camera move captures the moment beautifully, with the eye of an artist who work has included experimental films and sculpture.
Both actors are extraordinary. Fassbender delivers a performance that is alarmingly raw. He strips his character literally bare as Brandon gazes for what seems like an eternity into Steve McQueen’s cameras, in various stages of sexual release – and sadness. You cannot imagine a non-European actor, like contemporary rising star Ryan Gosling, taking on this role. Carey Mulligan also has that skill of revealing emotion on film and making it appear effortless. Both actors’ commitment to their craft includes frank nudity but these instances are true to the material and not glamourised in any sense. I mentioned this was an art film. By that I mean it felt true to life and hard to watch as opposed to reassuring. It is certainly not erotic and, for me anyway, seemed more revealing of its characters inner emotions than Michael Winterbottom's blow-jobs and concerts film, 9 Songs.
Shame seems to scratch away at some darkness in contemporary times, of people locked away in apartments in front of laptops, webcams and mobile phones, grinding away in despair. However, Steve MacQueen’s film has a formal beauty that demands to be seen, like Taxi Driver but in a different palette, different era.
In director Steve McQueen’s second feature, Fassbender plays Brandon a young executive in New York. He is sharply dressed, handsome and seemingly successful at work; clinching deals in boardrooms with backslaps and shit-eating grins. He is also a sex addict.
If we smirked at celebrities who have claimed this addiction in the past, Shame shows you what that really means, day to day. For Brandon, it’s all chat rooms, fuck-cams, and anonymous shags in back alleys. He cannot get through the working day without digitally relieving himself in a toilet cubicle and his office computer is crammed full of porn (he somehow gets away with that one).
We quickly understand the sex is the outward expression of a terrible loneliness and sense of alienation he feels. The arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) brings this into sharp relief. She’s a session singer whose life is a mess. She needs her brother and the last thing he can do is relate to her and offer a shoulder to cry on. When she rocks up at his apartment, she invades his space and fuels his self-loathing. How can he continue his ordered life of porn, masturbation and microwave dinners with his sister just feet away from him? Between the siblings there is a hint of – well, incest is too strong a word – fraught intimacy.
It seems that Sissy being young and sexually active, and also wanting to hug her brother becomes an exquisite torture for him. It brings out violent tendencies and sends him into the streets of New York. In an memorable scene Sissy takes Brandon’s boss back to the apartment for sex and her brother is spewed out into Manhattan; as the camera follows his long-stride jogging for what seems like an extraordinarily long tracking shot through several NY blocks. Steve McQueen’s fluid camera move captures the moment beautifully, with the eye of an artist who work has included experimental films and sculpture.
Both actors are extraordinary. Fassbender delivers a performance that is alarmingly raw. He strips his character literally bare as Brandon gazes for what seems like an eternity into Steve McQueen’s cameras, in various stages of sexual release – and sadness. You cannot imagine a non-European actor, like contemporary rising star Ryan Gosling, taking on this role. Carey Mulligan also has that skill of revealing emotion on film and making it appear effortless. Both actors’ commitment to their craft includes frank nudity but these instances are true to the material and not glamourised in any sense. I mentioned this was an art film. By that I mean it felt true to life and hard to watch as opposed to reassuring. It is certainly not erotic and, for me anyway, seemed more revealing of its characters inner emotions than Michael Winterbottom's blow-jobs and concerts film, 9 Songs.
Shame seems to scratch away at some darkness in contemporary times, of people locked away in apartments in front of laptops, webcams and mobile phones, grinding away in despair. However, Steve MacQueen’s film has a formal beauty that demands to be seen, like Taxi Driver but in a different palette, different era.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)