Father Geek here recovering well from yesterdays extravagances... Our Man on the scene in Rome, Robert Bernocchi, sent in a quick report from the continent for all our regular Euro-readers out there... sooooo with no further adieu here's this week's edition of...
Euro-AICN...
Hi people. What’s the worst case scenario when you are desperately loooooking forward to a movie? Well, try with this. You spent an entire night on train trying to get to the opening in another country because yours isn't showing it yet... and you didn’t sleep well at all. Then, you make a final part of your journey by car. When you arrive, you have to hurry up to find and check into your hotel, and to eat a little something. Eventually, when you are sitting in your place at the theater, you feel that nothing can waste this experience... Buuuut if the projectionist then decides to start the movie without turning off the house lights and, more seriously, to show the movie in a 1,33:1 format (as a normal television) instead of widescreen, you easily begin to feel like you're being thrust into a Argento-like nightmare. Of course, I’m talking about my screening of THE TWO TOWERS. I couldn’t expect to see it until January 16th, 2003 (when it will be released here in Italy), so I decided to make a trip to Nice, France with a group of friends. The theater we chose was the only one to present the original English language version of the movie with the French subtitles. It was perfect to hear the real voices of the actors and yet to have also the help of the subtitles. But of course we didn’t expect to see the first two-three minutes (all the Gandalf-Balrog falling…) that way, in the wrong aspect ratio. Then, when the projectionist understood his mistake he stopped the movie. Unfortunately for us, he wasn’t so clever as to start the pic over from the start again, so we saw the movie correctly beginning with the Frodo line "It was just a dream, Sam". Luckily, I was able to see the movie again in the evening, in a great theater where they showed the french version (not a great dubbing job, in particular for Gandalf and Gollum characters, by the way) on a large screen, with a perfect sound.
I won’t waste your time repeating all the praises for Peter Jackson’s work, because many people before me did it very well on AICN.
I hope only that the huge success of LOTR will be able to allow many talented directors to find the budget to make personal movies.
So, I've prepared a few lines about the TTT grosses worldwide. Then, we have a spoiler free review of Gangs of New York and a look at the Mindhunters script.
Of course, I hope everyone of you spent a great christmas
And best wishes of a great 2003.
Hi people. What’s the worst case scenario when you are desperately loooooking forward to a movie? Well, try with this. You spent an entire night on train trying to get to the opening in another country because yours isn't showing it yet... and you didn’t sleep well at all. Then, you make a final part of your journey by car. When you arrive, you have to hurry up to find and check into your hotel, and to eat a little something. Eventually, when you are sitting in your place at the theater, you feel that nothing can waste this experience... Buuuut if the projectionist then decides to start the movie without turning off the house lights and, more seriously, to show the movie in a 1,33:1 format (as a normal television) instead of widescreen, you easily begin to feel like you're being thrust into a Argento-like nightmare. Of course, I’m talking about my screening of THE TWO TOWERS. I couldn’t expect to see it until January 16th, 2003 (when it will be released here in Italy), so I decided to make a trip to Nice, France with a group of friends. The theater we chose was the only one to present the original English language version of the movie with the French subtitles. It was perfect to hear the real voices of the actors and yet to have also the help of the subtitles. But of course we didn’t expect to see the first two-three minutes (all the Gandalf-Balrog falling…) that way, in the wrong aspect ratio. Then, when the projectionist understood his mistake he stopped the movie. Unfortunately for us, he wasn’t so clever as to start the pic over from the start again, so we saw the movie correctly beginning with the Frodo line "It was just a dream, Sam". Luckily, I was able to see the movie again in the evening, in a great theater where they showed the french version (not a great dubbing job, in particular for Gandalf and Gollum characters, by the way) on a large screen, with a perfect sound.
I won’t waste your time repeating all the praises for Peter Jackson’s work, because many people before me did it very well on AICN.
I hope only that the huge success of LOTR will be able to allow many talented directors to find the budget to make personal movies.
So, I've prepared a few lines about the TTT grosses worldwide. Then, we have a spoiler free review of Gangs of New York and a look at the Mindhunters script.
Of course, I hope everyone of you spent a great christmas
And best wishes of a great 2003.
Well, try with this. You spent an entire night on train trying to get to the opening in another country because yours isn't showing it yet... and you didn’t sleep well at all. Then, you make a final part of your journey by car. When you arrive, you have to hurry up to find and check into your hotel, and to eat a little something. Eventually, when you are sitting in your place at the theater, you feel that nothing can waste this experience... Buuuut if the projectionist then decides to start the movie without turning off the house lights and, more seriously, to show the movie in a 1,33:1 format (as a normal television) instead of widescreen, you easily begin to feel like you're being thrust into a Argento-like nightmare. Of course, I’m talking about my screening of THE TWO TOWERS. I couldn’t expect to see it until January 16th, 2003 (when it will be released here in Italy), so I decided to make a trip to Nice, France with a group of friends. The theater we chose was the only one to present the original English language version of the movie with the French subtitles. It was perfect to hear the real voices of the actors and yet to have also the help of the subtitles. But of course we didn’t expect to see the first two-three minutes (all the Gandalf-Balrog falling…) that way, in the wrong aspect ratio. Then, when the projectionist understood his mistake he stopped the movie. Unfortunately for us, he wasn’t so clever as to start the pic over from the start again, so we saw the movie correctly beginning with the Frodo line "It was just a dream, Sam". Luckily, I was able to see the movie again in the evening, in a great theater where they showed the french version (not a great dubbing job, in particular for Gandalf and Gollum characters, by the way) on a large screen, with a perfect sound.
I won’t waste your time repeating all the praises for Peter Jackson’s work, because many people before me did it very well on AICN.
I hope only that the huge success of LOTR will be able to allow many talented directors to find the budget to make personal movies.
So, I've prepared a few lines about the TTT grosses worldwide. Then, we have a spoiler free review of Gangs of New York and a look at the Mindhunters script.
Of course, I hope everyone of you spent a great christmas
And best wishes of a great 2003.
I won’t waste your time repeating all the praises for Peter Jackson’s work, because many people before me did it very well on AICN.
I hope only that the huge success of LOTR will be able to allow many talented directors to find the budget to make personal movies.
So, I've prepared a few lines about the TTT grosses worldwide. Then, we have a spoiler free review of Gangs of New York and a look at the Mindhunters script.
Of course, I hope everyone of you spent a great christmas
And best wishes of a great 2003.
Of course, I hope everyone of you spent a great christmas And best wishes of a great 2003.
TTT worldwide
The movie grossed $87,9M in 25 international territories in its opening weekend. It’s 38% better than FOTR did last year. Considering the U.S. opening ($102M), New Line is expecting that the total of TTT to be 20-25% more than that of the first movie ($860M). It would mean that The Two Towers would surpass the one billion dollars worldwide, a performance that only Titanic was able to achieve before.
The movie broke box office records in New Zealand, Denmark and Germany.
Here is a list of the first five days grosses in 11 countries:
- UK ($20,9M)
- Germany ($19.4M)
- France ($9.8M)
- Spain ($7.1M)
- South Corea ($5.8M)
- Sweden ($3.5M)
- Mexico ($3.1M)
- Denmark ($2,75M)
- Norway ($2.7M)
- Switzerland ($2M)
- New Zealand ($377,509 on thursday, $1.14M in the weekend)
Damo has seen GONY and can give us (especially to the european audience who didn’t see the movie yet) a good idea why it didn’t worked at the box office as Miramax expected…
Hi there. You printed my review of Black Hawk Down last year. Maybe you are interested in this.
I saw Gangs of New York last night at a BAFTA screening in London's lovely Leicester Square. The film was introduced by Jim Broadbent who cheerfully said it was brilliant. The guy's an actor so he's bound to be pretty convincing and he was. I believed him.
Jim cracked a few quiet jokes but judging by the audience Jim is the funniest man in the world. I hate it when they do that. The wankers. I'll cut to the chase. The film isn't brilliant. It's a collection of briliant moments in search of a story.
I have never seen such a convincng period recreation in any movie. Period. I never once thought I was looking at a movie set. But while that was captivating enough I was never once gripped by the story and even now I couldn't tell you what it was about. Was it a revenge movie? Kind of, but it's not the heart of the film. Was it a romance? Pretty sure it wasn't that. It sort of fissles out and goes nowhere, like two pathologically shy teenagers on a last date. Was it a story about the birth of New York city? Apparently but I failed to see the link between what happens to the protaganists and the events that unfold leading towards the dramatic civilisation of New York.
And that might be because the last half an hour is very confusing. It seems hurried which is ironic because the film as a whole feels too long. DiCaprio is still in Titanic, the young pretender gaining favour, making powerful friends and powerful enemies, Irish music following him whereever he goes but he's OK.
And Daniel Day-Lewis is fucking amazing. I can honestly say he is one of the most extraordinary characters ever to be put on film. His performance is superb but it's the dialogue that he is given that will really blow you away. It's a brilliantly written character.
In fact the dialogue in the whole film is really good. The music is good. The photography is great, the cast, the costumes, the effects, the sound etc etc...
This is a movie that is less than the sum of its parts and that's what makes it so damn dissapointing. You can't help feeling that, to paraphrase Robert Evans, they shot a great movie but it's not on the screen.
I think someone has already commented on the poor editing in this film. I agree but not just with the opening fight sequence. I think the whole movie is a bad edit.
Call me Damo... Because that's my name. Sort of.
Our beloved Ethan has the privilege to read the Mindhunters script. And his opinion is... (of course, spoilers follow)…
Hey there, It`s Ethan in the house with the review of the MINDHUNTERS script!
I don`t know which draft is it. But it has Wayne Kramer credited for story and screenwriting with Kevin Brodbin and Kario Salem doing the revisions. Now, these guys truly don`t mean a lot in the quality department. This goes for Brodbin particularly because he is rsponsible for Steven Seagal`s demise since he wrote THE GLIMMER MAN. BTW, to all AICN contributors saying shit about Steven Seagal, there`s only one tip. See MARKED FOR DEATH. Then write a petition to bring Dwight H. Little back into the big league.
This draft I read was also doctored by Dimension`s very own hacker Ehren Kruger. Personaly, I have mixed feelings about Kruger. I loved ARLINGTON ROAD (because of ARLINGTON ROAD, I even watched his early works like NEW WORLD DISORDER and that low-key TV flick, but I believe this doesn`t belong to his body of work) but his other scripts didn`t do it for me. For example, I had high expectations for REINDEER GAMES but all we got was a routine Frankenheimer attempt which proved only one thing, old school directors are still ahead of youngsters when it comes to energetic depictions of action. Nothing else. His rewrites in Wes Craven productions probably brought some sense into otherwise unreadable scripts but SCREAM 3 was a disaster even in Dimension galaxy. If anyone who reads this knows something abot Danny Boyle`s installment in the Miramax alien omnibus, please let me now at noptt2002@yahoo.com. This springs to mind because Ehren Kruger also rewrote IMPOSTOR, the Gary Fleder short which eventually became a full-lenght theatrical release. Originally, it was supposed to be a part of an alien oriented short feature anthology and allegedly, Danny Boyle`s story was even filmed.
Gore Verbinski`s RING probably kicked major ass for people who missed Hideo Nakata`s original but for me it was just a hipper update of a tedious source. Anyway, even if Kruger still has to make a worthy follow-up to brilliant ARLINGTON ROAD, his rewrites are highly valued in Hollywood.
Renny Harlin is one of my favourite directors and after all the bad stuff happening to him on DRIVEN (or good stuff, I actually think that he and Sly made that picture just to travel around the world and band hot models), I pray for him to rebound. I still hope he can make the Sena biopic if someone lets him close to racetrack. If I was him, I`d cast Eduardo Noriega and Monica Bellucci and blame the mob for Sena`s death.
MINDHUNTERS isn`t the best script Renny Harlin directed. Let me remind you, he directed some of the coolest flicks ever like DIE HARD 2, CLIFFHANGER, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, DEEP BLUE SEA. Some of these films, like CUTTHROAT ISLAND and DEEP BLUE SEA didn`t rely heavily on the writing. I mean Akiva Goldsman was around when they made DEEP BLUE SEA. Nevertheless, every other film had a great script by a high profile writer. Shane Black`s THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is one of my all-time favs.
MINDHUNTERS has this mechanical quality of DEEP BLUE SEA script-it melds genre with action oreinted execution. DEEP BLUE SEA cross-bred Monster Movie with DIE HAD. MINDHUNTERS does the same by submission of serial kiler subgenre.
We can define it as serial killer action whodunit. The plot is simple. A group of up-and-coming FBI profilers go on a deserted island where Navy SEALs perform training. Navy SEALs let the FBI use the island for one week every year. So, young profilers do some profiling exercises on the island. They start getting killed one-by-one in obscure ways and realize that there is a killer in their ranks.
Howard Hawks once said that one should never trust a script that reads well. John McTiernan once said that all the best-written scripts eventually go to Spielberg so you wind up doing middle-of-the-road scripts and use them as a loose concept. This one reads well and it is a full-bloded page turner. Some deliberately talky scenes slow it down so that momentum doesn`t swallow the sense of pace.
See, in screenwriting, you must have a sense of rhytm. And the rhytm is the blueprint of accent placement. This script has furiously paced strethes that must be calmed down with extreme prejudice.
These stretches with lots of dialogue tend to get redundant. And that`s the main problem. I hope rewrites managed to solve this matter. Still, the film is already shot. So, if this is the shooting draft, Renny ought to cut some of the lines before assembling this piece.
If there was a rewrite, guess it would be fine if they added some sexual content since the script lacks punch in that department. I know Renny would love to do it. Remember Saffron Burrows undoing for the shark to feast in DEEP BLUE SEA?
Action parts may be stunning and I know that Renny won`t shy away from making them memorable. The script opens with a powerful and suspenseful intro wher FBI agents raid the serial killer`s nest and get involved into some heavy close-counter battle. Also, the reality shootout replicas of towns, which debuted in Ted Post`s MAGNUM FORCE, get ultimate treatment in this one.
The coolest set-piece in the script is when elevator and a hall are flooded and there`s electricity threatening so characters can`t walk through water. To solve the situation, an alpinist character shoots his gun into walls and the side-climbs to the generator in order to shut down the power supply. This beats some of the greatest obstacle-driven suspense scenes and after doing similar stiff in CLIFFHANGER and DEEP BLUE SEA, I think that Harlin could easily make a remarkable event out of this idea.
The climax is energetic even though the revelation of who the killer is feels like a bit of a letdown. It`s not that the twist is badly written. I mean, the twist is revealed in the last four pages of the 93-page script and you really don`t see it coming. It`s just that you don`t particularly care who delivers such prolific murders since you care more about the mechanics of murder itself. The script never makes you guess. I have no idea how can they fix this problem. Harlin directed one of the smoothest character revelations ever in DIE HARD 2. In this one, he has a situation where no one cares who the killer is, so revelation leaves you flatlined. Maybe, the solution could be found in greater integration of murderer`s deeds into the plot. In this script we don`t get to unravel the puzzle of characters deeds that make him a murederer. This means that ideal rewrites should have contained murderer`s actions that look innocent when observed casually but start making sense when fit into a puzzle. By this draft, this kind of magic wasn`t played out.
The murders are grisly and if MPAA lets them pass, we will have gore galore with some CGI dismemberment of famous actors. If you remember Samuel L. Jackson `s character in DEEP BLUE SEA, I`ll tell you one thing-Renny will pull that shit twice in this one. As for CGI, it ain`t threatening CGI. It`s like DEATH BECOMES HER done for thrills.
As for the cast, there are no sparkling personalities in this script, so I guess actors will have to get as magnetic as possible to pull this one off. Val Kilmer and Christian Slater reunite after their latest direct-to-video release HARD CASH. Hollywood was unforgiving when it came to these guys and I hope they get back on track since some of their quality output, like Kilmer`s SALTON SEA almost skipped any release. And there`s also the Brit hope Johnny Lee Miller with a fine character to behold against these two fallen angels. LL Cool J has an impressive track record in my book. I don`t like his acting. Actually, the only thing I like is some of his early music, but he worked with John Badham, John McTiernan and Renny Harlin. You gotta respect that!
I think that Dimension could have a 50 million-grosser in this one, even with the script as it is. If marketed as a mid-budget genre relief in vein of recent Joel Silver or Luc Besson production ventures. It will be a solid film even with this script if Renny stays in shape. The film is wrapped so there are no more rewrites. Let`s hope this one was rewritten. Anyhow, Dimension finally have a competent and competitive product in their hands.
BTW, Menahem Golan is back. Or is it Yoram Globus. Whatever. Let`s pray for Cannon rennaisance!
God bless, Ethan
