Abe Lincoln Role Stirs Studios To Flood Market With New Vampire Pics

Despite the less-than-stellar opening box office, and disastrous reviews, of the new film,‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’, major Hollywood studios are red-lining, and rushing into production, a wave of new vampire projects, a source tells The Garlic.



“They can’t get them out fast enough,’ said the movie industry insider, adding that “my clients are badgering to get me to land them something.”

The plan calls for issuing new projects with original stories, many of them with A-List actors, for serial stories that will offer multiple sequels and franchises.
Also, for the studios with deep archives, some classic films will be reworked, with CGI, and other state-of-the-art techniques, integrating in new stars, and turning movie legends into vampire fighters.

Scheduled for release by the Christmas rush include;

The Vampire World of Suzie Wong

William Holden’s Robert Lomax doesn’t move into the Nam Kok Hotel just to become a painter.

He teams up with Nancy Kwan’s Suzie Wong, and the other prostitutes, to do battle with the Vampires of Hong Kong, offering pulsating martial arts action on the teeming streets.

Look for Steve Buscemi in a cameo role as a kung fu rickshaw driver


Rain Man, Vampire Slayer

Raymond Babbitt may be autistic, but when he and brother Charlie hit Las Vegas, it’s not for blackjack, and Raymond shows the vampires who’s on first.

The pair does battle with the towns Vampires, tearing up and down the strip, rampaging through casinos, with the climatic fight coming on top of the Luxor Hotel’s pyramid.

Steve Buscemi has a role here, as a Craps Table dealer who rolls snake eyes for the vampires


A Vampire Affair To Remember

Cary Grant’s Nickie Ferrante and Deborah Kerr’s Terry McKay take on the Vampires, both on land and at sea.

With the ship anchored on the scenic Mediterranean coast, Ferrante and McKay clean the ocean liner of the stowaway vampires.

Back in New York, McKay isn’t hit by an automobile on the way to meet Ferrante, she’s abducted by the Vampires, leading to the final battle, at the top of the Empire State building.

Steve Buscemi pops up here, as the elevator operator who aids the pair.

Other works in the pipeline include ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Vampire’, ‘Three Vampires in the Fountain’ and ‘No Country for Old Vampires’.

“This is like found money,” gushed the Hollywood insider.

“I mean, we could dress someone up like Bela Lugosi, film him reading the phone book, and laugh all the way to the bank.”


 

Bonus Links

Review: Bloody Serious Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Isn’t as Fun as It Sounds

Vampires of Television and Film

Day Three of Swank Thank You's; No End In Sight

The Oscars ... "Perfectly awful!"

Movie Industry Titan, and LBJ Lackey, Rolls His Final Credits - Jack Valenti Obit

CSI Metropolis

This was some bonus news, that came out yesterday;

Footage Restored to Fritz Lang's ‘Metropolis’

For fans and scholars of the silent-film era, the search for a copy of the original version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has become a sort of holy grail. One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, “Metropolis” had not been viewed at its full length — roughly two and a half hours — since shortly after its premiere in Berlin in 1927, when it was withdrawn from circulation and about an hour of its footage was amputated and presumed destroyed.

But on Friday Film Forum in Manhattan will begin showing what is being billed as “The Complete Metropolis,” with a DVD scheduled to follow later this year, after screenings in theaters around the country. So an 80-year quest that ranged over three continents seems finally to be over, thanks in large part to the curiosity and perseverance of one man, an Argentine film archivist named Fernando Peña.

And why is this a big deal?

Made at a time of hyperinflation in Germany, “Metropolis” offered a grandiose version — of a father and son fighting for the soul of a futuristic city — that nearly bankrupted the studio that commissioned it, UFA. After lukewarm reviews and initial box office results in Europe, Paramount Pictures, the American partner brought in toward the end of the shoot, took control of the film and made drastic excisions, arguing that Lang’s cut was too complicated and unwieldy for American audiences to understand.

[snip]

That a copy of the original print of “Metropolis” even existed in Buenos Aires was the result of another piece of serendipity. An Argentine film distributor, Adolfo Wilson, happened to be in Berlin when the film had its premiere, liked what he saw so much that he immediately purchased rights, and returned to Argentina with the reels in his luggage.

For too long, all these decades, 'Metropolis' was thought to be a science fiction movie.

From Wikipedia;

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of the science fiction context to explore a political theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism.

The full-cut version now straightens that out;

The cumulative result is a version of “Metropolis” whose tone and focus have been changed. “It’s no longer a science-fiction film,” said Martin Koerber, a German film archivist and historian who supervised the latest restoration and the earlier one in 2001. “The balance of the story has been given back. It’s now a film that encompasses many genres, an epic about conflicts that are ages old. The science-fiction disguise is now very, very thin.”

When it comes out, and if 'Metropolis' is in a city near you, go check it out

Yet ...

While I have seen 'Metropolis' a few times, I was more partial, and liked better, Lang's "M", the riveting thriller, starring Peter Lorre, that "has become a classic which Lang himself considered his finest work."


Bonus Riffs

Ohhhh ... That's What Avatar Is About ...

One For The Film Buffs ... Max Ophuls

Rififi Director, Jules Dassin, Blacklisted, Dies at 96

Swedish Film Icon Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89 ; Police Depressed, Working Through Emptiness, Not Ruling Out Foul Play

Poland Goes To The Movies

Now, I understand that there has been a horrific tragedy, the lifeblood of a country, an incomprehensible loss of human life.

Yet, when I caught this article, it immediately came to mind;



Late Poland president's twin runs to replace him

Polish opposition party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Monday he will run in summer elections to replace his twin brother, the incumbent president who was killed in a plane crash.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he will run to continue the mission of his brother and others killed in the crash.

"The good of Poland is a common duty that requires an ability to overcome personal suffering, to undertake the task despite a personal tragedy," Kaczynski said.

"This is why I have taken the decision to run for the president of Poland. I have the family's support in this decision."

Enter, stage left, Kevin Kline.

Remember "Dave", where "In a country where anybody can become President, anybody just did?"



More, from Wikipedia;

Dave Kovic (Kline) runs a temporary employment agency in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and, as a side job, makes appearances impersonating President William Harrison "Bill" Mitchell (also portrayed by Kline), whom he greatly resembles. He is drafted by Mitchell's Chief of Staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) to make an exit at an appearance of President Mitchell, to cover up Mitchell's extramarital affair with White House staffer Randi (Laura Linney).

When the real President Mitchell suffers a stroke during the affair that leaves him in a coma, Bob Alexander sees an opportunity. Along with Communications Director Alan Reed (Kevin Dunn), Alexander arranges for the President's comatose state to be kept secret. They then con Dave into impersonating the president on an ongoing basis by telling him that the country would suffer if the truth was revealed or if Vice President Gary Nance (Ben Kingsley), who they say is mentally ill, took office. Nance is not mentally ill, but rather an upright politician who had refused several of the real Mitchell's underhanded dealings. Due to this, Nance has been sent on a series of extended diplomatic exercises intended to keep him away from the White House.

Apart from Alexander and Reed, only his Secret Service bodyguard, Duane Stevenson (Ving Rhames) and the medical staff tending to the real President Mitchell in the White House basement (being paid by Reed), know the truth. Neither Mitchell's mistress Randi nor First Lady Ellen Mitchell (Sigourney Weaver) are informed of the switch.

Okay, not a perfect "life imitates art", but pretty darn close ....


Bonus Riffs

Life Imitates Art ... Or, Did Burt Lancaster Invent Google Earth?

Swedish Film Icon Ingmar Bergman Dead at 89 ; Police Depressed, Working Through Emptiness, Not Ruling Out Foul Play

If You're A Disneyland Freak, Here's The Nuts-and-Bolts

Good "Third Man' Post

We discovered on Facebook today, a link to Edward Copeland on Film, highlighting a great post on the classic film, 'The Third Man', one of this writers' all-time favorites.



Regular Garlic readers will know this, from our periodic use of the tremendous Harry Lime (Orson Welles) riff, in the infamous "ferris wheel" scene, where Lime, who's been on the run, is tracked down by his friend, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), and Lime, colorfully, explains the way-of-the-world to Martins;

Don't be so gloomy...After all, it's not that awful. Remember what the fellow said... In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?...The cuckoo clock ... So long, Holly.

Copeland features today, a guest post from Ivan G. Shreve, Jr., a writer, and blogger from Thrilling Days of Yesteryear;

“A parrot bit me.”

Sixty years ago on this date, the Grand Prize winner of the 1949 Cannes Film Festival had its American premiere in New York City — and I mention this only because there may be one or two people confused as to why Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) is being commemorated in 2010 as opposed to 2009. Since its introduction to American audiences, the film has become a yardstick by which classic suspense thrillers are measured, telling an engrossing tale of crime and corruption in post-war Vienna as concocted in a novella by author Graham Greene, who also wrote the screenplay for the film.

Go check out “A parrot bit me.”, it's a good read.

Also, take the time to stop by The Reaction, where Copeland has an engaging Healthcare tale.

Ohhhh ... That's What Avatar Is About ...

I don't consider myself to be a dolt, when it comes to movies, cinema.

It's been a life-long passion, including, working my teens years at the legendary Brattle Theatre, exposing me to hundreds-and-hundreds of movies, from all over the world, that, had I gone the route of the most of the neighborhood, I would have been bagging groceries, and, thereby, less enlightened.

Over the past week, or so, seeing the trailers for the new James Cameron film, 'Avatar', I was, kind of, scratching my head, saying WTF!

It shows some military, blue people, giant birds, unseen since the Flintstones were on the television, the tease of a love story, and some kind of war, or battle.



So, we have to thank Annalee Newitz, for her post, "When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar?", for hipping me (and, likely, saving 10-bucks).

It's a sci-fi 'Dances With Wolves'.

Which means, that it is a long movie about how cool certain white people are, for trying to help (in their white-of-white ways) people of color, or, at minimum, different then themselves.

Newitz starts off;

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers

[snip]

This is a classic scenario you've seen in non-scifi epics from Dances With Wolves to The Last Samurai, where a white guy manages to get himself accepted into a closed society of people of color and eventually becomes its most awesome member. But it's also, as I indicated earlier, very similar in some ways to District 9. In that film, our (anti)hero Wikus is trying to relocate a shantytown of aliens to a region far outside Johannesburg. When he's accidentally squirted with fluid from an alien technology, he begins turning into one of the aliens against his will. Deformed and cast out of human society, Wikus reluctantly helps one of the aliens to launch their stalled ship and seek help from their home planet.

If we think of Avatar and its ilk as white fantasies about race, what kinds of patterns do we see emerging in these fantasies?

If you want to find the answer to that, go read Annalee Newitz, it's a great post.



SEK, over on Lawyers, Guns and Money, picks up on it;

In order for the audience to support the transformation of Jake Sully into Braveheart Smurf, it must accept the essentialist assumptions that make such a combination possible ... and those assumptions are racist. In football terms, this is a variation of the black quarterback "problem."

For decades, coaches and scouts wished they could find a black body with a white brain in it. ("If only someone could find a way to stuff Peyton Manning's brain into JaMarcus Russell's body!")

[snip]

*I'm analogizing race and species here because Cameron's space fable encourages me to do so with all the subtlety of a fry pan upside my head.

Sean Paul Kelley, on The Agonist, sees the above, but offers a different perspective, that this is a common narrative;

Several friends who dogged on Avatar have seen it recently. And every one of them tells me, "go see it." Of course, every one of them says, "it is like an alien version of 'Dances With Wolves' and is all about white, post-colonial guilt and race."

[snip]

The archetype is a common foundational myth, pops up in many national literatures and historical writing for a reason. It's been used by the Turks, the Mongols, the Mayans and others. It's not about colonialism, it's about the fluidity of tribes, a much older human grouping and one that is much more primal.

Sean John Scalzi, on Whatever, has a review of 'Avatar' (and, he "My Sister-My Daughter's" Cameron);

2. I spent almost no time at all thinking about the fact that most of my time was spent looking at computer animation. The Na’vi (I hope I got the apostrophe right, there) exist on the other side of the CGI uncanny valley; between the actors and their animators, these are real performances. Also, note to James Cameron: The extra time spent animating eyeballs paid off.

[snip]

I won’t get into the story except to say I found it serviceable, if predictable, and while I don’t really feel the same sort of moral outrage other people have about the “noble savage” stereotype as it applies to this film, it certainly does leave itself wide open for criticism along that line. But as you can tell from the pullout quote above, I go into Cameron films assuming I’ll need to compensate for storytelling anyway. That said, unlike, say, George Lucas, Cameron actually does attempt to tell a story and to give his actors something else to do except stand there. The story was serviceable, and serviceable, lest we forget, is actually a positive.

I don't know.

Blue people, running around, doing crazy things, on, or with, outlandish props?

Maybe the Blue Man Group should sue.


Bonus Links

One For The Film Buffs ... Max Ophuls

Rififi Director, Jules Dassin, Blacklisted, Dies at 96

Swedish Film Icon Ingmar Bergman Dead At 89 ; Police Depressed, Working Through Emptiness, Not Ruling Out Foul Play

Good Post Alert - Edward Copeland's Review of 'No End In Sight'

Certainly, not unrelated to the above-post of The Commander Guy swooping into Anbar Province, in Iraq, for a victory lap, we want to point you to a good post today, over on Edward Copeland on Film (and he also writes the blog Copeland Institute for Lower Learning).

Copeland reviews the new documentary, "No End In Sight", a tale of those early, heady days of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"No End in Sight is remarkable for its "Just the facts, ma'am" approach. There's no need for ratcheting up the rhetoric: The film's recitation of the facts, many of which are well known, are assembled in such a way that viewer provides his or her own sense of outrage or disbelief without any prompting from the filmmaker. Interviewing a wide assortment of officials involved in the initial invasion as well as journalists, troops and others, what's so astounding about this Iraq documentary, and there certainly have been no shortage of documentaries on the subject, is that those involved believed in the mission. They wanted to succeed and they wanted to leave an Iraq that was better than the one they invaded. Unfortunately, the people making the decisions either because of arrogance, incompetence, indifference or some combination of all three, let the opportunity for a success story to slip through their fingers and everyone is paying the price to this very day."

Of interest, Copeland opens his review with a great quote from former Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who appears in the film.

Bodine was also just on 'Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday, who offered some of flavor of what's in "No End In Sight";

BODINE: I don’t – I honestly don’t think that they were trying to egg on the insurgency. But I do think that they were so blinded by their ideology, so convinced of their – their right, their ability and their right to transform a society. They basically approached Iraq as if it was a blank slate. And there were – there were some in the reconstruction – the political side of the reconstruction – who actually said that they thought that the looting of the entire infrastructure was good, because it was a way of downsizing the government.

GRAVEL: I heard that.

BODINE: And – well, it did.

MAHER: Right. It seemed like they were trying to—[laughter]

BODINE: It did. It did. I mean, it zeroed everything out, brought it down to, you know, that sort of basic Stone Age level of no electricity, no water, no sanitation, no law and order. Sort of, you know, a “Lord of the Flies” almost kind of a thing. And – but the problem was – it wasn’t that they wanted the chaos. I think even the worst of them did not want the chaos. They didn’t understand the kind of forces that they were unleashing. And they had this—

MAHER: But, they—

BODINE: [overlapping]—arrogant idea that the Iraqis would be passive to all of this; that we could go in with our ideas and our plans and our way of doing things, and that the Iraqis would just simply sit there and wait for us to come forward with our plans. And it was going to be this Petri dish of every single one of their political philosophy ideas – you know, flat taxes, complete privatization—

And there was this gem, as well;

MAHER: And they had free health care over there.

BODINE: They did.

MAHER: Right. And when the guy—

BODINE: [overlapping] But it was – but – but—

MAHER: [overlapping]—the Bush people put in there, he was aghast at that because, you know, we don’t have that here and our system works so good. [laughter]

BODINE: Well, it – the health – the health system in Iraq was a disaster, but there were ways of fixing it. The guy who came in wasn’t a doctor, had never done public health. And the very first thing that he decides that has to be done on public health in Iraq is a “no smoking” campaign. [laughter] This is the major threat to the Iraqis, is cigarettes! Not guns, not bombs, not anything, but cigarettes.

Links

Take a spin over and read Edward Copeland's "A confederacy of dunces"

Visit the website for "No End In Site"

Barbara Bodine - IF WE LEAVE: Iraqis Will Learn to Deal

Ambassador Barbara Bodine