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Talking Trailers: ‘Elysium’ looks incredible

Held under wraps for all of pre-production through post-production, Neill Blomkamp’s highly anticipated follow-up to his debut surprise hit “District 9” is coming up on us in a matter of months, meaning that Blomkamp’s had to have his fingers pried open a bit to let some tasty nuggets of information out there for marketing purposes, to wet the beak of the public, and they are off to a hell of a start with this new poster and trailer combo.

“Elysium” is the name of the great big space station on which the wealthy live, free of poverty and disease and crime and fear. Meanwhile, the rest of us poor bastards are stuck on a trashed Earth, overpopulated and decimated, a toxic waste land, where poverty, disease and fear are the name of the game. And according to this trailer, Matt Damon plays a guys who wants to get from Earth to Elysium, and apparently he needs to have a robo-exoskeleton grafted to his body, and this will somehow give him the power to break into “the most heavily guarded place in the universe,” which will somehow “save everyone” in some sort of vague way. The class warfare element is obviously going to be very intense, so what else will be inside this narrative to drive this thing home emotionally. Damon’s character says he needs to get to Elysium. But why? Is it personal? Is he trying to save someone? Get to someone?Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 7 – ‘There Will Be Blood’

There Will be Blood (written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, chosen as an Examiner Essential) is an epic film about Daniel Plainview, silver miner turned oil man. The story revolves around Plainview and his relationship with the world around him, made complicated by the fact that he needs other men to accomplish his goals, despite his growing distaste for his fellow man. He feels he can only rely on family, and even then, things get screwy.

Oil! (written by Upton Sinclair, himself chosen as a Pulitzer Prize winner) is an epic novel about J. Arnold Ross, mule driver turned oil man. The story, however, revolves around J. Arnold Ross Jr., affectionately called Bunny throughout the book, and his relationship with the world around him, made complicated by the fact that he strongly identifies with the growing labor movement of the early 1900’s, which butts heads directly with his life and upbringing as an American oil prince.Continue Reading …

BONUS EPISODE – Florida Film Festival 2013 recap

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In this bonus episode of Cinema Crespodiso, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn sit down with fellow film critic Aaron Weiss of CinemaFunk.com to discuss the many films of the 2013 Florida Film Festival!

Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp’

Robert Beck a.k.a. Iceberg Slim, was a pimp turned bestselling author who used his ignoble lifestyle and career choices to help propel himself out of that same lifestyle, and at the same time provided a new, fresh, and most importantly, real voice to the landscape of Black authors of the era. According to the documentary “Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp,” this lifelong criminal and defiler of women and robber of people in general became one of the most influential and important Black authors ever. And after watching the documentary and listening to the people who share these views, it is kind of hard to argue against this point.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 6 – ‘The Prestige’

The James Tait Black Memorial Prize winning and World Fantasy Award winning novel “The Prestige” is a fascinating story of a pair of turn-of-the-century magicians who develop an intense personal and professional rivalry, sabotaging each other’s performances and lives until tragedy costs them both in ways neither could imagine. Written as a pair of journals (one by each magician) and framed by a modern-day story involving the magicians descendants, The Prestige has its own set of literary illusions and tricks that seek to hide it’s admittedly dull secrets in plain sight.

Brilliantly written and employed, these tricks of the written word would simply not work cinematically. Only so much drama can be derived from scenes of fellas sitting around reading each other’s diaries. Such is the perils of literary adaptation, as things that work on the page and in the theater of the mind would not work on the most silver of screens.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘SOMM’

“SOMM” is a documentary about four young gentlemen all in the midst of attempting to pass the Master Sommelier’s Exam, a test established in the 1960s and which only about 200 people have ever passed, a test so hard that people have lost years of their lives to the devotion of all things wine just so they can have a dream of passing it. And if they can pass it, oh boy, do those doors of opportunity swing wide open for a certified Master Sommelier.

“SOMM” is an interesting combination of a mostly no-frills, just meat and potatoes documentary, and a much flashier, artier doc. It’s all footage of these four people, all in different places in their lives, all with very different personalities, all trying to help each other do the same thing, which involves lots of studying and wine tasting and the occasional shit talking, mixed with interviews of copious amounts of people involved in the wine industry, and this is all wrapped in a warm blanket of art, as we are treated to dreamy, slow-motion photography and a wonderful, jazzy cum classical score. I guess it makes plenty of sense to couple wine with jazz. They seem to go hand in hand.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 5 – ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’

When discussing the best book-to-film adaptations, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” stands out as a success in wrangling a wild narrative and boiling it down to a workable movie, especially because the wrangling was done by a director with a history of wild and unhinged films (several of which contain their own decidedly non-wrangled narratives). Then again, in hindsight, it seems that maybe this movie could have only happened this way.

Book-to-film adaptations: 4 – ‘Dreamcatcher’

If you’re playing along at home, you’ll notice that this series is a back and forth type of deal. No Country for Old Men was a best of, I Am Legend was a worst of and most recently, The Warriors was a best of installment. To keep the pendulum going, entry four brings us back to the worst of side, where we find ourselves staring into the gaping maw of Evil Otto himself…Dreamcatcher.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 3 – ‘The Warriors’

Installment one was a “best” and installment two was a “worst.” So here’s another example of one of the best: Walter Hill’s The Warriors is an adaptation of Jewish-American writer Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name. Walter Hill, as we already know, makes manly movies about manly men. And The Warriors is populated with manly gang members, as well as younger kids trying to be men by being in gangs. Importantly, it must be noted that this write up of The Warriors will be of the original film and not the recent “Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD,” which itself (coupled with the director’s cut of Donnie Darko) is an example of a director not realizing what makes their film great. But that’s a completely different article. So with that out of the way…Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 2 – ‘I Am Legend’

Most people who saw the film I Am Legend probably had no idea the movie was based on a book. And even if they did, there’s a chance they had no idea what kind of impact Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend had on the horror community, both written and filmed.

Written in 1954, Matheson’s book followed a lone survivor of a horrible plague. The survivor was everyman Robert Neville and the plague was vampirism; as the lone human in a world of vampires, the book followed Neville’s daily ritual and his evolution as this survivor, and great swaths of information and characterization happen solely in the head of Robert Neville through his stream of consciousness and thought processes. The Omniscient Reader stays deep within Neville’s thoughts as he uses all the spare time that he has to kill as many vampires as possible during the day and do hours and hours of research to find a cure for this horrible problem. And The Omniscient Reader is so thoroughly into the mind of Robert that when he comes to his ghastly end, the Reader is right there with him.