Cinema is Dope

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Vintage Movie Wallpaper of the Day
Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Do you remember when you first saw this movie? I most certainly do. I vaguely remember the commercials drawing me in and seeing it open weekend. Immediately upon the first viewing I only had one choice… I immediately saw it again!

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With this new still, Terminator Salvation keeps looking more and more promising (previous image)! Will it be more balls to the way post-apocalyptic robot fury or something more akin to sci-fi melodrama scored to Metallica? The film features a pretty long list of producers who should be able to rein in director McG to a tight and more terse narrative that hopefully has more bite than random stylish excess. Stylish excess to me is good when it fits and supports a film or reinforces what is going on at any given moment. Stylish excess falls dead in its tracks when it feels like what your watching onscreen, while interesting, might as well be a commercial break and work more to disconnect a viewer than immerse them. You can look at the works of say Melville and see immediately where excess style can be a good thing, where every single light, shadow and stylization works to further reinforce and better tell the story with cinema.

Synopsis:

Action/Sci-Fi. In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

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The story and action didn’t work for me in this re-imagining of Transformers, let alone the melodrama which felt more random than integral. The realization of the robots onscreen was mostly impressive with an added bass heavy sound design. As a popcorn film it remained entertaining enough to do solid box office and solidify LaBeouf and Megan Fox as burgeoning stars in the making.

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The Terminator Salvation new teaser trailer is now out (view here).

There is enough in the trailer and this image to at least be more optimistic about this film delivering. It doesn’t give much away and doesn’t fall completely flat. It does miss a chance to climax the trailer around the pounding central leitmotif of the series, instead opting to use it once during an explosion. These early glances indicate a Post-apocalyptic hell ride bursting with destruction and carnage at every turn. Let’s just continue to hope they get the overall story right and this doesn’t turn into the Yentl of The Terminator franchise.

Synopsis:

Action/Sci-Fi. In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

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My mini-review of WALL•E, is now up on Twitch (view here).

“In the world of animation, pantomime is the thing that animators love best. It’s their bread and butter and they’re raised on it instinctually. John Lasseter realized this when he animated and directed his first short for Pixar, ‘Luxo Jr,‘ featuring two lamp characters who express themselves entirely without dialogue. The desire to give life to an inanimate object is innate in animators. For the animators on ‘WALL•E,’ it was like taking the handcuffs off and letting them run free. They were able to let the visuals tell most of the story. They also discovered that it’s a lot more difficult to achieve all the things they needed to.”

- WALL•E Director Andrew Stanton

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