Much of the fun of 2008s Taken was watching beloved thespian Liam Neeson go all Chuck Norris in a dirty little Euro trash thriller.
In the action adventure movie Neeson played a former “preventer” for the US government. A specialist in black ops, he was an undercover agent who contained volatile situations before they got out of control. Retired, he lived in Los Angeles near his estranged seventeen-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). When she is kidnapped by a child slavery ring he has only 96 hours to use his “particular set of skills” to get her back. His rescue mission takes him on a wild rampage through the soft underbelly of Paris. “I’ll tear down the Eiffel Tower if I have to,” he says.
It’s a down-and-dirty little flick, classed up somewhat by the presence of Neeson in the lead role and it became an unexpected lightening-in-a-bottle hit. It also redefined Neeson’s recent career.
At an age when many actors are staring down the barrel of character parts and cameos, the sixty-one year old has made an unlikely U-turn into action movies. “I was a tiny bit embarrassed by it, “ he says of Taken, “but then people started sending me action scripts.”
Arguably best known for his Best Actor Oscar nomination as the charismatic but humble German businessman Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List, the Irish actor has fully embraced his new career path. Vanity Fair even acknowledged the twist in an article called, “Wham! Bam! Thank You, Liam!”
His latest actioner is Non-Stop, a high-flying thriller that takes place on an international crossing from New York to London. Neeson is an air marshal who must prevent a crazed killer from murdering passengers in flight.
The actor’s rebirth as a gun-toting, neck snapping gravel-voiced Stallonite™—aging action star—works not only because he has the physical presence to be taken seriously as a hard man, but also because he has the acting chops to make us believe him as a ruthless and efficient killing machine.
Taken and Taken 2 (which were essentially the same movie) worked not just because the action sequences were out of control, but because audiences had some empathy for Neeson’s character as he kicked butt across Europe. It was a personal mission; he was trying to get his daughter back.
Action movies like Wrath of the Titans, The Grey and Unknown may not burnish Neeson’s rep as a great thespian, but when asked why he keeps making them, he has a solid reason: “Because they’re dumb enough to offer them to me!”
Santiago divorcee Gloria (Paulina García) is a character in search of a story. Director Sebastián Lelio has stranded the fifty-eight-year old free-spirited woman in a film that plays like a series of incidents rather than a fully realized story. García brings empathy to the woman, painting a picture of a person making the best of lonely life, but the components of story, like a strange, passionate affair with Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), are so underdeveloped it’s difficult to feel any connection to the characters or situations. García, complete with her Tootsie glasses, does interesting, brave work, but the story does not support her.
If the original RoboCop movie is any indication, sometimes life does imitate art.
The 1987 film shows a crime-ridden and financially ruined Detroit turning to a part-human, part-robot cop to police the streets. As far as I know, no cyborgs have ever patrolled the neighbourhoods of Motor City, but 27 years after the movie hit theatres, Michigan’s most populous city declared Chapter Nine, becoming the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.
Prescient? Perhaps.
Fosterwealth.com wrote, “With Detroit’s bankruptcy, we’ve seen much of RoboCop come to pass,” while screenwriter Ed Neumeier remembers a note written in the margin of his copy of the script, “The future left Detroit behind.”
The writer also told CNN, “We are now living in the world that I was proposing in RoboCop.”
The original Peter Weller movie lived at the centre of popular culture when it came out, spawning two sequels, a television series, two animated shows, a mini-series, video games and several comic books.
And today RoboCop is still a going concern.
Later this year a 10-foot-tall tribute statue will be unveiled in Detroit and this week a remake will become the first RoboCop movie to be released in IMAX.
The new RoboCop is an all-star affair, with Swedish star Joel Kinnaman as the title character and appearances from Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson and Jay Baruchel. Just don’t expect a straight-up copy. “I’m not trying to remake RoboCop,” says director José Padilha, “because I don’t think RoboCop is remake-able.”
Instead, Kinnaman says, the new film will be “realistic,” and “will have a satirical quality… It’s going to have that wink in the eye, but we’re not looking to replicate the [original director Paul] Verhoeven tone.”
The one thing the two films have in common for sure is that while both are set in Detroit, neither used the city as the principal shooting location. Verhoeven filmed his movie in Pennsylvania and Texas whereas the new movie was lensed mainly in Toronto and Vancouver.
Even criminals love RoboCop
Another incident illustrates how the film aided real life law enforcement… at least once.
A robbery suspect/movie fan in Sacramento, Calif., tried to elude police by hiding out in a movie theatre showing RoboCop. He became so immersed in the film he didn’t notice the cops evacuating the audience, leaving him alone and busted when the lights came on.
Filmmaker Ingrid Veninger says the pitch for the script writing initiative Femmes Lab, “could have back-fired badly.”
The actor-turned-director-turned-Renaissance-woman was on stage at the Whistler Film Festival in December receiving an EDA award from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists for her latest film, The Animal Project, when a notion struck her.
“I started to talk about the Femmes Lab at the podium,” says Veninger. “Six Canadian women will write six screenplays in six months. Then I took the leap to invite someone to step up for $6,000. At first the room was silent. So, I started counting down: 6, 5 … and before I hit 4, a women shot her arms in the air and said, ‘I’ll do it!’ My heart was racing and it was only later I realized it was Melissa Leo. Melissa approached me quietly and said, ‘This is going to happen. I will get you a cheque before the end of the year.’ And, she did.”
For her donation, the Frozen River Academy Award winner Leo gets a first look at six scripts written by a hand-picked group of female Canadian writers and directors including Veninger, Danishka Esterhazy, Michelle Latimer, Sophie Deraspe, Anais Granofsky and Mars Horodyski.
“It’s not your traditional kind of script development,” says Veninger, “that’s for sure. It’s almost more like a coven. We’re not actually casting spells, as we conjure these new screenplays, but sort of. The nuts and bolts is that we meet in person once a month from January until June, mostly in Toronto. And, month to month we each have to move our screenplays forward, so that by the end of June, we have six completed scripts. But what happens in the actual lab session is a secret. I can say that in my past 20 years of making movies, I have not experienced anything like this. First off, the six of us are very different and we bring a diverse range of experiences and perspectives to the table. Our sessions are minimally nine hours, but can also last the whole weekend.”
One of the participants, Mars Horodyski, said, “For me the pUNK Films Femmes Lab offers a supportive creative space where you are encouraged to do something different, brave and representative of who you really are.
Something really special happens when you get a group of women together to collaborate in this way. It’s different from anything I’ve ever been a part of and I’m excited to see the outcome.”
Veninger says this edition of pUNK Films Femme Lab is likely to be “a one time thing. I’m happy to spark the fire, but it’s most exciting to see how others keep it going.”
It seems that spark is about to ignite.
“After Whistler, I received a message from a filmmaker in L.A. saying, “we should do a Femmes Lab in Los Angeles”, and my response was, ‘go ahead and do it. Make it happen. We have nothing to lose. Now is the time.’”
Alfred Hitchcock said, “Ideas come from everything,” and certainly Hollywood proves his point.
Just this year we’ve had films inspired by everything from Norse mythology by way of comic books (Thor: The Dark World), real life (Captain Phillips, American Hustle to name a couple) and literature (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug to name one).
Like Hitch says, story ideas can come from anywhere. Even the board games and toys we played with as kids.
This weekend Hollywood has built a movie around a set of building blocks. The most famous building blocks in the world. The Lego Movie features the all-star voices of Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson, Elizabeth Banks and Morgan Freeman in a story about an ordinary Lego minifigure recruited to stop the evil tyrant Lord Business from gluing the universe together.
Lego’s colourful interlocking plastic blocks are the latest toy to inspire a movie, but they aren’t the first.
The 1977 animated film Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure has the distinction of being the first theatrical motion picture based on a consumer toy. In the movie the rag dolls go on a journey to rescue Babette, a beautiful French doll kidnapped by a pirate. Described as “tedious” and “lacking in pace and humor” by many critics, the movie has also been mentioned as an unofficial inspiration for the Toy Story series.
A few years later came an action figure that would inspire several movies. Roger Sweet, lead designer for Mattel’s Preliminary Design Department, says he wanted “a powerful figure that could be taken anywhere and dropped into any context because he had a generic name.” That character was He-Man, defender of the realm of Eternia from the evil forces of Skeletor.
The job of bringing that bigger-than-life character from the toy box to the screen fell to Dolph Lundgren in the 1987 film Masters of the Universe. The original story wasn’t a hit at the box office and isn’t one of Lundgren’s favourite films.
“How much could I do as an actor,” he asked, “when I was running around in swim trunks and chest armor?”
More successful was Clue, based on the crime mystery board game. Starring Eileen Brennan and Martin Mull as murder suspects Mrs. Peacock and Colonel Mustard, the movie was released with three possible endings. The various endings were split up between theatres, so no two prints were the same, but the DVD release features all three conclusions.
The news of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s sudden passing was met with a heartfelt outpouring of grief from fans and those who worked with him.
“Philip Seymour Hoffman was a singular talent and one of the most gifted actors of our generation,” Lionsgate, the studio behind the upcoming Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and 2, said in a written statement. “We’re very fortunate that he graced our Hunger Games family. Losing him in his prime is a tragedy, and we send our deepest condolences to Philip’s family.”
Hoffman played head -games-maker-turned-rebel leader Plutarch Heavensbee in the successful series. It is a pivotal role.
In the wake of the actor’s death, questions arose as to whether the uncompleted blockbusters-in-waiting would be completed in time for their scheduled November 21, 2014 for Part 1 and November 20, 2015 for Part 2 release dates.
Hollywood studios have handled the sudden death of cast members in many different ways. In some cases, films are even abandoned.
Production on Something’s Got to Give was shut down permanently after Marilyn Monroe’s August 1962 barbiturate overdose.
Dark Blood, River Phoenix’s final film, was put into cold storage when the young actor died before filming several crucial scenes. But both movies were eventually resurrected. The documentary Marilyn: The Final Days used footage from Monroe’s aborted film while Dark Blood sat for 19 years before being finished and shown at film festivals.
Father and son Bruce and Brandon Lee both died early, leaving behind unfinished films. The elder martial arts legend had completed 100 minutes of The Game of Death when a cerebral edema took his life.
Even more tragically, Brandon was killed on the set of The Crow in an accident involving a prop handgun.
Both films were salvaged with the use of stand-ins.
When Oliver Reed collapsed of a heart attack at a Malta pub after out-drinking a group of Royal Navy sailors, the editing crew of Gladiator replaced him digitally in the remaining scenes of the film.
More recently, Heath Ledger unexpectedly died during the production of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. He was replaced in the surreal story by three actors.
“I just started calling friends of Heath,” director Terry Gilliam said. “It’s as simple as that.”
“Johnny (Depp), Colin (Farrell) and Jude (Law) turned up. It was important that they were friends, because I wanted to keep it in the family. I wanted people who were close to him because, as Colin said when he was doing his part, he was channelling Heath part of the time, so Heath was very much still alive in some sense.
“Contractually, it was supposed to be a Terry Gilliam Film,” said Gilliam. “That’s what the lawyers said, but I said, ‘No way it’s going to be that. It’s going to be a film from Heath Ledger and friends.’ The cast sat around one night and that idea came up and I said, ‘This is it. Perfect. That’s how we do it.’”
As for the upcoming Hunger Games films, reports now confirm that Hoffman completed work on Part 1 and had just seven days left of shooting on Part 2.
His absence will not require any recasting, just a rewrite of one scene. And so Mockingjay Part 2 becomes the final film in Hoffman’s remarkable career.
“Words cannot convey the devastating loss we are all feeling right now. Philip was a wonderful person and an exceptional talent, and our hearts are breaking,” reads a statement released by The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins, the films’ director Francis Lawrence, producers Nina Jacobson and Jon Kilik and star Jennifer Lawrence.
In my review for the recent remake of Oldboy I wrote, “There is no more manly-man actor in the mold of Lee Marvin or Lee Van Cleef working today.”
I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise given that he was named after the rough-and-tumble character Josh Randall played by Steve McQueen in TV’s Wanted: Dead or Alive.
In Oldboy he’s so tough he’s a practically indestructible force of nature; able to withstand physical punishment that would make Grigori Rasputin look like a wimp.
The tough guy angle is one Brolin plays in a number of films, including his latest Labor Day. He plays an escaped convict who hides out in the home of a depressed, widowed agoraphobic, played by Kate Winslet. Over the course of one long holiday weekend she learns of his dangerous past and before you can say the words Stockholm Syndrome has fallen for the ruggedly handsome stranger.
It’s the kind of role that Brolin has mastered; the multi-layered tough guy but according to him, he doesn’t seek out those roles.
He says he wracks his “brain like crazy trying to figure out which films I wanted to be in.”
Some of those films include No Country for Old Men and Jonah Hex.
In the Oscar nominated No Country he plays down-on-his-luck Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles across the site of a drug deal gone wrong. Bullet-ridden dead men litter the landscape along with several kilos of heroin and a suitcase stuffed with two million dollars in cash. When he makes off with the money his life and the lives of those around him are changed forever.
Jonah Hex didn’t earn any Oscar nods, but did get some Razzie attention in the form of nominations for Worst Screen Couple for Brolin and co-star Megan Fox. The story of a supernatural bounty hunter set on revenge against the man who killed his family is as disfigured as its main character’s face but Brolin brings his real-life swagger to the role and has fun with some of the tongue-in-what’s-left-of-his-cheek lines.
One tough guy role got away from him however. On-line speculation had it that he would be cast as the Caped Crusader in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman. Although he would have been perfect for the part he lost out to Ben Affleck. Contrary to his bruiser persona he was gracious in defeat. “I’m happy for Ben,” he said.
It wasn’t the wind and snow that Thomas Haden Church found “punishing” when shooting the new psychological thriller Whitewash in northern Quebec, but the lack of it.
“You know how it goes,” he says. “You shoot one day and it’s the perfect conditions and two days later it’s 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) and you have to figure out a way to make it match. We had blizzards and we had giant fans with cornstarch.
“When we started shooting there was a storm blowing in but as God would have it three hours later there’s not a flake of snow floating through the air so they pull out the eight-foot fans and crank up the Corvette engines that drive them and start hucking cornstarch at me.
“It is still cold as all get out, and with those fans blowing sometimes you wish the blizzard would come back and they’d turn the fans off. Those fans will fling stuff at you at sixty miles an hour. Those things are punishing to stand in front of.”
The cornstarch plays a crucial role in the film’s opening and defining scene. During a whiteout snowstorm — enhanced with the white, fluffy thickener for extra effect — Church’s character Bruce takes a wild, drunken ride on a bulldozer that leaves a man dead.
Unnerved, he hides the body in a snow bank and lams it to the deep woods to avoid police and clear his head. “When I read it a buddy of mine who works with me said, ‘You know, sometimes you read ’em and you know what you know. You gotta go.’ I knew as soon as I read Whitewash I had to go. The challenges, the character, the uniqueness of the setting, the emotional complexity of what he goes through. There is tragedy but I think by the end of the movie there is this affirmation that everybody landed on the mortal coil where they were supposed to be.”
Church is in virtually every scene and delivers an extraordinary, minimalist performance.
He doesn’t appear to be doing much, but subtly rides the lines between sanity and insanity, between absurdity and logic, leaving the viewer off balance as the film veers between the present and flashbacks.
“Even as far back as working in television comedy as I did, I always wanted more nuance, more reflection, more moments of whatever the whisper line between comedy and drama is,” he says.
“That really is defined by human circumstance and human behavior. Even when we were promoting this picture that I did called Sideways, we’d do these big Q&As and one time this guy said, ‘It must be really interesting.
In the dramatic scenes you make very dramatic choices and in the comedic scenes you make very comedic choices.’ No man, maybe it sounds a bit elitist or pseudo-intellectual but I make human choices. I’m just trying to play a real guy.”
By Richard Crouse – In Focus Metro Canada
