Jack7
First Post
I'm not really a big movie buff. I went through a period in my twenties when I really liked film, especially old film (The Naked City, Ran, Alexander Nevksy), and even began collecting films. I had a collection of several hundred on VHS. But my interest waned in my late twenties and has dropped off ever since then. (Whereas my love of books has never really fluctuated all that much. My book library still grows.)
However over the holiday weekend I watched a show called Naked Trailers. And I was pretty much amazed by what I saw. 2012 looks to be an incredible year for film. I made a little list of the films I want to see as a result and these are the films that I know about so far that I want to see:
The Warhorse - as much as this will make me look like a little girl, I nearly cried when watching the trailer at the movies when I went to see Conan.
The Avengers - I really, really enjoyed Thor, and next to the final Harry Potter films Thor was the most enjoyable film I saw this year. Loki was one of the prime draws to me of the Thor film. It looks like he'll be the BBG of the Avengers, and if that's true, then I'd go see this just to see him play evil (sort of) again. The guy playing Loki did a superb job of playing indirect evil, maybe as well as any character I've ever seen in a film. I'm also hoping this franchise will have a sort of Ultimate Avengers feel to it.
The Amazing Spiderman - I really liked Toby McGuire in the first Spiderman film but I think the boy they've chosen for this series may be even better. He looks far more to me what I would imagine Peter really looking like, and acting like. (I'm not a Geek fanboy, obsessed with actors and theoretical interpretations of this and that, I just wanna see the kid playing him do a good job, and from what little I saw, he'll do a good job.) If the boy does a good job on Peter then he'll do a good job on Spidey, and I'll enjoy that. I never liked a lot of the Marvel Superheroes except for Spidey and Daredevil and Wolverine, but I've always liked those guys. So I like to see those characters done well. Wolverine and
Spidey have been done well so far, Wolverine very well. Unfortunately Daredevil, not so well.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - I liked the first Mission Impossible. The second sucked really hard. Just about a month of so ago I saw the one directed by JJ Abrams, and just like most things made by JJ Abrams it was superb. I've heard this one is just as good, maybe better. If so I'm really looking forward to that.
The Dark Knight Rises - This is the way I wanna see it go: hand to hand fight to the death with Bane, and hopefully Bane will break Batman's back before Bane is killed. If it even comes close to being that good, I'm in. Need I say more about that?
The Hobbit - I always thought the Silmarillion was by far the best book by Tolkien, but I also always thought that the Hobbit was as good as the Lord of the Rings. LOTR was a superb war story, and religious and cultural metaphor, with a very unusual background. But the Hobbit was a frontier's tale, and in it the characters explore a lot of the territory laying outside the "civilized roads" mostly traveled in the LOTR. Yes, there were ruins in the LOTR, and yes even the civilized roads had grown dark and dangerous, but in the Hobbit it was practically all frontier's land and untraveled, dead roads. It was the tale of the wild-lands of Middle Earth, and the places few outsiders visited. In that sense it was the Frontiers/Vadding tale of Middle Earth, and was in many ways far more bizarre than the LOTR. The LOTR was a tale of Civilization in turmoil and conflict, but the Hobbit was a true fairy tale of the Dangerous Frontier. And it looks like Peter Jackson, who has a real feel for Tolkien, has made another masterpiece, this time of the Frontier. Plus it had a real, actual, talking dragon in it, as well as a dragon slaying. You don't see that kinda thing in popular culture nowadays. I'll be seeing the crap outta this one.
John Carter of Mars - When I was in high School and reading Tolkien and Asimov and Pohl and Vernes and Wells for sport, my old buddy Scott Harrison introduced me to Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. I really liked Tarzan and took to him like a duck to water, because of where he lived and what he did. He was the man on the Frontier, and I mean way out on the Frontier, with no-one to rely upon except himself for survival. He was to me the Batman of the Jungle, and in some ways better because he was exploring ruins and could almost never call in backup. And he straddled ancient Africa and the modern world. I loved it. It appealed to both the explorer and the archaeologist in me. So I really took to Burroughs. Then I started reading John Carter. A Virginian of the Civil War, a complete southern Gentleman, a man totally self-reliant and honorable. A man who after the War heads West to make his fortune. A man who never backed down from a good fight, because no real man ever does that kinda thing, but a man who did not like violence. Who in heaven or hell couldn't like and admire a man like that? But then to put him not just on the Frontier, but on the dying frontier of an alien world with giant White Apes and incredibly tall and vicious four armed Green Martians, and because he's from Earth have him be a sort of Superman due to lesser gravity and his prior combat and survival training? Now that's real living!!! In a very important way John Carter is just as emblematic of the American Spirit as is Nathaniel Bumpo and the Cowboy. He is a fictional embedment of America every bit as much as Tarzan is to the British spirit. A sort of Southern American Beowulf (though he is also mysteriously sort of immortal). To me he's one of the greatest fictional character creations of all time. As a kid I ate up his adventures. As a man I still re-read them. Plus the science Burroughs interjects into the stories of Barsoom is so amazing and sophisticated and just plain useful that I think he should be placed right up there with Vernes and Wells and others of that ilk regarding his predictive capabilities about science and technology. He's way too often severely under-rated as both a writer and a futurist.
And so when I heard they were making a film of John Carter I thought it would be a cheap, crappy, low budget version of no accounting at all. But when I saw the trailer I was absolutely stunned. It's a Disney project, and John Carter is perfectly suited to Walt Disney's film imagination, and the film looks superb. Absolutely superb. Stupendous even. I know it won't be as good as the books, but it looks damn close. And that's sure good enough for me. Plus the fact that they are apparently using "Kashmir" as part of the soundtrack, well, that's really swell by me as it perfectly fits. John Carter of Mars is the film I most look forward to seeing in 2012, and that's really saying something considering the Hobbit, and the Dark Knight Rises will also be out. John Carter of Mars looks like everything Conan should have been but wasn't. But then again I think John Carter is a far better character than Conan, and personally I like Conan.
However over the holiday weekend I watched a show called Naked Trailers. And I was pretty much amazed by what I saw. 2012 looks to be an incredible year for film. I made a little list of the films I want to see as a result and these are the films that I know about so far that I want to see:
The Warhorse - as much as this will make me look like a little girl, I nearly cried when watching the trailer at the movies when I went to see Conan.
The Avengers - I really, really enjoyed Thor, and next to the final Harry Potter films Thor was the most enjoyable film I saw this year. Loki was one of the prime draws to me of the Thor film. It looks like he'll be the BBG of the Avengers, and if that's true, then I'd go see this just to see him play evil (sort of) again. The guy playing Loki did a superb job of playing indirect evil, maybe as well as any character I've ever seen in a film. I'm also hoping this franchise will have a sort of Ultimate Avengers feel to it.
The Amazing Spiderman - I really liked Toby McGuire in the first Spiderman film but I think the boy they've chosen for this series may be even better. He looks far more to me what I would imagine Peter really looking like, and acting like. (I'm not a Geek fanboy, obsessed with actors and theoretical interpretations of this and that, I just wanna see the kid playing him do a good job, and from what little I saw, he'll do a good job.) If the boy does a good job on Peter then he'll do a good job on Spidey, and I'll enjoy that. I never liked a lot of the Marvel Superheroes except for Spidey and Daredevil and Wolverine, but I've always liked those guys. So I like to see those characters done well. Wolverine and
Spidey have been done well so far, Wolverine very well. Unfortunately Daredevil, not so well.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - I liked the first Mission Impossible. The second sucked really hard. Just about a month of so ago I saw the one directed by JJ Abrams, and just like most things made by JJ Abrams it was superb. I've heard this one is just as good, maybe better. If so I'm really looking forward to that.
The Dark Knight Rises - This is the way I wanna see it go: hand to hand fight to the death with Bane, and hopefully Bane will break Batman's back before Bane is killed. If it even comes close to being that good, I'm in. Need I say more about that?
The Hobbit - I always thought the Silmarillion was by far the best book by Tolkien, but I also always thought that the Hobbit was as good as the Lord of the Rings. LOTR was a superb war story, and religious and cultural metaphor, with a very unusual background. But the Hobbit was a frontier's tale, and in it the characters explore a lot of the territory laying outside the "civilized roads" mostly traveled in the LOTR. Yes, there were ruins in the LOTR, and yes even the civilized roads had grown dark and dangerous, but in the Hobbit it was practically all frontier's land and untraveled, dead roads. It was the tale of the wild-lands of Middle Earth, and the places few outsiders visited. In that sense it was the Frontiers/Vadding tale of Middle Earth, and was in many ways far more bizarre than the LOTR. The LOTR was a tale of Civilization in turmoil and conflict, but the Hobbit was a true fairy tale of the Dangerous Frontier. And it looks like Peter Jackson, who has a real feel for Tolkien, has made another masterpiece, this time of the Frontier. Plus it had a real, actual, talking dragon in it, as well as a dragon slaying. You don't see that kinda thing in popular culture nowadays. I'll be seeing the crap outta this one.
John Carter of Mars - When I was in high School and reading Tolkien and Asimov and Pohl and Vernes and Wells for sport, my old buddy Scott Harrison introduced me to Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. I really liked Tarzan and took to him like a duck to water, because of where he lived and what he did. He was the man on the Frontier, and I mean way out on the Frontier, with no-one to rely upon except himself for survival. He was to me the Batman of the Jungle, and in some ways better because he was exploring ruins and could almost never call in backup. And he straddled ancient Africa and the modern world. I loved it. It appealed to both the explorer and the archaeologist in me. So I really took to Burroughs. Then I started reading John Carter. A Virginian of the Civil War, a complete southern Gentleman, a man totally self-reliant and honorable. A man who after the War heads West to make his fortune. A man who never backed down from a good fight, because no real man ever does that kinda thing, but a man who did not like violence. Who in heaven or hell couldn't like and admire a man like that? But then to put him not just on the Frontier, but on the dying frontier of an alien world with giant White Apes and incredibly tall and vicious four armed Green Martians, and because he's from Earth have him be a sort of Superman due to lesser gravity and his prior combat and survival training? Now that's real living!!! In a very important way John Carter is just as emblematic of the American Spirit as is Nathaniel Bumpo and the Cowboy. He is a fictional embedment of America every bit as much as Tarzan is to the British spirit. A sort of Southern American Beowulf (though he is also mysteriously sort of immortal). To me he's one of the greatest fictional character creations of all time. As a kid I ate up his adventures. As a man I still re-read them. Plus the science Burroughs interjects into the stories of Barsoom is so amazing and sophisticated and just plain useful that I think he should be placed right up there with Vernes and Wells and others of that ilk regarding his predictive capabilities about science and technology. He's way too often severely under-rated as both a writer and a futurist.
And so when I heard they were making a film of John Carter I thought it would be a cheap, crappy, low budget version of no accounting at all. But when I saw the trailer I was absolutely stunned. It's a Disney project, and John Carter is perfectly suited to Walt Disney's film imagination, and the film looks superb. Absolutely superb. Stupendous even. I know it won't be as good as the books, but it looks damn close. And that's sure good enough for me. Plus the fact that they are apparently using "Kashmir" as part of the soundtrack, well, that's really swell by me as it perfectly fits. John Carter of Mars is the film I most look forward to seeing in 2012, and that's really saying something considering the Hobbit, and the Dark Knight Rises will also be out. John Carter of Mars looks like everything Conan should have been but wasn't. But then again I think John Carter is a far better character than Conan, and personally I like Conan.
