Tech Touchz is a Network about Hacker News, Tech News &Tech Hacks - Latest &Tech News, Hacker News and Hacking Tricks About Technology
Pokemon is getting a live-action movie based on Detective Pikachu
Pokemon Go fever has definitely caught Hollywood’s attention: The franchise is getting a live-action movie, the rights to which were just won by Legendary Pictures. The movie won’t be focused on Pokemon Go, however: Instead, it’ll put the spotlight on Detective Pikachu, a sleuthing version of one of Pokemon’s most recognizable characters introduced in a franchise spin-out game for Nintendo 3DS earlier this year.
Production is set to begin in 2017, with Legendary fast-tracking the usual process according to Variety, almost definitely in the hopes of catching the Pokemon Go hype wave before (if?) it dissipates. Universal Pictures is going to be distributing the movie I’m markets outside of Japan.
Pokemon already has a storied animated filmic history, but this is its first foray into live action movies. The film rights were reported as being auctioned last week, and Legendary probably paid a decent sum to win the glory, given how much hype the franchise is currently riding.
A note for casting directors: I dressed up as an EXTREMELY CONVINCING Brock once for Halloween and critics are still raving about the performance (aka, one friend remembers vaguely that this probably happened).
Tech Touchz is a Network about Hacker News, Tech News &Tech Hacks - Latest &Tech News, Hacker News and Hacking Tricks About Technology
JON FAVREAU BRINGS MAGIC BACK INTO THIS CLASSIC STORY NEW MOVIE TALK YOU MUST NOT MISS
Disney's return to the story of The Jungle Book might feel bigger and look better than anything that's come before, but at its core is a very human tale that resonates just as strongly no matter how spectacular its visual wrappings. Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) takes on Rudyard Kipling's classic story by sticking close to the essentials and adding in a sense of scope and wonder. Watching the film in 3D, it was easy to be immersed in its world. As impressive as the scale of the movie is, there's also plenty to win over younger viewers being introduced to the story for the first time, from a truly adorable runt-of-the-pack wolf pup to new versions of beloved The Jungle Book songs. The movie wouldn't work without its star (and only non-CGI actor) Neel Sethi. The New York native was only 10 when The Jungle Book was in production, and he perfectly embodies the role. Sethi has the slightly awkward swagger of a young child who feels more ready for the world than he is, filled with confidence as he's challenging massive bears or facing down a dangerous tiger. The Jungle Book is Mowgli's coming-of-age story, and Sethi earns his character's evolution as he faces several humbling experiences and learns what his wolf pack's mantra (or as Baloo would say, propaganda) really means. The film borrows its most direct inspiration from Disney's 1967 animated version of The Jungle Book, but changes some key plot moments that alter the impact of Mowgli's journey in big ways. Given the range of Sethi's performance, it's impressive to realize that he often acted against nothing, as The Jungle Book was filmed largely on a green screen. Sethi fully lives Mowgli's joy and his sorrow as he's interacting with the jungle world, selling the fact that he lives in this land of make believe. But as much as The Jungle Book wouldn't work without a great Mowgli, it also wouldn't work without animal characters that feel as real as the movie's star man cub. The fantastic CGI used to create key characters like Bagheera the panther (Ben Kingsley), Baloo the bear (Bill Murray), Akela the wolf (Lupita Nyong'o), Shere Khan (Idris Elba) and King Louie the orangutan (Christopher Walken) was only half the battle. It was clear from The Jungle Book's trailers that all of these computer-generated creatures looked spectacularly real, but their striking visual effects would mean nothing if they weren't developed into full characters. Fortunately Justin Marks' screenplay brings real depth to the important creatures in Mowgli's life, turning them into fully-developed characters with their own motivations and desires. Nyong'o's Akela is the most affecting of the bunch, while Murray's Baloo brings the expected amount of humor and levity to the story and Elba's Shere Khan -- whose backstory is fleshed out to give his hatred of humans more depth -- makes a terrifying villain. There is a certain amount of darkness in The Jungle Book -- which led to some young children in our theater crying out in fear -- but overall this movie is an earnest event full of joy and wonder. Diving into the rich, timeless source material of Kipling's stories, Favreau was able to take the core of the tale and translate it into a modern audience without needing to diminish any of its strengths. This is an adventure story for children at its core, though some of the movie's exploration of loss and violence, and Mowgli's final decision, might need further explanation for a younger viewer. The Jungle Book is a wonder for both children and adults, and there's plenty of emotional resonance for all audiences. There are many lessons to be gleaned from the movie, like having respect for the power of nature and other people in your society, and not trying to constrict someone from being what that are because of what society thinks they should be. Instead of playing for laughs, Favreau seeks to humble the audience by putting into perspective each person's place in the world -- and what happens when you try to prevent someone from being their true selves -- both of which are worthwhile messages for anyone to hear. THE VERDICT With impressive visual effects, a strong leading actor and well-drawn characters, Disney's return to The Jungle Book is a fantastic adventure film with strong messages that's good for audiences young and old. There is some darkness to the movie that might be too much for some younger viewers, but for adults who loved the animated movie growing up, Favreau's take on the story amplifies the 1967 animated film's strengths while also adding new depth and emotional resonance to what was already a strong story.
Tech Touchz is a Network about Hacker News, Tech News &Tech Hacks - Latest &Tech News, Hacker News and Hacking Tricks About Technology
Let us all take a moment to celebrate the remarkable resilience of Hollywood.
As “the music industry finds itself fighting over pennies while waving goodbye to dollars,” to quote the New York Times; as the publishing industry finds itself increasingly eclipsed by Amazon; as “the number of people watching TV is falling off a cliff,” as Business Insider puts it — movie box office just keeps rising. From strength to strength: “Revenue from the American box office grew by 6.3% in 2015, to a record high of $11 billion. Thanks to droves of new film goers in China, where the market grew by 49% last year, global revenues increased by 4% to $38 billion,” calculates The Economist. Now, it’s true that these headline figures paper over serious problems. DVD sales, once a major source of income, have sunk to irrelevance. Production and marketing costs haveskyrocketed as the movie biz moves into Extremistan, relying on a few big hits to make money, squeezing out the middle class of mid-budget movies. “The top grossing films each week accounted for 33% of total box office in both 2015 and 2016, almost twice the average of 18% that prevailed in 2011-13,” according to some grim analysis on Variety. But there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with Extremistan. The multiplexes are still full of new movies every week, some of which are actually good, and more importantly, moviegoers still keep flocking to them. (Including yours truly; I see probably 40 movies a year in theaters.) Granted, higher ticket prices mask the fact that slowly rising box offices mean slowly falling attendance, but the growing worldwide audience, courtesy of capitalism’s remarkable ability to make poor nations richer, will more than make up for any slow secular decline in the West. So far so good… …but what happens when the VR age hits? The zeitgeist seems to have declared 2016 the dawning of the age of virtual reality. On the one hand, this is incredibly exciting. VR is to flat screens as color-with-sound is to silent-black-and-white; at least one quantum leap, maybe two. We’ll have to develop — we’re already beginning to develop — whole new vocabularies of “virtual literacy” … and whole new forms of storytelling that may have more in common with video games, and immersive theater like Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, and Third Rail Projects’ Then She Fell, than traditional screen narratives. But whither the traditional, beloved movie theater in such a brave new narrative world? What need will we have of a place to congregate to watch stories when the projections end a few inches ahead of our eyeballs, and we cannot see or hear those around us? An excellent Aaron Levie piece in Variety quotes Jeffrey Katzenberg: “It seems that all the zero-sum thinkers should reconsider their math… throughout this history, in not one instance did a new form a mass media replace an earlier form.” Levie’s larger point — that technology is the friend, not the enemy, of Hollywood and all forms of cinematic storytelling — is absolutely true. But I note that very few people go to see silent black-and-white movies any more. (I happen to be one of them, but trust me, we’re a minority.) Hollywood, in the sense of an enormously popular and influential industry that performs and projects stirring stories for vast quantities of money, will thrive. But very little of today’s Hollywood infrastructure will … including, I’m sorry to predict, movie theaters, or the notion of “first-run” box office. This will take years, of course, and will be a slow, staged process. At first VR will seem a fad; then only for hardcore gamers; then perhaps VR “arcades” will arise, a la the video-game arcades of the 80s; and only then will movie theaters be seriously threatened. But it’s hard to envision a future in which that does not happen. Again, this is no bad thing! The systems and stories that supplant and replace today’s will almost certainly be superior. But Hollywood’s braintrust had best bear in mind at least thepossiblity that VR’s most enthusiastic boosters are actually underestimating its appeal … and movie buffs like myself had best brace ourselves for some wrenching farewells.
Tech Touchz is a Network about Hacker News, Tech News &Tech Hacks - Latest &Tech News, Hacker News and Hacking Tricks About Technology
Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No -- and it's not Superman or Batman either. "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" sees the classic DC Comics characters meet on the big screen for the first time, but they're such dark versions of the beloved superheroes that they're barely recognisable as either super or heroes.
There's a lot riding on "Dawn of Justice", which is meant to lay the foundations for DC's answer to the wildly successful Marvel cinematic universe. Under the singular but divisive vision of director Zack Snyder, "BvS: DoJ" is an extreme and very grown-up vision of the DC universe. It's a barely comprehensible, overstuffed, overloud, unrelentingly bleak hot mess. But I think I loved it.
"Dawn of Justice" picks up just before the end of "Man of Steel", in which Superman was drawn into a super scrap that toppled half of the city of Metropolis. In among the devastation is millionaire orphan Bruce Wayne, who decides Superman is just too powerful to trust, and sets out on a quest to take the alien down.
In his first outing as the Batman, Ben Affleck is great, a jaded salt-and-pepper dark knight tortured by his misguided obsession with Superman. Another new face is Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, who...well, actually "Dawn of Justice" doesn't tell us who she is, what she cares about, or indeed anything beyond the fact she looks nice in a posh frock.
In the villain stakes, Jesse Eisenberg's jittery Lex Luthor is fun to watch, his entitled Silicon Valley nerd a Zucker punch of a reinvention. But again, it's never that clear who he really is or why he does what he does.
There isn't a lot of time for character, because the film has so much other business to get through. It has to set up "Suicide Squad" and "Justice League" movies, which means there are parts of the film that may make sense in 2019 (alongside plenty of scenes that may never make sense).
It also pointedly addresses criticism of previous movies, from the disaster porn of "Man of Steel" to Christian Bale's funny Bat-voice in the "Dark Knight" films.
In fairness, the shadow of Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy doesn't fall over "Dawn of Justice" anywhere as much as I expected. It's very much its own thing. That's largely due to Snyder's distinctive bombastic filmmaking style. I'll say one thing for the guy, he knows how to translate a comic book to the screen in a faithful and yet consummately cinematic way. He can't do compelling characters, or a plot that makes sense, or a joke, but hey, he sure knows where the volume knob is.
Ultimately, "Dawn of Justice" is ambitious, existential and frequently beautiful, but boy howdy is it hard work. It's barely Superman and it for sure ain't Batman.
The most expensive What if? ever made
Here's the thing about comics: they come out once a month. Superman and Batman feature in multiple titles every month -- Batman is in more than 10 different comics this month alone -- and they have been doing so for 75 years or more. The thing about comics, then, is that there are loads of them. Loads of comics, loads of creators, loads of stories.
Which means that there is space -- no, a necessity -- to approach those characters and tell those stories in different ways. Different tones, different styles, different eras and, sometimes, radically different alternative versions. Alternative versions that ask questions like, what if Superman landed in Soviet Russia instead of America? What if the Justice League lived in the wild west? What if Batman lived in the future? The sheer depth of the comics medium means you can push to the very edges of a character and beyond, making fundamental and unthinkable changes -- while the essence of the character remains safe in more conventional titles.
Films are different. Films come out one at a time. They appear only every few years. And when they do appear, they enter the public consciousness in a way no comic can. More people see the movie, and not only that, they see the movie on billboards and on buses and on lunchboxes.
Kids grow up with a movie. The movie version of a character is, like it or not, the version that is seared on the public consciousness. The movie version of a character becomes the definitive version for a generation. I'd argue that that comes with a certain responsibility to make a movie that feels true to the stuff that makes a character definitive, unique, inspirational.
"Dawn of Justice" doesn't do that. Instead, it's the most expensive What if? story ever made. It pushes to the very edges of the characters, and makes fundamental unthinkable changes. "Dawn of Justice" asks, What if Superman was a callous god? What if Batman killed people? What if the fictional world of fantastical heroes that has delighted and inspired kids of all ages for the best part of a century was a thoroughly joyless, miserable, awful place?
Now, personally, I love a bit of deconstruction. I love grand guignol and What if? stories, and that's the "Dawn of Justice" I really, really enjoyed. Like the totally bonkers bit in the middle where Snyder completely jettisons plot, century-old lore and any shred of narrative logic for an apocalyptically baroque mini-movie. The more I think I about it, that's probably going to end up as my favourite bit of the whole film.
But if the dark vision of "Dawn of Justice" is the Batman and Superman that will be the definitive versions for this generation, I feel sorry for this generation. My friend asked me if he could take his 6-year-old to see it. Nope. No way. The endless philosophical chat, the unremitting doom-laden score and the brutal, graphic violence will surely inspire more sleepless nights than daydreams that a man can fly.
This Superman is not a beacon of hope, a cheerful reminder that helping others is always the right thing, that power doesn't have to corrupt. Instead he's a troubled god, blotting out the sun above us. Actor Henry Cavill is either snarling or frowning, eyes glowing demonic red, his handsome features more evil Prince Charming than kindly benefactor. The tone is set from the start: After all the agonising over killing at the end of "Man of Steel", in "Dawn of Justice" he kills the first person he sees.
This Superman is legit scary. And he lives in a world that's inherently scary, full of sudden and pointless death, random mass destruction, anger and flame and horror. The world is an awful place, kids, and there's nothing you can do it about it.
I'm not saying kids need to be cosseted. It's perfectly possible to make challenging drama for younger audiences that's smart, considered and compelling. But Snyder thinks grown-up means Batman straight up mutilating people.
Very dark knight
If Superman is dialled over to the mardy end of the spectrum, this Batman is so dark you couldn't see him with a bag of carrots and night vision goggles. Batman has, remember, one rule: no killing. This Batman, however, doesn't seem to have read the same comics we have. He drives round in a tank pancaking and barbecuing cars full of henchmen, spraying bullets all over the shop, casually sending grenades and knives back the way they came.
The Batman persona is meant to scare bad guys. But when we meet him, we see this horrifying apparition not through the eyes of unnerved baddies, but through the eyes of the victims and police officers whose side he's supposed to be on.
Beginning and ending with a funeral, Snyder's vision is as nihilistic as ever. He can't help showing bones breaking in loving detail, can't keep away from violence away even when there's no reason for it. One scene, which involves Bruce Wayne chatting to a suspect and could take place pretty much anywhere, takes place in a bare-knuckle fight club with attendant face-pounding and bone-crunching sound effects. This is where your heroes live, kids.
As much as I loved this very adult take on these fantasy figures, it's a shame there's no concession to younger audiences to experience the magic and fantasy. Won't someone think of the children? Zack Snyder isn't.
Sure, the superhero myth is inherently violent, and in some ways it's admirable to interrogate those power fantasies, to confront the implications of fictional violence. But that hardly makes for a fun day at the pictures. Is it too much to ask for a bit of escapism with our capes? "Dawn of Justice" is so grim, so bleak, so devoid of joy -- especially compared to Marvel's fun-packed Avengers adventures. It isn't so much a superhero movie as a movie about superheroes. It's like reading a think-piece about power fantasies...while someone hits you with a hammer.
I love that "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" is so dementedly ambitious, so bizarrely messy, so balls-to-the-wall weird. But it's neither the Batman and Superman movie our kids need, nor the one we deserve.
