Brain Assassin

Yes­ter­day, the sec­ond offi­cial trailer of the soon to be released Prince of Per­sia movie adap­ta­tion hit the web. If you want to know more about the movie, check out my first post on the topic. Prince of Per­sia will be in cin­e­mas on May, 21st. With­out fur­ther ado, here’s the trailer:

Most of us will already know that a Karate Kid remake – The Karate Kid – is in the works and slated for a June 11 release. Jaden Smith plays the 12-​​year-​​old kid Dre Parker whose mother’s lat­est career move has landed him in China. Of course, he’s not even remotely as pop­u­lar there as he was in good old Detroit. Some kid beats him up but he is res­cued by main­te­nance man Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) who will teach Dre the kung fu. Wait, did you read that cor­rectly? Kung fu? Why the hell is this remake about kung fu and not karate even though the title says otherwise?

Well, Dre of course knows a lit­tle karate which is way too lit­tle to stand up against the class bully. The lat­est inter­na­tional trailer also shows that Dre is called “the karate kid” by the bully. Appar­ently, that’s it. Dre will no doubt mas­ter kung fu and will defeat his enemy in the tour­na­ment, obvi­ously. I don’t espe­cially like the plot but I think I’m going to watch it anyway.

I saw AVATAR on Sat­ur­day and I’m still impressed. James Cameron once again employs state-​​of-​​the-​​art tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate some­thing we’ve never seen before. Of course, with the largest bud­get a writer-​​director has ever had at his dis­posal, one would expect lots of things to be done right. Unfor­tu­nately, the movie matches awe­some spe­cial effects with a lousy script. To be hon­est, that’s some­thing Hol­ly­wood has been doing for a long time now.

AVATAR is visu­ally stun­ning and very pleas­ing to watch. The story takes place on a dis­tant planet called Pan­dora which looks like a jungle-​​covered par­adise. It’s forests are filled with fan­tas­tic crea­tures and intrigu­ing plants. Vibrant col­ors dom­i­nate the jun­gle, even at night. Pandora’s pre­dom­i­nant species is an intel­li­gent life form who call them­selves the Na’vi. Due to the low grav­ity the blue-​​skinned humanoids grow enor­mously huge: they’re roughly 11.5 feet tall. The Na’vi’s move­ments are fluid and their eyes can con­vey cred­i­ble emo­tion. Well done!

While the film is great to look at, the story dis­ap­points. This is even more true because of the stark con­trast between the mas­ter­fully real­ized CGI effects and a lousy plot that goes like this: The Na’vi hap­pily live in their Eden until some nasty humans arrive to mine a min­eral known as unob­tainium. The min­ing cor­po­ra­tion comes pro­tected by space marines and, of course, they need to get the Na’vi moved because under the tree this spe­cific tribe lives in there is the biggest unob­tainium resource within the area. At least, humans can’t breathe in the atmos­phere with­out a breath­ing appa­ra­tus. Read more…

Being greatly inter­ested in Greek mythol­ogy I find myself look­ing for­ward to Clash of the Titans. This is a remake of the 1981 film of the same name, which was a box office hit back then.  The fan­tasy film is loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus and fea­tures an impres­sive cast. Sam Wor­thing­ton stars as Perseus, Liam Nee­son as Zeus, Ralph Fiennes as Hades, and Gemma Arter­ton por­trays Io. The film is directed by Louis Leter­rier – who already did The Incred­i­ble Hulk – and the music will be com­posed by Craig Armstrong.

The teaser trailer looks good! It sure looks like an action movie rather than a fully-​​fledged adven­ture. The remake will hit the the­aters on March 26th, 2010.

A movie adap­ta­tion of one of my most favorite games of all time – Prince of Per­sia: The Sands of Time – will come to a movie the­ater near you in 2010. The game evolves around an adven­tur­ous prince who teams up with a beau­ti­ful princess to stop an evil sor­cerer from unleash­ing the Sands of Time. It fea­tures beau­ti­ful envi­ron­ments, clever puz­zles, superb ani­ma­tions, really strong char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and a well thought-​​out story won­der­fully nar­rated. An absolutely gor­geous mas­ter­piece that has been praised many times for its stun­ning atmosphere.

The film will be the­atri­cally released on May 28th, 2010. Jor­dan Mech­ner, the cre­ator of the Prince of Per­sia fran­chise, lent a hand in writ­ing the script. He re-​​conceived the sto­ry­line to shift the per­spec­tive to a non-​​interactive expe­ri­ence and in doing so he crafted a new story. Though the film still is based on the video game Mech­ner doesn’t expect pos­si­ble sequels to be based on the sub­se­quent games War­rior Within and The Two Thrones.

The prince is played by Jake Gyl­len­haal and con­trary to the game, in the movie he has a name: Das­tan. Gemma Arter­ton por­trays princess Tam­ina and Beng Kings­ley stars as the film’s antag­o­nist, Nizam. Alfred Molina plays a char­ac­ter named Sheik Amar, a men­tor to the prince. Jerry Bruck­heimer is pro­duc­ing for Walt Dis­ney Pic­tures. Like Pirates of the Caribbean The Sands of  Time has received a PG-​​13 rat­ing due to intense sequences of vio­lence and action.

Now, with­out fur­ther ado, enjoy the trailer:

Venom by kg21 (deviantART)

SCI FI Wire talked to Paul Wer­nick who co-​​wrote the script for the Spider-​​Man spin-​​off Venom with Rhett Reese and it looks like Sony is going for­ward with the project. Accord­ing to Wer­nick “the project is still mov­ing for­ward and the writ­ing team has turned the script in to the suits at Sony”. Appar­ently, the stu­dio has two drafts of Venom to con­sider and is try­ing to fig­ure out its next step. It seems unlikely that Venom will hap­pen before Spider-​​Man 4, which the lat­est rumors have shoot­ing  in early 2010. Wer­nick was tight-​​lipped when asked about a pos­si­ble rela­tion­ship between the two movies.

I’d love to see a Venom movie, that’s for sure! And I know a bunch of peo­ple who’d sell their moth­ers to do so too. It will be inter­est­ing to see whether the film will ignore what’s hap­pened in Spider-​​Man 3 or starts fresh if they decide to go through with the project. I still hate the fact that Venom didn’t get enough screen-​​time in the third install­ment of the Spidey franchise.