Collider has conducted an interview with Steve Carell on the set of Get Smart, Hollywood's latest attempt to reboot an old television franchise.
Question: For someone who hasn’t seen the TV show, what’s this movie about? Who are these characters?
Steve Carell: For this version of the TV show, first of all it’s set in a as I said before sort of a parallel world in which one of America’s secret spy organizations is called CONTROL and their nemesis spy organization is called KAOS who extensively are out to take over the world and each side has various characters that go up against each other. Eccentric, crazy some silly, some very serious. The version that we’re doing is more of an origin story in terms of where this character of Maxwell Smart came from. How he came to be a field operative. We just thought that would be an interesting way into the story as opposed to just picking him up on his journey.
M. Night Shyamalan was once heralded as the next big thing, the heir apparent to Spielberg and Lucas after The Sixth Sense wowed the box-office. Unfortunately, the acclaim was a little premature, as M. Night has had a rough go of it ever since, and, in my opinion, his movies have become steadily worse with each new effort, culminating in the laughably bad Lady in the Water, released in 2006.
Shyamalan's next movie will be out later this year, titled The Happening, which it may or may not be. While The Happening is wrapping things up in post-production, M. Night is busy putting together another film, Avatar: The Last Airbender, based on the children's animated TV show of the same name. He took some time to yap it up with Empire Online about this new endeavour.
"The actual plot is in a place where there are four tribes of people. And these people each have people within their tribe that have mastery over one element: water, earth, fire or air. They all live in a balance and harmony and once every generation there is born an individual who can bend – that is manipulate – all four of those elements and thereby keep a balance between all. They are kind of a Buddha figure to some extent. The story is about how, in this particular time, this avatar is born into the airbenders and disappears. Then all hell breaks loose and the fire nation basically commits genocide and eradicates the air tribe in the hopes of killing the avatar and taking over control of everything. This child then re-emerges, which is the beginning of our story. He reappears having been frozen in the ice — there is a whole story about how that happens — a hundred years later and this world is all fucked up and he is the last airbender, but he doesn’t want this job. He’s forced into the position of putting the world back together again. It actually has a lot of Shakespearean overtones to it. There’s lots of family angst, and fathers denying sons in different storylines."
Remember when James Cameron had geek-cred? Dude made one great science fiction movie after another, from Terminator to Aliens to The Abyss, promptly hucking it all away when he made Titanic, the last movie I walked out of. Yes, I'm a Titanic hater, sue me. I think I walked out when one of the characters was running around a sinking ship firing a gun. Ugh. After the monumental success of Titanic and his ego-maniacal speech at the Oscars, James spent the next decade making little documentaries while trapped in a submersible. Finally, after what seems forever, Cameron is poised to reclaim some additional geek-credits with his forthcoming 3-D movie Avatar.
Variety has posted a lengthy interview with Cameron that focuses entirely on shooting in 3D, a technique many have tried but none have turned into box-office gold. The interview covers a lot of ground and gets pretty technical at times, but it appears obvious that Cameron is consumed with this new project, which bodes well for the final result.
Someone told me that "Citizen Kane" was a great example of how to shoot for 3-D: great depth of field, wide-angle lenses, etc.
I think it's a myth that you want deep focus in 3-D shots. I find the opposite is true. Selective focus, created by working at low f-stops with longer lenses, evolved as a cinematic technique to direct the audience's attention to the character of greatest narrative importance at a given moment. With 3-D, the director needs to lead the audience's eye, not let it roam around the screen to areas which are not converged. So all the usual cinematic techniques of selective focus, separation lighting, composition, etc., that one would use in a 2-D film to direct the eye to the subject of interest, still apply, and are perhaps even more important. We all see the world in 3-D. The difference between really being witness to an event vs. seeing it as a stereo image is that when you're really there, your eye can adjust its convergence as it roves over subjects at different distances.
Our friends over at SF Signal have managed to corner Michio Kaku while he's visiting our dimension, conducting a fantastic interview about his latest book, Physics of the Impossible. Michio Kaku has become the Carl Sagan of the new millennium, doing more than any other scientist to make hardcore particle physics accessible for the common man. His latest book is a step further in that direction, clearly explaining the many wondrous inventions that await us in the near, and not-so-near future, covering everything from lightsabers to teleportation.
SF Signal: In your book Hyperspace, you trek through complex higher dimensions and explained - in simple terms - how to conceive the six dimensions beyond Height, Width, Depth and Time. What is your personal philosophy on explaining science and using plain English to do so?
Michio Kaku: Einstein once said that if a theory could not be explained to a child, the theory was probably worthless. But this, I think he meant that great theories are not just a mass of equations, but are based on simple physical principles and pictures that even a child can understand. Thus, his theory is full of pictures, such as rockets, trains, elevators, even merry-go-rounds, that children can understand.
Hence, when I try to explain hyperspace or string theory to children, I use analogies that they can understand that summarize the essence of a physical theory.
Legendary animator Ralph Bakshi has finally emerged from self-imposed exile after abandoning Hollywood over ten years ago for the seclusion of New Mexico. It seems the failing of his last movie, Cool World, was all Bakshi needed to finally give up on Hollywood politics once and for all.
Since Bakshi has been AWOL for so many years, his name may not mean much, if anything, for a new generation of film-goers, but back in the 70s, Bakshi was a household name, if for other reason than he created the first X-Rated animated cartoon in Fritz the Cat. He later created the animated version of Lord of the Rings, a movie that irritated a great number of fans with its liberal alterations. Personally, I find his movie Wizards to be his best work and I urge you to seek it out.
Ralph has given his first interview in quite some time to the excellent BlackBook Magazine. It contains the same old cranky tongue Bakshi is famous for:
BB: Everyone from Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee to Peter Jackson and Matt Groening claim to have been heavily influenced by your work. How would you like to be remembered as an artist?
RB: You do something because you love it, and you do it with everything you’ve got. And then you die. What you leave behind doesn’t matter. How much money you make doesn’t matter. What people think of you doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how you spend every fucking day of your life, how you feel about yourself—and not in the narcissistic, egotistical way. It doesn’t matter how I’m remembered, because I’ll remember everything myself. I’ve drawn every day of my life since high school and that’s a pure victory. I’m able to eat. I have hot dogs and I’m not starving. I live in a decent home on top of a mountain. I give my thanks, and I’m not angry anymore. The only person I’m angry with is Robert Crumb. He’s been on my back for too long. Tell him to get off it.
Ralph, now 70, will be making three public appearances in New York where he will be signing copies of Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi.
If you happen to be in New York, head to page 2 for dates and locations, plus a clip from Wizards.
The Wolfman, a remake of the 1941 Universal classic, is slated for a 2009 release, with Benicio Del Toro assuming the role of the fanged lead. So many variations of the Wolfman have been made over the years that I have to wonder if anyone still cares, but so far, this new attempt is shaping up to be something special.
It certainly helps that the makeup is being created by the legendary Rick Baker, who has worked on everything from Star Wars to Hellboy and, yes, An American Werewolf in London. On the other hand, this new version of The Wolfman is directed by Joe Johnston whose filmography is hit and miss, including films like Hidalgo (miss) and Jurassic Park III (hit). Hardcore geeks will know Joe best as a visual effects genius, lending his talents to the original Star Wars Trilogy and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
One thing is for sure: with Johnston and Baker involved, The Wolfman is bound to look great.
Need to know more about The Wolfman? Then you'll want to read Empire Online's exclusive interview with producer Scott Stuber, where he talks about differences between this latest incarnation and the original, time period, special effects and a ton more.
Gamespot, still suffering an exodus of editors and game reviewers after the dust-up involving Jeff Gerstmann's review of the crappy Kane & Lynch game, have posted an interview with Yahtzee, known for his acerbic video dissections of the industry and their products.
Now that's irony. A videogame site with no balls, no integrity, and zero loyalty to their staff interviewing someone who is free to express his opinions without repercussion.
PS: Your reviews tend to put a lot of focus on the annoying and/or just-plain-bad bits of games. Do you think the games press in general goes too easy on games? Are they just writing for a different audience than you are?
BC: I do think there is a tendency for most gaming press to go easy, especially on big-name titles, because I think there's a feeling that ensuring the success of really popular games helps the industry as a whole. I seem to remember growing up that whenever a console was dying out, the associated magazines would always start awarding the few remaining games with bigger and bigger scores... My own position is that we're living in the early days of a new art form, and that the cruellest possible thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is perfect when it isn't.
I hope Gamespot is taking notes, even if their marketing and ad-sales department will promptly place those notes in the nearest shredder.
