Prometheus Trailer Premire at AMC

Last week I checked on one of my Facebook links and there was an invite for me to attend a Special Event at the Downtown Disney AMC Theater. The new trailer for the movie Prometheus was being launched with an on-line streaming event that included a Q & A with Director Ridley Scott. Now Sir Ridley Scott is one of the masters of modern cinema and I am Jones-ing for this movie like you would not believe. He is maybe the most creatively visual of the major directors out there. His original background was in art and advertising. "Alien", "Blade Runner", "Legend", and "Gladiator" are all stunning works of visual splendor. If you have seen the teaser trailer for "Prometheus", you can tell it is in a similarly grandiose style.

I had to go through a complicated process which involved signing up for a movie promotion site I had not heard of before in order to get the passes. Here is the PDF file that shows the ticket:

Of course my daughter Amanda is as big an "Alien" geek as I am, she believes all the best movies open in June to celebrate her birthday, so she was looking forward to this as much as I was. Well it was a rainy day here in Southern California, and the freeways were slow and the parking lot at Downtown Disney was Full. We had to wait like vultures for a spot and then scamper through the rain to get to the Theater. There was a long line for the theater the screening was in, but when we got to the end there was an attendant who directed us with our invitation to the front and a lanyard and pass to go on in. Yeah Stubbs card membership.

The front of the theater was set up as you see in the picture at the start of this post. There were a view brief announcements and then the trailer was screened for us in 3-D. Here it is in all of it's magnificence.








After the awe that we just witnessed, Ridley Scott and Co-Producer and Co-writer of the film Damon Lindelof came out and began the Q & A with a series of questions from on-line viewers, most of which came through Twitter. There were some very descent questions and a good deal of jocular ribbing when it came to keeping mum about the plot of the movie.

When the guests left, we were given another chance to salivate over the 3-D trailer. The movie was shot in 3-D, not converted to 3-D. The questions suggest that there are aliens in the film but they are not of a type we have seen before. There was also a very intriguing question about the impact that the story presents on our religious faith and place in the universe. The two film makers thought the question was particularly relevant to the theme of the movie and suggested that we will have some similar provocative questions once we have seen the film.

On our way out of the theater we were presented with full sized posters for the movie. Clearly they saw that we were coming. It was a great experience and I can hardly stand to believe that we still have almost three months until we get to sit down in the dark and experience the whole thing for ourselves. It should be exciting, frightening and profound. Of course it will also look spectacular.

AMC Has added the video feed from the event stream to their site. Here it is for you.

Watch live streaming video from prometheus at livestream.com

prometheus on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

John Carter of Mars

This movie is going to suffer an ignoble fate at the box office and that is just too sad. The source material has been an inspiration for science fiction films and fans for decades. The fact that this project was never developed into a film property before now has hurt it in strange ways. It should be an anticipated series of films based on an original character that was popularized in a set of stories told in books. The books unfortunately are nearly a century old and the modern audience has no familiarity with the characters. Edgar Rice Burroughs' other creation, Tarzan, has been adapted for films since Elmo Lincoln first played him in the silent days. Audiences that may never have encountered a Tarzan book have seen a version of Tarzan at some time or other. He is a character that entered the public consciousness and has stayed there even in long fallow periods. John Carter on the other hand has remained a literary icon, for the community of science fiction and fantasy aficionados and those things that were original about the books have been strip mined for movies since Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon to Star Wars and Dune.  So the material here may seem like old hat although the character of John Carter precedes any of the other modern heroes.

The trailers do not do the film justice. It looks too much like there is a somber theme, attached to a CGI crapfest which comes from the studio that brought us the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise which was a success and the would be "Prince of Persia" franchise that failed. The emphasis in the previews is on the spectacular look of the movie and the alien creatures that inhabit that world. If you don't know who John Carter is, you probably won't care much about seeing the movie. I have to admit that I voraciously consumed Tarzan novels when I was a kid, but never dove into the John Carter story. I remember in college, when we had seen "Star Wars", my debate coach John DeBross, tried to encourage me to read the stories since so much of the Star Wars mythology drew on the Burroughs work. I was too distracted to get around to it and my knowledge of the series is severely limited as a consequence. I can say based on the movie I saw today, that I am encouraged enough to take up the task of catching up with a hundred years of science fiction history.

A couple of things about the movie stand out and should encourage viewers to seek it out. To begin with, the tone of the film is set pretty effectively with the bookend story that puts the author Burroughs into his own fictional work. The start of the movie details the background of the John Carter character without revealing too much. It provides a reason for us to want to follow this character into the story. The technology for his transportation to Mars is partially explained and it turns out it is less space travel than astral projection. The performance of Taylor Kitch in the lead is fine, he seems a little contemporary at times, but plays the southerner he is supposed to be solidly due to some appropriate dialogue and vocal tone. He is a gentleman from the South, not a redneck farmer but a Captain in the Army of Northern Virginia. He manages the transition to life on Mars (Barzoom) about as well as any man of the times could hope to.  The other strong part of the story is the Princess of Mars that he comes to know and defend and is the romantic interest for his character. She starts off a little too eager but settles into a more serious character who finally begins to realize the sacrifices she might have to make to save her planet. She is not so much a damsel in distress as a warrior scientist that needs some common sense and love. The actress Carol Lynn plays her with just a right amount of sensuality but a lot more intelligence. 

Mars is depicted as a dry and barren planet nearing the end of it's life cycle. This is the way it has been visualized by movies since the earliest of times. The origin of this vision is contained in this story.  While there is a significant amount of CGI in the backgrounds and sets, it did not feel overdone. There were maybe a couple of scenes where the goal seemed to be to wow us but most of the time the film makers stuck to their story. The alien races are visualized in an adventure action style that is reminiscent of old pulp novels, horns in their jaws, multiple arms, body tattoos, and friendly and dangerous animals to interact with. There is some good humor in the tribal story of the race that Carter first encounters, that helps keep us in mind that we are watching an entertainment. It may strain at credibility as most fantasy will, but it sets up some believable moments to keep us in the story. The story is much too complicated to try and explain. The character names all sound similar and it sometimes feels like a Russian novel with hard to pronounce names and characters that can easily be mixed up with one another. In "Dune" back in the 1980s, David Lynch gave characters internal dialogue to try to clarify the story. That had the effect of making the movie portentous.  George Lucas would have some long scene of exposition that is stuck into the middle of the story and slows the pace of the movie but then he would try to slam it back into action with an elaborate and overlong set piece.  Here they go for something in the middle. The characters sometimes verbalize plot, usually they try to show it and plenty of times we are left to infer it, which may leave a viewer confused at times. Even if you lose track of all the characters, you still have a pretty good sense of who the good guys and bad guys are.

Your willingness to give into the pulp roots of the story and accept the complications of plot and character will be your best guide for determining if you will enjoy this movie. I was very much surprised by how much it all worked despite my familiarity with the world Burroughs had created. The battles are epic and well staged, the look of the movie seems true to it's roots, and best of all, the growing relationship of the two leads and the resolution of the story left me hopeful about the characters.  They spent a lot of money making this movie and most of it ends up on screen. I am just afraid that it will not mean much to most potential customers and they will move on to some other film that is not as much fun or as ambitious. John Carter does not succeed entirely, but there is plenty here to satisfy the  twelve year old boy in all of us.

AMC Stubbs Program

I was not a fan of the program when it first started. I enjoyed the surprise of a promotion on my ticket with the old Movie watcher program. I must say however, it is nice to know how much I have got back on ticket purchases and concession spending. In the year since the program started, I have received $260 back. You earn $10 for every $100 you spend. That means I spent $2600 at AMC Theaters in the last year. That could be one nice vacation, but instead I had over fifty mini vacations and got to eat popcorn too.

Universal Celebrates 100 Years

OK, I'm a movie whore selling for the man. I just love the promotional stuff studios put out celebrating anniversaries and old films. It makes me want to watch them all again.

FOR SHAME, OSCARS! 2012

Someone else posted this on Youtube and it seems appropriate to share. Some of these might be better known in TV but there are definitely some glaring omissions.

Prometheus - Guy Pearce Weyland Viral Video (HD)

This movie is going to be incredible. This is a fantastic monologue presented as a TED video setting up the premise of the movie. I don't know how much Guy Pearce is in the movie, but this sets the tone for something amazing.

Evolution of Trailers

Here is a CBS story on the changes over time in the way trailers try to sell movies.