Empire of the Sun Tagged Articles at Cinematical
RIP, J.G. Ballard
Filed under: Obits »
After a long battle with prostate cancer, British novelist J. G. Ballard passed away in his home in west London on Sunday at the age of 78. Ballard might not have been a big name in Hollywood, nor lent his time to the world of Tinsel and screenwriting, but his novels did make for two radically different and unforgettable films.First, there was Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun -- the story of Ballard's expat childhood in China and his experiences in an internment camp when the Japanese invaded during World War II. This also happens to be the film that truly kicked off Christian Bale's career (he played the young, fictionalized version of the writer). Ballard once wrote: "In many ways my entire fiction is the dissection of a deep pathology that I had witnessed in Shanghai and later in the postwar world."
This notion adds a whole other dimension to the other notable film made from his work: David Cronenberg's Crash, which saw James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, and Rosanna Arquette explore the world of sexual energy bred out of car crashes. Roger Ebert said of the film: "It downloads gigabytes of information about sex, it discovers our love affair with cars, and it combines them in a mistaken algorithm. The result is challenging, courageous and original--a dissection of the mechanics of pornography."
J.G. Ballard, you will be missed.
Perhaps with his passing, Ballard's work will now get new life in Hollywood. Is there any you'd like to see on the big screen?
[via The Hollywood Reporter]
Ben Stiller Is Done With Museums And Is Heading To The Tropics
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Scripts »
To be honest, in all the rush of the holidays I never got around to watching Night At The Museum, granted I'm not a huge Ben Stiller fan, but I got the occasional chuckle out of the trailer. Well, in the end it looks like I didn't really miss out on anything unforgettable. I never really thought Stiller would be a good fit for family films; I always thought his comedy worked best when it could get a little more "adult". If you've seen the SNL digital short by Adam McKay about a one night stand with Glen Frey then you know what I mean.Production Weekly announced that Stiller and writing partner Justin Theroux are set to begin production on their comedy Tropic Thunder. The story would follow a film crew besieged by problems, including being mistaken for commandos in a local war on location, all while trying to make a big budget epic war movie. So I can only assume the plot is Stiller's nod to his humble beginnings in Steven Spielberg's Empire of The Sun. Stiller is set to direct the film with principal photography scheduled to begin this July. Hopefully the laughs will be kept PG-13 at the very least.
Meyers, Mitchell, Chow and Yeoh Save the Children
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », Casting », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
The names in the title of this post kinda sound like they're from some sort of funky international law firm or something, don't they? Or maybe, instead of a law firm, a relief agency for orphaned children specializing in Asia? That would actually make more sense considering the true nature of this post. What the heck am I talking about? Glad you asked.According to Production Weekly, Jonathan Rhys Meyers (of Bend It Like Beckham and the underrated Ang Lee film Ride With The Devil), Radha Mitchell (of High Art and Man on Fire), master of swords and two-handed pistol shooting Chow Yun Fat and former Chow co-star Michelle Yeoh are booked to be in the period drama The Children of Huang Shi for director Roger Spottiswoode.
The film, which tells the story of young British Journalist Gregg Hogg (played by Myers) who saves a group of orphaned children during the 1937 Japanese invasion of China by taking them on a 1000 mile journey to safety, is being written by Jane Hawksley. Mitchell will play the brave Australian nurse who helps Hogg save the children.
This new film covers similar ground explored before by Steven Spielberg in his film Empire of the Sun . In that film, a very young and pre-Batman Begins, Christian Bale is forced to flee his home when the Japanese invade China. He ends up separated from his parents and living at an abandoned airfield with other refugees -- including John Malkovich, Joe Pantoliano and a young Ben Stiller in one of his first movie roles . Empire of the Sun is a great movie that if you haven't seen lately, or at all, deserves a look.
If The Children of Huang Shi, which while obviously dealing with similar subject matter tells a different story, turns out to be half as good as Empire of the Sun, I will definitely be interested in seeing it. Even if Chow Yun Fat doesn't fly through the air, pistols blazing away in both hands, taking out bad guys.
Filming on The Children of Huang Shi is expected to begin mid-November in China with production moving later to Australia.
New On DVD - Date Movie, Freedomland, Winter Passing
Filed under: New Releases », DVD Reviews », New on DVD », Home Entertainment », Columns »
• Date Movie - Nowhere in the formula "Comedy = Tragedy + Time" does "Cruelty" figure in, something that this caca-palooza -- "from 2 of the 6 writers of Scary Movie" -- sets out to correct from the very first scene. When they introduce us to morbidly obese Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan), it is with ridicule as they paint her as a hideous beast that makes men vomit and turn gay. Of course, when we remember that 2 of the 6 writers of Scary Movie were Wayans Brothers, whose stock in trade is that kind of cruelty, it makes sense (even if these are another two writers.)
A parody of romantic comedies like Bridget Jones's Diary, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Hitch, this lame spoof goes for the easy laugh almost every time, beating to death with a golf club every gag with the subtlety of, well ... someone who beats someone else to death with a golf club. The "13" in the movie's "PG-13" rating would seem to be either a limit for either I.Q. or emotional age, as the movie's show pieces are either juvenile blue bits or have something to do with either poop, pee, puke or pus (the dreaded "4 P's"). Putting gifted comic actors like Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge in this stinky mess makes them both stinky by association, though as time goes by, the whole lot of them will only be guilty of contributing to a vast background of white noise that we will have learned to filter out when we grow up. Presently #64 on the IMDB's Bottom 100 of all time.
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