independence day Tagged Articles at Cinematical

At a press junket earlier this summer for 2012, Roland Emmerich told reporters he's not doing any more blow-'em-up flicks. "I would not know how to top this... It's just one of these things, you know. I had a hard time deciding to do another disaster movie, but... you cannot make a disaster movie if there's not something --- an idea in this disaster which elevates it to something more than a disaster. And so it was this idea, you know, that there will be a global flood and it's a retelling of Noah's Arc."

Later he added, "It's not my last film, it's my last disaster film. And that's because I wouldn't know what else to do. It's just, you know what, I really didn't want to do this movie at first... But when I decided that the idea was too good to not do it for the reason I had done before, I said, okay, if I do it, I will do it in such a spectacular manner that nobody can top it for a long time. I have that pride in my work."

Though no one asked for a sequel to Independence Day (because didn't Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum use a computer virus to rid us of those damn aliens the last time?), that's not stopping special effects superhero Roland Emmerich from wanting to churn one out for the hell of it. Only problem is ... it's going to take a lot more than an arm and a leg to get Will Smith back in an alien fighting mood.

While speaking to Emmerich about 2012, Latino Review learned that there's a script and a story for Independence Day 2, but right now 20th Century Fox is delaying it because they can't come to terms with Emmerich, writer-producer Dean Devlin and Will Smith -- all of whom want to make sure they're paid, like, a trillion dollars for this thing. According to Emmerich, Fox wanted them to make the sequel without Will Smith, but the writer-director insists he star in it. "I said Will is essential for us, for this movie and actually for the audience too. And, so, it's in limbo and lately the studios are fighting. Like gross players, and Will is a gross player and is probably the only gross player right now who's worth his gross. So we'll see what happens. I would love to do it," Emmerich noted.

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

Maybe I just follow far too many movie nerds on Twitter to get an accurate reading on this, but did Independence Day turn around and become an honest-to-goodness movie staple over the Fourth of July holiday while I wasn't looking?

I mean, I get that it was huge when it landed on said weekend back in 1996, and I know that President Pullman's speech (embedded below) is quotable as all get out -- though extra points to the pal who instead posted "Eagle-20! Fox-2!" -- but I usually see war movies and TV show marathons as go-to fodder for the 4th, however less fitting their titles may be.

So how many of you actually did watch ID4 yesterday? How long had it been since you watched it? How fond of it were you thirteen years back? Did you watch it because it harkens back to a big, loud, relatively healthy level of cheese that we used to get from our blockbusters, back when we could see what exactly was going on in any given action scene? Or was it simply a more welcome/convenient option than going to see a third Ice Age or a two-and-a-half-hour gangster drama, or perhaps a memorial to the late Jeff Goldblum?

Comment away!

No one makes things go "boom!" like the German "Master of Disaster." Director Roland Emmerich introduces a new trailer for his end of the world thriller 2012, which you can watch over at Yahoo! Movies. After taking a look, all I can say is, "Holy crap! John Cusack is in this movie?"

Admittedly, I haven't been paying very much attention to the project. The first teaser hit last November, and featured gigantic waves washing over the Himalayas (or a similar huge mountain range). The waves return in the new trailer, which starts with a newscaster talking about the Mayan calendar's prediction of the end of the world in the titular year and then leads to John Cusack's instant conversion from doubter to believer (maybe) before everything -- and I mean everything! -- starts to slip, slide, crash, burn, and, yes, go "boom!"

From the brief glimpses of dramatic scenes included, let's just say that the main, and possibly only, reason to see the movie will be to appreciate the creative work of hundreds of gifted visual effects artists. (In other words, it's in line with Emmerich's previous disaster flicks Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow). This is destruction depicted on a truly grand scale; Emmerich and his team have clearly been thinking BIG. The film was originally set to open next month, but Sony Pictures bumped it back a few months. If we're all still around, it will open on November 13.

It would be easy to offer you appropriately themed movies for the Fourth of July. There is, of course, Independence Day, plus flicks like Yankee Doodle Dandy, or on a more serious note, Born of the Fourth of July. But what's the fun in that? You could come up with those yourself. I could be snarky and offer only British fare, which is actually very tempting, but I have something else in mind: Independence-themed chills.

The two films for this double feature are not centered specifically on the Fourth of July, but the date is important to both stories -- whether it's the tale of tourists and teeth, or parades and creepiness. Do you see where I'm headed? For this double feature, in honor of the Fourth of July, I give you: Jaws and Cape Fear.

I love conceptually clever alien invasion films. I mean, Independence Day (humans fight aliens!) is fun, but something like Signs (humans fight aliens, from the point of view of one farm family) is way more gripping. And for all my problems with Cloverfield (which isn't quite an alien invasion movie, though I guess we don't really know that), its notion of an apocalyptic event viewed solely from the ground was brilliant, and the movie worked like gangbusters when it really engaged with that idea instead of focusing on the emotional tribulations of the numbskull characters.

Battle: Los Angeles (not to be confused with Battle in Seattle), which is being fast-tracked for Columbia from a script by Chris Bertolini (The General's Daughter), looks to be a movie like that. The story posits a large-scale alien invasion, but will focus on one marine platoon's role in Earth's effort to fight back on the streets of Los Angeles. I'm not sure any movie to date has tried to answer the question of what it's like for the poor military saps who inevitably get deployed against the terrifying alien attackers. (Starship Troopers is close, but not quite what I have in mind.) I mean, what about those guys who ran across the screen with grenade launchers in Cloverfield? What happened to them? Inquiring minds want to know.

Directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich, who's previously given us Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 B.C. offers audiences the prospect of epic action on a canvas as broad as human history; what it delivers is another matter entirely. In an age where computer-generated effects make spectacle possible, and audiences reward blood-and-thunder films like Gladiator and 300 at the box office, greenlighting 10,000 B.C. must have seemed logical. I can imagine someone pitching the film, to paraphrase Team America: World Police, by saying "It's like 300 .... plus 9,700!"

But as Emmerich's films have always demonstrated, suggesting that spectacle can make up for weak storytelling is like suggesting that having a great haircut can make up for being born without a skeleton. And, so it is in 10,000 B.C., where a variety of off-the-rack plot points and generic heroic journeys are decorated with computer-generated baubles like wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers and massed mobs, shiny hollow Christmas ornaments hung on a bare, ruined tree. Emmerich co-wrote 10,000 B.C. with Harald Klosser and put an army of technicians to work on the movie, but the end result simply feels like threads and themes and moments borrowed from other films.

Can Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. survive if it doesn't feature New York City either under water, under ice or being attacked by aliens and/or giant lizards? That's the question I had after watching the first teaser trailer for 10,000 B.C. -- Emmerich's latest epic, effects-laced extravaganza. From the guy who brought us Independence Day, the updated Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow comes a film that ... I don't even know what to say. It's like Apocalypto, but extremely Hollywood-ized. Once you get past all the running and animal-fighting, the first question you'll probably have is ... what language will this film be in? I can't answer that for sure, but since it's coming from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures (300), I assume everyone spoke English back in 10,000 B.C. I mean, the Spartans did, so why wouldn't these prehistoric mammoth hunters?

It's a no-brainer; I really can't see a major studio like Warners taking a chance on a big-budgeted flick that either doesn't have dialogue or is in a different language. It just wouldn't make sense. But we're used to seeing the historical facts smudged a whole lot when it comes to huge Hollywood flicks, so I won't hold that against the film. That being said, this is only a teaser. Does it look cool? Yeah. But that's as far as I can go. All of Emmerich's films "look" cool, but I've always found the stories are told on a third grade level. Hopefully this one will carry a bit more substance, instead of two hours worth of half-naked men chasing mammoths around with spears. I have no problem checking my brain at the door for certain things, but I'm getting tired of people using that excuse for every other film that gets released. But perhaps I'm in the minority on that one. Who knows. 10,000 B.C. arrives in theaters on March 7, 2008.

Here's an idea that seem a bit late: a disaster movie spoof. Not only would it have been more fitting nearly a decade ago, when Armageddon and Deep Impact faced off at the box office, and when we'd already seen Independence Day, Twister, Titanic and the dueling volcano movies, but we hardly need a parody of these movies after seeing unintentional spoofs like The Core, The Day After Tomorrow and Poseidon. Still, the cheaply made cheap laughs of the modern spoof trend need something to make fun of now that scary movies, date movies and epic movies have been taken care of. So, thanks to Screen Gems, we are about to get Armageddagain: The Day Before Tomorrow from director Robert Moniot, who co-wrote the movie with voice-actor Travis Oates.

Moniot apparently already has experience spoofing Armageddon -- or at least its title -- having previously directed a short film called Pearl Harbor II: Pearlmageddon. That 11 minute short seems to have been popular enough (based on the IMDb user ratings), but then again shorts and skits are much more tolerable when it comes to silly spoofs. The current model of spoof features is unfortunately like a bunch of these shorts linked together by some forced, incoherent plot. Interestingly, Armageddagain is being produced by actor Noah Emmerich, though as far as I know, he isn't related to Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. In addition to spoofing the long-passed disaster movies of the 1990s, the movie will reportedly feature parodies of upcoming pics like Transformers and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Today is my best friend's birthday. I've always been jealous of him because July 3rd is, hands down, the coolest birthday ever. First off, when you're young there's no school that day, the day after or the day after that. Heck, it's summer -- you don't have school for two months. When you're older, working some dead end job and hating your life, July 3rd is superb because of the federal (no work for me!) holiday that follows on the fourth.

Not only that, but early July is always such a fun time here in the United States. Time to go to the beach, throw a backyard barbecue and smuggle in illegal fireworks from Pennsylvania because I can't buy them anywhere near me. Ya know, it's time to be an American --  time to throw on some SPF 75, wave a flag and complain about what President Bush isn't doing. For a movie buff, it's time to escape the heat and sit down with one of your favorite patriotic films.

Depending on the kind of mood you're in, there's plenty of films to choose from -- most of which involve us Americans kicking someone's ass. Can't make up your mind? Well, here's a few flicks to help steer you toward a decision:

• Americans kicking Alien ass: Independence Day
• Americans kicking German ass: Saving Private Ryan, Battle of the Bulge
• Americans kicking Japanese ass: Pearl Harbor, In Harm's Way, Sands of Iwo Jima
• Americans kicking Vietnamese ass: Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July
• Americans kicking English ass: The Patriot
• Americans kicking American ass:  Glory

So, I ask you: What's your favorite patriotic (go America!) film?