The Rime Of The Ancient Submariner [Review: 2010: Moby Dick]

I'm writing this review carefully: The Asylum's 2010: Moby Dick is not the only modern adaptation of a seafaring fantasy in the village, and I'll be sure to hold up Jack Black's Gulliver's Travels re-boot to the same standards.

Moby Dick is the kind of nonsense The Asylum loves to make over and over again: oversized ancient sea-creatures, submarines, beautiful brainy women and crazed soldiers. Let's take a look at each:

The sea-creature is Moby Dick, a survivor from prehistoric times of a whale species that ate other whales. MD is a giant, white, toothy CGI creation with intelligent black eyes and a sonar signature "like a hole in the sea."

The crazed soldier is Captain Ahab, a submarine commander who survived a brush with MD, losing a leg - and a large percentage of his sanity - in the process. The white whale becomes his bête noir and he spends the last twenty years of his naval career scheming to get his own back. Ahab is played by Shakespeare-class actor Barry Bostwick who puts everything into his performance and then some. It doesn't stop there, either, at least according to the Making Of featurette: it seems Mr. B wasn't too impressed by the Asylum's props department, so turned up on set with his own kick-ass mega-harpoon that he'd knocked up in his garage the night before. As the demented captain fighting to maintain the loyalty of his crew, Ahab also gets the best of the script - of course the best lines of all are those borrowed from Herman Melville.

The beautiful brainy woman is marine biologist and whalespeak expert Dr. Michelle Herman (see what they did there?) who is kidnapped by Ahab to help him in his quest. Michelle is played by Renee O'Connor, who some of you may recall as Xena's "close friend" Gabrielle - she's a pro and gives a great performance but is underused: her main job is to sit and look pretty wearing a pair of headphones, then suddenly notice things on the sonar that no-one else can see or hear. In this respect the lack of imagination on the part of the writers is inexcusable.

Ahab's submarine, the Peaquod, has been secretly upgraded in preparation for the day when Ahab goes rogue and hunts down the whale. Externally it's a CGI job and a poor one - rarely convincing. Internally it's better although not claustrophobic enough for a sub, and I think I recognized a few re-deployed sets from the Transmorphers underground city. It's a time of austerity so recycling is good, right? Lucky Dr. Michelle gets to sleep in the torpedo bay with nuclear missiles hanging from chains above her head.

2010: Moby Dick is not Shakespeare, however it is an enjoyable hour and a half. Despite the flaws, I would recommend it on the strength of Bostwick's performance and the attempt to stay in touch with, or at least make use of, the original story. In particular the arch-nemesis relationship between Ahab and MD is very well staged, and I think this gives it a bit of an edge over the many other Asylum creature features. I guess we should look forward to The Asylum's re-boot of The Ancient Mariner, featuring a 200-foot prehistoric man-eating Mega Albatross and Tiffany as the crypto-ornithologist who holds the key to defeating it.

Read Me, Seymour!

Two short films today: firstly, The Wonderful Present, placed 3rd this year in Sci-Fi London's 48hour film challenge. I saw this film at the screening event, it's got great atmosphere and effects, does a lot with minimal dialogue, and seems to be following the DV Rebel's Guide to the letter - right down to the vignetting. Congratulations also to Shoot The Runner, makers of this year's winner Abducted, and More Reel Than Real, who made the other runner-up The 10th Planet. You can see the other films here.



Today's second film is The Slush Pile, a comedy by Keith Kowalczyck and Martin Ott. This is not a 48 hour challenge entry. It's based on a true story, and another screenwriter friend also confirmed that it is very true to life. Martin Ott writes:

An friend of mine in the entertainment industry worked at a top agency where he dumped all of his "reader" scripts in a "Slush Pile" so that he could network his way out of the mail room (which he did).

So part of it is true enough and part of it is "tongue-in-cheek" - obviously a Slush Pile monster hasn't really eaten Hollywood (yet!). However, a town filled with so much nepotism and "connections" for a script to get read deserves this type of "parody."



[edited 10.5.10]

The City Of Gold And Lead

This week sci-fi has literally been oozing out of the ground all over London. First of all the Tree of Souls sprouted in Hyde Park:
Rumours of the discovery of massive deposits of unobtainium beneath the Serpentine lake remain unconfirmed and I am assured that the excavation works all over London are pure coincidence.

Over in Piccadilly Sci-Fi London is in full swing. Accompanied by my two leading ladies I came to the screening of the 48 Hour Film Challenge entries, just as the All-Nighter survivors were leaving. I say "leaving", but what I really mean is "falling asleep all over the foyer." Brave souls, I will join you in your cryogenic suspension pods next year.

Our non-shortlisted film, Half A Million, received a few giggles and some applause - you're a polite lot, Sci-Fi London! More about this in my last post. It was shown alongside some really good entries made by some very nice people, so I'll round up the links and publish my favourites in another post.

Starcraft II was on display. This is news. Look!

The amazing Science Fiction cupcakes by Chocoloty (pictured) - which tasted as glam as they look. I'm guessing Chocoloty is a fan of Barbarella, Flash Gordon or old-series BSG rather than, say, new-series BSG.

Half A Million intro [remake]

We made a film for Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge 2010. The results were shockingly poor - looking back the decision to shoot everything on bluescreen & model all the locations in Blender within the 48 hours was a bit ambitious and should have rung a few alarm bells, and although the live shoot went smoothly post-production was completely rushed. The film will eventually be uploaded at Sci-Fi London & I'll link to it when it appears.

This is not that film.

Here I've completely re-made the first few shots using the original bluescreen footage - took a few nights but the clip you are now watching is closer to how the film appeared in my head.

With thanks to the wonderful cast and crew.

The Day After Tomorrow - update 2

This is proving to be quite a challenge to edit this year & I'm not 100% certain at this stage how complete the film is going to be when we hand it in. We had a last minute change of plan and the new plan involved a large amount of bluescreenery - a risk as you can end up with completely unusable material if you're not careful. So far it's just about holding up.

The Day After Tomorrow - update 1

Running slightly behind schedule but we did complete our 48 hour challenge shoot this evening, leaving me with a very ambitious editing & post production job. Still think I can do it but we'll see what happens over the next 36 hours.

The Day After Tomorrow

Sci-Fi London's 48 Hour Film Challenge starts in a couple of hours. I'll post updates on my progress. We're going to try something a little different this year...

History Of The World - Part I

Time has run out - like an aircraft carrier falling from the crest of a tidal wave, 2012 has been released upon us. Time for a quick history lesson from the movies:

In 1,000,000 B.C. cavewomen were fighting dinosaurs and wearing rabbit-skin lingerie. By 10,000 B.C. teeth were the new rabbit-skins and mammoths were the new dinosaurs, but otherwise very little had changed. In 1492 Chris Columbus discovered America and the Round Earthers enjoyed a certain amount of social acceptance, and in 1941 America was saved from a Japanese invasion by a bunch of idiots. In 1969 it turned out that War was officially a bad thing however by 1984 we had forgotten this and were all in love with Big Brother.

2001 was of course the Dawn of Mankind and this had something to do with malfunctioning computers and black obelisks. Despite, or possibly due to those idiots in 1941, Japan never actually lost World War II and Korea never gained independence - until 2009 when the Korean resistance begins. Luckily in 2010 those monolith-loving aliens are back to sort everything out for humanity, at least until the world ends in 2012 as a direct consequence of the Mayan Calendar-Makers Strike. But it all ends well - by 2046 the world has been rebuilt as a supercity with some really cool trains.