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7 Other Directors Who Should Adapt ‘The Great Gatsby’

By Alison Herman on

When fans of The Great Gatsby found out that divisive filmmaker Baz Luhrmann would direct this spring’s highly anticipated adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary novel, reactions were mixed. Some film lovers embrace Luhrmann’s sheer excess; it worked well enough for Romeo and Juliet, so why worry about flubs like Australia? Others, however, had different aspirations for the movie that might just get leading man Leo DiCaprio his ever-evasive Oscar. So, what about the Gatsby adaptations that could have been? Read on for a short list of other directors who might have succeeded at filming one of the most acclaimed American novels of all time, from Scorsese to Spielberg. … Read More

Film

30 Behind-the-Scenes Monster Movie Photos That Will Blow Your Mind

By Jason Bailey on

Because it came out in the ‘90s and now people old enough to remember it are running websites, a lot of Internet ink has been spilled recently over the 20th anniversary of The Sandlot, writer/director David Mikey Evans’s 1993 remembrance of baseball, boyhood friends, and the summer of ’62. But the most interesting discovery of all of this nostalgia bathing was the unveiling of three photos (by Mr. Evans himself) of the elaborate puppets they used to create “The Beast,” the giant English mastiff that terrifies that neighborhood kids. Looking at those images (and you can check them out after the jump), we get a little nostalgic ourselves — for a time when computers weren’t the solution for scaring an audience, leaving artists and puppeteers to create the horrifying creatures of moviedom. Let’s take a look at how it used to be done. … Read More

Film

‘Jurassic Park’: How a 2D Movie Becomes a 3D Movie

By Jason Bailey on

Today, moviegoers across the country will have the opportunity to see a 20-year-old movie on the big screen — and with an extra dimension to boot. Jurassic Park 3D is the latest case of a two-dimensional movie getting the three-dimensional (or “stereo”) treatment, following in the footsteps of several Disney titles and last year’s 3D re-release of Titanic. Since this is a new process, one that’s not yet been painstakingly demystified by DVD extras and behind-the-scenes reports, it seems, frankly, to be some sort of witchcraft; how do they take a movie that was finished two decades ago and transform it into a 3D experience? Luckily, we were able to get William Sherak to break it down for us. … Read More

Film

This Is a Thing: Turkish ‘E.T.’

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to “This Is a Thing,” a new monthly feature where your humble film editor will examine a piece of popular culture — a film, an album, a television special, whatever — that I wouldn’t believe existed had I not laid my own eyes upon it.

I’d heard about the Turkish films for a while. They’ve been a longtime object of fascination for bad movie connoisseurs; it seems that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, filmmakers in Turkey had something of a cottage industry in unauthorized remakes of American blockbusters, in which plots were appropriated, characters were bastardized, and music, shots, and even entire sequences of the original works were lifted wholesale (often in jarring contrast to their terrible homemade special effects). In other words, the Turks were “swedeing” movies long before Be Kind, Rewind. There was the Turkish Superman, Turkish Star Wars, Turkish Wizard of Oz, Turkish Star Trek, and so on. They were spoken of in hushed tones by lovers of terrible cinema, who swapped third-generation VHS dubs, always (and this seems a point of pride among those who view them) without subtitles. They sounded too terrible to be true, so when I spotted a copy of Badi — helpfully labeled “The Turkish E.T.” — on the shelves of my beloved World of Video, I took a deep breath and walked it up to the counter. … Read More

Film

Awesome Vine Trailers for Modern Classic Movies

By Jason Bailey on

As you may or may not have noticed, your Flavorwire didn’t bother covering this week’s maddening, seemingly frame-by-frame unveiling of the trailer for The Wolverine, a movie we’re not all that worked up over to begin with (seriously, didn’t we already do that once?). It was bad enough when we started getting 30-second teasers for movie trailers — an item that is, when you break it down, a commercial for a commercial. But Wolverine director James Mangold went a step further, first putting out a six-second Vine “tweaser” (yep, that’s what he called it), then the teaser, then the trailer, meaning that the Vine was a commercial for a commercial for a commercial and good God make it all stop please. But one good thing did come out of it: trailer editing house Tokyo got the nutty idea of recutting the trailers for eight modern classics into six-second form and posting them on Vine. The results are oddly captivating; check them out after the jump. … Read More

Film

10 Authors Who Loved the Film Adaptations of Their Books

By Jason Bailey on

Last week, we had a good laugh at the recently uncovered notes from the producers of Blade Runner, who seemed united in their hatred for the “deadly dull” sci-fi noir that would prove one of the most influential movies of the ‘80s. But it’s important to remember that some of those casually involved in the production actually liked it quite a bit — particularly Philip K. Dick, whose book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis of Ridley Scott’s film. And while there’s a long (and enjoyable) history of authors loathing what Hollywood does to their books, there are a few examples of writers who are utterly delighted with their page-to-film adaptations. We’ve collected them for you after the jump. … Read More

Film

Hilarious Notes on Modern Classics From Clueless Studio Executives

By Jason Bailey on

The image of non-creative types mucking about with (and screwing up) movies and television shows is nothing new — we’ve seen it in everything from Barton Fink to The Player to The Larry Sanders Show — but we got a rare opportunity to observe a real-life example of it recently, when a memorandum of notes from the suits at Tandem Productions to the makers of Blade Runner started popping up online. Those hilarious criticisms and suggestions got us wondering about other classic movies that came close to ruin thanks to studio interference. We’ll take a look at Blade Runner and several other examples after the jump. … Read More

Film

Behind-the-Scenes Photos of Oscar-Winning Directors at Work

By Tom Hawking on

The Oscars are just around the corner, and we’re very much looking forward to sitting down this Sunday night and watching them unfold. (Much more excited than we were about the Grammys, anyway.) The point of interest, as ever, will be who walks away the Best Director award — even with the golden age of the auteur long behind us, the director’s chair continues to hold a certain mystique, as do the people who occupy it. It’s intriguing to watch directors at work, to see how differently they translate their ideas into reality, and in this vein, we’ve collected some fascinating behind-the-scenes photos of the most distinguished directors to receive the Best Director award over the years. And Mel Gibson. … Read More

Film

Film’s Most Epic Quests

By Alison Nastasi on

Acclaimed director Keisuke Kinoshita adapted a Shichirō Fukazawa novel in 1958, setting his haunting film in rural, 19th-century Japan. Ballad of Narayama — which arrives on Blu-ray from Criterion today — explores an ancient folkloric tradition in which elderly and infirmed relatives are carried to a mountain and left to die. Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka) approaches her 70th year and faces her final days on Mount Narayama, but she embarks on a quest to secure her family’s happiness before her journey to the mountain. It’s an allegorical, stylish Japanese classic that inspires thoughts of other epic film quests — stories that defined obsession, sacrifice, adventure, greed, self-discovery, and a search for the truth. Add to our list, below. … Read More

Film

The 2012 Oscar Nominees: Your Shocks, Surprises, and Snubs

By Jason Bailey on

If there’s one thing you hear a lot in the run-up to the Academy Award nominations, it’s that they’re predictable — that the industry’s “Oscar bait” films are clearly labeled and marketed as such. So maybe it’s just because there was such an embarrassment of cinematic riches in 2012 that there were so many genuine surprises and shocking snubs when Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announced the Academy Award nominees yesterday… Read More