Renegade Reverse Engineering - John Woo Style 397
MankyD writes "Just saw the trailer to a new John Woo film over at apple.com called PayCheck. Written by Phillip K Dick of Blade Runner and Minority Report, its a story about a top notch reverse engineer (Ben Affleck) who, after a quick memory wipe, finds trying to piece together the mystery of his past. It's also got Uma Thurman as the female lead. Unfortunately the website isn't up and running yet, and the premise of the movie seems a little far fetched, but this still ought to be a fun one."
Looks like a good one (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, there is the arguement that films such as this one offer an escape from reality so that the viewer can relax and forget all the day to day shit that they have to deal with. But I lost all faith in hollywood when I saw keanu reaves restart some chick's heart in the matrix reloaded, I couldn't help from bursting out in laughter in the middle of the theater.
Re:Looks like a good one (Score:0, Insightful)
What the fuck ?!? You had faith in Hollywood to do what... portray reality ?
Dude, they're fucking movies. There are all types of movies. You want reality based movies and you go see The Matrix ?
You don't even know what the hell you're complaining about. Just another typical, whining loser with no purpose.
Re:mmm. . . Astroturfalicous! (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I agree that this is sort of tenuous as far as /. news goes, my guess is that if the story really was submitted by an undercover marketer, they would have at least waited for the website to be online. At least, I'd wait until then.
Re:Chasing Amy was top of his game? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, the Big Hit isn't a Woo movie. He's one of the 10 or so producers, not exactly what I'd call involved in the (pseudo) artistic process.
John Woo didn't do anything good since he made it to Hollywood. I thought Broken Arrow was nice when I was 12, Face|Off had some cool gunfights, and MI2 had a few nice action scene, but overall they were all terrible.
Not that anything John Woo made back in HK was all that great, but it was still much better than the tripe he's spweing these days. Actually, I can't think of a single Chinese actor who has been doing better in the US than in HK. Although, if Jet Li stopped making movies with lame rappers he'd be faring quite good - The One was great fun
Anyway, all this to say that John Woo's name isn't as much a turn-off as much as, say, Michael Bay. Ben Affleck, however, is even worse than Keanu Reeves. How can a guy who has been in *Daredevil*, *Reindeer Games* and *Gigli* be allowed to keep making movies. He's like a failure magnet.
Here's how to recognize a good Affleck movie: Matt Damon's in it. From there it's only a small step to give all the credit to Mr Damon.
Re:Hollywood Hype - False. (Score:2, Insightful)
Then again, who would want to sit there for two hours watching someone reverse engineer things...
Seeing the trailer though, it looks like a stock action escape movie, with reverse engineering as the flavor-of-the-month.
Between that and The-Rocky-of-InsertThemeHere, Hollywood never seems to run out of recycling ideas.
What are some of the best sci-fi flicks you've seen?
Re:Hollywood Hype - False. (Score:1, Insightful)
Puking is in order.
Re:Looks like a good one (Score:3, Insightful)
How did you feel in "The Matrix" when the chick restarted his heart?
That's not pedantic... (Score:3, Insightful)
I carefully avoid seeing any Steven Spielberg movies, but I'm not persuaded that Ridley Scott is anything brilliant either. Most of the good dialog in Blade Runner was improvised by the actors, who found Scott's klunky script unperformable.
God, where is Billy Wilder, now that we really need him?
Re:Looks like a good one (Score:1, Insightful)
??? You are one dumb mother*
Let's see, what's more believable,
artificial intelligence,
super fun fun virtual world called the matrix,
doing anything in super fun fun virtual world?
Hmm, oh no, kianu made everybody fart, runaway
Re:IMDB Movie Listing, ISFDB story listing (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd love to see someone turn the VALIS trilogy into a movie and actually make it work and stay true to the book. The only names I can think of are combinations of people such as the Warchoski bros crossed with David Lynch.
Oh for the science fiction Alfred Hitchcock... (Score:3, Insightful)
Predictably, what is most absent from both Dick adaptations is the more philosophical edge. In Minority Report in particular the whole issue of the implications of alternate possible futures devolves to a mere plot device.
And sigh, yes, where IS a director consistently interested in the speculative genre? Spielberg seems to have some designs on that mantle, which is a shame since he's such a ham-handed, cliche driven director. Where's our sci-fi Alfred Hitchcock?
"Since"? (Score:3, Insightful)
--grendel drago
Re:Just to be pedantic (Score:3, Insightful)
Between Dick and Vonnegut we've got 20 or so themes that could be turned into spectacular films, and money making ones at that. Hell, even Total Recall (Dick short story) in its' better moments touched on some themes that raised it above the levels of crap scifi like "The Sixth Day".
What's really sad is that even Gibson's Johnny M. could have made an incredible movie if they had just played it straight. A friend (actually makes a living as a writer) once mapped out the short story in script form and showed that you could have filmed it without alteration and come up with an under two hour Hollywood film. You had novel chases, character development, the introduction of a world and characters that would support many sequels, some great fight scenes, and an ultra-stylish cyberpunk environment, and those fuckers still screwed it up.
Bah, why do I care.