Here’s the first picture released of Johnny Depp as kind of ‘ghost-warrior’ Tonto and a slightly city-fied Armie Hammer as the Masked Man in THE LONE RANGER.
Radio Ranger actor Brace Beemer often wore a black & white outfit in his public appearances as the character, so it’s not entirely without precedence.
Directed by Gore Verbinski (PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN) THE LONE RANGER is due out in 2013 by Jerry Bruckheimer and Walt Disney Films.
Continuing in the western theme, DOCTOR WHO will go West in the third episode of the new season of the revived series, Written by Toby Whithouse (BEING HUMAN).
Actually, it’s south, as Spain is subbing for the American West in the BBC production.
Here’s a pic of Matt Smith donning a Stetson once again for the show, in which Ben Browder (FARSCAPE, STARGATE SG-1) will guest star. Saul Metzstein is directing.
Photo via Whovians.net
Tag: Jerry Bruckheimer
The Sorcerer's Apprentice flunks out
What did we ever do to producer Jerry Bruckheimer that he should want to pay us back by taking the beloved “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” episode from FANTASIA (1940) and turn it into a soulless summer snooze-fest that virtually defines everything wrong with would-be blockbusters? The new live-action version of THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE has a trailer just barely good enough to make you hope there might be some fun to be had with the concept of a geeky college kid learning magic from a wizard, but almost every good moment has been squeezed into the coming attractions (and in fact some don’t even make it into the actual film). Viewers tricked into attending this magic show will marvel only at seeing their money go up the filmmakers’ sleeves.
After a prologue showing Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) capturing and containing the evil Morgana (Alice Krige), the story has physics student Davd (Jay Baruchel) identified by Balthazar as the “Merlinian,” a word so silly you wonder if the screenwriters are thumbing their nose at the audience. The Merlinian, it seems, is the only one with the power to destroy Morgana, which is really important because Balthazar’s old rival Horvath (Alfred Molina) is eager to release her so that she can resurrect a bunch of dead wizards and basically bring about the apocalypse, just because that’s the kind of thing villains of this type do. Dave thinks the magic thing is pretty cool, but he’s a bit of a slacker when it comes to practice, because he would rather spend time with Becky (Teresa Palmer), an old friend from grade school, with whom he has recently reconnected. Yeah, the world may be ending, but that’s no reason to interrupt your social life!
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is remarkable consistent in its enervated presentation. There is no attempt to make us truly fear the coming confrontation with evil, nor is there much in the way of self-satire. Instead, the film settles for a vague kind of jokiness that seems distantly related to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (Dave’s just an ordinary kid, who happens to be fated to face the forces of evil). The “Karate Kid” relationship between Dave and Balthazar never really materializes; the training scenes just sit there like a hat with no rabbit, and the attempt at emotional bonding is tossed off with such indifference that you suspect the filmmakers themselves must believe in magic – i.e., that some miracle would turn all of this dross into gold.
Baruchel gives more or less the same performance he delivered vocally in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, which is at least enough to generate a few laughs – just about the only bright spots in the film. Cage coasts through trying to look cool; he barely even tries to register the script’s shifts from “humor” to “sentiment.” It’s as if he is belatedly trying to save his acting credibility by not wasting his talent on unworthy material, but he hasn’t quite taken the big step toward adopting a camp attitude to express his contempt for the lousy movie he in which he is appearing.
Molina fares slightly better as the villain, but his best moments are in the previews – basically a handful of good lines that never add up to a compelling character. Toby Kebbell is mildly amusing as his young assistant – who fritters his genuine magical abilities away on a career as a flashy professional magician – but the character is wasted. The same can be said for Alice Krige (the Borg Queen from STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT) and for Monica Bellucci (BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, the MATRIX sequels), the latter of whom shows up as Balthazar’s love interest almost as if she were an afterthought in the screenwriters’ minds.
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is virtually pockmarked with special effects, but except for a Chinese-type dragon and a metallic flying eagle, none of them are memorable; they simply shoot across the screen at regular intervals to interrupt the narrative tedium with a slightly different sort of tedium. With all the available CGI technology, it’s amazing that no one thought to orchestra a really great scene around it, let alone figure out how to build the effects toward a crescendo.
At times the action seems to have been generated at random to fill up the running time and give the characters something to do. You will lose count of the number of skirmishes between Balthazar and Horvath, with Dave in between, dodging plasma balls and other magical firepower. A sequence based on episode from FANTASIA is dropped in for not much more reason that to justify the use of the title THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE. And in a transparently desperate effort to keep Becky involved in the climax, Dave has her climb an antenna tower to disrupt a magical stream of energy that is being relayed around the world – a scene knocked in a handful of shots that generate no suspense but lots of incredulity.
Rather like the recent THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is an exercise in not trying very hard – sort of a cinematic version of FIELD OF DREAMS (“Just shoot it, and the audience will come”). This approach can sell tickets to pre-sold viewers eager to visit their favorite characters on screen, but it’s hard to imagine anyone so besotted that they would fall for this second-rate magical routine. In the end, this sorcerer’s biggest trick will be making the audience disappear.
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (2010). Directed by Jon Turtletaub. Screenplay by Matt Lopez and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard; screen story by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal & Matt Lopze, suggested by the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” episode of FANTASIA. Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Tersa Palmer, Toby Kebbell, Omar Benson Miller, Monica Bellucci, Alice Krige, Jake Cherry, James A. Stephens.
Prince of Persia: Cinefantastique Podcast 1:16
In the sixteenth episode of Cinefantastique’s weekly Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Podcast, Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski sift through the Sands of Time as they search PRINCE OF PERSIA for hidden political metaphors and/or weapons of mass destruction. The big screen film version of the popular video game stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, and Gemma Arterton – but, strangely enough, no Persians. Also in this episode: a fond farewell to Dennis Hopper; a preview of the WOLF MAN unrated director’s cut DVD; and the usual news and previews.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Viewed from the Olympian heights of Cinefantastique – the Online Magazine with a Sense of Wonder, which maintains a reputation for demanding dilettantism, even outright pretension, in its assessment horror, fantasy, and science fiction films – PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME seems virtually made to be derided. Its package of elements is less a brightly wrapped present than a glowing new security gadget, flashing multiple warning lights: It’s another big-budget, CGI-heavy action-fantasy flick, based on a video game no less. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, who hardly seems cut out for action-hero theatrics. It’s directed by Mike Newell, who has two great movies to his credit (ENCHANTED APRIL and FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL) but has shown little sense of wonder when working on fantasy material (his work on HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE was anonymous at best). And it’s produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who gave us the increasingly insane PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels and the unwatchable G-FORCE. With all this stacked against it, one may understandably wonder: What could possible go right? The answer, surprisingly, is: More than you would expect.
Make no mistake: almost everything that you would expect to be wrong with PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME is, in fact, wrong. It takes that Hollywood generic approach to costume epics, in which British accents (including one from Gyllenhaal) are used to suggest a past time and place, regardless of the actual setting. Despite its Middle Eastern setting, the cast is filled with fair-skinned American and English actors, who are obviously not Persian. The running time is overloaded with action scenes thrown in for their own sake. The screenplay features a love-hate relationship between the male and female leads that grows wearisome in its effort to recreate the chemistry of Princess Leia and Han Solo. And the dialogue is bogged down with tedious exposition.
And yet somehow it works more often than not. How?
Well, it’s all presented as an enjoyable lark, a light-hearted popcorn flick that makes few demands on the audience and expects few in return. The goofiness of the things you might hold against the film actually becomes part of the fun, like little signposts indicating not to take the proceedings seriously. As often as not, PRINCE OF PERSIA‘s mistakes are clouds with silver linings. [WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW]
For example, when we see the lone prominent black character, the knife-throwing Seso (Steve Toussaint) give up his life so that his master and the other white heroes can succeed in their mission, it’s a tired, racist cliche as old as silent cinema – you may flinch when you realize the film is going to roast this old chestnut again, but when it’s over, you have to give the sequence an exemption, because in its own cornball, melodramatic way, it’s a memorably good moment that gives a supporting character a chance to steal the show, and you’re sorry to see him go.
Likewise, the script’s uncertainty about what to do with Princess Tamina (CLASH OF THE TITAN’s Gemma Arterton) during the action set pieces is actually a stroke of good fortune. She is not allowed to sit on the sidelines like a damsel in distress, but she doesn’t really do anything, either. Sure, she is always reaching for a sword, but we see little evidence that she can actually handle one. In this day and age, the reluctance to morph her from pampered princess into the obligatory warrior-heroine feels almost as if it’s preserving the character’s integrity. (And she does finally get a good moment when she sneaks up behind a villain with a pet snake, grabbing the serpent from behind and plunging its fangs into its master’s face! Way to go, girl!)
POLITICAL SUBVERSION?
PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME doesn’t use its popcorn pedigree as an excuse to be deliberately arch or ironic, nor is it completely empty-headed. It’s a confection but not a completely flimsy one; its attempts to add a little substance to the souffle – which should have been disastrous – actually ground the film in – if not a sense of believability, then at least a sense that we should invest enough to care about what’s happening for a couple hours instead of just hurling candy wrappers at the screen and waiting for the next fight scene.
On top of that there is a little more – just enough – to engage our interest on something more than a video game level. In fact, PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME even dares to question the underlying assumptions of the video game aesthetic, in which action is everything, suggesting that being heroic in battle is not always enough.This last element is not necessarily the most insightful stance ever taken in a feature film, but hey, you take what you can get, especially when it arrives in the form of a thinly veiled attack on Bush’s Iraq adventure.
After a brief prologue showing how Dastan, a young orphan, was adopted into the royal family, we flash-forward a couple decades to see the adult Dastan (Gyllenhaal), aiding his brothers in a battle against the holy city of Alumet – against the previously expressed order of their father, who is back home, tending the Persian kingdom. The motivation for this attack is the discovery that Alumet is supplying arms to Persia’s enemies. Unbeknownst to his older brothers, Dastan mounts a separate raid that breaches the walls of the heavily fortified city, leading to victory.
So far, so dull – or so it seems. PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME has us deep in familiar territory: we’re supposed to think the warfare is fun because our guys win, and we’re supposed to think Dastan is cool because he came up from the streets and he does things his own way – even though he doesn’t follow the rules, we expect he will be rewarded for his successful results. The first surprise comes when his adoptive father King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) praises Dastan for being a good soldier but then points out that a truly great soldier would have prevented the unnecessary battle in the first place, even if it meant defying his superior.
What? You mean there’s more to war than winning? Maybe even there are times when we should rely on discretion rather than force? What kind of commie, defeatist talk is this, anyway?
Well, it turns out that the accusations against Alumet were based on faulty intelligence; even worse, the intelligence was not merely faulty but deliberately fabricated in order to fool otherwise well-meaning people into opting for a war that was not necessary. In a delicious dig that couldn’t be more obvious if PRINCE OF PERSIA had a flashing sign pointing at it, the post-battle focus becomes an off-screen search for the alleged weapons (as in, “Weapons of Mass Destruction”) that were the casus belli for the battle. (That this plot element has not ignited a firestorm of controversy from right-wing pundits is little short of miraculous, but hey, that’s why popular entertainment is a great medium for indoctrinating the masses – right, comrade?)
DARING ESCAPES AND ANTI-TAX RHETORIC
In any case, now that the filmmakers have had their little joke at the expense of the previous White House administration, it’s on with the story, which is frankly a bit weighted down with its set-up. After being framed for murder, Prince Dastan escapes, reluctantly taking Alumet’s Princess Tamina with him as he seeks to clear his name. Of course she hates him because he helped sack her city, but they need each other – at least until they don’t. This provides opportunities for the screenplay to indulge in the sort of monotonous back-stabbing twists that muddled the Bruckheimer’s PIRATES sequels. Yawn.
The Dastan-Tamina relationship is hardly helped by PRINCE OF PERSIA‘s screenplay, which seems unsure whether to portray her as she sees herself (noble and pure) or as Dastan initially sees her (spoiled and pampered). Consequently, she emerges as not much of anything in particular. But this hardly matters, as we are safely in the land of make believe, where princess and princesses are familiar archetypes. We know we are supposed to like them, and we know they will end up liking each other, even if they bicker along the way. All that’s required is that the actors look good going through their paces and let us in on the fun they they are having while playing dress-up. Arterton struggles to imbue the character with some gravitas, and she at least manages to look like someone who should be taken seriously – not just a pretty face -even if the script offers little to support this appearance. Arterton and Gyllenhaal may not light up the screen together, but they seem to be having fun, without winking at the audience of camping it up.
Fortunately, Alfred Molina shows up as a tax-hating and rather shady entrepreneur, who sounds like a mouth-piece for anti-government Tea Bagger sentiments (gotta give credit to the film for working both sides of the aisle). Although Molina at first seems too good to be wasting his time in this sort of nonsense, he’s actually good, and the film sells his character to us in such a way that even when betrays Dastan, we know it’s all going to work out in the end – we just like him too much for him to remain a villain.
This is a key part of what makes PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME succeed in spite of everything stacked against it: it gets us to like its characters, even some who seem initially antagonistic. Instead of hating or dismissing them and tuning out, you want to see them do the right thing, and as predictable as the change-of-heart scenes may be, as much as your cynical inner self may recoil from these moments, they do indeed work.
Buoyed by this mid-film boost, the rest of PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME coasts along at a fairly painless clip, at least until the film gets around to explaining what the plot’s about. You see, Tamina is the keeper of a sacred dagger that can turn back time as long as the sand within its glass handle runs out (i.e., about a minute). Somebody wants to get their hands on that dagger and take it back to the source of the sands, in order to reset history years back, and…
Oh well, I intend to be kinder to you than the film is to is audience, which just about nods off during the exposition regarding the sands of time and how the dagger came to exist and what the catastrophic consequences will be if the villain is allowed to go through with his nefarious plan. No one really cares, yet at least one of the credited screenwriters seems to have felt the need to work overtime justifying his paycheck, sending viewers into Lotus-land. Apparently, no one realized that the dagger is just a plot device – a huge MacGuffin – and all we care about is that it gives the characters an excuse to dodge arrows, leap off buildings, and outwit the villain, whatever his ultimate goal may be.
Said villain turns out to be Nizam, played by Ben Kingsley. Revealing this is hardly a spoiler, since for mysterious reasons of their own, the studio gives this away in PRINCE OF PERSIA‘s theatrical trailer, undermining Kingsley’s achievement, which was convincing you of his sincerity until the moment when Dastan begins to suspect his duplicity, at which point some subtle little light goes off in Kingsley’s eyes, just enough to confirm your suspicion. It’s an amazing acting moment because it’s hard to see exactly what has changed in the man’s face, and yet it’s there, clear as the bright desert sun without anything obvious to explain why we haven’t seen it all along. It’s nice to see a fantasy film villain who avoids scenery chewing; Kingsley seems to be taking it all seriously, but not too seriously – he never risks overstepping into campy melodrama.
As for Gyllenhaal, his boyish charm is really his meal ticket here. Not much is demanded of him, but for someone who seemed the least likely heir to the Errol Flynn’s and Douglass Fairbanks’s, he acquits himself quite well; even if you go in dead set against the idea of him as an action hero, you have to laugh along with him and enjoy the ride. In a way, it’s a bit like watching your best friend in the high school play: you know he’s not Hamlet, but you want to see him do well, and you enjoy watching him anyway.
And ultimately, the thrill ride is what this film promised – a promise so often unfulfilled – or fulfilled only at the cost of story-telling and characterization – that one has come to regard it with innate suspicion. When a film offers nothing but fun entertainment, “fun” and “entertainment” become almost the last things expected.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Almost in spite of itself PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME earns audience goodwill, and that buys a lot of slack to get away with gambits that would otherwise fail miserably. The ending features what could have registered as ultra-lame contrivance, based around one of the worst science-fiction-fantasy cliches: turning back the clock to set things right. Yet unlike the ending of, say, SUPERMAN (1978), this sequence feels justified, partly because the entire plot is built around the time-twisting powers of the mystical dagger but mostly because the film has earned its right to hit the reset button. Consequently, instead of groaning in derision, you may be surprised to find yourself sighing in satisfied relief.
PRINCE OF PERSIA achieves its modest goal – supplying the derring-do that one expects from a glossy action-adventure – without succumbing to the pitfalls of the soulless Hollywood manufacturing process. What’s surprising is that, when the film makes the obligatory attempts at generating some genuine feeling, it actually works better than when it’s just running, jumping, and defying death at all turns. The themes are basic stuff about loyalty, bonds of brotherhood, and doing the right thing instead of mindlessly following orders; fortunately, the cast sells it with a pleasing semblance of sincerity.
This helps redeem the more unpleasant elements of PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, which occasionally s border on misogynistic. Our hero’s noble brother at one point order Dastan to kill Tamina if she refuses to join Persia and Alumet through marriage. Dastan himself threatens to break Tamina’s arm at one point; at another he sells her into slavery to get himself out of a bad situation. These mismanaged moments turn out to be attempts to present characters who do not live up to21st century standards of behavior; these people are not automatically chivalrous or merciful toward their defeated enemies, but throughout the film we see glimpses of them evolving; they’re not perfect, but they are trying to be better. And by the end, they succeed.
Making improvements requires an admission that there is room for improvement. Too often movie heroes are a bit smug in their own self-satisfaction and deep conviction in the rightness of their cause. For what could have been a dumb summer movie to come out in favor of self-reflection and self-improvement, instead of the mindless jingo-ism of war and victory – my country, right or wrong – deserves at least a small nod of respect.
PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME (2010). Directed by Mike Newell. Written by Boaz Yakin and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard, screen story by Jordan Mchner, based on his video game series. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred MOlina, Steve Toussaint, Toby Kebbell, Richard Coyle, Ronadl Pickup, Reece Ritchie, Gisli Orn Garoarsson.
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Armageddon Blu-ray review
New Blu-ray release of ARMAGEDDON recalls a time when a Michael Bay film was no cause for dread
Difficult as it might be to imagine, the prospect of a new Michael Bay film wasn’t always cause for dread. After a string of successful music videos, Bay hit box office pay-dirt with the buddy-cop action comedy BAD BOYS in 1995, immediately establishing a signature style of kinetic action visuals on a bed of questionably tasteful racial and sexual humor. While the stars were largely responsible for its success, the energy and strict adherence to formula was 100% Bay. He exhibited a far more refined touch in his next – and best film – THE ROCK, which displayed strong sense for casting and a better grip on action sequence pacing. The film was yet another smash, which guaranteed Bay even more control (and a coveted Producer credit) on his third film, ARMAGEDDON, a hugely expensive sci-fiextravaganza that pushed the limits of 1998-era digital effects.
After Manhattan Island is devastated – and the orbiting space shuttle Atlantis destroyed – by a particularly violent meteor shower, a group of NASA’s top scientists led by Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) discovers that the initial strike was just a preamble to the real threat, a giant meteor the size of Texas that’s due to reach Earth in 18 days. With the meteor too immense to be destroyed by missile, it’s decided that a powerful nuclear device buried near the core would be enough to break the rock up before it impacts. To accomplish the necessary drilling, NASA approaches Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his crew of hard-nosed oil rig drillers with the job of a lifetime. The enormity of the task forces Harry to re-hire A J Frost (Ben Affleck) after chasing him away at gunpoint from daughter Grace (Liv Tyler) in an attempt to save her from a blue-collar life. Stamper and his team are trained alongside the crews for the shuttles Independence and Freedom, led by Col. Sharp (William Fichtner), whose military training is put to the test by the less-than-disciplined drillers, particularly the mellower than mellow Oscar Choice and the uber wormy ‘Rockhound’ (Owen Wilson and Steve Buscemi, respectively, making for cinema’s most unlikely geologists). The shuttles finally launch, barely surviving a dock with a Russian space station to gather fuel, where they pick up cosmonaut Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare, reunited with Fargo costar Buscemi). After a dangerous slingshot maneuver around the moon severely reduces the team’s numbers, they must still attempt an unprecedented landing (on a surface without 2 tandem meters of flat space) and then drill through thousands of feet of hard iron for the detonation to be effective. When venting gas destroys the remote detonation system, it’s short straw time for Harry, A J and the remaining crew.
Michael Bay has been making it very difficult to remember that he used to know how to put together a satisfying summer blockbuster. What might have seemed bombastic – or just loud – a decade ago seems almost quaint in the wake of two Transformers films, and Bay’s over-reliance on Americana iconography hadn’t quite worn out its welcome yet (this oversight was taken care of with Pearl Harbor, where we lost count of the number of scenes of Middle-American families huddled around antique radios. Now, were not going to sit here and tell you that ARMAGEDDON is without problems – far from it. The film seriously drags once the crew lands on the offending comet, with Bay creating increasingly incredulous suspense sequences for no better reason than to wring an extra ‘beat’ out of an already exhausted story (and why NASA would think to install Gatling guns on its expedition vehicles would make for a deleted scene that we want to see!)
But you have to give credit where it’s due, and Bay (along with producer Jerry Bruckheimer) shows an almost wizardly casting sense; in addition to giving Billy Bob Thornton his first truly high-profile role in a Hollywood Studio film, ARMAGEDDON features genuine ‘catch a rising star’ turns from Owen Wilson, Jason Isaacs, Steve Buscemi and Michael Clarke Duncan. Almost more impressive is Bay’s knack for filling many small roles with the likes of Will Patton, William Fichtner and Peter Stormare – all welcome faces who take hackneyed characters and make them entertaining and watchable. Plus, look fast for Udo Kier (as a harried NASA psychologist) and Grace Zabriskie (a nagging wife who unwittingly names the meteor).
As for the leads, Willis and Affleck do just fine. Willis can do this sort of thing in his sleep, but to his credit, rarely does. He can take a potentially cringe-inducing scene like his final communication with daughter Liv Tyler, and find a genuinely affecting emotional beat to build on. Affleck, in an early role, doesn’t have the effortless gravitas that his costar does, but exhibits a nice, unaffected humor when given the chance (“I have no idea what I’m doing! See that button (hits button) I have no idea what that does!”) But it’s Thornton that you’ll be remembering, lending the same sort of authority as the executive director of NASA that Ed Harris did in Apollo 13 – and in far less forgiving surroundings!
Unfortunately, the success of ARMAGEDDON seemed to kill one part of Bay while simultaneously awakening another. His follow-up film, Pearl Harbor, made money, to the extent that it was shoved down the collective throat of audiences in the months prior to 9/11, but good luck finding anyone who actually liked it. Bay’s casting instincts were off, and the few genuinely affecting moments are lost in an orgy of self-indulgent visuals and carelessly slight characterizations. After a brief detour on THE ISLAND (a film that featured a slow narrative build-up in its first act), things have only gotten worse since then, with the two overblown TRANSFORMERS films.
Unfortunately, Disney has let ARMAGEDDON down with a so-so Blu-Ray release that didn’t have to be. Criterion had previously released a deluxe 2-disc DVD, and though that set sports a non-anamorphic transfer (not, unfortunately, odd for a 1999 DVD release), this long out-of-print edition is still desirable for its extras, commentary, and extended cut of the feature (amounting to about 3min) – none of which are in evidence on the new Blu-Ray. It’s possible that Criterion owns the rights to all of the above, but given Disney’s business practices, it’s a bit much to believe that they would hand over the rights to all that value-added material without at least tying a string to it.
In any case, what matters is the image quality, and it’s quite good. Like Tombstone, Disney’s other high profile Blu-Ray release streeting on Tuesday, April 27th, ARMAGEDDON appears to have been struck using the same master for the older DVD releases. That’s good news the film, which always looked good on home video – even VHS – and not so good for a heavily filtered and artifact-plagued Tombstone. Unlike Bay’s heavily digitized Transformers films, ARMAGEDDON feels amazingly film-like, enough so that we were amazed to see some textural film grain pop-up now and then (particularly in darker scenes).
Equally good is the DTS-HD master audio that retains aural nuance and readable dialog levels without sacrificing the show-off sequences, like the initial meteor shower over Manhattan (featuring several disturbingly realistic shots of the WTC towers being hit) or the beautifully handled dual shuttle launch sequence.
Back in 1998, nobody was going to argue ARMAGEDDON’s place in the annals of great cinema, but more than a decade on, when summer blockbusters like G I Joe thrash about in an unconvincing digital world that leaves even engaging actors like Dennis Quaid adrift without a paddle, who’d have thunk that we’d be holding up a Michael Bay picture as a paradigm of taste and restraint?
New Sorcerer's Apprentice Trailer
The folks over at Sci-Fi Wire have an exclusive new trailer for Jon Turteltaub’s (NATIONAL TREASURE, COOL RUNNINGS) fantasy blockbuster, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, which you can see for yourselves below:
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is is a live action re-imagining of the Mickey Mouse Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment in Disney’s FANTASIA , which in turn is based on the late 1890s symphonic poem by Paul Dukas and 1797 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ballad (thanks Wikipedia). This version of the story is being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and stars Nicolas Cage as the sorcerer and Jay Baruchel as his apprentice.
I’ve come to expect great special effects from a Bruckheimer film but the ones shown in this new trailer are particularly impressive. Not only are they technically lavish but Turteltaub also seems to be doing some really inventive things with the effects. We also get a good look at the central antagonist, Maxim Horvath, who is being played by Alfred Molina seemingly in full on SPIDER MAN 2 baddie mode. If there’s anything about this trailer that leaves me with any doubts about the film it’s Jay Baruchel who just seems to be plain annoying every time he opens his mouth.
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is due for release on the 16th of July.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We had trouble getting Sci-Fi Wire’s video to show up on the website’s front page, so the video up top is the International trailer, which is essential the same. Below you can find the embed for the version from Sci-Fi Wire.
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Prince of Persia: Hassansins featurette
A promotional featurette talking up the mysterious villains in PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME. Includes soundbites from star Jake Gylenhall, director Mike Newell, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
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