More on RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fist
Last week Hunter found a small mention of martial arts film called The Man with the Iron Fist, which RZA is supposedly developing with Eli Roth. CHUD emailed the Hostel director and was able to get the full scoop:
“He has been studying directing with Tarantino for years, and he’s really ready to get behind the camera,” Roth said adding that RZA is “ready to add his own unique style and vision to the world of film.”
Roth calls RZA’s script amazing, saying that RZA’s dream project will “have everything martial arts fans could want”, promising R-rated action: “yes, there will be blood… This ain’t no PG-13.” And now that he brings it up, what would be the point of a PG-13 martial arts movie anyway?
Eli Roth Not Ditching Horror
Last week it was reported that Eli Roth was going to make a PG-13 mass-destruction movie. All the AP-wires ran the story with the headline announcing that Eli was leaving horror behind. Apparently that isn’t exactly true after all. Roth is making a PG-13 film, but has no plans of ditching the horror genre.
“As soon as I saw that headline I just thought ‘I should’ve kept my mouth shut.’ That one headline went all around the internet. A headline that nasty is not only untrue, it makes it seem like I’m like spitting in the face of everyone who’s ever supported me,” Roth wrote on his blog. “While the reporting was fair and I like the journalist, I can just see some editor coming up with a spin about how I ‘ditched horror,’ just to get people to read the story.”
And regarding Roth’s future projects, the Hostel director sets the record strait:
“The mistake that studios make is that films get watered down or castrated to fit a certain rating, and that rating doesn’t necessarily best serve the story. “Hostel” would not have worked as a PG-13 movie, because a very important ingredient to the story is the violence. A film like “Cloverfield”, in my mind, was the perfect PG-13 movie, because it was really scary, it had a good amount of violence, but just the shot of the girl’s chest exploding in the tent was all you really needed. It wasn’t about the gore, it was about the monster. We got in a conversation about “Transformers,” which I loved. Those are two films that had mass destruction and chaos and were very fun PG-13 films. “Iron Man” is the latest example of a great PG-13 film.”
“I’m only going to make ideas that excite me. Period. Some of those ideas are R rated, some of them are G rated, and some of them are in between. Some ideas are horror, some are comedy, some are sci-fi, some are animated. Some ideas are feature films, some are shorts, some are not even film ideas. I’ve never locked myself into making one thing except the ideas that excite me. I’m in a very fortunate position that I have the luxury of choosing what project I do next, and I’m only going to do an idea that I’m so fired up about it won’t let me sleep at night.”
And guess what folks… Roth can’t sleep at all lately….
“I’ve had crazy insomnia working on this new project. Major announcement coming soon. Stay tuned.”
Sundance Movie Review: Funny Games
Funny Games is not a movie I would wish upon anyone I care about. People complain about movies like Hostel and SAW, referring to them as Torture Porn, well then Funny Games is Psychological Torture Porn. And by that I mean boring, and stupid. Why anyone would remake this film I will never know. Director Michael Haneke remakes his film from 10 years prior, and from what I understand the new film is almost shot for shot the same. What’s the point? The story involves two psychotic young men who take a family hostage in their vacation home.
Funny Games would work better on the stage, than on the screen. The whole film is shot in wide master shots which sometimes last for over 5-minutes without a single cut. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not standing up for the MTV-style editing which has taken over today’s films. I just think that cinema should be cinematic. And there is nothing cinematic about Funny Games. Most of the violence happens off screen.
The two psychotic young men break through the fourth wall and talk to the audience. At one point, one of the hoodlums grabs a remote control and rewinds the movie to negate what had just happened. There are so many things wrong with this movie. Maybe I just don’t get it. Another critic tried to explain to me that Funny Games is a response to films like Hostel. That the two young mad men are taunting you, because you came to see blood, and they’re going to give it to you, but not how you expected. Im sure I just don’t get it. That has to be the explanation, right?
The story is lined with plot holes (beware of spoilers). For instance, they finally get the cell phone working and it conveniently runs out of batteries (someone should send an email to John August to explain why this is bad screenwriting). So the married couple are staying at this vacation house for at least a week, yet all she brought along was a car charger? Does she put the phone in the car at night to charge the phone? The husband gets through to 911 for a quick few seconds before being cut off, yet the police don’t show up at the house? And why the hell didn’t they try to escape in the boat? They have a freaking boat in the backyard, but the wife decides to run into the street where the f’n killers are likely to find her.
Heroes: Origins earns some Geek-Cred: Hires Eli Roth & Michael Dougherty
It looks like Heroes is trying to collect some interesting writer/directors for the new spin-off series Heroes: Origins. Kevin Smith has already signed on to write/direct an episode. News circulated through the tabloid papers this past week that Quentin Tarantino was asked to pen and direct an episode (but he turned it down because he had never watched the series).
Now news comes out that Superman Returns co-writer Michael Dougherty and Hostel writer/director Eli Roth have both been tapped to write an episode of Heroes: Origins. Roth will also direct. It will be interesting to see what other writers/directors with geek-cred they can nail down for an episode.