Archive for July, 2008

George Lucas talks to Times Online

It’s really, really hard to like George Lucas these days. First up, he ruined the best sci-fi franchise ever with a gore fest of CGI, bad acting, slapstick comedy and ridiculous storylines. Then he ruined the best action-adventure franchise with a (wait for it) gore fest of CGI, and ridiculous storylines. In the meanwhile he’s milking his creations to the brink of a drought with releases of cartoons, animated features, and a live-action tv-series. So, I didn’t really think it was possible to dislike the man any more, but then I read a recent interview with him, on Times Online:

“Indiana Jones only becomes complicated when you have another two people saying ‘I want it this way’ and ‘I want it that way’, whereas, when I first did Jones, I just said, ‘We’ll do it this way’ — and that was much easier. But now I have to accommodate everybody, because they are all big, successful guys, too, so it’s a little hard on a practical level.”

“Really, with the last one, Steven wasn’t that enthusiastic. I was trying to persuade him. But now Steve is more amenable to doing another one. Yet we still have the issues about the direction we’d like to take. I’m in the future; Steven’s in the past. He’s trying to drag it back to the way they were, I’m trying to push it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of tension. This recent one came out of that. It’s kind of a hybrid of our own two ideas, so we’ll see where we are able to take the next one.”

“I can’t say yet, but they’ll be personal. n fact, I’d sooner just make them and not even release them, just put them on the shelf, like ships in a bottle — ‘Oh, look, let me show you my collection.’ Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Films are a very expensive hobby. And you have to get people to want to go and see them.”

The amount of arrogance is just mind-boggling. And the fact that he isn’t making movies for the audience, but for himself, is fine, just don’t try to continue the legacy, of something good you made, more than 25 years ago, then.

Inglorious Bastards

Being a big Tarantino fan I was psyched when the man himself announced, that his next movie may be in cinemas, at the next Cannes Festival. The flick is a WW2-movie called Inglorious Bastards, and he’s been working on it for more than a decade. We all know Tarantino is heavily inspired by his own favorite movies, and a Tarantino movie mixed with classics like The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, and Where Eagles Dare sounds extremely interesting to me. Anyway, a couple of movie blogs got a hold of an excerpt from the script and now I’m even more hyped. I’ll quote a bit of it, this is Lt. Aldo Raine, who may be played by Brad Pitt:

But I got a word of warning to all would be warriors.  When you join my command, you take on debit.  A debit you owe me, personally.  Every man under my command, owes me, one hundred Nazi scalps.  And I want my scalps.  And all y’all will git me, one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred Nazi’s or you will die trying.

A bigger preview of the script can be seen here.