ZNAK SAGITE — više od fantastike — edicija, časopis, knjižara...

Hardcore
Sharlto Copley ("Elysium," "District 9") has signed on to play the hero in Ilya Naishuller's first person P.O.V. sci-fi action thriller "Hardcore".

Timur Bekmambetov produces what is being described as a stylized action movie with Copley killing bad guys and saving damsels

Kakva grupa bećara na jednom mestu...

Australian actor Jason Clarke ("Zero Dark Thirty," "The Great Gatsby") has joined the cast of Daniel Espinosa's currently in production "Child 44" at Lionsgate and Scott Free.

Set in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the story follows a loyal MGB officer (Tom Hardy) betrayed by his colleagues and on a desperate search for a serial killer.

Clarke plays a slimy man whom Hardy's character thinks is a traitor. Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paddy Considine also star.

Richard Price penned the script based on the Tom Rob Smith novel. Ridley Scott and Michael Schaefer are producing.

Ovo je kao rimejk kultne epizode TWILIGHT ZONE samo što je sada glavni junak glasač Radikala koji se budi u zemlji kojom je zavladao Vučić...

Politika
Zbog masovnog prelaska u SNS nestaju odbori drugih partija

U Jagodini svoje odbore više nemaju SDPS, DS i DSS, a isto se desilo i URS-u u Pančevu
Zoran Babić: ,,Pogrešio je stranku onaj kome smeta da iko više zakuca na vrata SNS-a"

Čak tri partije od juče više ne postoje u Jagodini. Naime, čitav gradski odbor Socijaldemokratske partije Srbije Rasima Ljajića i mesni odbori Demokratske stranke i Demokratske stranke Srbije, gotovo trista ljudi, u istom danu je pristupilo Srpskoj naprednoj stranci. Kako je to saopštio poverenik SNS-a za ovaj grad Nebojša Tatomir, a prenosi Fonet, ,,najbitnije da su to ljudi čiste prošlosti i da im je stalo do svog grada i države".  Samo tri dana ranije i ceo pančevački odbor URS-a Mlađana Dinkića ,,preselio" se u redove naprednjaka. Nakon što im je prišlo kompletno rukovodstvo i preko 500 članova subotičkog ogranka DSS-a, Izvršni odbor SNS-a raspustio je svoj gradski odbor i formirao novo povereništvo u koje su odmah uključeni i bivši članovi DSS-a.

Ovi masovni preleti poslednji su u nizu grupnih pristupanja najjačoj stranci na srpskoj političkoj sceni. Osim ovakvih slučajeva, koji su sve učestaliji, u javnosti su ostala upamćena i neka pojedinačna menjanja stranačkog dresa. Tako je predsednik Mesnog odbora DS-a iz Miroševca (Leskovac) Milorad Stamenković svoj odlazak u SNS obrazložio time što njegova bivša stranka nije asfaltirala putni pravac Slavujevce–Miroševce i Miroševce–Lugare.

Generalni direktor RTB Bor Blagoje Spaskovski je pak prelazak iz URS-a u SNS objasnio time što uvek želi da igra u najboljem timu.

,,Odavno sam odlučio da je moje mesto u SNS, još u vreme kad je Vučić počeo da niže uspehe u spoljnoj politici. Ali, kad se nedavno okrenuo ekonomiji, e tad me je potpuno 'kupio'", rekao je Spasovski za ,,Kurir" uz ocenu da je ,,postao vagon u kompoziciji kojom upravlja mašinovođa gospodin Vučić". 

Kako se u ,,voz" SNS-a ukrcava sve više ,,putnika" tako i nezadovoljstvo pojedinaca koji su u stranci od osnivanja, dakle, još dok je bila u opoziciji, narasta.

,,Neselektivnim učlanjenjem postajemo sabirni centar za politički otpad onih koji nam dolaze da bi se uhlebili i ponovo bili neko i nešto, nakon što su prokockali svoje pozicije u prethodnim političkim opcijama", kaže revoltirano dr Radmilo Todosijević iz Subotice, član najužeg rukovodstva sada raspuštenog Gradskog odbora i odbornik u Gradskoj skupštini, koji tvrdi da većina članova nije saglasna sa odlukom Izvršnog odbora partije.

Prema njegovim rečima, nove stranačke kolege, dojučerašnji članovi DSS-a, teže sopstvenoj promociji, a ne povećanju autoriteta stranke. ,,To može dovesti do defetizma, jer stari članovi više neće želeti da se aktiviraju, a pridošlice neće doprineti ugledu stranke. Uostalom, broj članova nije garancija autoriteta, jer je u svetu do osam odsto populacije je učlanjeno u neke partije i bitnije je da imate dobar program i kvalitetne ljude za njegovo sprovođenje", kaže Todosijević.

Ovakvi komentari, međutim, ne brinu previše rukovodstvo naprednjaka. Zamenik šef poslaničke grupe SNS-a u republičkom parlamentu Zoran Babić kaže da je pogrešio stranku onaj kome smeta da iko više zakuca na vrata SNS.

,,Nikada nismo ni od koga pravili prvoborca, uvek smo stavljali znak jednakosti između onih koji su u septembru 2008. godine napravili poslanički klub 'Napred Srbija' i onih koji se učlanjuju sada. Na zatvorena vrata će naići samo oni koji su se bavili kriminalnim i koruptivnim stvarima u prošlosti, pa možda učlanjenjem žele da dobiju aboliciju od svega toga, ali to neće doživeti", kategoričan je Babić, uz opasku da nema ničega spektakularnog u tome što se u poslednjih godinu dana, otkada je partija došla na vlast, učlanilo dvadesetak hiljada ljudi, jer je, kaže, najveći broj njih, oko trista hiljada, stranci pristupilo u vreme njenog opozicionog delovanja, od 2008. do 2012. godine.

Koliko je, međutim, među ovim ljudima onih koji svojom stručnošću i kvalitetom mogu da doprinesu partiji koju u javnosti bije glas da nema dovoljno kadrova, a koliko je karijerista ili onih kojima je menjanje partije uobičajena stvar kod svake promene na državnom vrhu? Uostalom, još svi pamte masovna preletanja posle 2000. godine iz stranaka bivšeg režima u partije koje su preuzele vlast posle demokratskih promena, ponajviše u DSS.

,,Većina onih koji se učlanjuju po dobrom starom običaju traže sinekuru (dobro plaćeno radno mesto koje ne zahteva previše truda, prim. aut.) i to je odvratno. Ali, ja to na neki način i razumem. Posle 20 godina jedna stranka od koje se tome nismo nadali probudila je, neočekivano, neku veru kod ljudi zbog te obnovljene sposobnosti pregovaranja sa svetom i otrežnjenja, doduše sa tragičnim zakašnjenjem, ali otrežnjenja u pogledu svih tih lažnih nacionalnih mitova. Očigledno da to što su pričali početkom devedesetih nimalo ne liči na ono što sad pričaju i mene to raduje. To znači da se ljudi menjaju nabolje i ja to moram da podržim. Ako izdrže, onda ta podrška neće biti uludo data", kaže za ,,Politiku" Nenad Prokić, dramaturg, nekada visoki funkcioner LDP-a, koga su inače iz bivše stranke prozivali zbog odlaska u vladu na razgovor sa Vučićem.

Upravo njemu se spočitavalo da se ulaguje novoj vlasti ne bi li dobio neko ambasadorsko mesto. Uz opasku da bi ,,poštenu inteligenciju, kako je to Tito lepo govorio, trebalo da bude sramota da ulaze u ovu partiju zbog sinekure", Prokić tvrdi da je među onima koji podržavaju promene, ali da mu ne pada na pamet da tamo uđe, te da je to jedan pošteniji odnos, koji je dobra formula za nekog intelektualca.

,,Osim što su pomogli da se obnovi sposobnost pregovaranja sa svetom, oni su napali i jedan ključni problem ovog društva, a to je onaj deo nakaznog kulturnog modela u kome je dozvoljeno da svaka džukela može da krade. A ako se ta borba završi na jedan koliko-toliko uspešan način, onda za ovu državu ima neke nade", ocenjuje Prokić.

Babić tvrdi da u SNS-u niko neće profitirati samo zbog toga što je član partije.

,,Ne kažem da takvih motiva nema. Da bi se neko kvalifikovao da ga SNS predloži na određenu poziciju, mora da bude posvećen politici SNS-a, mora žestoko da radi, da deli naše vrednosti, da prođe kroz stranačku hijerarhiju i stranačka rešeta kako bi se popeo na stranačkoj lestvici", objašnjava Babić, dodajući da je ,,utakmica uvek otvorena i uvek dobrodošla u demokratičnim strankama kao što je SNS".

J. Cerovina - A. Isakov - B. Čpajak

Stari ispisuje fatvu protiv reality emisija, pravi male posvete Tijanićevim najdramatičnijim člancima, potvrđujući svoje ionako slabo prikrivene totalitarističke poglede.

http://novinenovosadske.rs/braca-i-bracale/

Koliko pominješ reč "pornografsko", čovek bi pomislio da bi vredelo gledati te rijelitije. 

Pornografsko in a bad way.

Kriple, reaguj!! 


Steven Spielberg and George Lucas predict 'massive implosion' in film industry


George Lucas and Steven Spielberg think the film industry is heading towards a cliff. The pair behind some of the most successful franchises in movie history think that conservative programming choices and rapidly evolving distribution schemes have set the stage for a massive upheaval — and internet-based services may become the dominant medium when moviegoing as we know it crashes and burns.

The duo were joined during a panel at the University of Southern California by Microsoft's president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick, who played backup with the occasional Xbox reference as Lucas and Spielberg took center stage. While the focus was ostensibly on the future of the entertainment medium — USC just opened a new building for the school's Interactive Media department — the topic quickly pivoted to the state of film distribution in a world where everything from games to television are competing for consumers' attention.

People simply have a limited amount of time, said Spielberg. "We can't expand the week. We can't expand the 24-hour cycle. So we're stuck with so many choices." The enormous amount of available content has pushed movie studios to be more conservative, banking on the power of event films to break through the white noise of a crowded marketplace. "You're at the point right now where a studio would rather invest $250 million in one film for a real shot at the brass ring," he said, "than make a whole bunch of really interesting, deeply personal — and even maybe historical — projects that may get lost in the shuffle because there's only 24 hours."

"There's going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground," Spielberg said, "and that's going to change the paradigm again."

Barreling from opinion to opinion throughout the discussion, Lucas presented a clear vision of this post-crash entertainment landscape: a world where going to the movies is no longer a casual outing, but a high-end experience more in line with Broadway. "What you're going to end up with is fewer theaters," he said. "Bigger theaters, with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100. Maybe 150." It will be more in line with sporting events, with films playing in these high-end cinemas for as long as a year. "And that's going to be what we call 'the movie business.' But everything else is going to look more like cable television on TiVo."

"It's not going to have cable or broadcast," Lucas said. "It's going to be the internet television."

As Lucas painted it, the shift will present new opportunities both for consumers and filmmakers. Viewers will have access to a wide variety of programming, "usually more interesting than what you're going to see in the movie theater. And you can get it whenever you want, and it's going to be niche-marketed, which means you can really take chances and do things if you can figure out there's a small group of people that will kind of react to it."

That kind of niche focus has already paid dividends for cable networks like HBO, he said, which have lower thresholds for success than a movie studio or traditional network — and are able to produce less-conventional programming as a result. "All you need is a million people," Lucas said. "Which in the aggregate of the world is not very many people. And you can actually make a living at this. Where before you couldn't."

Spielberg offered a softer touch — even turning wistful when discussing the increasingly narrow theatrical window movies have to deal with today. "It used to be, when I first started making movies it was really cool, my movies stayed in theaters for one year," he said. "If it was a hit, it was a year long. Raiders [of the Lost Ark] was in theaters for a year. E.T. was in a theater for a year and four months... That was an amazing situation, back then."

Today's movies are in hotels two weeks after they hit theaters, he said. "There's going to be eventually day and date with movies" — when films are available on demand at home the same day they hit theaters — "and eventually there's going to be a price variance. You're going to have to pay $25 to see the next Iron Man. And you're probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln."

Lucas jumped in: "I think eventually the Lincolns are going to go away and they're going to be on television."

Spielberg smiled, saying, "And mine almost was! This close. Ask HBO — this close!"

Despite the chaos, both men see the changes as something the industry will overcome, with Lucas taking particular relish in the opportunities the disruption is providing — adamantly stating that "now is the best time we can possibly have."

Comparing the industry's panic over fleeting DVD sales and crumbling business models to the 2008 economic crash, he stressed that now is the time to look forward. "It's a mess. It's total chaos," Lucas said. "But out of that chaos will come some really amazing things. And right now there are amazing opportunities for young people coming into the industry to say, 'Hey, I think I'm going to do this and there's nobody to stop me.'"

"It's because all the gatekeepers have been killed!"

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/13/4425486/steven-spielberg-george-lucas-usc-film-industry-massive-implosion

Ovo je stara vest. Mislim da ovo što su konstatovali nije sasvim neosnovano, mada ima dosta tu i Lucasove rezignacije što mu ovaj ratni film nije dobro prošao a Spielberg se onda tu malo identifikovao sa njim. Imao je i Soderbergh baš tih dana jedan zanimljiv govor na temu krize industrije. Mislim da kinematografija neće implodirati toliko u poslovnom pogledu koliko će ogromni troškovi u spoju sa grčevitom potrebom da se filmovi obrate globalnom trižštu dovoditi do sve jalovijih filmova koji će na kraju početi da odbijaju publiku. I to je već počelo da se dešava s tim što je onih filmova kojim se pokrivaju promašaji ipak dovoljno da se sve izniveliše.

Pogledao sam KILLING SEASON u kome je Mark Steven Johnson, reditelj neuspelog DAREDEVILa sa Ben Affleckom, dobio priliku da režira scenario SCHRAPNEL Evana Daughertyja koji je pre neku godinu dobio mesto na Black Listi najboljih nesnimljenih scenarija. U fazi dok se još zvao SCHRAPNEL i kada je govorio o vijetnamskom ratu, film je trebalo da režira John McTiernan. Na scenariju je i dalje potpisan Daugherty, ne znam da li je on napravio ovu promenu koja je prebacila priću iz vijetnamskog rata u posledice sukoba u Bosni. No, ko god da je to uradio, svakako neće obradovati Srbe koji su ponovo negativci ali neće ni one koji ih za to optužuju zato što je ta predistorija prikazana toliko apsurdno, od početka do kraja da je neverovatno da ovde imamo posla sa filmom kome Bosna nije primarna tema ali nije baš ni marginalna. Naime, da je ovo film koji se isključivo svodi na žanrovsku priču, potpuno bi bilo u redu da predistoriju prikaže pojednostavljeno ili pogrešno. Međutim, Bosna i kasnije ima svoju ulogu.

KILLING SEASON je u osnovi torture porn koji pokušava da proizvede neku sofistikaciju kroz red priče i red maltretiranja a teško je odrediti koji od ta dva segmenta mu lošije ide. Travolta i De Niro već duže vreme koketiraju sa DTV materijalom, no ovog puta treba naglasiti da je film došao ipak sa kakvom-takvom reputacijom, ako imamo u vidu Daughertyjev scenario na Black Listu i sl. Moguće je da su De Niro i Travolta sa rediteljem sami snizili ambicije projekta. No, rekao bih da se Travolta dosta trudi igrajući Srbina sa tvrdim ruskim akcentom a film postaje prilično bizaran kada na temu Bosne pokušava da bude slojevit odnosno da pokaže kontinuitet nasilja kroz istoriju.

Torture porn je krvav, ima svega i svačega, ali nije naročito ni maštovito ni efektno, izuzev u slučaju waterboardinga posoljenom limunadom koji je naprosto bizaran. Ima čak i nekoliko bolnih ideja ali one ne nude ne postužu adekvatan efekat tokom gledanja, odnosno bolnije deluje ideja nego egzekucija.

Uprkos mnogo većem broju antisrpskih filmova, i dalje imamo sreće da su oni mahom slabi. Po reputaciji, KILLING SEASON je mogao da preokrene taj trend ali nije uspeo.

Dupli post.

Hmda:

Sylvester Stallone Confirms Mel Gibson for 'The Expendables 3′?

Muka ga je naterala.

Johne, pročitao sam BEKSTVO IZ LOGORA 14, našeg starog znanca Blejna Hardena. Posle Srbije, Afrike i drugih kriznih žarišta, napisao je čitavu knjigu o radnim logorima u Severnoj Koreji. Srećom, knjiga je prilično slaba, više liči na neki pamflet koji bi NGO štampao i delio džabe uz novine nego na nešto što bi platio 500ak dinara.

Ideja iza knjige je beleženje ispovesti tipa koji se rodio u radnom logoru, spojena sa opservacijama o sistemu u Severnoj Koreji koji su manje više na nivou onog što ti prvo izađe na Googleu. Stil je novinarski, bliži feljtonu nego dokumentarnoj prozi, svakih desetak strana nas Harden podseti šta se desilo, malo nam rekapitulira, a vrhunac je Deretino izdanje koje na kraju donosi neke fotografije Vođa i crteže onoga što se desilo glavnom junaku, kao da su čitaoci retardirani pa ne mogu da zamisle.

Pored novinarskog stila, vidi se da je prilagođen publici nižeg intelektualnog nivoa pošto kreće sa time da je ovaj iz logora isto godište kao Kim Jong Eun pa se ne uzdrži da napravi poređenje tipa, eto ovaj se muči, a ovaj uživa. Ta struktura "Kraljevića i prosjaka" deluje prilično neverovatno u knjizi koja pretenduje na ozbiljnost.

Nekoliko puta sam listao Deretino izdanje da vidim da li je neka strana fondacija finansirala ovo, rekao bih da nije. Ipak, nije na nivou knjige za koju treba dati novac.

QuoteSrećom, knjiga je prilično slaba

QuoteUprkos mnogo većem broju antisrpskih filmova, i dalje imamo sreće da su oni mahom slabi.

Деценија и по је прошла од МИРОТВОРЦА, а то је и даље вјероватно најмање дебилан филм овог типа.

MIROTVORAC je master class za sve ostale.

Pogledao sam HOI SA WON Sang Yoon Lima za koji bi se moglo reći da spada u ne tako čestu formu južnokorejskog B-filma. Još od trajanja od sat i po uprkos tome što pripada žanru koji Korejanci drže u dvočasovnim minutažama, pa preko sažetog, pomalo konfuznog načina izlaganja priče, HOI SA WON odstupa od kanona i više liči na američki B-film ili neki hongkonški rad. 

Priča je blago stilizovana, govori o firmi iz metalskog kompleksa koja zapravo funkcioniše kao krinka za plaćene ubice i njenom zaposleniku koji naravno omekša u ključnom trenutku i pretvara se u slabu kariku koja se mora ukloniti,

U pogledu akcije, Sang Yoon Lim je izvanredan, sve što je vezano za atmosferu, obračune i napetost realizuje vrlo energično i elegantno. Nažalost, melodrama koje ima dosta u filmu deluje nerazrađeno a uprkos dosta kratkom trajanju filma ponegde je razvučena i repetitivna. Reklo bi se da je Lim uveo odnose koji su promenili život naslovnom junaku, ali nije najbolje osmislio kako su se oni potom razvijali, kada su ispunili svoju svrhu unutar onoga što njega zanima.

Otud ovo nije značajan film sa južnokorejskim pečatom ali jeste vrlo efektan akcijaš koji će prijati ljubiteljima žanra.

* * 1/2 / * * * *

With His New Film, Elysium, Director Neil Blomkamp Delivers a Hellish Vision of Paradise

    By Mark Yarm
    07.16.13
    6:30 AM

Neill Blomkamp loves almost everything about Los Angeles: The sunshine. The palm trees. Beverly Hills. The pollution. Compton. Urban sprawl. Razor wire. Class warfare. Police choppers. Civil unrest. The way he sees it, LA is one immense, complicated mechanism. And Blomkamp is nothing if not fascinated by mechanisms, be they automobiles or firearms or massive orbital space stations. But most of all, Blomkamp loves LA because it's the one city that he feels comes closest to the violent, charged metropolis where he was born and raised, the city that shaped him as a man and inspires him as a filmmaker, and the place he is irrevocably drawn back to: Johannesburg, South Africa. "It has this thermonuclear-weapons feel," he explains, "like it's going to go off at any point." Los Angeles can't match that level of intensity—yet—which is why Blomkamp sometimes refers to LA as Diet Joburg or Joburg Lite.

On this early April afternoon in Joburg Lite, Blomkamp is relaxing in the back of a black Mercedes-Benz provided for him by Sony Pictures, en route to his hotel in Beverly Hills. Just an hour earlier, he was in Hollywood's ArcLight theater premiering 10 minutes of footage from his dystopian sci-fi thriller Elysium, the follow-up to his feature debut, 2009′s aliens-in-apartheid tale, District 9. He's heartened by the enthusiastic reaction from the crowd, a mix of press and fans, but would prefer it if he never had to do these kinds of events—or sit for interviews or have his photo taken or deal with the business of Hollywood in general. Which brings us to the one thing that Blomkamp hates about LA: the "fear-based, bottom-line-worshipping" film industry.

Of course, he realizes that you have to make some concessions when your new movie is a $100 million tentpole starring Matt Damon. In every respect, Elysium is a larger, higher-profile, and more conventional action film than District 9. Produced by Peter Jackson, D9 was made for a measly $30 million and went on to gross $211 million worldwide and garner four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Elysium takes place in 2154, when the 1 percent live out their caviar dreams and enjoy spectacular health care on board the film's titular space station—while the rest of humanity suffers on a ravaged, overcrowded Earth. The orbital utopia scenes were shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, while a Mexico City slum stands in for LA. Blomkamp spent two weeks of the four-month Mexican shoot filming in one of the world's largest dumps, a place swirling with dust composed partly of "dehydrated sewage." ("You know you're in a Neill Blomkamp film when you're the actor and everybody else has a protective mask on their face," quips longtime collaborator Sharlto Copley, who plays mercenary Kruger in Elysium.) When Damon's character, a shaven-headed, tattooed ex-con named Max, is irradiated in a factory accident and given five days to live, he must find a way to get to Elysium, the only place that promises a cure.

The year 2154 is somewhat arbitrary, but Blomkamp believes that Earth will someday look a lot like his movie's dystopian portrayal. He currently places humanity's odds of survival at 50-50: "The dice are going to be rolled, and either we're going to end up coming out of this through technological innovation"—leaps in genetic engineering, say, or artificial intelligence—"or we're going to go down the road of a Malthusian catastrophe." That path leads to human extinction or, on the sunnier side, a return to the Dark Ages.

Recently Blomkamp has been leaning toward Malthusian catastrophe. As the car rolls west along LA's Miracle Mile, he holds forth on just a few of the topics that engross him: overpopulation, pathogens, nukes; how America's hegemony is slowly eroding en route to a "third world deathbed." All this without a hint of gloom. He is capable of compartmentalizing these bleak visions, and right now he's in his default mood: "slightly upbeat," as he puts it.

But Blomkamp insists Elysium isn't some sort of filmic Paul Krugman op-ed piece. It's important for him that his movies grapple with things that matter, in this case economic disparity, immigration, health care, corporate greed. But he disdains prescription-happy "message" movies—that's what documentaries are for, he says—and intends Elysium to be first and foremost a mass-appeal, summer popcorn flick. Allegory, satire, and dark humor interest him; providing pat answers to society's woes does not. "Anybody who thinks they can change the world by making films," he says, "is sorely mistaken."
Photos: Asger Carlsen


For a guy drawn to struggle and chaos, Blomkamp seems to have a pretty cozy life. He shares a two-story, stone-faced Vancouver home with his wife and District 9 writing partner, Terri Tatchell, and their 14-year-old daughter, Cassidy. Visitors are greeted by an Elysium droid, a 22nd-century version of a knight in armor. In an adjoining room, a robot parole officer from the film is seated at the table, an unsettling grin on his face.

The 33-year-old Blomkamp is in his usual uniform—jeans, T-shirt, high-tops—and today wears his brown hair spiked in front. Six-foot-even, he carries himself with a quiet self-assurance. "He's probably the most decisive director I've ever worked with," says Jodie Foster, who plays Elysium 's scheming defense secretary. "For somebody with an f/x background, you'd think that he'd be persnickety about everything, but he's not. He knows it will all work out."

Blomkamp's preternatural calm belies his rough first encounter with Hollywood. Back in his midtwenties, when he was directing short films and sneaker commercials, Blomkamp was plucked from obscurity by Peter Jackson to direct a big-budget adaptation of the blockbuster videogame Halo. Jackson was executive producer on the project, a three-way partnership between Fox, Universal, and Microsoft.

The young director relocated his family to New Zealand, but after about six months of development, the plug was pulled on Halo. The project had gotten off to an unpleasant start—Blomkamp cites friction with 20th Century Fox's then cochair and CEO, Tom Rothman ("I think he thought I was too young and inexperienced"). But ultimately, according to Blomkamp and published accounts, the unusual financial model—two studios sharing profits with an unbending Microsoft—killed Halo. Which didn't stop the blame from being spread around. "One of the studios was quoted as saying it had no confidence in Neill," Jackson says. "I thought, 'You shit bags!' It was studio egos that brought Halo down."

Within 24 hours of receiving the news of Halo's demise, Blomkamp's fortunes changed. He met with Jackson's partner, Fran Walsh, who suggested that Blomkamp turn his documentary-style short about outer-space refugees, Alive in Joburg, into a full-length feature. "We tried to make District 9 everything Halo wasn't for Neill," Jackson says. "R-rated? Sure! Cast your buddy Sharlto Copley in the lead? Sure! Shoot in a dangerous Joburg township? Sure!"

In the end, Halo 's implosion was "a complete blessing," Blomkamp says, his South African accent softened by nearly half a lifetime in Canada. "When any young director gets hired by a studio to do a $125 million film based on a preexisting piece of intellectual property, they're climbing into the meat grinder. And what you're coming out with on the other side is a generic, heavily studio-controlled pile of garbage that ends up on the side of Burger King wrappers."

He's still highly resistant to the idea of adapting someone else's work—particularly a beloved franchise with high expectations to live up to—but he won't rule it out entirely. So far, though, Blomkamp has held his ground: He turned down the possibility of working on a new Star Wars movie after the subject was "gingerly" broached by Elysium producer and close friend Simon Kinberg, who's deeply involved in the revitalized franchise.

While promoting D9, Blomkamp expressed his intentions to do his next movie in the same manner—with a modest budget and no stars. In fact, he initially approached Ninja, of the outlandish South African rap-rave crew Die Antwoord, to play the lead in what would have been a much lower-budget version of Elysium. A South African countercultural icon, Ninja didn't want his first screen role to be an American-accented character in such a high-profile film. ("It was a fucked-up, difficult decision," says the musician, who has a D9 inner-lip tattoo to prove his devotion to his favorite movie.) Blomkamp subsequently approached a bigger-name white rapper, Eminem, who was interested—but only if the shoot took place in his hometown of Detroit.

So Blomkamp turned to the A-list. In late 2010 he met with Damon in a New York diner. "About 15 minutes in, he pulled out what was essentially a homemade graphic novel" of the movie, Damon says. "It absolutely blew my mind." That book, which also featured detailed illustrations of weaponry and future-tech, was the result of a yearlong back-and-forth between Blomkamp and illustrators from New Zealand effects house Weta and conceptual artist Doug Williams. The look of the film hews closely to those drawings. "I talked to Jim Cameron about Avatar early on," Damon says, "and what struck me about Neill was the same thing that struck me about Cameron: The world had already been created. It existed in their minds."

Born in 1979, at the height of apartheid, Blomkamp was raised in the upper-middle-class suburbs of Johannesburg. His parents divorced when he was a toddler; both remarried quickly. His mother ran an interpretation company that handled UN and NGO conferences, which she says helped inform Blomkamp's interest in sociopolitical issues. The filmmaker credits his father and stepdad with his fascination for all things mechanical. Both men loved cars and were into firearms, his stepfather "massively" so—nothing unusual for white South Africans, who have a deep-rooted gun culture. The director has vivid memories of his stepfather taking a shotgun to venomous spitting cobras in their yard. Blomkamp was similarly exposed to third-world culture: The household's nanny, who was training to be a sangoma, or healer, would collect the snake corpses for her studies.

Growing up, Blomkamp had three major haunts: the Midrand Snake Park, the Museum of Military History, and Estoril Books, where he first saw the work of Syd Mead, the futurist designer who contributed to two of the director's favorite movies, Aliens and Blade Runner. Young Blomkamp fixated on one image in particular: Mead's National Geographic–commissioned illustration of the Stanford torus, a ring-shaped, rotating space habitat first proposed during a 1975 NASA conference. That design and, to a lesser extent, Halo 's titular ring-shaped worlds were the basis for Elysium 's orbital space station—in fact, Mead, now 80, designed sets for Elysium.

Blomkamp was a jock at his high school, but he also indulged a geeky side, teaching himself 3-D computer graphics. When he was 15, one of his teachers introduced him to a guy six years Blomkamp's senior who had attended the same school. That young man, Sharlto Copley, had already cofounded a production company. The two hit it off despite their age difference—Blomkamp has always balanced "an intellectual maturity" with "a very youthful sense of fun," Copley says—and began an enduring partnership.

The dismantling of apartheid in 1994 brought with it a spike in violence and crime in previously protected white enclaves. In came the electric fences and razor wire and rottweilers. Viciously racist attitudes, of course, remained. Blomkamp was exposed to both extremes: A white 17-year-old family friend was shot dead in a driveway carjacking; the director once witnessed members of an opposing rugby team brutally beat a black janitor. Though no serious violence befell Blomkamp's family, by 1997 his mother had had enough, and she relocated the household, which included three of Blomkamp's stepsiblings, to Canada. (Blomkamp's parents split about a year after the move; his stepfather died of brain cancer in 2010, a "brutal" experience that Blomkamp says provoked Elysium 's brain-surgery scene.)

Seventeen-year-old Blomkamp didn't much care for his new, sedate environs, and it wasn't long before he was preparing to return to Johannesburg. Alarmed, his mother brought a video of her son's CG animation to Vancouver Film School—without Blomkamp's knowledge. Her gambit worked; Blomkamp was enrolled right away and threw himself wholeheartedly into the computer-animation program.

School led to work as a digital f/x artist at a local studio called Rainmaker, where he was seen as something of a boy genius. By the age of 25, Blomkamp was represented by childhood idol Ridley Scott's film and commercial production company. Five years later, in the wake of District 9, Scott was hailing Blomkamp as a "game-changing filmmaker" in an essay celebrating his inclusion in Time 's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Back in Vancouver, in a darkened theater at f/x studio Image Engine, Blomkamp and staffers watch a repeating loop of one of Elysium 's characters exploding. But the director isn't sold: "It's in the zone, but I just—" He pauses. "It doesn't have that concussive—" He smacks his fist into his palm. "It looks quite gentle." And gentle explosions are not how you know you're in a Neill Blomkamp film. After discussing the scene with Image Engine supervisor Peter Muyzers and executive producer Shawn Walsh, Blomkamp advises them to consult footage of grenades or Iraqi IEDs.

Blomkamp knows his military-grade hardware. His work office, within walking distance of Image Engine, has the air of a modest munitions outlet. On one wall hangs a small arsenal of firearms and grenades featured in the movie. (Until very recently, Blomkamp also had a personal collection of real weapons—including four AR-15s and about 10 handguns—which he and friends would use to blow up old TVs and other stuff out in the woods. As much as guns fascinate him as triumphs of engineering, he decided to sell all his firearms, citing unease with proximity to "something that is designed to kill people.")

Blomkamp wants to show off a prop from Mild Oats, a low-budget movie he's developing that he describes as "somewhere between John Waters and Jackass." He removes a panel from a nearby wooden crate, uncharacteristically giddy. "You should be scared," he warns. He's right: The crate houses a 3-foot-tall, photo-realistic silicone puppet rocking a mullet and jailhouse tattoos. The deranged redneck stands completely naked, revealing six nipples and a prodigious, uncircumcised penis. The character's name, Marvin, is inked on said organ in gothic lettering.

"You know you're in a blomkamp film when you're the actor and everybody else on set has a protective mask on their face."

Before Blomkamp can get to Mild Oats, though, he has to film Chappie, a $60 million contemporary sci-fi movie due to begin shooting in Johannesburg in September. Copley will star as Chappie's titular android—he'll act out his parts, then be digitally replaced with a CGI bot—and Die Antwoord's Ninja and Yolandi Visser will play themselves. Chappie sounds like a project more along the lines of D9—Blomkamp describes it as a rawer, quirkier picture than Elysium—but the filmmaker says the lower budget and return to a more vérité shooting style are "project-specific, not part of an overall strategy."

Chappie, Blomkamp says, is about sentience: "If something is as smart as you, do you treat it differently if it isn't a human?" He's cowriting Chappie with Tatchell, who describes the script as laugh-out-loud funny but also emotional. "It's fairly touching," Blomkamp confirms. "But, you know, fraught with gunfire."

Beyond those two movies, Blomkamp doesn't know what's next. He and Tatchell have written an 18-page treatment for District 10—about which he'll say little more than that the story is "really fucking cool"—but he's not prepared to commit to it. He's sure he'll come up with any number of other really fucking cool ideas he might want to pursue first.

Given Blomkamp's problem with most contemporary sci-fi films—he doesn't know what they're about, "other than shit exploding and spaceships and stuff"—it's jarring to hear about his affection for Michael Bay, Hollywood's preeminent exploder of shit. Blomkamp and Copley are in a booth at the ArcLight café prior to the promotional event, and when Bay's name comes up, Copley exclaims, "Michael Bay? Ohhhh!" Blomkamp has a more measured take: "It's not just blowing stuff up," he says. "I like the way he composes scenes and action. He's inspiring." (Turns out Blomkamp is a longtime Bay fanboy; when he was 19, he made a failed pilgrimage to LA to meet the man.)

But Bay's movies have no message, I protest. "Elysium doesn't have a message either," Blomkamp says with a laugh. The director finds it unfortunate that observers are already drawing parallels between Elysium and the Occupy movement, a phenomenon that he says wasn't even a consideration. Blomkamp identifies as neither liberal nor conservative, which doesn't stop people from ascribing all sorts of agendas to him and his films. The focus group comments for an Elysium test screening bear this out: "Some people said, 'This guy's a racist!' and other people, 'He's a liberal!' It's like, well, which is it?"

It's a good sign, in his view, that the film provokes such disparate reactions. But he doesn't care for the idea that by making two Big Theme movies he's bound to be branded a political filmmaker. "That would be the worst calamity of my career," Blomkamp says. Though given that he'll soon be back shooting in Johannesburg, it's easy to imagine worse calamities. Around his neck, tucked under his T-shirt, Blomkamp wears a talisman bearing the Latin phrase Dominus custodiat unum ("May God bless you and keep you"). It's a gift from Tatchell, intended to keep him from getting shot on return trips to his homeland.

He'd better hold on to it. Within six years, Blomkamp hopes to buy a skyscraper, maybe 40 or 50 floors, in downtown Johannesburg—a place to stay when he's in town. He insists it's not such a crazy dream; since the crime rate skyrocketed downtown in the late '90s, so many high-rises went vacant that they can now be had for a relative pittance. He envisions the building as his own version of Blade Runner 's Tyrell Corporation headquarters.

It sounds a lot like his own little version of Elysium, I point out. "Exactly," he says. "That's exactly what I want."

Quote from: crippled_avenger on 17-07-2013, 12:19:54
BEKSTVO IZ LOGORA 14

Дакле, ако само добро схватио, ово не вреди читати? Али морам да питам две ствари. Прво, чему поређење Шин Ин Гуна и Ким Џонг Уна? Овај први је (наводно) утекао 2005. године, та "краљевић и просјак" прича је нешто ретроактивно, пошто је Ун дошао на власт? И друго, како је (и да ли је) описано сналажење од бекства из логора до преласка у Кину? Знам за причу тог лика и оно што ме је увек чудило, а можда су то моје предрасуде према логорима, како је успео да се снађе да пређе пола Северне Кореје, пређе границу и ради као неки шљакер док га нису "нашли" и схватили да има значајну причу? Па мајку му, кад Мајкл Мајерс побегне  , неко у једном тренутку постави питање ко га је научио да вози, да ли књига даје било какву назнаку о томе ко је толико детаљно учио Шин Ин Гуна спољњем свету, онај лик што се спржио на огради? Јер обрни-окрени, све и да је испричао сушту истину, испада да кретање по Северној Кореји и није тако контролисано и помно праћено као што се мисли, пошто је овај без докумената и без икаквог искуства ван ограде далеко догурао.

ПС

Читуцкам сад на Википедији. Наводно, чим је прескочио ограду дошао је до неке фарме и нашао униформу у коју се пресвукао, па је у њој кренуо даље. Опет некако... бем ли га, подсећа ме на (америчке) филмове о бекствима из затвора, где затвореници дођу до усамљене фармерске куће и нађу неке (how convenient) корисне предмете. А чудно је то јер су тамо оне колективне фарме, дакле пре је реч о сеоцима него о фармама.

Pa poređenje je besmisleno. U tome je suština. Logor je više kao neka izolovana varošica u kome oni žive u kućama, ili spavaonicama škola, nije tipičan gulag sa ćelijama i spavaonicama. Tako kako je bekstvo opisano u Wikipediji, isto je i u knjizi, samo sa više ličnih iskustava i kao ekspresivnijim opisima.

Zanimljivo je koliko je severnokorejsko društvo puno nepoznanica čak i onima koji ga opisuju sa ciljem da ga demistifikuju. Voleo bih da pričitam knjigu o "normalnom" životu, to je tema koju tamo niko nije rasvetlio.

mrkoye se zapljunuo with the big guys

http://dobanevinosti.blogspot.com/2013/07/mali-budo-wrap.html

Rispekt za Mrkoja. A pošto moja žena odlepljuje za Strugarom, nije nezamislivo da ćemo se pojaviti na premijeri. 

Quote from: crippled_avenger on 17-07-2013, 21:31:11
Zanimljivo je koliko je severnokorejsko društvo puno nepoznanica čak i onima koji ga opisuju sa ciljem da ga demistifikuju. Voleo bih da pričitam knjigu o "normalnom" životu, to je tema koju tamo niko nije rasvetlio.

+1

Мени је управо то, "нормални живот", највеће занимање кад је ДНРК у питању. Имаш понекад на nkeconwatch.com текстове који указују понешто на ту тему. Друга тактика је, ако те не мрзи, моја - тражиш по flickr-у фотографије у високој резолуцији које су правили туристи, али само оне који поближе сликају људи, улице, зграде, итд. Онда увеличаш, гледаш неке детаље и конструишеш приче. Има добрих ствари и по блоговима, иако онај лик из документарца који си окачио на CG каже да се водич шокирао Рамштајном, негде сам видео фотографију званичног издања касете Битлса, а богами и групицу Севернокорејаца с окренутим качкетима а ла олдскуп хипхопери... Међутим, моја потрага за било којом музиком осим "званичне" засад није дала резултате.

Ima onaj Nemac sa sjajnim fotkama Severne Koreje na Instagramu.

PROPAGANDA | FULL ENGLISH VERSION (2012)

Mehmete, biće mi zadovoljstvo da te ugostim na tom malom prazniku filma...

Pogledao sam THE DEVIL YOU KNOW Jamesa Oakleya, film koji je snimljen iz istih motiva iz kojih je i gledan a to je objektifikacija Lene Olin i Rosamund Pike, spada u red bizarnijih "mladalačkih greha" danas poznatih glumaca. Lena Olin i Rosamund Pike, obe sa kredibilnim karijerama, nisu bile dovoljne da se ovaj film konačno pojavi već je i Jennifer Lawrence (koja u flešbekovima igra mladu Rosamund Pike) morala da postane superstar kako bi krenule eksploatacija. Inače, J. Law se pojavljuje u samo par kadrova.

Rosamund i Lena su, doduše bez skidanja, objektifikovane za sve pare, ali ono što ih okružuje je grozan, diletantski parahičkokovski triler sa misterijom koja to nije, zakržljalim zapletom i trajanjem od jedva sedamdesetak minuta.

Činjenica da se Lena i Rosamund pojavljuju je naravno dovoljna da određeni broj entuzijasta u koje ubrajam i sebe, pogledaju ovaj film, ali Oakleyev rad će ostati duboko ukopan na đubrioštu raznih inferiornih kopija FEDORE i SUNSET BLVDa.

Pogledao sam R.I.P.D. Roberta Schwentkea. Jasno mi je da u ovoj sezoni kada studiji udaraju jako, sa vrlo teškom artiljerijom i dosta te teške artiljerije pritom promašuje i stvara niz upečatljivih komercijalnih kataklizmi, ovaj film prosto nema šta da traži. Štaviše, rekao bih da po svom izgledu i resursima ovaj film više deluje kao deo ponude tokom proleća. Ryan Reynolds u tom pogledu zaista nema sreće. R.I.P.D. je u sebi imao sve karakteristike high concepta, čak i franšize, u tolikoj meri da neverovatno liči na MEN IN BLACK. Reynolds i Bridges kao mrtvi policajci iz različitih epoha čak i imaju vrlo sličnu hemiju kao Smith i Jones, i ona čak i u dobroj meri funkcioniše. Međutim, sam koncept proistekao iz stripa koji je izdao Dark Horse ne nudi dobre antagoniste. "Mrtvi" u tako apstraktnoj formi kako je prikazana u ovom filmu prosto nisu dovoljno atraktivan protivnik a ni efekti kojima su izobraženi nisu nešto naročito dobri.

Ne mislim da studio laže kada kaže da je ovaj film koštao 130 miliona. Tu su ipak dve velike zvezde i masa specijalnih efekata ali naprosto efekti su uzaludni kada nisu u službi razrađene i dobre ideje i zvezdama je izmaknuto tlo pod nogama između opstalog i time što su suočeni sa masom inferiornih animacija kao protivnicima.

Reynolds i Bridges su odlični, a Schwentke je filmu dao simpatičan arhaični ton, sveo je stvari na nivo 80s buddy flicka, kao kada bi Walter Hill pre demencije režirao nešto tipa MEN IN BLACK. No ta low-key postavka ne funkcioniše tako dobro u spoju sa nedokuvanim spektaklom.

Otud R.I.P.D. maltene deluje lapidarno sa svojim trajanjem od sat i po vremena i vrlo neprezencioznim zapletom.

Karakteri nisu dovoljni da izvuku film jednim delom i zato što Schwentke između ostalog direktno rtansplantira Mary Louise Parker iz REDa i daje joj maltene istu ulogu. Da paradoks bude veći, R.I.P.D. ide head to head protiv RED 2 ove sedmice. Dakle, ovaj pokušaj reciklaže istog lika se Schwentkeu obio o glavu na svim nivoima.

Kao derivat MEN IN BLACK sa sjajnim zvezdama, R.I.P.D. teško može privući one koji nisu fanovi. Međutim, oni koji ga pogledaju mogu uživati čak i više nego što bi smeli na jednoj ovakvoj kolekciji pogrešnih procena. U neko drugo godišnje doba, ne bi bio bolji ali bi možda bio isplativiji film nego sad.

* * 1/2 / * * * *

Rajan Rejnolc nanizao dva komercijalna flopa u jednom tjednu - kažu da i Turbo posrće - pa taj čovek će uskoro postati Boks Ofis Pojzn  A lep momak, sad se baš brinem što Marvel Deadpoola najavljuje tek za 2016, do kada će Reynolds biti parija koga se ne sme pustiti u bioskop.

Mislim da je u slučaju R.I.P.D. prilično jasno da Ryan nije kriv. Sam Universal ga je pustio niz vodu. Mada, film bi itekako funkcionisao da je izašao u martu.

U Rusiji je počela primena zakona koji zabranjuje gej propagandu.

http://www.b92.net/tehnopolis/vesti.php?yyyy=2013&mm=07&nav_id=734037

Quote from: crippled_avenger on 19-07-2013, 13:06:57
Mislim da je u slučaju R.I.P.D. prilično jasno da Ryan nije kriv. Sam Universal ga je pustio niz vodu. Mada, film bi itekako funkcionisao da je izašao u martu.

Ma ja sam hiljadu posto siguran da je u slučaju Turboa još mnogo manje kriv, ali znajući retardirano rezonovanje holivudskih studio egzekjutiva, nastradaće Rajan ni kriv ni dužan. Vidiš da poslednje dve nedelje šuškaju kako i Džoni Dep gubi uporište jer je naređao niz flopova...

'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' EXCLUSIVE SECRETS REVEALED: Matt Reeves Gives Comic-Con Preview
Interviews
by Anne Thompson
July 16, 2013 7:38 PM

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
For all the complaints about Hollywood's constant mining of properties past and present, one of the best recent franchise reboots is Twentieth Century Fox's 2011 "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," which wowed critics and global audiences alike to the tune of $483 million worldwide.

Director Rupert Wyatt and origin story screenwriters Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa deserve considerable credit for how well the movie turned out. Fox greenlit the movie as a prequel that could score with the "Avatar" VFX technology in which they had invested so heavily. Weta Digital's Joe Letteri delivered incredible VFX advances, none more important than allowing actors to emote opposite one another, hugging and mugging. And Andy Serkis, who played wily lead ape Caesar in one of the great all-time motion capture performances, was able to engage with actor James Franco so that warm and fuzzy feelings bounced back and forth.

In a notable parallel to the "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" follow-ups, Wyatt, who runs London indie film collective The Picture Farm, having proved that he can do action, character, effects, opted not to rush into the follow-up aimed for May 23 2014 release and moved on instead to direct TV movie "The Turn."

Without Wyatt, the studio needed a director willing to take the reins on an accelerated schedule. They had a script outline from Jaffa and Silver. But when life-long "Planet of the Apes" maven, writer-director Matt Reeves, who had earned kudos for "Cloverfield" and his "Let the Right One In" remake "Let Me In," pitched Fox production chief Emma Watts, he had an entirely different approach in mind.

While Jaffe and Silver had skipped well ahead in the narrative, Reeves wanted to continue to follow the slow evolution of the sentient apes, especially Caesar, that had been so compelling in "Rise." Producer Dylan Clark encouraged Reeves to meet at his house to talk through his ideas, and led him to believe that Fox would be excited enough to allow Reeves to rework the script, which he eventually did, with writer Mark Bomback.
I get on the phone with Reeves a few days ahead of his ritual trek to San Diego for Fox's Saturday Hall H panel at Comic-Con. Although Reeves has been shooting "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" in Louisiana and Vancouver since March, with only a few more weeks to go, he won't have much to show, he says, as the Weta effects are still a long way from being complete. In fact Fox pushed the release date back to July 2014 so that all Reeves' crazy ambitious visual ideas could be fully realized with on-location motion capture shot in 3-D.

In this story, a band of human survivors of the devastating virus faces off against the burgeoning nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar. The negotiated peace does not last long. It's man vs. ape in a war for world domination. The humans are Gary Oldman as Dreyfus, and a family played by Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee ("Let Me In"). Among the apes are Judy Greer as Cornelia, who has a son (Nick Thurston) with Caesar, Brit actor Toby Kebbell, who takes over from a stuntman in the key role of Koba, and coming back are Karin Konoval as the orangutan Maurice and Terry Notary as Rocket, who also doubles as ape movement coordinator.

Anne Thompson: What can you show us at Comic-Con?
Andy Serkis as Caesar in 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'

Matt Reeves:  Because we're shooting, we're not showing very much. We are not going to be coming with tons of footage. The cast will be there, we'll try to give a taste of limited little bits. But not ape shots, we're not going to do that, you're limited in what you can show. That's another story that takes months and months. The movie doesn't even come out Memorial Day, we switched with "X-Men" on July 18. Now we can do those shots. So much doesn't exist yet.

How did you land the job?

I found out about the movie, I was obsessed with "Planet of the Apes," as a kid I desperately wanted be a gorilla, to be an ape. And I love what they did with "Rise," so emotional. I was not sure they'd want to have me do the movie. When I was going in, I thought, surely what's going to happen is they'll say "read the outline, to get it you're doing this." I'd say, "this is what I want to do," and they'd say "thank you, but no thank you."

Instead, Emma Watts said, "Sounds great! You do that version. Are you in?" "I'm in, that would be incredible."

It has been a whole process: crazy locations are all the result of that story pitch, realizing it practically in the forest in Vancouver on a hillside with mo-cap cameras. Are we crazy? Because of it the footage is all the more exciting.

What were the changes you made in the Jaffa/Silver script?

I wanted to extend what I thought was achieved so brilliantly, the emotional connection with Caesar, with a greater sense of realism in the world, the face of it and scale of it. Where the first movie ends on the precipice of a major shift about to happen in the world, I wanted to come into that story. It's definitely a bigger ape world, but it still centered on Andy Serkis as Caesar, it's his POV.

Watching "Rise" it was miraculous how connected we are emotionally to him. I've never seen it at that level. We're wrapped up in his character. I wanted to carry that forward. When I rewatched "Rise" in the interim, I had a son, and something in watching Caesar come into being in that movie reminded me of my son. When you watch you identify with Caesar. I couldn't believe I had that level of emotional involvement with a CG character. He is torn away from his family and grows up with another family, he's taken away from them and imprisoned in the ape habitat. There's no dialogue except sign language and it's fascinating and emotionally involving. It felt like an uncanny connection to Andy's perspective. I wanted to make sure that the emotional life of Caesar was the way the story carried forward. You have to make Caesar's movie, you have to think about what matters to him the most.

We started looking over over several drafts of scripts and several stories. Silver and Jaffe did the first iterations. Rupert had done a version with Scott Burns.

When I got involved the story initially took place further down the line, the apes had evolved fast. What excited me was the idea of going back to finding a way to get on the path, I did not want to jump so far ahead. I restarted the first movie that put you in the heart of the apes, knowing that in the canon, the '68 movie I saw as a kid, you know what that world is about. That was the beginning. So this leads to the original film. How does that work? That is where it's going. I did not want to go too far and miss how it developed.

Do the apes talk?

Caesar talks at the end of the movie, he has some level of speech. I wanted to make sure we're continuing to go along the path of evolution without missing it, it was so delicious to watch in the first movie. It's not like now they are talking in verse. Hopefully the movie is emotional and thrilling as you watch the apes come into being.

Where does the movie take place?

The ape civilization is in the woods, between Vancouver and New Orleans, the world after what happens with the simian virus flu. The two main locales are San Francisco and the Muir Woods where the ape civilization is born. We'll be doing a little shooting in San Francisco as well. A lot of the Louisiana shooting was to build huge wood sets outside in the woods to add realism, enormous exterior streets. We're shooting in the rain, in the wind, all on location out in the open in the elements.

How did you adjust to the scope of this production, which is so much grander than "Let Me In"?

The crazy thing is the giant scale of this film, which is enormous for any movie, so much bigger. The only way it works is from an emotional intimate point-of-view. It has all the things that drive me to do something, an emotional core, as Andy, Rupert and Weta did on "Rise": How do you become an ape? How emotional it is, the emotional intimacy.

It's a huge adjustment. It's not only on a scale for me that is obviously larger than anything I've done, but huge for any film in this particular way: this is the first movie at this level to do native 3-D on an enormous canvas and mo-cap that is 95 % shot on location. The mo-cap shooting on the first movie was done really on the stage. It's enormous do this in a naturalistic space. And it's an exciting learning curve.

Do you expand on the ape world?

The world is larger, still growing. For all of us that was exciting to explore, and bring in new performers to our cast of apes, Toby Kebbell and other great actors along with Andy.

The apes story is a through-the-looking-glass way of looking at what we are. By what's going on in the internal lives of the apes we are exploring ourselves, our impulses, our society. So much is roiling inside Caesar. He has a rational side separate from the apes, they're all instinct. We are seeing how Caesar becomes this leader.

You're working with Weta's Letteri?

Weta's Dan Lemmon was the supervisor on the last one. Joe Letteri and all those guys are very excited. It's cool because Michael Seresin is shooting; I chose him because I wanted the lighting look to be very real. I want it to feel as if we're making an epic film, very grounded, we're lighting with real light, so the effects that are so amazing in "Rise"and "Avatar" we're putting in this environment. Making the effects emotional in real life increases the illusion. But it's a complicated thing to take these crazy digital cameras in these crazy locations.
'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes'

The stuff is looking really rough in blocking passes. We're going through different cuts, going in and editing on weekends, turning over sequences, going to Weta to talk about what's in.

Does Serkis have a special method for doing mo-cap performing that could be communicated to other actors?

Andy is a great actor, it comes down to that. The first thing I did, I wanted the VFX people to take me through all the footage on the last movie before and after of Andy so I could understand what he was doing. I was so impressed, we all know he's a genius. I wanted to get under the hood, and they showed some minutes in scenes with even more going on, I'm hoping to pull those things out.

Is he acting in a larger bigger way?

What's great about the best mo-cap is the authentic emotional performance. I've worked with Kodi for years, he was going through this emotional scene, going through the beats talking through it, and at the end of rehearsal I looked at Andy. Throughout the scene, he's been crying in the rehearsal, tears his eyes. He works inside out, that is the key to what he does, and to all the mo-cap.

Toby plays Koba in the film, another strong internal performance, and Terry Notary is a Cirque du Soleil actor who trains all the actors to move like apes. Their emotional life is grounded and internal, there's nothing put on about that. They act physically like actors, they're not thinking about acting like apes. When you watch them, what's exciting is actors in grey suits with cameras on their faces and dots all over their bodies. My biggest concern is that the actors' emotional life comes through, the exciting part is seeing that it's no different to explore all that through the motion capture stuff.

How else do you advance this movie over the last one?

In the last movie there were a lot of things the apes couldn't do as performers, physically, so they animated them. It's amazing but some of that stuff isn't totally believable. You accept it. One of the things in the pursuit to make this as realistic as possible in addition to going on location in the light for a higher level of realism, is to see the movement of the ape stunt performers, not animated. The stunt performers trained themselves to move like apes. What they are performing is all real and when you see it translated it will not look animated.

And I wanted to make sure to bring to the human characters the same level of emotional depth as the apes. I can't give too much away, I'm hiding a little bit. I'm going back to shooting apes climbing trees in the woods.

Quote from: Meho Krljic on 19-07-2013, 15:24:30

Quote from: crippled_avenger on 19-07-2013, 13:06:57
Mislim da je u slučaju R.I.P.D. prilično jasno da Ryan nije kriv. Sam Universal ga je pustio niz vodu. Mada, film bi itekako funkcionisao da je izašao u martu.

Ma ja sam hiljadu posto siguran da je u slučaju Turboa još mnogo manje kriv, ali znajući retardirano rezonovanje holivudskih studio egzekjutiva, nastradaće Rajan ni kriv ni dužan. Vidiš da poslednje dve nedelje šuškaju kako i Džoni Dep gubi uporište jer je naređao niz flopova...

Идиоти.

Pogledao sam WHITE HOUSE DOWN Rolanda Emmericha i moram priznati da me čudi kako Sony nije tužio producente filma OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN za bestidno kopiranje skupo plaćenog scenarija Jamesa Vanderbilta koji je evidentno poslužio kao kroj za oba filma. Čini mi se da je možda Sonyjeva sujeta doprinela tome da se preko ovog gafa pređe jer su mislili da će njihov film iako izlazi kasnije zaraditi više, kao što je svojevremeno bio slučaj u sezoni ARMAGEDDON/DEEP IMPACT. Tada su oba filma zaradila dobre pare, ali su to isto tako bez ikakve sumnje bili različiti filmovi, razvijeni na drugačijim premisama iako su se bavili istom temom.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN i OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN su praktično isti film, sa nekoliko krupnijih razlika ali sa identičnom osnovom, na nivou postavke likova, odnosa i namera negativaca. U pojedinim aspektima čak, rekao bih da su scenaristi OLYMPUSa unapredili WHITE HOUSE jer je u njihovom filmu osvajanje Bele Kuće nešto sofisticiranije i zanimljivije realizovano.

Čak su u oba filma napravljeni mali omaži ranijim klasicima kroz glumačku podelu među izdajnicima. Tako agenta-izdajnika u OLYPUSu igra dylan McDermott koji je bio požrtvovani agent u IN THE LINE OF FIRE a okorelog Black Ops operativca CIAe iz Pakistana u WHITE HOUSE DOWN igra Jason Clarke, donekle ponavljajući lik iz ZERO DARK THIRTY.

Iako je naravno uvek delikatno meriti namere i ubedljiviost ideja filmskih terorista, Severnokorejci iz OLYMPUSa su primer zdrave pameti i političkog promišljanja u odnosu na negativce iz WHITE HOUSE DOWN.

Jedan od problema DIE HARD derivata, a i OLYMPUS i WHITE HOUSE DOWN su upravo to, jeste u tome što kada su vezani za jednu lokaciju vrlo brzo počnu da se vrte u krug. McTiernan nije slučajno vrlo značajnu ulogu dao svom scenografu u prvom DIE HARDu jer to je primer filma čiji je izraz sušt8inski vezan za ambijent i nije to kojekakvo rokanje u službenim prostorijama. Uprkos tome što je WHITE HOUSE DOWN dvostruko skuplji od OLYMPUSa i to se itekako vidi na ekranu, taj problem nije rešen.

Emmerich je slabiji reditelj od svog zemljaka Wolfganga Petersena tako da rečju nije uspeo da ubedi gledaoce u ideju Predsednika akcionog heroja, Jamie Foxx je u ovom filmu šupalj, bez šarma, i mnogo manje ubedljiv od Forda u AIR FORCE ONE. Međutim, AIR FORCE ONE je bio mindless film velikog reditelja koji kontroliše stvari dok je WHITE HOUSE DOWN jedno dosta raspojasano gomilanje kojekakvih situacija i detalja koje nisu koherentne ni na jednom nivou.

U tom pogledu više je šteta što su zanimljive face kao što su James Woods i Jason Clarke potrošene kao negativci, nego što su Jamie Foxx i Channing Tatum iostavljeni bez smislenog materijala.

U ukupnom skoru, WHITE HOUSE DOWN je svakako bolji film od OLYMPUSa ali više zbog vitalnosti ekipe i budžeta nego zbog neke suštinske superiornosti u postupku. Otud je ovo primer već pomalo senilnog Emmerichovog pokušaja da snimi blokbaster koji u ovoj klimi teško da može da prođe jer se akcioni film ipak previše transformisao.

Isto tako, OLYMPUS je imao belog predsednika, i strane agresore, ovde je predsednik obamolik i napadači su američki reakcionari. Mislim da to nije slika koju publika za militarističke i patriotske filmove želi da vidi, naročito sada kada se ostrvila posle mogućnosti da nekažnjeno ubijaju crnce.

* * / * * * *

Pošto si autor teorije da televizija u ovom trenutku radi bolje nego bioskop, sigurno će i tvom tvrdom antimarvelosvskom srcu prijati ovo oduševljenje KomikKon publike prvom epizodom serije Agents of SHIELD:

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/creators-stars-reveal-marvels-agents-shield-230952994.html

Quote
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Fans expecting to see a snippet of the new "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." television show Friday at Comic-Con got a surprise instead — the chance to see the entire debut episode.
Thousands of fans went wild when Marvel executive Jeph Loeb and series creator Joss Whedon surprised them with the episode, which features Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent everyone thought died in Marvel's recent blockbuster film "The Avengers."
"I've got to say it's a little hot in here," Loeb said, taking off an over shirt to reveal a T-shirt with the words "Coulson Lives" on the back. The crowd started chanting "Coulson! Coulson! Coulson!"
That was just the beginning of the cheers, laughs and even tears — from Gregg, who got choked up when talking about the chance to return to the Marvel universe after appearing to die in a key moment in "The Avengers."
"I'm a longtime Marvel fan and I can't believe this is happening to me," Gregg said as he got a little misty after hugging Whedon for an uncomfortably long period of time. "I didn't like being dead, but I really liked my death. And then I met Lola."
"Lola" is Agent Coulson's suped-up red Stingray Corvette that's not quite as vintage as it looks.
Without revealing too many details to ruin the debut for fans not at Comic-Con, the show follows Coulson as he builds a team of fellow agents to deal with the growing problem created in a world quickly changing because of superheroes and their foes, alien visitors and Norse god appearances.
Fast-paced and full of comic moments that don't always require a deep knowledge of comic books, the episode laid the groundwork for the series with several subplots that will play out over time. Until Friday, little had been revealed about the ABC show set to debut Sept. 24.
Most of the show's cast attended, including Ming-Na Wen (Agent Melinda May), Chloe Bennett (Skye), Iain De Caestecker (Agent Leo Fitz), Elizabeth Henstridge (Agent Jemma Simmons) and Brett Dalton (Agent Grant Ward). Dalton got a wolf whistle from the crowd, leading to laughter.
"Yeah, we've got a really unattractive cast," Loeb joked.

Mislim da sam govoreći o IRON MAN 3 i pomenuo da je Marvelov filmski univerzum sada sličniji televiziji. Stavili su svoje pretenzije u pravi format.

BTW, Marc Webb koji je pre nekoliko godina imao simpatičan film 500 DAYS OF SUMMER sada radi SPIDER-MANe i već je ušao u tu psihozu univerzuuma, šta nas čeka u sledećem iako ni ovaj koji sada snima nije izašao itd.

Da, pa to je nekako sad čini mi se novi bubble za sledećih nekoliko godina, koji će, pošto je Marvel uspešan, pokušati da emuliraju i drugi... Videćemo.

Meni, najvaznije od svega je da ce u seriji gostovati Kobi Smalders... 

Warner Bros. plans to kick off Saturday at Comic-Con with a big announcement: Batman and Superman will pair up in a new movie as the follow up to "Man of Steel."

The studio and DC Entertainment has been considering several options for its superhero films, including a "Man of Steel" sequel for 2015, a Flash movie in 2016 and the Justice League film for 2017.

Studio is making the Superman match up with Batman announcement to 6,000 people inside Hall H inside the San Diego Convention Center where it also is promoting "300: Rise of an Empire," "Godzilla," and "Seventh Son."

Warner Bros. has indicated that it planned to bring back Superman for a 2015 film if "Man of Steel" performed up to expectations. The film's worldwide box office has hit $622 million since its June 14 launch. "The Dark Knight Rises," starring Christian Bale, topped $1 billion in global box office last year.

The Batman-Superman movie could match the box office prowess of "Marvel's The Avengers." That 2012 Disney release, featuring Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk and Thor, amassed $1.5 billion worldwide.

It would also move the Burbank studio closer to its long-planned all-star superhero pic "Justice League" — finally fully exploiting its DC Comics library beyond Batman and Superman.

"Justice League" would bring to the screen such characters as Aquaman, the Flash, Wonder Woman and another Green Lantern, whose costly 2011 predecessor flopped.

Dok oni naprave Justice League film, ceo pod-zanr ce se urusiti sam u sebe i prestati da postoji... 

North Korean State Propaganda – Interview with Jana Hajzlerova
Propaganda-Pic-620x340   
by Gianluca Spezza , September 30, 2012
     
   

From September 6 to 8, the Central European University of Budapest hosted the Korea Foundation-sponsored conference "Whither The Two Koreas", where scholars and experts from European and Asian universities exchanged views on a number of Korea-related topics. NK News met with some of the panelists to gather insights on their research and their opinions on North Korea. The first interview in this series is with Jana Hajzlerova, chairperson of the Czech-Korean Society in Prague and external lecturer of Korean Studies at Charles University in Prague. Beside her research activities, Ms. Hajzlerova is currently translating B.R. Myers' The Cleanest Race for the Czech market. She focuses her research on North Korean media and propaganda to illustrate how the North Korean leadership seeks to reinforce its legitimacy among its people.

NK News: Tell us more about your background and your actual involvement in Korean studies.

J.H: Having graduated from Korean Studies and Media Studies at the Charles University in Prague, I have been focusing on the production and exchange of meanings in both Koreas, which in South Korea would translate to topics such as popular culture for example and in the case of North Korea it´s mainly the regime´s propaganda. Korean Studies in the Czech Republic have a tradition of more than 50 years and considering the vivid diplomatic ties with North Korean during the communism era in the Czech Republic and the current, ever strengthening, presence of South Korean companies in the country, the department, from which around 20 students graduate every year, has a lot to offer in all the Korea-related matters.

NK News: You are currently translating BR Myer's book, The Cleanest Race. What do you think of it and how did you get involved in its translation for the Czech market?

J.H: I got involved in the project through the Czech-Korean society; I am delighted to be a part of the process of introducing Myers' book to the Czech market as I believe there is a serious lack of North Korea-focused literature which would educate journalists (so that they could replace their scandal-oriented, facts-lacking news with some decent coverage) and feed the enormous hunger for information from North Korea among the general public. The Cleanest Race, with its popular yet serious approach to the topic, will fill in this gap very well I think.

NK News: You have presented quite an interesting paper (at the CEU conference in Budapest) which focused on DPRK media analysis to reveal more about its narrative structure. Could you tell us why you opted for this topic, what are the methods and samples you have used and how do you plan to take it further?

J.H: Well, I have a background in media studies and I spent time studying abroad in Korea, so the combination of these two experiences enabled me to focus on this topic. I am not really interested in 'surface analysis' that keeps repeating how restricted the media scenario is in the DPRK and how its citizens are brainwashed and live in a world without freedom. I would rather focus on a deeper analysis of how the DPRK media talk and what do they say to both its Korean and English speaking audiences. I have chosen KCNA as it really is one of the main voices of the party: it constitutes a reliable sample to understand not only the content but the target audience of DPRK news.

See, there's a lot of people who still maintain that the DPRK does not believe in any of the propaganda claims and that all of it is directed to foreign audiences while the citizens are simply forbidden from accessing all information. I believe, on the other hand, that the regime does make a considerable effort to keep its people 'motivated', by feeding them  a balanced menu of 'retouched' facts and opinions.

I have looked at the thematic agenda of KCNA broadcasts, which I have found really interesting and not really comparable to any classification you would find in foreign media. There is no real 'domestic or foreign news' as we would interpret in the West, but rather information is divided into categories (i.e: regime cult, acts made by one of the Kims, conflicts, etc). In particular, the category of 'conflict', occupied almost 52% of the current news, and by 'conflict' I mean every report related to ongoing wars or military actions that occur either between North Korea rest of the world, or between U.S. and other countries. What I have found really interesting about this is that KCNA dedicates  a huge amount of time to reporting on third countries in order to side with one of the parties involved (that is, against the U.S. or Japan, 99% of the times). They do this to generate indirect criticism (of enemies) or indirect praising (of allies) as a way of reinforcing their worldview. It also speak volumes about the capacity of the leadership to keep an eye on what goes on outside of the country and it definitely defies the stereotype of the "most isolated country on Earth", which still lingers so strongly.

NK News: So, basically, the DPRK leadership seems to make quite an effort in maintaining legitimacy and building regime support among its people through carefully presenting selected facts in a certain manner. Do you think this finding can be used to support Myers' theory of a North Korean regime that constantly keeps its people under an 'imminent military threat', and by doing so motivates them to accept restrictions, deprivations and so on to support whatever action the leadership takes?

J.H: I think so. See, in the time frame I examined there were a lot of news stories related to war, especially in the Middle East (as there really is no ongoing war that would include either South or North Korea or the U.S. at the moment), and even though most of them were outdated, they were nonetheless reported (with Pyongyang siding of course with those countries invaded or attacked by the U.S.). It seems the message is: "we're not alone in this, the U.S. attacks just about every country it wants to, and so we have to resist". So I would definitely agree with Myers on this.

About the legitimacy, I think that referring to other countries helps the regime a lot in trying to legitimize its worldview. This reinforces my idea that KCNA, in its Korean version, must be targeted at North Koreans – even though most of them do not have Internet access yet.  Perhaps they can access it through the DPRK Intranet. The fact is that most western experts or observes think that KCNA, just because it has an English version of its website, is solely aimed at foreign readers, but that can't be all. Really, why would they want to tell foreigners (Westerners) that this or that little 'unimportant' country (in their view of the Western worldview) has a study group on Juche or supports Kim Il Sung's precepts on agriculture and so forth?

NK News: The fact is that the rest of the world knows already that Kim Il Sung was definitely not the genius DPRK propagandists have so long tried to portray, so why would they waste time and resources to try and make foreign audiences change their minds?

J.H: Indeed. And what is even more important is that they absolutely know that we know this. So it really would make no sense for them. Why would they be targeting these unbelievable (for anyone who knows the world) news at western people? They're really not that stupid.

NK News: The strange thing though is that North Korean media (not just KCNA) have in almost all cases an English or a Japanese version of their pages. So it is clear that at least some of what we perceive as 'silly, unbelievable content' must be targeted at non-Koreans. Why do you think this happens? Also, what are the major differences between the Korean and English editions of KCNA?

J.H: I must admit this has been puzzling to me since I started researching this topic. There are obvious differences between the Korean and the English version in format (length, titling etc.) as well as in the content (sources cited, structure of storytelling, different details stressed etc.) which leads us to the assumption that the regime has a different target audience in mind when publishing these. Sometimes I even come to think that the English version is purposely silly and unbelievable to distract the outside world from real domestic issues and as Myers would put it, for most observers is too ridiculous to properly analyze it. Still, it may be a good way how tell the world: "Yes, we do have our own media, yes there are things happening and yes, we still hate the U.S., don´t worry", so to speak.

NK News: Back to the original question: you have chosen a limited sample for this first analysis.

J.H: Yes, I have worked with one continuous week of KCNA news so far, so, quite a small, yet significant one. I know I would have to repeat this analysis on a larger scale, including crucial periods like September 11 or June or July when the Korean media decisively put more emphasis or this or that aspect, depending on political agenda and the anniversary that takes place in that period. There really are a lot of options, I could try to extend weekly samples and spread them throughout the years (maybe the last 3 or 5) or analyze a recurring event (e.g. Kim Il Sung's birthday or the Korean war anniversary) in the last 5 years. It may turn out that the categories I proposed for this first research will not be as valid in the end, but i will have to see about that.

NK News: And you have used in this instance, the structural analysis of Vladimir Propp, to define characters and functions of DPRK media stories...

J.H: Exactly, I am trying to deconstruct the actors and their functions in the text, uncovering the layers: who is acting, what is going on against whom, under what circumstances and so forth.

NK News: In Propp's analysis there are 30-plus categories (functions) and at least 8 actors: the hero, the villain, the messenger, and such. Who do you think is the main 'bad guy' in DPRK news?

J.H: Well, I did not draw any conclusions on this yet, but if I were to guess, I would say President Lee Myung Bak, just by the way he has been demonized, represented as evil and funny (well, laughable or clownish, really more than just funny). At the same time he has been depicted as the most shameful character, in an almost non-stop media campaign, since his election in 2007. There really is no other personality that received so much negative attention in DPRK news recently. I think it is quite interesting.

NK News: Are there any positive or neutral characters?

J.H: Well, I think it's a bit early to draw conclusions, but what I find really interesting is that South Korean people (not the government) are always portrayed as innocent, almost as victims, in North Korean news. They're always removed, separated from their government, so, while Lee Myung Bak is always a traitor, out of more then 200 articles I have analyzed, North Korean news always tell how unfortunate it is for South Korean citizens to live under him. For example, during the protests in Jeju Island or when the U.S. beef protests broke out, KCNA has always emphasized the case of South Korean citizens being enraged at Lee Myung Bak, who is basically a traitor, or maybe 'the traitor', of Korean people.

NK News: This is in a way mirrored in what a good part of western media try to tell about north Korean people: we always perceive them (as they're portrayed as such) as victims of a brutal regime, upon which they have no influence whatsoever.

J.H: True. the whole conflict, the question of inter-Korean relations, is very personalized. Sometimes I really feel that it is a conflict for conflicts sake really. A conflict that keeps all the involved parties awake, yet not busy.

NK News: Who writes for the KCNA and is it profitable (compared to other government jobs)?

J.H: Oh, I wish I knew the answer here. I personally don´t know anybody who writes for KCNA. If I knew, I would probably give anything to interview that person, to find out about the editorial guidelines and policies that are followed in KCNA. Some sources claim that there are two thousands employees working for KCNA. Once can guess that it is definitely one of the jobs that is looked upon a lot as belonging to those that "help the Leader take care of the country". I also believe working for KCNA requires a strict screening, similar to other governmental posts.

NK News: Since you're from the Czech Republic, I'd like to ask you whether you know anything about the little 'community' of North Korean citizens who used to work in a factory near Prague? Also, what (or how) were the relationships between The DPRK and your country in the years of communism?

J.H: Czechoslovakia (former Czech Republic and Slovak Republic) had vivid diplomatic ties with DPRK until 1989 as most of the USSR countries back then. Apart from this, however, Czechoslovakia was a member of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission and was intensively involved in many parts of social life in DPRK (e.g. sending hospital staff to DPRK). It should not surprise you then, that the diplomatic ties haven't really frozen since the 1989 revolution either. Currently, for instance, Czech students are sent to Kim Il-Sung´s University summer language program every year and currently (September/October 2012) the director of our Korean Studies department is visiting the university in Pyongyang to arrange further future cooperation programs. All this based on a bilateral governmental agreement between our two countries. No wonder the South Korean embassy in Prague is trying to actively enhance South Korean influence in the Czech Republic. They have a strong competitor here.

As for North Koreans living in the Czech Republic, there is naturally not much information on this matter available. We know for sure that there are students from North Korea coming for exchange programs based on agreements between particular universities (Interestingly enough, by the way, if you wish to get your foreign diploma acknowledged at a Czech university, you can do so easily if you have one from North Korea as thanks to old communist education laws North Korea is still on the list of "acknowledged" countries, unlike the USA for example, from where it will take months to get anything acknowledged in the Czech Republic). Then of course there's the embassy, with most of the staff speaking fluent Czech (North Korean Czech – so called Bohemian – studies have always been very strong) and an ambassador who regularly gives public lectures (interestingly, under the umbrella of Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs). What deserves our attention, though, is a group of Czechs supporting North Korea who made themselves a civic organization called 'Baektusan' which fuels the pro-North Korean attitude widely found among the Czech communist party members.

NK News: To wrap up, what do you think is the future of North Korea, and do you think you will continue focusing on it?

J.H: I believe North Korea will remain a highly interesting topic for all Korean Studies scholars and I personally think that any kind of serious research done about it is valid. I don't belong to those Pyongyang observers who claim that there must be a rapid change any time soon as the current situation is unsustainable (I actually think it is very sustainable for the current leadership – and considering the various crisis our today's world is going through these days, one may even describe it as very stable), but I am convinced that when the time of any chance comes (and it may be a rather subtle process itself), it will come in really handy to have any sort of experience or connection to North Korean environment, perhaps by having participated at Kim Il-Sung´s summer university camp, or simply being from the country where most of the Pyongyang tram cars come from!...

Stari nudi red srbovanja, red komodifikacije, susret Slavoja Žižeka i Siniše Pavića, Googlea i jagodinskog SNSa.

http://novinenovosadske.rs/mladi-referenti/

Smešne stvari koje su se desile na putu za Glasnik.

http://novinenovosadske.rs/novo-odelo-srpske-inteligencije/

An enormously ambitious, visually stunning and richly satisfying futuristic epic from the gifted Korean genre director Bong Joon-ho.
Scott Foundas
Chief Film Critic @foundasonfilm   

Two decades into a second Ice Age, a few thousand human survivors live out their days aboard a state-of-the-art luxury train in "Snowpiercer," an enormously ambitious, visually stunning and richly satisfying futuristic epic from the gifted Korean genre director Bong Joon-ho ("The Host," "Memories of Murder"). A rare high-end sci-fi/fantasy pic made completely outside the studio system, and that even rarer case of an acclaimed foreign helmer working in English with no appreciable loss of his distinctive visual and storytelling style, Bong's adaptation of French graphic novel "Le Transperceneige" reps a pricey investment ($40 million) for majority producer CJ Entertainment, but seems a downright bargain compared with the cost of forging such pics on Hollywood turf. A heavy marketing blitz combined with Bong and co-star Song Kang-ho's considerable fan bases will drive strong biz at home (where the pic opens Aug. 1), if less than the whopping $64 million earned by "The Host" in 2006 — until recently, Korea's all-time box office champ.

Offshore, "Snowpiercer" poses a somewhat trickier marketing challenge, given its hybrid art-movie/blockbuster nature, lack of audience familiarity with the source material, and the untested drawing power of top-billed Chris Evans outside his Captain America suit. But clever positioning along the lines of Sony's campaign for the much less starry "District 9," plus an assuredly warm fanboy reception, could just do the trick. The Weinstein Co., which controls the film for all English-speaking territories, has yet to announce a U.S. release date or major festival premiere.

Adapted by Bong and Kelly Masterson ("Before the Devil Knows Your Dead") from the 1982 graphic novel by authors Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette, "Snowpiercer" has been brought to the screen with the kind of solid narrative craftsmanship, carefully drawn characters and — above all — respect for the audience's intelligence rarely encountered in high-concept genre cinema except when directors like James Cameron, Christopher Nolan and Guillermo del Toro are at the helm. Indeed, Bong's film owes something to "Titanic" in its vision of a crowded passenger vessel that functions as an elaborate microcosm of society itself, complete with all the same top-down class distinctions, only here rendered tip to tail. Oh, and ice presents no obstacle for the Snowpiercer; it smashes right through great, arctic blocks of the stuff as it circumnavigates our now-frozen planet on a high-altitude railway.

The train and the track are both the inventions of Wilford, a billionaire industrialist dismissed as a crank in his day but now having the last laugh, his unseen, Oz-like presence looming large over the denizens of the Snowpiercer and inspiring a fanatical degree of devotion in his fascistic minions (led by Tilda Swinton's hilariously grotesque Mason, with pudding-thick Yorkshire accent and upper bridge work that speaks especially ill of British dental care). We begin in the caboose, where the great, soot-faced, Dickensian masses jostle for space and rumors of incipient class revolt stir the air. It isn't the first time the have-nots have attempted to take control of the train, but previous efforts failed because no one managed to make it all the way to the engine room. This time, things will be different, promises Curtis (Evans), the revolution's semi-reluctant instigator, though it's clear to see he has the makings of a sturdy prole hero.

For a while, cryptic messages have been arriving concealed in the gelatinous protein bars that serve as the stomach-churning staple of the "back of the train" diet, convincing Curtis and his wise, disabled mentor, Gilliam (John Hurt), that someone at the front of the train is spurring them on. One such message encourages them to free a Korean security expert, Namgoong Minsu (Song), from custody in the train's prison car. But Minsu, wonderfully and inventively played by Song as an ornery, bedraggled self-preservationist, drives a hard bargain. He agrees to help only if his imprisoned daughter (Ko Asung, who also played Song's plucky daughter in "The Host") can tag along — and if each of them is rewarded with a fix of the hallucinogenic drug kronole for every door they manage to open. (The character, who speaks only in Korean, is able to communicate with the others via a two-way, voice-activated translation machine.)

Thus, armed with a few homemade weapons, Curtis and his band of ragtag revolutionaries (including Jamie Bell as Curtis' loyal adjutant and Octavia Spencer as a mother searching for her missing child) begin their journey forward. At which point "Snowpiercer" sheds the close-quarters claustrophobia of the first half (which nods to such classic cinematic railway fare as "The Narrow Margin" and "Runaway Train") in favor of a more expansive vision.

Built on gimbals on a series of interconnected soundstages at Prague's Barrandov Studios, the train itself is a triumph of visual imagination for Bong and production designer Ondrej Nekvasil ("The Illusionist"), with each successive car revealing a new, surprising facet of this eerie, self-sustaining ecosystem: one a lush greenhouse, another a giant aquarium, yet another a Disney-on-acid classroom presided over by a creepily cheerful schoolmarm (Alison Pill). Gradually, color and light enter the heretofore monochrome frames, along with our first real glimpses of the outside world and its infinite permafrost. The further forward the rebels travel, the more decadent the surroundings get, until we arrive at the very front of the train and its blithe one-percenters, who seem to have been deposited direct from New Year's Eve at the Overlook Hotel (a connection made explicit by Al Bowlly singing "Midnight the Stars and You" on pic's soundtrack).

Along the way, various impediments arrive, mostly in the form of Wilford's sizable personal militia, whose first major standoff with Curtis and company is a brilliantly staged rumble that coincides with the train's passage through an extended tunnel, shrouding the combatants in near-total darkness. Like most of the key actions scenes, it's executed in moodier, more impressionistic fashion than the whiplash-inducing likes of "Man of Steel" and "The Avengers." Making a particularly menacing impression as one of Wilford and Mason's head henchmen, without ever uttering a single word of dialogue, is Romanian thesp Vlad Ivanov (best known for playing the abortionist Mr. Bebe in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days").

Throughout, Bong gets away with much that he almost surely would have had to curtail if working at an American studio. For starters, the pic's pacing is more measured than most of its type, but never slack, with lots of time taken out for nuanced, character-building scenes that increase our level of emotional involvement. Important backstories are deployed only gradually, constantly shifting our sense of who the characters are and what motivates them. (As in "The Host," too, all bets are off on who dies and who gets to live.) By the end, the film reveals itself as a surprisingly thoughtful contemplation of man's inhumanity to his fellow man, and whether mankind is worth trying to save at all. Somber stuff, to be sure, but not without flashes of hope, and a steady infusion of Bong's dark, quirky humor.

Among the generally impeccable craft contributions — including composer Marco Beltrami's excitingly big, brassy original score — only the fully CGI exterior shots of the Snowpiercer itself disappoint, with an overly animated feel that lacks the texture and verisimilitude of the best modern vfx work.
Film Review: 'Snowpiercer'
Reviewed at Magno screening room, New York, July 19, 2013. Running time: 125 MIN.
Production
(South Korea-U.S.-France) A CJ Entertainment (in Korea)/Weinstein Co. (in U.S.) release presented in association with Union Investment Partners, with the support of Ministry of Culture, Sports & Tourism/Korea Venture Investment Corp., of a Moho Film and Opus Pictures production. Produced by Jeong Tae-sung, Steven Nam, Park Chan-wook, Lee Tae-hun. Executive producer, Miky Lee. Co-producers, Robert Bernachhi, TJ Park Tae-joon, Dooho Choi, Back Jisun, Francis Chung, Matthew Stillman, David Minkowski. Co-executive producers, Kim Young-Don, Choi Pyeung Ho, Kris Ghil, Kim Hong-il, Hong Kyttack, Song Jin-kyu, Kim Byung-ki, Kim Young-kee, Kim Hyun-woo, Ahn Seung-yun, Shin Kang-yeong, Choi Kyu-nam, Lee Youn-hee, Nam Ki-moon, Kim Hak-beom, Chae Yoon.
Crew
Directed by Bong Joon-ho. Screenplay, Bong, Kelly Masterson; story, Bong, based on "Le Transperceneige" by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, Jean-Marc Rochette. Camera (color, 35mm), Hong Kyung-Pyo; editors, Steve M. Choe, Changju Kim; music, Marco Beltrami; production designer, Ondrej Nekvasil; art director, Stefan Kovacik; set decorator, Beata Brendtnerova; set designers, Adela Hakova, Petr Bouska, Darina Hejlova, Pavel Tatar, Barbara Garcia; costume designer, Catherine George; sound (Dolby Digital), Mark Holding; sound designer, Dave Whitehead; supervising sound editor, Taeyoung Choi; re-recording mixers, Taeyoung Choi, Anna Behlmer, Terry Porter; visual effects designer, Eric Durst; visual effects, Scanline VFX, Method Studios, Upp, 4th Creative Party; associate producers, Cathy Seok, Lee Sorim, Huh Soo Young, Samuel Yeunju Ha; stunt coordinator, Julian Spencer; assistant director, Robert Grayson; casting, Johanna Ray, Jenny Jue.
With
Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Ko Asung, Alison Pill, Vlad Ivanov, Luke Pasqualino, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Clark Middleton, Stephen Park, Paul Lazar. (English, Korean dialogue)

Nicolas Winding Refn nastavlja sa svojom srpskom režijom i u novom filmu ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Ako je DRIVE delovao kao holivudski debi Srđana Dragojevića onda ONLY GOD FORGIVES deluje kao internacionalni debi Srđana Spasojevića.

U ovom filmu Refn kombinuje žanrovsku pojednostavljenost filma DRIVE i portrebu da fetišizuje prirodu u društvo u kadru, i kad ima i kad nema Goslinga na sceni, uzimajući jedan petparački krimi zaplet i uzdižući ga na nivo metafizičke studije. U određenom smislu, ONLY GOD FORGIVES ima određenih auralnih sličnosti sa VALHALLA RISING, ali ti filmovi se ne mogu porediti i ovo je više nabrajanje polovnih delova koje je Refn ugradio u svoj novi rad.

Refn je novim filmom potvrdio svoju šminkersku poziciju i čini se da je vrlo brzo prokockao ne samo ono što je postigao filmom DRIVE već i mogućnost da njegov novi spoj sa Goslingom može biti potentan miks sa producente i publiku. Jedini istinski rezultat ONLY GOD FORGIVES je to što je eto dokazao da može da radi šta hoće, i da u te svrhe može povući i Goslinga, no to više deluje kao unutaresnafski potez nego kao nešto što ima ikakvog značaja za publiku i kritiku.

Osim možda malo na Miikea, Refn ne aludira previše na azijski film, iako se koristi tradicionalnim mitemama te kinematografije. Ipak, ONLY GOD FORGIVES je znatno dalje od azijskog filma nego DRIVE od američkog.

Samom činjenicom da na nivou puke bizarnosti nije prevazišao Miikea, kao što ni scenama "brutalnosti sa porukom" nije prevazišao Spasojevića, Refn je snimio jedan minoran film koji je sticajem okolnosti zbog uspeha DRIVEa prikazan široj publici nego što zaslužuje i po ambicijama i po kvalitetu.

* 1/2 / * * * *

Meni je ovaj film bio manje Miike (mada ima i njega) a više Kitano iskombinovan sa Linčom i onda sve to parodirano. Stoposto stil nula posto supstanca, prosto sam se samom sebi čudio da ga gledam. Još više sam se zapanjio kad sam video da neki američki kritičari priačaju da je film "life changing".

Uh, mislim da mu laskaš pominjući Kitana. Ipak je Kitano nešto više od svega ovoga...

Pa, i Linč je više, nema tu spora. Samo mislim da je Refn sa celom mafijaškom idejom pokušavao da čenluje Kitana, mada je istina da je gore-core koga je prikazao u par scena bliži Miikeu, ali opet, Miike bi te stvari verovatno napravio još apsurdnijim i fantastičnijim dok se Refn kao ipak drži nekog naturalizma, mada naravno prestilizovanog da bi bio propisan naturalizam.

Inače, sećaš se da sam ti poslao poruku nakon gledaja ovog filma na Blokbasteru u Sava Centru? To je zato jer se tokom filma neko na svaku glupu scenu (dakle, na svaku scenu) smejao vrlo slično tebi. Mislim da je mnogo ljudi ovaj film doživelo kao komediju.