Westercon 2004
17/09/2004 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 

Mark reports on the movies at Westercon. The trailers seemed to be better accepted by the audience than they have been at recent Worldcons, while the presentation was a little more polished - and the films seemed of a higher quality.

Buy Suspect Zero in the USA - or Buy Suspect Zero in the UK

Previews of Upcoming Films (film comments by Mark R. Leeper):

Just as the World Science Fiction Conventions have a presentation of upcoming films of possible interest to attendees, the science fiction convention Westercon this year had a program of trailers for forthcoming films. The trailers seemed to be better accepted by the audience than they have been at recent Worldcons. The presentation was a little more polished and the films seemed of a little higher quality. (Please note this article is written on the road and is based on just what I saw on the screen and remember. I have not been able to fact-check.)

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE has been remade. Jonathan Demme recycles one of America's greatest political thrillers. The new cast is good. Denzel Washington is in the Frank Sinatra role. Liev Schreiber, a very good actor who somehow is not becoming a household name, will play the Laurence Harvey part. That is certainly the tougher of the two roles. Meryl Streep will be in the role of the mother, formerly played by Angela Lansbury.

But the question everybody is asking is why remake such a fine film? What can Denzel Washington bring to this role that Sinatra did not? I am not a big fan of Sinatra but Frankenheimer got a very nicely disturbed performance from him that is deeper than the CRIMSON-TIDE-earnestness that Washington usually plays. Demme is a good director, and there is some question why he would choose to remake a classic film and one that was so good to start with. [Postscript: the film turns out to be what I call a saddlepoint. It is better than just about anything else playing and not nearly as good as the original.]

We have gotten a lot of serial-killer films. And among serial- killer films a lot of them seem to involve innocents who have some sort of psychic link to the killer. I seem to remember that after THE EYES OF LAURA MARS opened the field there were a bunch with this plot made for cable. SUSPECT ZERO is one more that retreads this plot. Ben Kingsley plays the nasty after showing in SEXY BEAST that the little guys can be scary. But it is hard to think of SUSPECT ZERO as anything special. [Postscript: I believe the plot turns out to be a psyhic serial killer serial killing serial killers.]

This first thing I thought when I saw the trailer for CELLULAR was that it is obviously a Larry Cohen story. A New Yorker article said Cohen returns to the idea of an innocent bystander connected to dastardly happenings by a telephone link. PHONE BOOTH was a recent example of his storytelling. In CELLULAR a kidnap victim, Kim Bassinger, somehow is connected to a young male innocent bystander via a cellular phone and it is up to said bystander to save her. PHONE BOOTH had little beyond the premise and did little that was impressive. I hope this is better.

The Japanese have their own traditions of ghost and demon stories. Frequently they do little short punchy ghost stories. (Aside: There is a traditional ceremony in Japan of telling 100 ghost stories at night by the light of 100 candles. After each story a candle is blown out. By the end the group is in total darkness and is just about ready to freak out. These guys KNOW how to throw a party.

But then I am a ghost story fan.) Last year I saw at a film festival a Japanese film that had not so much a single plot as a collection of related stores. It had some very startling and non-traditional images of ghostly happenings. I thought THE GRUDGE was quite effective even without much plot. It is tough to scare me with a film, but this certainly had me tense. It is only a few months old, but it has already been remade. THE GRUDGE (American version) was filmed in Japan and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar of BUFFY fame, no stranger to facing the dead.

Don't expect a lot of plot, but if it is like the original it should have jaded horror fans grabbing for the arms of their seats. Again I ask, why bother to remake a good film? Are subtitles THAT scary? (Another aside: if you like original scary films, don't look to Carpenter and Romero. Better stuff is coming from Japan.)

RESIDENT EVIL: THE APOCALYPSE is a sequel based, I believe, on a video game. Somehow the trailer does not look like it would be based on a video game. It seems to be about some sort of process to restore beauty. Something goes terribly wrong and it is creating zombies or something. It turns from a horror film to an action film. Here's hoping it is more original. Do I sound jaded?

YU-GI-OH! is Japanese anime. The trailer claims "Monsters you have never seen will be more powerful than ever." I guess if you have never seen them you can't know that they will be more powerful than ever. It must be based on the TV series. It has something to do with ancient Egypt, I think. I don't think I will find it interesting, but I probably would have loved it as a kid.

CAT WOMAN stars Halle Barry and is based on the Batman villain, I believe. It looks like another comic book superhero story. A superhero in a cat suit is just the sort of role an Oscar-winning actress would long for. [Post script: it is already in the theaters by now and most accounts are negative. The IMDB gives it 2.7/10]

If one popular series of children's books makes a successful film series, why not try another? That is the idea behind LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. Jim Carrey plays Count Orloff and several other roles in makeups that make him unrecognizable. If they were serious about making this a series they would make it a Lemony Snicket movie and not a Jim Carrey movie. It looks like a nicely crafted comedy with little series potential.

The trailer for SEED OF CHUCKY was a teaser and did not say much about the film. The audience said something about the film. It wasn't a very friendly response. Do you think this series has run its course?

I ROBOT [already released] is a summer action film inspired by the Isaac Asimov stories. Actually it is a non-Asimov story forced to have something to do with the Asimov. It is set in a world where every sixth person is a machine. Will Smith stars. You can bet you will hear the three laws of robotics, that the robots' three highest priorities are to act in humans' best interest, to be obedient, and to protect themselves. [You do hear it.] How much else can possibly be in the spirit of the Asimov stories remains to be seen, but I am skeptical. [I had good reason to be.] It looks like a standard sci-fi action film that has bad robots and which quotes the Asimov laws of robotics. [On target.]

ALEXANDER THE GREAT had a teaser reminding people who Alexander was, but did not say much more. The teaser was narrated by Anthony Hopkins. With the failure of KING ARTHUR, I suspect the producers of this film are having some sleepless nights.

Somewhere in Borneo young scientific explorers are looking for a Fountain of Youth and instead run into ANACONDAS through the magic of CGI. If you want snake films they seem to find a new one to run on the sci-fi channel every 27 minutes. I think two weeks after this film is released they will have BOA VS. ANACONDA.

Part of what made ALIEN good was that it was about a creature that had nothing to do with Earth. It was just out in space. However now we are told Alien has been on Earth all along in a pyramid deep under the Antarctic. Predator is there also. Fox owns both Alien and Predator monsters, which are somewhat similar monsters. Already there have been novels and comic books having them fight each other. Now they have gone the whole way and made a film: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR. Luckily they didn't own Chucky or it would be ALIEN VS. PREDATOR VS. CHUCKY. Monster matches have never made very good films since Frankenstein met the Wolf Man and didn't hit it off.

There was an uninformative teaser for THE SPONGBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW was originally due out June 25. Visually it looks super, particularly for those nine of us who appreciated THE ROCKETEER. It is set in the world of the future as seen from the 1930s. In the era of the Depression people looked for optimism inspired by recently completed engineering marvels like the Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building. Fiction fantasized about giant robots and strange flying machines in the future and Depression-era kids ate it up. This film plays off that feel and sense of wonder and I am willing to go with it. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow star in an adventure set in that sort of future. Potentially I could like this film a lot or it could go clunk.

POLAR EXPRESS is a Santa Claus Christmas fantasy taking its visual style from some very nice children's book covers. Tom Hanks does multiple voices. The visual style looks good, but I have reservations about the candy-flavored story.

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE [already out] is a comedy about and aimed at college stoner kids. The director previously did HEY DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? [I have not seen it, but there are good words about this film.]

CONSTANTINE is another horror film having something to do with the devil. For those who think we need another horror film having something to do with the devil and a supernatural detective who has been to hell and back. The source is the HELLBLAZER comic book.

THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING is another horror film having something to do with the devil. This is a film about what went before the events of the 1973 film. Don't trust me on EXORCIST films. I actually thought there was some good stuff in the second film.

Julianne Moore has a son who disappears and nobody but her remembers him. Photos that previously showed him no longer include him. Is it mass amnesia, someone fooling with the time stream, or what? Didn't they use this idea on the Twilight Zone episode "And When the Sky Was Opened" with returning astronauts disappearing? This film is called THE FORGOTTEN.

THE INCREDIBLES has a short teaser about what appears to be an over-the-hill super-hero, the father of a whole family of super-heroes. He apparently is called back into superservice. It is Pixar so it probably will be good.

On very little evidence, I am most looking forward to SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. And I can recommend the original THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE for those who don't mind black and white. Also the original THE GRUDGE for those who don't mind subtitles.

Mark R Leeper

(c) Mark R Leeper 2004 - all rights reserved