Peter Jackson: Extortionist and Megalomaniac

http://news.yahoo.com/hobbits-superheroes-put-magic-nz-film-industry-054242009.html

In my humanitarian effort to expose Peter Jackson for the insufferable megalomaniac he is, I post this recent article. It proves how this furry Orc has bee

n allowed the power to literally shackle the film industry in New Zealand.

First, he tries to get away with underpaying screen actors, then extorts the union by threatening to take the Hobbit films abroad to Eastern Europe. Well played, Sir Peter! He would rather see movie workers starve than pay them their due.

Furthermore -- and this is the scary part! -- he invites Warner Bros. executives to a pow-wow with the Prime Minister, who then CHANGES THE LAW so that movie workers are exempt from being treated as regular employees, thereby removing any protection afforded them by labor laws!!!!

Not to mention the question of animal rights abuse. Next thing Sir Peter will want is for his employees to yell, "Heil Jackson"! In a world that seems to produce more and more tyrants, Jackson has etched his own private empire in a corner of the world and strangled New Zealand's film industry like a real-life Saruman. And all this power achieved through another man's creation, namely Tolkien. He doesn't have a single creative bone in his body. He should be boycotted. He will probably singlehandedly ruin the entire film economy in New Zealand before he's done.

The Failure of Jackson's upcoming Hobbit Trilogy

Why isn't Smaug in The Hobbit trailer? Simple. There is no confidence in Peter Jackson to deliver a truly successful film. It's no wonder. His track record demonstrates fiscal failure.

The truth is New Line did not want Jackson ever to make another Tolkien film and rightly so. He seriously botched the budget on the LOTR trilogy so that despite the huge returns the actual profit was marginalized, although this will never be publicly admitted. Then the bastard has the balls to SUE New Line for more money after he screwed things up to begin with. The ONLY reason he's still attached to the project is thanks to his own cronie-ism at MGM.

They're once again counting on Tolkien fans to convince the studios they will recoup their extraordinary investment. But THIS TIME they want a guarantee and that's why they're extending this into a trilogy. They want box office receipts for the first films to legitimize an investment in following through with the finale. They do not have the investment capital or the supporting structure of graphic artists they got for practically free the first time around to make Smaug a digital reality on the big screen. Nobody's buying the farce this time that just being associated with a Tolkien film is going to guarantee them future work.

Jackson and his cronies are so desperate, they went behind the backs of the New Zealand Screen Actor's Guild to avoid paying proper union rates. Once they were caught, they threatened to take the production to Eastern Europe so the union would recapitulate given the millions New Zealand would lose if the production was taken elsewhere. Keep burning bridges, Jackson. It all catches up eventually.

And Christopher Tolkien is an ingrate who WHORED his father's dear work just like his father knew he would do and wrote about in "The New Shadow" and "The Lost Road." So - very - sad.

Kubrick's Inner Truth

I already heard about the moon landings being faked but I didn't know the Apollo 11 footage was shot by my favorite director, Stanley Kubrick. It makes sense. He was working on Space Odyssey at the same time. And it was around that time that he went from a clean-shaven suit-wearing class act to a scruffy, withdrawn Peter Jackson-type.

Everyone knows that his film The Shining deviates significantly from Stephen King's novel in a lot of odd details. There is a lot of Apollo 11 symbology in that film apparently. I studied Kubrick's career myself and know for a fact that he loved lacing symbols into his films. Some people suggest Kubrick used the King novel as a front to tell the story of how his involvement in the Apollo 11 hoax nearly destroyed his marriage, something he clearly revisits in his last film Eyes Wide Shut.

No wonder he was never allowed to work in the Hollywood studio system again. Kubrick became another warrior in the fight to open our eyes. I knew I liked him for a reason. Everyone at some point comes face-to-face with true evil and must make a choice. To pretend otherwise is delusional

Should Peter Jackson's _The Hobbit_ film be a trilogy?

The momentum of a single ongoing story is lost in a trilogy of films because of how much time it takes them to crank out a film versus a TV series. And also because the whole experience is different. Films are spectacle-driven while a good TV series is character-driven. While there are plenty of opportunities for spectacle in The Hobbit, it's really a character and argument-driven piece. Bilbo's conversations with Gandalf, Gollum, Smaug and Thorin, not to mention his own inner musings, are really what made us fall in love with hobbits in the first place and make it an endearing, classical work of fantasy literature.

Peter Jackson is NOT a filmmaker suited for fantasy or epics. His King Kong remake was awful. He was incapable of connecting us with the personal anguish of King Kong and so the spectacle falls flat. However, he's great with visceral imagery and should stick to horror. In that respect I would consider him superior to Tim Burton, whose brand of films are creepy because they reflect a disturbed childhood rather than a cohesive approach towards the horror/thriller genre, ie. Alice in Wonderland and Willy Wonka. Jackson's most successful scene in all of LOTR is the confrontation with Shelob. It combines epic fantasy action and CG effects with a gritty, visceral look that makes the physical dynamics of the struggle with the giant spider believable as an experience.

Tolkien's work is driven by linguistics and landscape. It is epic fantasy storytelling at its most meticulous and evocative. Ridley Scott is the one director who has proven that while he falls short with characters, he can create an entire world out of nothing. Perhaps James Cameron as well, although I'm not a fan of Avatar. Personally, I'd want Martin Scorsese to direct The Hobbit, since he's debuted successfully into the fantasy genre with Hugo and, as a true Italian director, knows how to get performances out of his actors that bring to life compelling characters onscreen.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I

Something compelled me to watch Atlas Shrugged: Part I, even though I could tell from the trailer that it was poorly shot with mediocre acting. That’s because I’d heard of the book it’s based on and was curious to experience the message behind it. It is very provocative and scary. The implications, that is, not the movie. Conspiracy theorists and ex-Illuminati like John Todd have mentioned that the book is a code for the steps to world domination by conquering America.

In Part I, we witness a woman’s grueling effort to save her family’s railroad line, while key personnel in her company and in the financing world vanish mysteriously. And suddenly the enigmatic one-liner (“Who is John Galt?”) keeps popping up all over the place. After succeeding to re-build her Colorado rail line with a new steel alloy, despite the metal being publicly denounced as unsafe, she finds one of her major investors has disappeared and torched his own oil reserve.

The idea here is for entrepreneurs to bankrupt their own companies as a form of going on strike against a government that penalizes them for being successful in bringing innovation and wealth to their companies and the nation. Sound familiar? Ultimately, the problem here is that John Galt is the demonic high priest himself and is wielding sound reason (as he tends to) to lead these men to their doom and usher in a New World Order that doesn’t promise to be any better than the previous one. In fact, it is the answer to problems purposely created in order to advance its own coming about.

It is important for us to be aware of this and for that reason it is good to watch this movie, despite its cheap production and lackluster storytelling, but we must do so with a properly critical and well-informed mind. I personally no longer like to delve into any popular writing without an understanding of the framework within which its writer is operating. Because all writing is fiction. Fact is a myth. Truth is all we can hope for. And in any writing it is the mind of the writer we are in actuality becoming acquainted with. We learn more about that writer’s inner circle and what they’re up to and how they view the world than we do about anything natural or spiritual. The natural and spiritual have to be experienced. But writing is the most powerful form of magic and can transform our collective consciousness and therefore the world. I’ve been curious about this book because of who the author is and who she was affiliated with.

In any case, the film is dull, boring and its message is dreary and depressing so far. I can only watch it because I have a fascination in understanding the nasty depravity of my enemy and so it’s not time wasted. After watching it, I felt quite reflective about where we’re heading in the world right now and came up with the thoughts I now add below:

We are in the birth throes of an age that has never been before and never will again: the Age of Deep Disillusion, in which nothing new will be created, ideas will be outlawed, and acts of faith condemned as crimes against humanity.

It will also be a time of fortitude, solidarity and distinction among men once again based on virtues and deeds, rather than wealth and ruses.

A strong undercurrent of resistance shall stand on its own. They will feed the fires of revolution and keep the human spirit alive.

A beautiful rose amidst thorns of cruelty.

Soderbergh's Contagion not so contagious

I like Soderbergh; I do. I don't know why. He's awful. I mean his cinematography? Phhbt! He makes documentaries in narrative, barely. But he knows how to get A-list actors to jump on his bandwagon, and surprisingly, although it is for show and publicity, it works. He did it in Ocean's Eleven; he did it in Traffic; and he did it in Out of Sight; he's been doing it forever. And it works. Okay, I'll be honest, I love his two-part biopic Che starring Benicio Del Toro, the one living and currently active actor that makes me proud to be half-Puerto Rican. Martin Scorsese makes me very proud to be half-Italian. But here's the thing: Che was a great film, one of those films that you knew would NEVER get done if not for the driven commitment of a visionary--and that was Soderbergh. Che also proved that his documentary-style can work when the right elements are in place. So he CAN do it; he just needs to understand when it's going to be effective. Contagion was not.

Great performances, by the way. Very even keel. Laurence Fishburne, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. All very professional; all well and good. But so what?! Where is the story, man? It plays the way it reads, like an article in any respectable magazine. Contagion is about what could very well happen if we had another outbreak like SARS or the bird flu blow up into a worldwide pandemic. That's it. It didn't get further developed than that. It started out ominously enough; I thought I was in for something BIG. The momentum built up to a looming crisis of monumental proportions. But then it was like the ending to every Shakespeare play: Soderbergh said, "I give up. I don't know what comes next. All these story arcs, all this character development. Let's just wrap it up with a big bow on top. After all, we don't really want people thinking this will happen." Hmm, come on, man, you've come a long way already in your career. Take a risk. If that's the case I much rather see over-the-top films where everything goes to hell and we're fighting for our dear life against zombies. Because you know what? That's most likely what WILL happen!

BOTTOM LINE: If you want a conscientious thriller wrapped up with a happy ending so you won't go paranoid and buy gallons of hand sanitizer and stock up on canned foods, watch this. But if you missed it, you didn't miss much. Class-act performances for the sake of class-act performances are not enough to give a compartmentalized film replay value.

The Way to our hearts, or simply the way Out

The Way is a film by Emilio Estevez, starring his father Martin Sheen that came out last October.  It's about an old man whose son passes away in a bad storm while on a Christian pilgrimage from the French Pyrenees to Galicia across northwest Spain. The old man assumes the pilgrimage, known as El Camino, to fulfill his son's wish and discovers that in doing so he communes with his deceased son and gets to know him in death like he never had in life. 

You can tell it was shot digital and Estevez doesn’t have much of an eye for camera framing or vistas, which is what I look forward to in films where the protagonists spend most of their time traveling, especially when it’s on foot. But the editing is seemless and the characters so odd, disparate and genuine that I found myself being slowly drawn into the mystique of the film. And I’m glad to have found it has one.

Although the slower pacing is not unfamiliar to those of us who have watched European films, I could see it boring anyone who’s not the staunchest of avid film enthusiasts and that’s truly a shame, because this film is worth watching; yes, maybe even more than once. Estevez does know what he’s doing as he builds on the momentum, not necessarily of the plot but, of the emotions behind these characters during the journey with such sincerity and serenity that I did find myself overwhelmed by my own catharsis at the end of the road. What’s great about films like this that can afford to take their time is that you truly feel that you experienced the journey with the characters.

The European actors were well-cast, too. It reminds me of the days when the French auteurs spoke of mise-en-scene and the Italian directors staunchly believed in using non-actors. They were just natural, themselves. It was refreshing. Along the way, Estevez gives us a plain and true look at the provincial Europeans, which I'm personally familiar with but can see how alien it must look to an American audience. So much talk about history and poetry! So many nuances and an entire underground culture of people like the gypsies.

Most importantly, there is an actual story here. I think we've all forgotten what's that like in the past decade with the bombardment of spectacle, CG effects and comic book recreations on the big screen. We get so used to lunacy bubble-wrapped in THX noise and 3D-o-rama that watching a film with a beginning, middle and end feels jaunting, but in a very good way. Estevez says it himself (and I couldn't agree more) that audiences are telling Hollywood they want fresh, new ideas. Kudos to him for taking that risk with this film. It's certainly one I'd want to see with my family and for kids to see as they're growing up.

BOTTOM LINE: Poignant film about loss and reconnecting with one’s own spirituality. The pace is slow but if you like films where a small group of people become fast friends in a journey of mutual commitment, like me, you’re going to love this one!