Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Apes, Overlords, Ringworlds and The Great Gulf Between The Haves And Have Nots

AintItCool has quite a few interesting news items posted.

The latest big screen version of Tarzan, with Harry Potter film veteran David Yates slated as director, has been put "on hold."  Sad news indeed, as just last year marked the 100th anniversary of the first publication of the seminal pulp story "Tarzan of the Apes."  I wonder if they will ever be able to put on screen images that capture the wonder and awe of some of those great illustrated covers to the many Tarzan novels and comics, featuring the work of such luminaries as, for example, Neal Adams and Joe Jusko

Director Neil Blomkamp's upcoming Elysium finally gets a trailer.  Just as with his District 9, this new film looks to be visually amazing, with a timely and thought-provoking story.  Maybe this movie can get the utterly stupid Meet Dave out of my brain.

And SyFy is stepping up the SciFi with two planned mini-series of classic science fiction tales from two of the greats: Ringworld by Larry Niven and Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.  Holy cow!  This is truly amazing as SyFy has always seemed to shun classic scifi material, especially with their longstanding deal with The Asylum to air that "mockbuster" studio's crapload of ripoffs of big budget studio summer fare such as Transmorphers (to ape Transformers), Alien Origin (Prometheus) and American Warship (Battleship). 

True, SyFy did have the foresight to give the greenlight to Ronald D. Moore's reworked Battlestar Galactica, for which we will be eternally grateful, and therefore, give SyFy some serious wiggle room.  But I have never liked SyFy's fantasy miniseries, such as Tin Man.  They felt to me as simply "TV fare" and not very good TV fare at that, never breaking out of that mold with truly interesting characters, or amazing turns by actors, or with compelling stories.




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