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DOGS AND MONSTERS
Aug. 7th, 2011 09:11 amBeen watching the cinemas. Results: mixed.
Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night
Hollywood’s version of the Italian comic book series by Tiziano Sclavi involving Dylan, a private eye specializing in the supernatural, with vampires, zombies and werewolves as his clientele. And it says a lot that the filmmakers can take a set-up that promising and completely fail to capitalize on it.
It’s not the worst film I’ve seen this year, but it’s hard to think of anything good to say about it. There’s some decent zombie jokes, and Peter Stormare doing one of his weird accents, and Kurt Angle as a werewolf named Wolfgang and … well, that’s about it. The script is full of private-eye clichés and clumsy narration that somehow manages to telegraph the entire premise and background of the film (rather than just allowing anything in the film’s mythology to unfold for itself) and still fail to sufficiently explain it. And then there’s Brandon Routh, who fails to make Dylan even the least bit unique or interesting, unless smirking and brooding interest you.
Maybe the biggest complaint I have is that it didn’t have to be this way. I’ve never insisted on films being 100% faithful to the original material, but in this case it could only have helped. The Dylan Dog comics are rich with good material to work with, both in terms of the title character and its approach to the supernatural, but the scriptwriters don’t really take advantage of any of them. All up, a lost opportunity to do something different.
Monsters
Low-budget indie film in which northern Mexico is quarantined after being “infected” by aliens following a NASA space shuttle crash, and photojournalist Andrew must escort his boss’s daughter Samantha through the infected zone back to the US.
Which would be exciting if it were an SF action movie. It’s not – writer/director Gareth Edwards intentionally wanted the alien infestation as a fact-of-life backdrop rather than the central problem for Andrew and Samantha to solve, which is a nice twist to the usual alien/monster film. The downside is that without the novelty of aliens, it’s basically an indie romance with Two-People-Who-Don’t-Like-Each-Other-But-Will-Be-In-Love-By-The-End-Of-The-Film, and a fairly pedestrian one at that.
But in terms of craftsmanship, it’s pretty impressive if you know that the entire film was shot guerilla-style with improvised dialogue on a budget of half a million dollars, with all of the special effects done by Edwards himself on a laptop with Autodesk 3ds Max. So I’ll give it points for great execution, as well as for the daring genre twist.
DIY,
This is dF
Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night
Hollywood’s version of the Italian comic book series by Tiziano Sclavi involving Dylan, a private eye specializing in the supernatural, with vampires, zombies and werewolves as his clientele. And it says a lot that the filmmakers can take a set-up that promising and completely fail to capitalize on it.
It’s not the worst film I’ve seen this year, but it’s hard to think of anything good to say about it. There’s some decent zombie jokes, and Peter Stormare doing one of his weird accents, and Kurt Angle as a werewolf named Wolfgang and … well, that’s about it. The script is full of private-eye clichés and clumsy narration that somehow manages to telegraph the entire premise and background of the film (rather than just allowing anything in the film’s mythology to unfold for itself) and still fail to sufficiently explain it. And then there’s Brandon Routh, who fails to make Dylan even the least bit unique or interesting, unless smirking and brooding interest you.
Maybe the biggest complaint I have is that it didn’t have to be this way. I’ve never insisted on films being 100% faithful to the original material, but in this case it could only have helped. The Dylan Dog comics are rich with good material to work with, both in terms of the title character and its approach to the supernatural, but the scriptwriters don’t really take advantage of any of them. All up, a lost opportunity to do something different.
Monsters
Low-budget indie film in which northern Mexico is quarantined after being “infected” by aliens following a NASA space shuttle crash, and photojournalist Andrew must escort his boss’s daughter Samantha through the infected zone back to the US.
Which would be exciting if it were an SF action movie. It’s not – writer/director Gareth Edwards intentionally wanted the alien infestation as a fact-of-life backdrop rather than the central problem for Andrew and Samantha to solve, which is a nice twist to the usual alien/monster film. The downside is that without the novelty of aliens, it’s basically an indie romance with Two-People-Who-Don’t-Like-Each-Other-But-Will-Be-In-Love-By-The-End-Of-The-Film, and a fairly pedestrian one at that.
But in terms of craftsmanship, it’s pretty impressive if you know that the entire film was shot guerilla-style with improvised dialogue on a budget of half a million dollars, with all of the special effects done by Edwards himself on a laptop with Autodesk 3ds Max. So I’ll give it points for great execution, as well as for the daring genre twist.
DIY,
This is dF
