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Unknown White Male (Script) – Review

Unknown White Male (Script) – Review

Here comes another script review for you guys this week with Unknown White Male.
This thriller will star Liam Neeson. It’s supposed to be his next project once he completes The A-Team and Clash of the Titans.

The script was written by Oliver Butcher & Stephen Cornwell (the guys behind Guy Ritchie’s next movie, The Gamekeeper), with some revisions by Dead Like Me‘s Karl Gajdusek. The story is based on Didier Van Cauwelaert’s French novel Hors de moi (published under the title Out of My Head in the US). Unlike in the book, the movie isn’t set in Paris but in Berlin (money, money, money).

What’s it about? Well, it centers on Dr. Martin Harris, a botanist who arrives in Berlin with his wife Liz for a conference (he has been invited to speak at the “World Biotechnology Forum”). After forgetting something at the airport, he takes a taxi back to get it. His plans are cut short however when the car crashes into a river. His life is saved by the mysterious taxi driver, Gina. Martin wakes up in a hospital; three days have passed while he was in a coma. He discovers that another man (Martin B) has taken his identity and has replaced him in every way. Even Liz, the wife, doesn’t seem to recognize her husband.
Lost in a foreign country with no papers, a small amount of cash, and no way back, the “real” Martin tries to uncover the truth behind the most extreme case of identity theft ever. He also seem to have some killers going after him for some reason.
Has our hero gone completely off the rails (is he who he thinks he is), or is there really a giant conspiracy trying to replace him?

At first glance this looks like an interesting thriller with some paranoiac elements echoing The Game. We’re also quickly thrown into the action with the crash already happening around page five.
That said, this is no Taken. In Unknown White Male, I wouldn’t say Neeson kicks lots of asses, as we’re talking more of a deadly cat-and-mouse game throughout Berlin (involving at one point a train colliding with a Land Rover, “pushing the mangled wreck along the tracks into a tunnel [in] a tail of sparks”). The motto here is more “run and hide from the bad guys” than “go hunt them”.
It takes also a lot of time to get decent answers to some of the stuff going on. For the most part it feels like a long chase with no end in sight.
In a way, it looked like a cross between UPN’s 1995 Bruce Greenwood series, Nowhere Man (virtually the same basic premise), and especially a “reverse” Jason Bourne (mainly the first one). It’s kind of a giant mash-up between those two stories only set in Berlin.
Martin even has his own foreign female side-kick that later becomes a love interest and helps him uncover the truth. Whereas in Jason Bourne it was Franka Potente’s Marie, here it’s the character of Gina. Not much originality unfortunately.

And this brings me to two of the main points I want to make about the film.
First, about half-way through the story, the movie shifts tone into a more spy-based thriller. The “real” Martin seems to be hunted by a unit (named Section 15) described by one of the characters as:

Freelance, deniable. They’d work for whoever would pay – public sector, private sector. Second-to-none in their planning and efficiency. They never failed. What’s more, they were invisible. They’d strike, and nobody would even know there had been foul play.

To be clear, we’re talking about an elite assassin squad known for its secrecy. Yet, in the film, we’re witnesses to dozens of murders, crashes, and explosions. So what gives? I mean that’s what I’d call a hell of a mess to clean.
Also, there is this whole deal about the Biotech conference that is never really explained. Even though it is hinted around the end that one of the character’s research was around the “development of a new strain of corn to be made available worldwide without patent or copyright costs,” it still does not justify some of the actions made by a few of the main characters (going back to that “mess” thing).
Now, the second comment concerns a major twist that occurs about two-third into the movie.
I won’t say what it is exactly because it’s pretty major in the storyline, but like The Game’s final twist, this is a revelation that makes you reevaluate the whole shebang. The surprise is so big that it might be hard to swallow for some.
It even stretches this “reverse” Jason Bourne comparison to the max as you’ll see (when the film comes out, you cheat). And if you really, really, want to know the twist, go read the book’s last pages.

Overall, this was a decent read, but the finished product might look like a poor man’s Jason Bourne.
Shooting for Unknown White Male is slated to start around January in Berlin. As said above, Liam Neeson is set to star as the “real” Martin Harris. No clue as of now on who will play Martin B, Liz, or Gina. Joel Silver’s Dark Castle is producing the pic with a release date around 2011.

Avatar Day or how I tasted the 3-D revolution

Avatar Day or how I tasted the 3-D revolution

I’m just back from seeing the 15-minute preview of James Cameron’s Avatar and one word comes to mind: gorgeous.


Wiggle your big toe!
We were able to see six very intense scenes in 3-D from the movie’s first half.
A quick note regarding the story: I didn’t expect much beforehand so I wasn’t disappointed on that part. It looks like a “green futuristic Pocahontas.”
Nothing more, nothing else.

Yesterday, I said I was going to wait until after Avatar Day to see the 2-D version of the teaser trailer, thinking the teaser would look pale in comparison to the true result. Looks like I was correct.
Indeed, the 2-D version is, dare I say, awful. Too flat, too unrealstic, too CGI. A video-game of sorts, like Crysis but on screen.
However, the 3-D end-product transcends everything you might expect.

Here it is folks: the most immersive movie in History.

Yes, that’s what over 120 years of technology have led up to.
I’ll refer you back to my November post about how “3-D will be introduced in 2009.”
If you think about what all those technological advancements in the entertainment industry were for, the answer is simple: realism.
With the use of sound, color, and now 3-D, mimicking the real was always the main goal of cinema.
And this is real enough, folks.
The CGI is so advanced that its uncanny valley equivalent has been skipped. Sure, we’re not talking about fake-humans here, this is no Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but the Na’vi skin and eyes are more than convincing. There’s no dead-eye syndrome either.
The movie seems to have completely immersive CGI aesthetics that perfectly blend in with the raw footage. Though you can obviously guess what was added (answer: everything non-human), it is still extremely realistic.
The night scenes are absolutely amazing, same goes for the fauna. Colors were vivid, despite the use of darkening glasses.

I might seem overly enthusiastic about the movie but I had two problems with the footage (hey, there had to be some):
The first scene we got to see was one only involving humans, and presented to us the world we were about to enter. As the camera was dollying in, the depth of field created by the 3-D camera felt too…forced. It was almost problematic. Basically, it looked to me like the technology seems to work great with CGI-based sceneries and scenes with some human/CGI interaction (like above), but seemingly not that well with “semi-raw” footage (or rather scenes only involving human interaction in normal surroundings).
Given that about 40% of the movie should be live-action, I’m still waiting to make up my mind regarding Cameron’s use of 3-D in non-VFX scenes.
Probably the main disappointment however came from the main action sequence featured in the preview (a chase between Jake Sully and an alien creature through a forest). The camera and editing were way too quick. The scene was almost all a blur. With 3-D, eyesight cannot really adapt to the various depths.
Also another minor quarrel: Given that I saw the preview in Paris, the movie was subtitled (fortunately not dubbed). You might have noticed the use of subtitles yourself during the native Na’vi language as well as its Papyrus font. They were pretty distracting overall. The eye has to deal with the subs in the forefront, plus the whole movie behind with its own depth of field.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering, theatres aren’t being equipped with Avatar-only technology. It’s your standard run-of-the-mill modern 3-D tech, including XpanD glasses (the ones you might have used on Up).


Incidentally, Cameron has just inked a deal with Panasonic to help promote 3-D TV and 3-D Blu-Ray players. The home video business plan for Avatar will be extremely interesting to see…
That said, what separates Avatar from previous movies is its use of the revolutionary Fusion/Reality Camera System 1 developed by James Cameron and Vince Pace allowing groundbreaking stereoscopic imaging.

Remember when I said:

If [typical 2-D movies were meant for 3-D], something huge would have been missing from the first time we laid eyes on them.

Avatar is exactly that.
Seeing the 2-D trailer just shows how great the gap between the two “dimensions” is.
Even on a big screen, I doubt Avatar 2-D would visually work, or at the very least if it would be as immersive as 3-D.
James Cameron clearly revolutionizes 3-D not by the way it is made but by the way it is used.
We’re far from Journey to the Center of the Earth or My Bloody Valentine with their “gimmicky” use of the tech.

We’ll just have to see the 2-hour result on December 18th.

Mad Men: Demystifying the overhyped

Mad Men: Demystifying the overhyped

As my Twitter followers can attest, I’ve been recently complaining about Mad Men, or rather all the attention the show is getting.

Don’t worry, zero spoilers ahead.
If you have never watched the show, you are also very welcomed to read the following rant.

Mad Men is certainly amongst the best show currently airing on TV, no doubt about that.
In my mind however, it’s certainly not the greatest show ever though.
With four out of five possible Emmy writing noms and not a single negative article about it out there, the series sure seems like the greatest thing ever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we have our new Sopranos.

By that I mean a good TV show that is by most people considered the greatest show in television history, forever and ever.
The writing is so good, and the stories are so deep, and the symbolism is mind-blowing, and this can go on, and on, and on…

Probably the straw that broke the Camel Cigarette’s back is Bruce Handy’s Vanity Fair piece on Mad Men.
It seems as if we’re talking about some piece of art that should be hung in a museum and Weiner is the greatest genius ever.

Let’s take a look at where this article went wrong and why I do think Mad Men is overhyped.

Off the bat, we’re told an average episode costs a “measly” $2.8 million. I know we’re talking historical accuracy et al., but I think we can all agree that about 80% of the show takes place inside, with at least half of that time spent in the same office/soundstage.
To compare, Lost’s pilot episode was around $10 million and is considered the most expensive pilot in TV history.

Despite all of this, Matthew Weiner seems to be complaining about this “budget constraint”:

I’m of the persuasion that budget contraints are very, very good for creativity. I think people having unlimited amounts of money makes you really lazy. And I will be quoted on that, believe it or not.

The article also underlines even more to what extent Weiner is a control freak, not only on the décor, costumes and props (which is understandable since this is a period piece), but also on the various scripts.

Reading this article, one might have thought Weiner is writing the whole show by himself, if not for the following small parenthesis on the last page of the article:

(Despite the impression I may have given, TV is never a one-man show.)

Oh, and that other remark:

Weiner would descend from the production suite with four or five of his writers trailing him like ducklings.

And there’s also this talk about how they are writing scenes around a single image in Weiner’s mind.
Wow.

Anyway, moving on the rest of the article, the parallels made between the show’s backstage drama due to salary negotiations and 1920s/1940s movie studios exercising creative control are appalling. Here is the excerpt:

The one public sour point for Weiner amid all of Mad Men’s success was the negotiations for the third season, which in his telling didn’t begin in earnest until after the second season had concluded, along with his original contract. Looking for a raise but with no guarantee that he’d even get a deal, Weiner said, he began putting out feelers for other jobs. At the same time someone leaked to the press that AMC and Lionsgate, which AMC had brought on after the pilot to produce the show, were considering bringing in another show-runner to replace Weiner—which would seem inconceivable on a project so clearly driven by one man’s obsessions, except that the entertainment industry has a long history of swatting away idiosyncratic talents, going back to Orson Welles on The Magnificent Ambersons and Erich von Stroheim on Greed. That history lesson aside, Weiner said he was “mystified” by AMC and Lionsgate’s hard line.

Just reading this should give you a clue as to why this is an almost-inexcusable error. If you still don’t get it (understandable if you don’t know about the two movies mentioned), here’s what’s going on.

First, we’re talking here about The Magnificent Ambersons and Greed, which respectively came out in 1942 and 1924.
As said above, both of these movies are known for their tumultuous history. Long story short, we’re talking about a time where directors were nothing more than interchangeable parts for movie studios. The latter were also exercising dictatorial-like control over the finished movie product. Even Bruce Handy talks about this period in the start of his own article:

Once upon a time, the studios reigned supreme. They bulldozed geniuses and turned out dreck[.]

Yet, he seems to forget that we’re in 2009 and, ever since the 1960s, things have changed.
Let alone the fact that we’re talking about television, not cinema.

Moving on the second main problem, the author tries to compare two different situations. One is, if you don’t know this, studios firing directors (Welles and Von Stroheim) because they couldn’t follow the movie studios’ directions regarding the finished product. Again I’m simplifying the various stories, but suffice it to say that in the Magnificent Ambersons’ case, the studio reedited the pic without Orson Welles’ knowledge.

On the other hand, are AMC execs displeased with Weiner’s work on the series? Are they reediting episodes? Are they firing Weiner because he’s just messing up what Mad Men ought to be?
No.
Weiner is asking for a better salary given the show’s enormous success.
Not the same thing, at all.
This is not a studio fight; this is just a monetary dispute.

And, last but not least, comparing Von Stroheim and Welles to Weiner is an embellishment of the biggest magnitude.

I think I have now covered the main problems of this article. Handy is hovering between utter admiration towards “the greatest writer in TV history,” David Chase Matthew Weiner, and this perfect series that is The Sopranos Mad Men.

A final case in point:

The dialogue is almost invariably witty, but the silences, of which there are many, speak loudest: Mad Men is a series in which an episode’s most memorable scene can be a single shot of a woman at the end of her day, rubbing the sore shoulder where a bra strap has been digging in. There’s really nothing else like it on television.

If only shows such as Six Feet Under, The Wire, Breaking Bad or Carnivàle were on television…
Oh, wait.

Okay, I have to admit, I love underrated stuff. The aforementioned shows are in my mind the true series that should be imortalized.

The Wire and Six Feet Under got, in their entire 5-year runs, only 2 writing noms (no wins). As for Breaking Bad and Carnivàle, I’m still waiting.

When a single series occupies 80% of all writing nominations despite obvious worthy contenders, when Times Square dedicates a whole evening to said series’ season premiere, when virtually everyone declares it the best series of the year, no matter how good the show actually is, that’s Mad Men.
And Mad Men is being overhyped.