Stephen Norrington
37 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Naturally, that folly gets cheekily referenced here, as do Green Lantern and the Blade series; there are more allusions than plot points in this movie, with screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick packing in nods not just to Reynolds’ history of aborted crime-fighting series, but also to the Spin Doctors, Adventure Time, Bernadette Peters, Taken, Alien 3, and Jared from Subway.
(That’s not to mention the trailblazing “Blade” series, which Reynolds inexplicably namedrops in one of the picture’s hundred throwaway pop culture references.)
I liked the bit where Deadpool's stoner buddy (T.J. Miller) references Blade II because I remembered that Reynolds was notoriously in Blade: Trinity and I recall reading that Wesley Snipes was perpetually stoned on that shoot and sent memos to the director signed "Blade."
While the wildly popular “X-Men” and “Avengers” franchises — including “Iron Man,” “Thor” and other feeder films — have never strayed beyond PG-13 territory, some Marvel adaptations occasionally have, such as “The Punisher” and “Blade.”
One of the primary selling points of "Deadpool" and its big differences with most studio fare is its R-rating, earned for "strong violence and language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity" (plenty of people have tried to tout the film as the "first" superhero film to pick up an R, but that's just not the case, as it follows in the rating steps of other offerings as diverse as the "Blade" films, "Watchmen" and even the recent hit "Kingsman: The Secret Service").
From Nosferatu to Blade, vampires have been popular movie characters, while werewolves have been less so.
Imagine if “Blade” sided with vampires instead of against, had plenty of help all with the same fashion sense, all lived in “Dark City” and fought everyone as if they were in “The Matrix.”
The look is a combination of Blade and The Crow.
Just why they want him especially won't be too hard to figure out (especially if you've seen Blade, which provides a similar hierarchy of races and moral grounds, except in that case, they're all vampires), but for Selene, it's a wrenching emotional ordeal, as she discovers centuries' worth of betrayals and deceptions.
Underworld could easily have been patched together from clips from a hundred other films, from Dark City to Blade to, most tiresomely, The Matrix .
The cast and crew is made up of Rudy's friends and a host of others that Rudy manages to talk into making the film one way or another, including actor D'Urville Martin (played by Wesley Snipes of “Blade”) who is lured into the project by Rudy offering him the coveted creative job of director.
Beyond Murphy as Moore, we also have: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (TBS’ People of Earth ) as his performance partner Lady Reed; Tituss Burgess (Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ) as his hapless assistant manager and later assistant director; Keegan-Michael Key ( Keanu ) as a very patrician playwright hilariously engaged to write the decidedly non-patrician screenplay; Wesley Snipes – the eternal Blade – as the alcoholic D’Urville Martin, an established blaxploitation star hired as the movie’s director; and many more, all of whom shine.
The film's premise--inherited from the graphic novel by "From Hell" creator Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill--is promising: What if a handful of the most compelling Victorian literary icons were assembled to form a kind superhero team in an age before such things as superheroes existed?
First things first – if you’re a fan of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s excellent comic book, then you won’t fail to be disappointed with the big screen adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or “LXG”, as Fox are insisting on nick-naming it) as it pretty much suffers the same fate that befell From Hell.
It takes a certain kind of talent to sanitize a comic book and then dumb it down, but that's exactly what's been done to this brainchild of Alan Moore (From Hell) and Kevin O'Neill, which brings together a number of great figures from literature and sets them out on new adventures.
Such is the cruel fate that awaits "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," a handsome but frustratingly shallow adaptation of the comic book series by Alan Moore ("From Hell") and Kevin O'Neill.
Although previous big-screen examples certainly exist — among them Wesley Snipes’ “Blade” and Will Smith’s “Hancock” — “Black Panther” celebrates its hero’s heritage while delivering one of Marvel’s most all-around appealing standalone installments to date.
Despite what some less informed commentators have stated elsewhere, “Black Panther” is not the first major motion picture to feature an African-American superhero at its center—films ranging from comedies like “The Meteor Man” and “Blankman” to the Shaquille O’Neal vehicle “Steel” to the “Blade” trilogy beat it to the punch decades earlier and I am sure that I am forgetting a few here and there.
Aunque ahí está la trilogía de Blade, Hancock de Will Smith, Spawn y hasta Meteor Man, si únicamente consideramos al MCU, era necesario un primer superhéroe negro.
Sure, there have been movies featuring black comic books characters and superheroes before (Blade; Hancock), but none have been based on a classic character, or been part of a major franchise.
It’s as if everyone enlisted to bring the project to life understood the magnitude of what Black Panther, the first comic-based studio movie with a black hero at the center since 1998’s Blade , would represent: The chance to fill every corner of their fictional Wakanda with the same level of craft and detail usually reserved for British-star-studded period pieces; an opportunity to tell a story about black lives, which matter and are not defined by their pain but, instead, by their glory; an answer to a culture’s question, “When will it be our time in the sun?”
Black Panther is not the first black superhero, as a couple of dozen media outlets have erroneously stated, as if there hadn’t been three different Blade movies.
Whilst the 1980’s and 1990’s gave us Superman and Batman films, and, though a Marvel brand, the Blade films were seen more as Wesley Snipes features rather than a comic-book outing, it was 2000’s X-Men that would unknowingly launch the phenomenon that’s become something of a staple in today’s cinema climate.
It wasn’t the first superhero movie or even the first film based on a Marvel comic (“Blade” debuted two years earlier), but it seemed to rise out of the shadowy depths of the campy DC movies and the overlooked ghettos of the action-horror genre.
It was my favorite comic book as a kid, and the 2000 X-Men , the movie that primarily jump-started this entire cycle of superhero cinema (although Blade , which preceded it, also deserves a salute), was like a godsend to those who had long dreamed of seeing Wolverine, Cyclops et al on the silver screen.
The 1-2-3 punch of that movie, Blade in 1999, and Spider-Man in 2002 helped usher in the era we live in today.
Si bien es cierto que películas como “Blade” ya habían tenido cierto éxito en la década de los 90, fue la primera entrega de “X-Men” la que inauguró la época dorada del cine de superhéroes.
The Invisible Man (1933)
Directed by James Whale
influenced The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
So it is that Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) of "King Solomon's Mines," Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) of "Dracula" are brought together with fussy fop Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), the schizoid Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) and Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), who has followed in the footsteps of H.G. Wells' "The Invisible Man."
Norrington and Goyer don’t really explain the power struggle in the vampire world between the governing body of full-blooded vampires (headed by that undead icon of Eurotrash cinema, Udo Kier, whose credits include Paul Morrisey’s “Blood for Dracula”) and the ones, like Frost, who’ve been turned.
Ever since the silent days of movies, when F.W. Murnau chilled audiences with Nosferatu, a creepy, atmospheric adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, film-goers have been entranced by vampires on the big screen.
Apart from that, the latest effort from director Randa Haines (Children of a Lesser God) is quite harmless.
Blade’s dilemma has none of the tragic resonance Joss Whedon has given his heroine in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Blade II, the sequel to the 1998 Wesley Snipes movie about a fanged, half-human vampire hunter, has so much martial arts you'd almost think it came from Hong Kong.
While it helps to have seen the original "Blade" for a full understanding of this so-called "Daywalker" (Snipes) and his character and the nature of his relationship with Whistler, "Blade II" is more enjoyable than the original.
"Blade II," starring Wesley Snipes as Marvel Comics' mercenary half-breed vampire, moves in the opposite direction, alienating its potential audience -- new viewers or fans of the original "Blade" -- with its convoluted plot, vapid supplementary characters and overwrought computer graphics.
The new Blade recalls the Ripley who showed up in Cameron's Aliens: potent and focused, primed for full-on combat.
(Bryan Singer's X-Men two years earlier did likewise, and both needed 1998's Blade to establish that comic-book movies had to be not comic-booky.)
Those of you who care to see Snipes giving a damn -- rather than kicking, spinning, and posing for two hours -- would be well-advised to rent a 1992 movie called "The Waterdance."
The incredibly attractive pair have quite the chemistry, overcoming some rather inane dialogue -- and the fact that heavy nods are given to Strictly Ballroom, Dirty Dancing, even Singing in the Rain -- with ease.
V for Vendetta (2006)
Directed by James McTeigue
influenced by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Writer/producers Andy and Larry Wachowski ("The Matrix" series) may have given the directing reins over to their "Matrix" first assistant James McTeigue, but their fingerprints are all over this adaptation of the 1980's Alan Moore ("From Hell," "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") anti-Thatcherism graphic novel.
Alan Moore made quite a stink earlier this year by publicly disassociating himself from the cinematic adaptation of his 1982 graphic novel V for Vendetta, which he assumed – after unpleasant experiences with From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – would be bastardized in its translation to the screen.
The years since September 11, 2001, have made V for Vendetta's story more resonant, although it's no longer about Thatcher, which may be one reason Moore has dissociated himself (as he has with other movie adaptations of his work, such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).
Previous screen adaptations of the English writer's comics and characters had resulted in movies that ranged from bad ("Constantine," 2005) to worse ("From Hell," 2001) to worthless ("The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," 2003).
Thanks to the debacle that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (and, to a lesser extent, From Hell), comic-book fans have rightly come to be suspicious of any cinematic adaptations of Moore's work.
When the vampires are killed, they instantly disentigrate, and sometimes when killed differently, even inflate and blow up (a tactic blatantly stolen from John Carpenter's "Big Trouble in Little China").
You'd be better off renting an INTELLIGENT subgenre action flick like "The Crow," than to subject yourself to a movie so full of gratuitous exploitation of gore and GQ Goth.
The only examples of it I can pinpoint are Dark City and The Crow, which, coincidentally, were both directed by Alex Proyas, a man of great visual style.
Blade is the latest in a series of films based on adult-oriented comics called "graphic novels" (Spawn and The Crow are two other recent examples).
"Superman" is dated and uneven, "Batman" is more about style than substance, "The Crow" is strangely unexciting, "The Phantom" is a lot of fun but a bit childish and "Spawn" is busier with FX than anything else.
The shadowy, abstract urban environment of "Blade" is strictly "Batman" revisited, with hints of leather and steel fetishism on loan from "The Crow.
Constantine (2005)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
influenced by Blade (1998), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Characters Visuals
In this way, Constantine himself doesn't get to stand out, unlike the way, say, Ron Perlman made Hellboy stand out and Wesley Snipes gave Blade his edge.
(We can spot them since their eyes glow like the replicants in Blade Runner.)
Remember "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" — also from the mind of Constantine's abused creator, Alan Moore?) There's a reason why Marvel's track record on film is better.
Unlike the absurd pseudo-Gothic of "Interview with the Vampire" or Abel Ferrara's slightly more inventive "The Addiction," the setting of "Blade" is ingeniously evoked, at once wildly unreal and entirely believable.