Tarsem Singh
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The Princess Bride (1987)
Directed by Rob Reiner
influenced The Fall (2006), Mirror Mirror (2012)
Plot Themes Visuals
The way in which the story unfolds evokes The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride , but the synthesis of the elements marks The Fall as vastly inferior to either.
I want to say, too, that The Fall is unlike any movie I’ve ever seen before, except that it reminds me, just a bit, of The Princess Bride : the outrageous tropes of adventure stories -- pirates and revenge and strange and mysterious characters and unlikely plot twists -- get sent up here, too, in the story Roy spins for Alexandria.
"The Fall" is what you'd get if you told a fiendishly gifted graphic illustrator the plot of "The Princess Bride" and sent him off to come up with his own version.
The Princess Bride, Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and Jodorowsky’s Fando and Lis are all ingredients for Tarsem’s spellbinding movie (unfortunately saddled with a 15 cert for strong violence) but kids and adults sat in front of this are unlikely to forget its mystical atmosphere, achingly detailed visuals (big screen or HD viewings are mandatory), and beguiling story.
Bonus: Although audiences may be tempted to draw parallels between “The Fall” and any number of fantasy films—including “The Princess Bride,” “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “The Fifth Element,” the work of Terry Gilliam and “The Wizard of Oz”—the storyline was directly inspired by an unexpected source: the 1981 Bulgarian film “Yo Ho Ho.”
A fantasy told to a sickly child, The Fall has been compared to Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987), but it has just as much in common with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006), while its exuberant imagery evokes the visionary works of Alejandro Jodorowsky â specifically Fando y Lis (1968) for the live birds flying out of a dead man's mouth, El Topo (1970) for the masked bandit and child, and The Holy Mountain (1973) for the group quest and kaleidoscopic pageantry.
Even the similarly themed (and equally redundant in its slash-mark use) "Face/Off," in which John Travolta and Nicolas Cage swapped mugs for director John Woo, had a sly self-awareness about its own glorious absurdity.
Recycling riffs from John Frankenheimer’s superior 1966 thriller Seconds (which in turn inspired Face/Off ), Tarsem Singh’s dopey romp signally fails to mine the identity-swap promise of its premise.
At times, so does the far more ridiculous "Face/Off" (due equally to the whole central switcheroo concept as well as that annoying, awkward slash in the title).
As in “Face/Off,” “All of Me,” “18 Again” and other body- or image-switching flicks, the charade comes with a wink and a nod.
Movies like “ Face/Off ” are enjoyably ridiculous in large part due to the fact that Nicolas Cage , John Travolta and John Woo KNEW they were ridiculous, laughing and winking at the audience throughout.
It’s not even the best Ryan Reynolds body-swap movie (that would be half-baked comedy “The Change-Up”) or the best guilty pleasure sci-fi thriller with an unnecessary forward slash in its title (John Woo’s “Face/Off”).
Immortals ends up being sort of like 300 meets The Matrix in its best moments.
There's a battle sequence that ends the film that has some zest to it, if only because it's shot in "300" Vision, where the action freezes and then speeds up so we can feel every THWACK and GOOOSH.
The more satisfying is to compare it to its two most obvious antecedents, 300 and Clash of the Titans , and think to oneself, "Holy balls!
But if you can’t tell your Medea from Medusa — but love the Frank Frazetta musculature and slo-mo, blood-splattered violence of films such as “300” — buy your ticket now.
Not since "300" has so much Greek flesh been bared in service of such gratuitous carnage.
The movie "300" was important because it was one of the first films to fully embrace the idea that action movies are all about style over substance.
The idea of the Seven Dwarves here owes more than a little to Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981), but the concept of them passing themselves off as giants with the aid of accordion stilts is an amusing notion—and one that plays even better than it sounds.
And as a movie, eye candy specialist Tarsem Singh Dhandwar borrows from “Zorro,” “Time Bandits” and his own “The Cell” and “The Fall.”
Forget Sneezy and Dopey - think Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits .
Mirror Mirror is essentially a live-action Snow White and the Seven Dwarves crossed with Time Bandits .
Protosevich's script borrows heavily from The Silence Of The Lambs, with Singh adding the dreamlike imagery of Altered States.
The basic story of The Cell is somewhat pedestrian, and can best be described as a watered down version of The Silence of the Lambs.
Despite the obvious plot similarities to "The Silence of the Lambs," it really doesn't seem like too bad a setup for a film.
This is The Silence of the Lambs for people who find Jodie Foster and Jonathan Demme too thinky.
Take "The Silence of the Lambs," a similar themed FBI/psycho-killer crime drama.
The Cell has been dismissed by some as just another serial killer movie but I defy anyone to view it back-to-back with The Silence of the Lambs and find any but the most superficial similarities.
The circumstances of the filmmaking keep coming up alongside the filmmaking itself, not because The Fall is only impressive with asterisks describing its technique, but to demonstrate the filmmaker's unconventional and dedicated approach to material that could be as familiar as watching The Wizard of Oz on cable.
Alexandria draws on people she knows in order to visualize her story much in the same way that Dorothy looked to people on the farm as she imagined the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
It doesn't take long to realize that the story reflects both of their lives, originating from his movie background and wounded romanticism and filtered through her imagination and experiences (complete with characters cast from her life, a la "The Wizard of Oz").
Like Pan's Labyrinth and The Wizard of Oz, Tarsem's film dives deep into the imagination of a child, taking characters from her real world and transplanting them into the fantasy.
Cowriter (with Dan Gilroy ("Two for the Money") and Nico Soultanakis ("The Cell")/director Tarsem Singh ("The Cell") spent sixteen years scouting locations in twenty-eight countries, then another four years creating his own visually spectacular, culturally peculiar version of "The Wizard of Oz." Equal part bedtime story and contemporary art museum installation, "The Fall" is unlike anything you've ever seen.
The way in which the story unfolds evokes The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride , but the synthesis of the elements marks The Fall as vastly inferior to either.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
influenced The Fall (2006)
Themes Visuals
For a movie with such audacious, lush, and inventive images (and, yes, production backstory), the story and themes of The Fall bring to mind a whole lot of other audacious, inventive films, including several by Terry Gilliam (particularly The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the little-seen, mostly-reviled Tideland ), and even a couple of recent ones about the transformative power of storytelling and mythmaking ( Be Kind Rewind and Son of Rambow ).
So The Fall encourages thematic comparisons with del Toro 's Pan's Labyrinth and especially Terry Gilliam 's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Tideland .
For a more interesting failure along near-identical lines, check out The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , which, even with a young Sarah Polley, at least has energy and lucidity.
While "The Fall" might not be everyone's cup of tea due to the eccentric way it blends epic fantasy with brooding reality, the scope of Tarsem's imagination and vision and the delightful pairing of Pace and Untaru creates an eclectic fantasy tale unlike anything we've since Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen."
Any further familiarity with Greek mythology will merely get in the way of this slow-building, hyperstylized pastiche, which draws upon the helmer's many influences, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to the gold-toned vistas of Pasolini's "Arabian Nights," with room for rich multiculti costumes (simultaneously Greek, Indian and Orc-like) and Hong Kong fight choreography in the same frame.
Lacking the rich visual surreal madness of the similarly themed The Cell , or the visual pop of A Scanner Darkly , this simulated reality comes off like an underdeveloped videogame bereft of soul and character.
So, pretty much the same deal as Tarsem Singh’s The Cell , subbing out the serial killer on the loose for an avian demon tagging along as Carly returns to our dimension.
As the doctors at Therapol explain, impulses from the brain are redirected into a virtual space, and other people can then have their own consciousness uploaded into that space – like stepping into someone's mind (or, like stepping into the plot of the much better Jennifer Lopez horror thriller The Cell ).
What's more, they're trialling new technology that allows Carly to step inside her mother's mind - an idea previously explored in 2000's The Cell , not to mention various A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
In other words, here Blomkamp is doing to exorcism what Tarsem Singh‘s The Cell (2000) did to the psychothriller: using the left-field addition of virtual reality to revitalise these subgenres’ stale old tropes and to expose their inner workings, so that any psychological subtext comes writ large on the surface.
Relying on a setup similar to The Cell , watching a character enter the mind of another (and seeing the visual effect choice that comes with it), only to deal with some kind of demonic force, has an inherently fun ring to it from a horror standpoint.
A fantasy told to a sickly child, The Fall has been compared to Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987), but it has just as much in common with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006), while its exuberant imagery evokes the visionary works of Alejandro Jodorowsky â specifically Fando y Lis (1968) for the live birds flying out of a dead man's mouth, El Topo (1970) for the masked bandit and child, and The Holy Mountain (1973) for the group quest and kaleidoscopic pageantry.
A fantasy told to a sickly child, The Fall has been compared to Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (1987), but it has just as much in common with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006), while its exuberant imagery evokes the visionary works of Alejandro Jodorowsky â specifically Fando y Lis (1968) for the live birds flying out of a dead man's mouth, El Topo (1970) for the masked bandit and child, and The Holy Mountain (1973) for the group quest and kaleidoscopic pageantry.
We might as well be watching Clash of the Titans.
Immortals plays like the illegitimate offspring of 300 and Clash of the Titans , but while it represents a substantial improvement over the latter, it falls short of the former.
The less said about the most recent entry, the lamentable remake of Clash of the Titans, the better.
Where the remakes of Clash of the Titans and Conan the Barbarian failed to quench the thirst of fantasy action fans, Immortals should appease many a swords and sorcery junkie.
Don't look for sharp dialogue or multifaceted character in this sword 'n' sandals bloodbath, the latest in the abs-obsessed genre featuring " 300 ," " Clash of the Titans " and " Conan the Barbarian ."
Following in the sandals of Zack Snyder’s 300 with a splash of story inspiration from Clash of the Titans, Immortals is a chest-thumping sword, sandal and CGI Greek mythology actioner for those who like their violence with a side of splatter.
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)
Directed by George Miller
influenced by The Fall (2006)
Visuals
Miller recalls shades of Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (2006) both in the loose, potentially illusory nature of the stories he tells and the methodical splendor he employs to give them life.
With all due respect to Robert Ford’s production design (it’s never a bad thing when a movie’s sets earn comparison to “The Fall”), or the impressive degree of freakiness that Miller and his team are able to stuff into a single image of Solomon wooing Sheba, the Djinn’s tales are always more compelling for his sad and self-deprecating commentary on them than they are for any of their murder hijinks.
A titre personnel, je n’avais pas vu un travail de cette ampleur depuis The Fall de Tarsem Singh, qui se trouve être un de mes films favoris de tous les temps.
Visually reminding of Tarsem Singh’s work (seriously, if you haven’t seen The Fall , rent it whenever it becomes available to stream) and almost reminding of coming-of-age fantasy films of the ’80s, there’s something magical here that’s poking through the dirt.
Even when the low-budget seams show infrequently, Young and crew manage to create a world that is enjoyably reverential to classic sources like Alice in Wonderland , The Wizard of Oz and even recent films like The Fall .
Unable to find any relief, and teased with the suggestion that she can somehow rescue her lost sister, Margaret eventually gives in and enters the portal, slipping into a dizzying fairytale dream world that seems to have been stitched together from several of David Lynch’s movies and Tarsem’s The Fall .
Opulent, gold-plated visuals, B-level actors, 300 ripoff… you’d be forgiven for confusing Gods of Egypt with Immortals (if you remember it), and for confusing Proyas, the poor bastard, with Tarsem Singh, who also has a distinctive music-video sensibility that hasn’t always been served by his Hollywood career—but has made more of a go at it in recent years than Proyas.
As a friend said, the movie, if it were going to have those elements, should have been a hard R so they could have focused on the really dark stuff in mythology, which made me remember the noble failure that was Immortals from Tarsem Singh.
En este aspecto, Dioses de Egipto hace bien no tomándose a sí misma demasiado en serio, incluyendo unas buenas dosis de sentido del humor que hacen que el filme sea más divertido que otro fiasco reciente de similares características como fue Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011).
Thanks to the success of films like 300 and Clash of the Titans, every studio has been scrambling to latch onto their coattails with their own action-filled fantasy epics, which has ultimately led to diminishing returns for the weaker sequels to those films and obvious rip-offs like Immortals.
What’s more, there’s a method to the director’s madness here – the slow-mo shots and whirling camera-play he employs to capture destructive brawls between the gods (who sometimes enter a kind of beast mode, transforming into super-sized mech creatures of combat that resemble an unholy cross between one of Immortals ‘ gold-fetishizing warriors and a super pissed-off Transformer) make those sequences an absolute blast to behold.
At its best, the visual milieu is fondly reminiscent of Tarsem Singh’s Immortals, his immensely flawed but visually stunning ode to mythology.
Graham's special gift -- what endears him most to his superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) -- is the ability to get inside a killer's mind; not literally, as Jennifer Lopez did in The Cell, but by looking at the evidence and patterns of behavior and allowing himself to "become" the killer in theory.
It echoes Manhunter (1986), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Seven (1995), as well as all the other, more forgettable serial killer movies of recent years (The Bone Collector comes to mind).
"Manhunter" arrived early in the serial killer trend, after Ted Bundy but before films like "Seven" and "The Cell" romanticized smart sociopaths.
To my mind The Cell is the best movie since that staple of 1930s surrealism Un Chien Andalou to capture the state of dreaming.
If Tarsem Singh ever had a blueprint to model "The Cell" after, his original film source would clearly be Luis Bunuel's mesmerizing "Un Chien Andalou," in which every grotesque moment was a powerful metaphor for the unfortunate toll that schizophrenia had taken on a person.
Catherine straps on a leather bodysuit that may be leftover from David Lynch's Dune, suspends herself from wires like in Coma, and through a combination of pharmaceuticals and microchips transfers her mind into Carl's (who is similarly gotup, but you probably would rather think of Lopez in skintight leather than D'Onofrio, right?).
The videogame look that dominates the trailers is less obtrusive in the film itself, and the fact that Immortals' leanly muscled gods, who spend much of their time lolling divinely around Olympus in gilded-leather skirts and fabulous headgear, owe a great deal to Bruce of Los Angeles physique photography and James Bidgood's lavishly art-directed Pink Narcissus can be ignored by viewers who'd rather not acknowledge the pervasive homoeroticism (which extends to an 11th-hour vision of the ongoing war in Heaven as one long upskirt shot).
The Princess Bride, Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and Jodorowsky’s Fando and Lis are all ingredients for Tarsem’s spellbinding movie (unfortunately saddled with a 15 cert for strong violence) but kids and adults sat in front of this are unlikely to forget its mystical atmosphere, achingly detailed visuals (big screen or HD viewings are mandatory), and beguiling story.