Originally posted by @captaintim
Good thoughts that Furball, have you read any of the books (A J Quinnell (I think) they are out of print now, but on Kindle) very good. Have to say, I reckon book Creasey could easily take Reacher.
Only seen the movie, but now you mention it I probably should. I loved the Mexico City setting, and Creasy was a great character, beautifully played by Denzel Washington.
EDIT: Oh, I see there were five Creasy novels; Man on Fire was just the beginning.
Rowdy Roddy Piper was “good” in They Live, all things considered. He’s not troubled the big screen since.
Honestly, Will Smith does my fucking head in. He’s a man of our times, perfectly placed to bridge the gap between white and black folk, especially in his native land. What else was Fresh Prince of Bel Air apart from several seasons of needlessly ramming home the unnecessary message that black people can be affluent too?
His music is a reflection of his appeal. I’ll admit that his earlier stuff caught me when I was watching MTV (“Parents _just _don’t understand” - I feel ya Will), I also liked a lot of crap then that I can’t look in the eye now. To enjoy any of his later stuff, you really need to have no prior knowledge of music. That way, you won’t be upset when Will Smith unleashes a series of meaningless shit bombs across one of your favourite old tracks.
Originally posted by @frbl
Only seen the movie, but now you mention it I probably should. I loved the Mexico City setting, and Creasy was a great character, beautifully played by Denzel Washington.
EDIT: Oh, I see there were five Creasy novels; Man on Fire was just the beginning.
Man on Fire
Man Still on Fire
Man, it’s Hot
Man Shouldn’t Wear Shell Suit
Man of Ash
fkwt.
frbl pls
I think I’ve figured it out. Men just like insulting each other.
Now everything makes sense!
Interesting so many list Lee Child & a proper Jack Reacher film. While not a bad film in itself, it could have been anyone in any thriller,
Nice idea on Idris Elba but he has such a great persona with the whole Brit accent thing it simply would not work him messing up a mid atlantic accent. Give it a few years and let one of the current tough guys out there (who isn’t 3ft 6in) do it - Gerard Butler type maybe.
Another good film that has a story potential for a sequel is World War Z. Survival or The Fight Back. Must be more in that somewhere.
Oh and Star Trek The 5 Year Mission… Soooooooooooooooooooooooo much scope now in that reboot they just need soome whacky locations (oh yeah they got one, my place)
How about Skyline? A middling attempt at an Alien Invasion movie but with a lot of loose ends. Or perhaps Invasion Earth, Battlefield Totton & Eling?
World War Z doesn’t need to be, nor should ever be a movie. The best hope for the source material is a TV series. It’s far too soon right now, but I think entirely the wrong option was taken on that. If you forget that the film has anything to do with the source material, it’s pretty competent. It is a distant relation, though - and a poorer one too. Waste of money on securing the licence, as far as I’m concerned.
Still, as Daredevil shows, a piss-poor big-screen romp needn’t kill the character off from further consideration completely. Same thing goes for Star Trek. In that case, you cannot do the big screen stuff without the small screen stuff to support it, or you’re just playing lip service to a few rebooted tropes. Trek is a TV series, simple as. It’s the sort of thing that needs the time that TV provides to build the universe and character development that sustains the films.
I get the reason for the reboot. Continuity is a bitch, and as such, the first film had my full support, warts and all. It was a fuckton more engaging than many of the recent attempts, but it’s nowhere near as rewatchable as II-IV from the original cast. It was given a lot of leeway because, hey, if this is the thing that gets Star Trek off the ground, why not? The reboot could be a good thing. Great opportunity, or so I thought. Strange new worlds?
Nah, same old ground, despite having the direction to go in any direction they wanted. Real bloody shame. No faith in Star Trek 3. Think a lot of diehards will stay away. They established their direction clearly in that last film, which was to go where every Star Trek film had gone before.
Originally posted by @Goatboy
Not a film but I could happily watch another 4 or 5 seasons of Deadwood.
Getting a QPR season ticket then?
Titanic.
They’ve already made it - Raise the Titanic. You might not have heard of it because it was such a disaster, plagued by costly production overruns plus the small problem of no one turning up to see it in the cinemas.
Lou Grade, who financed it, said it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.
Woud like to see Eragon remade. I found the books a really entertaining read and thought they expanded on one another superbly.
The film was absolute crap however, targeted far too much towards children when it could have been created in a similair manner to the LOTR and Hobbit movies. Wasted potential and you know a film is shite when the author himself admits he wishes it hadn’t been made!
Eragon. Yes. Definitely.
I wish they would make a film about the elephant man. I reckon they should cast John Hurt in the lead role.
Not sure if the movie was ever made, but if not The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart would make a great film, as would The Onion Eaters by JP Donleavy.
Would like to see Neal Ashers’s ‘Hilldiggers’ or any of the Polity novels made into a film. Preferably with music by Muse.
There are a couple of book series I think are perfect for adaptation, but I can’t help feeling that if you can’t get three hour epics out of each book, then maybe look at more films, miniseries or full TV series.
First up, The Name of The Wind. Great books, very inventive and a genuinely precocious lead character in Kvothe, the flame-haired gypsy orphan. Very funny in places, but dark when it needs to be.
The other book series would be the Vorkosigan Saga. While the books cover a couple of generations, the main protagonist is Miles Vorkosigan, messed up in the womb, and born with brittle bones and a misshapen spine. He’s got very interesting ways of going about things. The progress in his first novel, while totally natural while reading, is staggering when you reflect on it afterwards, and consider the enormity of what the fuck he did. A younger Dinklage would have been perfect for the role.
I thoroughly recommend The Dice Man for anyone who hasnt read it. It is about a guy who changes the way he lives by giving himself muliple choices and rolling a dice as to what he will do. It starts off tamely enough but gradually he gives himself harder choices and you can imagine where it ends up. Its a really good read.
Schindlers List 2: The Mazel Tov Cocktail.