Wednesday 6 February 2013

180reviews - Flight

Flight - February 2013 


Director: Robert Zemeckis Writer: John Gatins
Cast: Denzel Washington, Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Tamara Tunie, Melissa Leo

The film opens with a spectacular flight sequence that culminates with Washington's Captain 'Whip' Whitaker turning a plane upside down and landing it. Out of the 102 passengers on board, 96 survive. Whitaker is lauded a hero soon becoming the centre of media attention. What is undisclosed is the Captain's serious drinking problem, substance abuse and his inability to stay sober even if it means proving the crash was an 'act of god'/technical calamity rather than the result of his own health state. Washington gives a powerful performance; emotional and irrational, the audience really relate to Whitaker willing him to stay sober even if we and even he knows he won't stay off the booze. The film seemed doomed from the start with such a compelling first half hour, but the brilliant supporting cast and the energetic tones kept this film off the ground. Particularly admirable turns from Greenwood and Reilly, but Cheadle and Goodman seemed slightly underused. The film teaches you many things including, don't drink and fly and that cocaine can cure hangovers in less than 40 minutes.

84%

Adam Bloom


Sunday 27 January 2013

180reviews - Lincoln 2012 - #BloomNetwork

LINCOLN 

 
Director: Steven Spielberg, Writer: Tony Kushner,
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, John Hawkes, James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson, Jared Harris, Lee Pace, Jackie Earl Haley, Hal Holbrook.                                                                   

Outwardly, you can easily make the shloppy comparison of the pro-America genre that seems to have followed on from last year’s ‘War Horse’. But one should be aware that this passion project for Spielberg has been over 10 years in the making. If it wasn’t for such drastic rewrites and more available opportunities this could have been a very different film, with Liam Neeson as the lead. The Lincoln we get is a fresh take on the bio-pic, looking at the final months of the American Civil War and the 16th President of the United States; as he tackles furiously to abolish slavery. Like a certain other Oscar-related film 2 years ago, it's talky (The Racial Network?). Heavy political discourse doesn’t hinder the dramatic ride, with the audience captivatingly driven alongside Lincoln to achieve his end goal. After the 13th amendment is passed, everything happens quite abruptly, probably due to the long running time. Lincoln could have been two films, but the squeeze barely justifies the emotionally clashing climax. Worthy of being one of Spielberg's best in a long time.

85%


Adam Bloom

Monday 7 January 2013

T.A.C - Vanishing City


The Apocalypse Man – The Apocalypse Complex

Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, The Shining, The Machinist, Memento, There Will Be Blood,

One man travelling into the heart of darkness, brought to a mental or physical state that breaks his spirit and forces him to question his sanity or his morals and where facing his demons will uncover the true nature of his personality. To find his own redemption and to save his world he must also



#1 Vanishing City. (Added influences: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Inception, Synecdoche, New York, Memento, The Truman Show) Concept genre based around a supernatural romantic drama and a cerebral urban thriller; themes of love, loss, responsibility  mental deterioration and affection. 25 year old Ryan Carter lives in a small flat in North London, he has a dead end job a girlfriend of four years from university who is on the brink of leaving him, he doesn’t speak with his parents much and has recently found out his mother is ill. He has a higher achieving older brother, Aiden Carter, who is a doctor, happily married with a pregnant wife. As Ryan’s traumas increase he starts getting headaches, which lead to moments of memory loss and blackouts. He begins to forget where he put things and left things and where places are but soon he discovers quite literally that his world is crumbling around him. Places significant to his distancing relationships start to disappear; people he cares about pay less attention to him, his job disappears; His local bus, his mail, his car, local cafĂ©, facebook. Soon whole streets, hospitals, stores and people fall of his map quite literally as if the world is his and his life is the story. The more it affects him the more he loses touch with reality and soon Ryan realises he needs to rebuild the bonds of the people close to him to bring everything back.

He faces confronting his brother and asks him for help, at first Aiden rejects him, this makes his wife miscarriage and then she disappears. Aiden doesn’t believe what has happened, he leaves his job over it, but that'salso down to Ryan who cannot control it. He scans Ryan and gives him tests, the hospital empties and rooms vanish. Aiden freaks and they fight. Left in a bloody state in the hospital, Ryan wakes up in his flat, he calls out to his girlfriend…no answer. Suddenly his phone rings, its his mum. Thinking she had disappeared he is grateful to hear her voice, she says she is no longer ill but she is scared she doesn’t know where she is, its dark, she starts crying she says she feels sorry for him, she’s worried. She mentions Aiden’s wife’s miscarriage but she can’t have known…Ryan pulls the phone away from his ear. His phone is off but he still hears her voice. He runs outside still hearing his mother’s cries. It’s daytime but the sky is black as if not there, roads are missing at the end of his vision, the busy streets become quiet in front of him and houses blip out of sight, memories and images flash in front of him fitting the landscape then disappearing. Ryan is left in darkness. …
Still Developing

#2 God’s Lonely Man.

Open Run - Screenplay in the works

 Open run                    OPEN RUN     

Influences: Heat, 127 Hours, The Walking Dead, The Terminator, The Dark Tower, Phonebooth   


Chase movie, whole film following the protagonist, youngish man pursued by a mysterious figure, they both have a gun. Pursued through a sort of abandoned town with run down shops. He’s not sure why he’s being followed; he is not familiar with a gun but soon learns the hard way how to survive The Run.     
                

The Sky in the Water


The Sky in the Water

Set on the beach, existential, nature theme about fear and water.
A young man in his early 20’s is on holiday/at the beach with a group of friends. He can’t swim well and has a secret phobia of the sea. After all his friends go in it starts to show. He swims towards them. Pulled under the water the rest of the film takes us through the characters panic stricken drowning reality as he drowns under the calm beneath the surface.
Flashback to the past as  he is a young boy afraid of going into the water. Shots of the sky, reverse tracking. Under water.

Revolution with the Soup script(Short Film) Script Tease


Opening extract from INDIGO project - short film written October 2012



INT. Workhouse canteen - day
It's a busy work canteen within a dystopian run down work house. Human workers are on long seated benches. There's a soup kitchen at the back where some our queuing. Everyone is in a filthy drone like state. The ceiling is open roofed with an invisible force field so the rain doesn't get in.
There is an old style ping pong table in the middle. Two workers get up off the benches. They ask a strange looking man for access. He's very tall, thick jaw, long blonde hair, he takes a vial of their blood and pockets it. The man nods and goes over to the table. He places his fingers on it and puts his head down. The table illuminates and a small ping pong sized orb forms in the centre. The two players stand on opposite sides, one pulls the orb to him with a gesture and they begin to play a non-contact round where the orb levitates between them. They are using telekinesis to create there own gravity. All the while, on a bench to the far wall sits Doctor Henry Shard, watching them. A revolutionary ex-biologist and lecturer who was involved with the early development in Indigo's Genetic Modification Unit. The 52 year old has gone underground, he's dirty, like the workers. Sporting a moustache with a 4 day shadow. He's traveling.
Someone passes him some bread, he dips it in his soup and gobbles it down, all the while, his eyes fixated on the table-tennis.
His attention snaps when a bowl of soup clobbers down in front of him. A large brutish man with a buzz cut and soul patch sits down opposite. Ritchie, American with a hint of Chinese, about 7 feet tall, 30 years of age.  He is wearing a denim vest with one long sleave. Next to him is Dagen, 27, smaller and more agile but well built. Light brown hair, tanned with piercing green eyes. He has a necklace with a vial for a pendant. He's shuffling a pack of cards, soup to one side.
Ritchie
Fucking Evos. We weren't made to be enslaved. Fucking working for them like we are the weaker race. They adopt our society, our livelihood, our jobs. And for what, so I can eat like a fucking 19th century cleaner on a 2 Gigabyte salary.

INDIGO: Funding Evolution (Miniseries/Shorts)


No More Heroes.   INDIGO®: Funding Evolution.


Concept idea that in the future the world (2112) is over run by the rich and through this the upper-class have been an able to fund their own evolution to gain super human abilities and where vanity has also contributed to super surgery. The poor/the average man, known as regular humans, live in squalor and in fear of the higher species. The ‘Evo Sapiens’ refer to the tribal humans as The Hominini and use them as sport, fun, slaves, workers etc. Humans are attempting to reach sanctuary on the moon where the human population is 2 billion and the higher species just 500,000. Earth population 3 Billion, Higher species and Humans: 1 Billion. In about 2060 War between the American Alliance, The Russians and The Chinese saw the world split into three with America’s technological advances combining with the Japanese saw evolution increase faster. The war wiped out most of mankind. Indigo grew from revolutionaries and idealists at Apple leaving the corporation to start something bigger and more unique something Apple was never willing to do. Fund Evolution. By 2050 science had achieved the impossible, With CERN developing new breakthroughs in exploring the frontiers of knowledge and Apple and Google running worldwide society evolution turned to computers with minds, Human DNA replication and alteration. Indigo started as an imprint of Apple incorporating the hundreds of Networks Apple had been able to buy out. Indigo grew too big and left Apple taking with it the best scientists in the world who wanted to be part of the next big thing. Indigo picked up the pieces after the war, rebuilding civilisation how its CEO’s and Business Leaders saw fit. Google, Sony, Apple, Microsoft all became tiny imprints on Indigo who were finally able to fund evolution. What apple had achieved between 1980 and 2020, Indigos upgrades excelled further and more dangerously in less than 25 years. The Evo Species are merely imprints on the company.

Indigo Children – Gifted Children, possible supernatural traits. IndigoCorp. Through natural selection Indigo has helped create beings (Evo-Species) that are born smarter, stronger, taller and more beautiful than the average human. In the year 2112 at the age of 16 it has become a common ritual for the parents to invest in their child’s abilities and give them their first Super-Surgery.

Humans are too weak to undergo this surgery; their bodies aren’t built to withstand the impact. A human at his physical peak at 25/30 years will still suffer brain damage, temporary memory loss, nerve tissue damage and risk becoming comatose depending on the DNA and physical/mental strength of the person.

Humans attempt to adapt or die in the new world. They have no choice, once at the top of the food chain; Humans have become a rare species fighting for survival. Some have given up, some are the resistance and some seek sanctum on Lunar Earth (Moon)




Influences: Firefly, In Time, Gladiator, Terminator, Blade-Runner, Species, Apple, theory of natural selection, Darwin etc

Currency has become inadequate; humans mostly barter possessions between each other. Store wealth in bytes (memory platform) Megabits, Gigabits, Terabits.
Dollars is the only surviving form of old-age currency. They are extremely rare, usually reserved for high society and reachable to the richest of Evos. A dollar can feed a family for about a week.

‘Super-Surgery’ is the slang/street name for Indigo’s surgical DNA altering process and genetic modification unit. Most higher beings use it to inherit superhuman abilities rather than resolving defects such as blindness, deafness, brain damage or physical handicaps. Earlier generations used it to that effect, however they passed down the new DNA to cancel out weaker genes. The body of wealthy humans, had adapted to form a new being. The only way to better and improve themselves further was to surpass human potential with superhuman capabilities through playing with cybernetic and genetic modification.

Point of view from the human resistance