Hackers....

God I love this film...

Is is Filmable? Red-Storm Rising

I've often asked this question "is it filmable", such as the age old argument that the Lord of the Rings was not filmable before Peter Jackson proved that theory wrong... Sort of (cough).

So what don't I think is filmable?  Well, the Tom Clancy novel "Red Storm Rising".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising

I really like this book, I read it every couple of years and get really engrossed in the concept of what a war in the Europe of my youth would have been actually like.

Remember, I'm a kid who played on the beaches of Skegness (in the UK) when A10 Warthogs were flying low over the coastline in dummy strafing runs, we could find spent 50'cal bullets (metal and a stone line practice bullet too) from their activities and we read up avidly about the new to service Tornado jet.

I have a vivid and expectant concept of that that war might have been, everything from blistering nuclear instant death, to a lingering radioactive malaise, to the starvation induced strangling of Britain's sea-trade by the Red menace.

We all know it never came to pass, but this novel visualizes it, you get the interspersed stories from a single tank commander, to the infantry on the ground, A10 pilots are mentioned and the desperate struggle of the high-seas as well as the personal impact on civilians on Iceland.

Could it ever be filmed?  Certainly the CG is out there to allow it, and perhaps convincingly, so technically yes this story could be told on screen.

The question therefore is should it be made?  With the current resurgence in an autocratic mind-set from Russian voters you could argue that the days gone-by of the Soviet regime are actually echo'd on the streets of Moscow today, but that feeling is tempered a much more cosmopolitan mixing of peoples and business, even organised crime.  All completely change the social-political landscape of Russia.

What was once a far-away distant disturbing land, is still very far away and still disturbing, but it's far far less distant, we can all connect to Russian news, feel the pulse of Russian politics.  We all even watched their invasion (yes I'm afraid I sit on the fence of it being an invasion) of the Crimea, literally taking it from Ukraine.

A moment of pride to some I'm sure, but a sign of things to come?  Maybe, I never felt that was a war which would go hot, I don't think anyone in the west had the stomach for a war with Russia, submarines off the coast of Sweden, incursions into Ukraine and the murder of airline passengers all passed without serious repercussions.

But you film Red Storm Rising, you put that story out there, from the perspective given in the book.  I think that would get serious repercussion and denounced in the Russian press as scare mongering, I really do.

That's why its unfilmable, because Russia.

Film Non-Sense : Re-Animator

We've been watching some really weird films of late, I've been trying to get the wife to watch something's I consider good, but which she just considers too much trouble...

My ultimate aim is being getting her to watch, understand and get "Amelie" in French and "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" in Russian...

Last night we started off with "Re-Animator", something I consider a classic... I leave the obvious observations behind, but something struck me as hilarious, something I'd not spotted before or at least not been conscious of being a teenager watching this mid-80's video nasty.

There's a scene in the film where they first animate a corpse, and the Dean of the university comes down and challenges them... And... He gets killed... So they reanimate him, of course, like you do... He of course goes crazy, so they lock him up in a padded cell, so the next shot...

We have him in his padded cell, he's salivating blood, he's banding his head on the glass......

BUT...

And this is where I lost it....

This padded cell, the window opens on his office... With his awards on the wall...!?!?!?!

I was so busy laughing I couldn't figure out, "Did they bring his awards to show him how human he was?"  OR... "Did this sick fuck have a padded cell to watch random victims bounce off the walls as entertainment?"

I'm not sure which was worse?  But it entertained me....

Especially when his daughter is co-oped to sign the frontal lobe surgery in that very room...

Come to think of it, the office is probably the "bad" doctor there... But why has he got a padded cell in his fucking office?!?!?!?