bunch'o'links

[the_grynne]

- "Call me Ishmael.": 100 best first lines according to the American Book Review.

- You can watch the American trailer and download the soundtrack for critically acclaimed Korean film Sympathy for Lady Vengence at Twitch.

- Vin Diesel with be starring in Babylon A.D., a sci-fi action thriller written and directed by Matthieu Kassovitz (Munich). (

Comments

[fan_elune]

- I feel so geeky over every first line I know, and so ignorant over the (more numerous) first lines I don't. Thanks for the link!

- Matthieu Kassovitz directing Vin Diesel in a sci-fi action thriller? Might I hope for something as good as Pitch Black? Vin, remind me why I like you! Matthieu, don't disappoint! (Also, Babylon brings Carnivàle to mind.)

- Can't bother with DVC either. Unless I knew Paul was in that little clip, which I don't, hence... can't bother. (*shakes fist at Paul* Two movies in a year I wouldn't watch if not for him. Two!)

[the_grynne]

I've never seen anything Matthieu has directed. Is he good? I'm inclined to be optimistic about Babylon in any case. Until I'm not, that is. *g*

[the_grynne]

CHUD: "Based on the cult French novel Babylon Babies, the “extrapolationist” story takes place in a dystopian future of cyborgs and Serbian mobsters. Diesel will play a lone-wolf war veteran who gets hired to escort a schizophrenic woman (who also happens to be pregnant with a "genetically modified messiah") from Russia to Canada, only to discover there’s a lot more to her than he initially thought (as in: the end of the world). So I guess it’s sort of like a more existential version of Cyborg 2."

[fan_elune]

Hmm. Potentially catastrophic, and potentially brilliant.

I've only ever seen La Haine and Les Rivières Pourpres (...the Crimson Rivers, I think, was how it was translated?), which I both very much enjoyed, even though the Rivers... well, there was an issue with the script, really. But the directing was brill. As for La Haine, it's pretty much THE movie you want to watch about young French suburban kids. ...gods I haven't seen it in ages. Anyway. Matthieu can be very good. I can only hope he will be, again.

[the_grynne]

I've been meaning to watching "La Haine", trying to find a copy to rent. "The Crimson Rivers" is something I remember watching when it first came out...on DVD, having had read and enjoyed the book. I thought it was a very effective horror-thriller, and quite different to the book.

[fan_elune]

I'd offer to find you one here and then send it over, but I'm afraid it'd be even harder to find something with English subtitles here.

I very much enjoyed the Crimson Rivers, don't get me wrong. I even have the DVD. (Cassel and Reno, Kassovitz directing, plus the lovely Nadia Fares? How can I not.) But I still think the script is far from perfect. I'd read the book, too, so it was less striking, but to people that haven't read it? The end must look like it's spinning out of control and I know for a fact that confused = them. The plot just unfolds far too quickly - which makes sense, it's a thriller after all. But it's to the detriment of comprehension.

I'm not such a huge fan of the author, though. I thoroughly enjoyed that book, but then I read another one by him and it was so... the same. It wasn't, mind you. Not the same characters, not the same subject matter, and yet... the same. I was utterly unsurprised from beginning to end, and ended up enjoying it about as much as I did the Da Vinci Code, which is saying something.

[the_grynne]

I'm afraid it'd be even harder to find something with English subtitles here

You're a dear for thinking it, anyway. :)