Today has been a rough day. First, the only new horror film on Netflix is “Alligator X”–which sucks even more since I saw the very entertaining “Occupant” yesterday and my standards and expectations are a bit higher than usual. Prior to that I had an argument with a colleague at work over their problem with Apple’s lack of willingness to repair a MacBook monitor under AppleCare that he broke.
Yeah, I should have just ignored him, but I don’t brook fools well.
Then, there’s my attempted summoning of Cthulhu, which is not quite as easy as you’d think. I mean, if you’ve read as many tales of the Cthulhu Mythos as I have, you’d probably have reached the impression that all you’d need are the addition of a few common household items, and there you go, one alien, malevolent deity to go.
I was ready to just kiss off the rest of the day when a bright spot appeared: Paul Verhoeven, director of “Spetters,” “Hollow Man,” Starship Troopers, “Showgirls, among others, is preparing a movie based upon the life of Jesus Christ, though what’s even more interesting is that he’s doing so based upon a book that he actually co-wrote.
Verhoeven is a kinetic, clever, and perceptive director; he also happens–if his finished projects are any indicator–to be apeshite crazy, which makes me really, really curious about what he could do with material like this.
The story comes courtesy of Deadline.
Paul Verhoeven‘s “Starship Troopers” may not have been that faithful to Robert Heinlein‘s novel, but then again, I have never been much of a fan of Heinlein’s writing, so it’s all good. For my money Verhoeven is in the same company as David Cronenberg, or (lately), Don Coscarelli, in that just about everything they do may not be a favorite, though it’s going to be interesting.
There have been two sequels, “Starship Troopers 2: Hero Of The Federation,” and “Starship Troopers 3: Marauder,” and despite having the involvement of Ed Neumeier–who wrote the screenplay for the first film and the second, while directing and writing the third–neither sequel was that entertaining.
So, imagine my surprise to learn that there will be a forth film, “Starship Troopers: Invasion,” though this time they will be going with CGI, instead of live actors. I have to say that that computer graphics better evokes the look of Paul Verhoeven’s original than either the second or third sequel, which has a lot to do with the fact that it’s relatively less expensive to create such effects in such an environment, as opposed with models, which was done extensively in the first film.
Sure, the faces of the computer-generated characters looks kinda dead (not unusual, though Peter Travers, the film critic from Rolling Stone magazine, can probably explain it better), but the spaceships and tech look just like those in the first film, so that makes it at least worth a look.
Because what we needed was a reboot of “Total Recall,” the original a Paul Verhoeven film that, as far as I could tell, was done pretty well the first time. The new version is being directed by Len Weisman, who’s every film looks like huge set pieces with occasional character interaction thrown in.
