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Mad max

The Huntsman’s Nicolas-Troyan on Cooking, Charlize Theron, & Highlander

August 16, 2016 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

cedricCedric Nicolas Troyan, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects on Snow White & the Huntsman, directed The Huntsman: Winter’s War out now on Digital HD (and on Blu-ray on August 23). After directing Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Emily Blunt, and Charlize Theron in his debut, Troyan shared his thoughts on conveying strong visuals, and the challenges of showing audiences something new.

As a first-time director, Troyan found himself leading a group of A-listers into a new enterprise, but after initial jitters, Troyan said he was unfazed. “When you do visual effects, you’re there from inception, working beside the director. It’s a grew school to learn from them. So, I figure in twenty years, I have put in my share of set time,” the director said with a chuckle. “But you ask yourself, how will you interact with the cast? Will they get what they need from me? Will I flounder around like a bowling ball? I was confident that I had the knowledge necessary. And in the end, I could see that these people were all great.”

Troyan’s confidence was potentially bolstered by (in his mind) the surprise nomination for the Academy Award, because he was so focused on creating what he needed to. “At the end of the day, you try to make something you think people will like, something cool. That’s the job: trying to take the ingredients and make something great, like cooking up a dish for your guests. But there’s no full-on recipe for success. There are just things you think are good, and you hope people will share your enthusiasm.”

While The Huntsman varies in tone from the original in the series, Troyan saw the way that the characters were influenced by a variety of backgrounds in legend and style. The director was focused on telling those stories, and making sure that it looked cool (a regular adjective for Troyan’s understanding about the way things would appear). But he admitted that a different take on an old story can be tricky.

“You have Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen not exactly but inspired. You have the Snow Queen in Narnia or Elsa, the queen in Frozen. You’re mixing the different worlds but trying to stay in the same world as Snow White & The Huntsman.”

“It’s like most people when they wake up in the morning; they don’t stay in the same mood all day long. When you explore the world [of these fairy tales] mixed with changing emotions, it’s kind of cool. Some people like the way we presented that and some people don’t. You flavor it thinking it will fit but the important part is that you’re trying.”

cedric2Troyan’s path continues to draw him into stories (like Maleficent) where female characters show us more than we had seen before. It’s clearly of interest to Troyan as he creates these ‘meals’ for us to enjoy, and he warmed to the subject, especially when it came to Theron.

“I’m definitely more interested in female characters in my life. I tend to sway toward those females. It’s not that male characters aren’t interesting but I think there’s more variation in female characters. There’s a broader spectrum. We need to hear those different voices.”

When the subject of the hyper-visual Mad Max: Fury Road was broached, Troyan admitted that he hadn’t seen it in theaters because he was filming. “I told Charlize I was sorry. I wasn’t sure I’d like it because I’m not a huge Mad Max fan. But because of Charlize I went to see it. As soon as I got home, I emailed her that I absolutely loved it – especially her portrayal of Furiosa. It was just so rock’n’roll! The most rock’n’roll thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

As our time drew to a close, I had to ask: what could Troyan tell us about the Highlander remake that has been rumored about for the last few years? Troyan laughed, and measured his response. “Highlander was always supposed to be my first film, never my second. Now that’s my first has already been done, I just can’t say too much.”

Ah, the heart of a fan. We must wait to see what Troyan is cooking, and then dig in. Each meal won’t be for everyone, but this chef is cooking a buffet of visual and storytelling delight.

Filed Under: DVD, Featured, Film, Interviews Tagged With: Angelina Jolie, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Fury Road, Highlander, Jessica Chastain, Mad max, Maleficent

Mad Max: Fury Road–Pursuing Peace (Oscar Spotlight: Best Picture)

February 4, 2016 by Jason Norton 2 Comments

Upon first glance, Mad Max: Fury Road seems out of place amongst its fellow best picture nominees. There’s no biographical dramatization, no outspoken activist star. There’s not even a subtitle in sight. But there is flame-spewing punk rock guitarist chained to a thirty-foot wall of Marshall amps on the front of a semi. In other words: winnah.

From the time the opening titles roll, you’re given one calm, cozy minute to prepare. And you’ll want to. Because for the next two hours, you are going to be thrust into the biggest, most exciting action spectacle ever filmed. Director George Miller took his legendary high-octane hero and throttled him up by 2,000 RPMs, as Tom Hardy does the impossible and picks up brilliantly where Mel Gibson left off.

FRD-27348.TIF
Hardy’s Max is near-mute and broken, but finds his strength when he steps up to defend the oppressed (but far from helpless) Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and a group of her fellow females. These women have the unenviable job description of “wives” to the uber-creepy desert despot, Mortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). It’s one near-constant, 90-miles-per-hour retreat that turns, on a hairpin curve, into a full-scale assault on evil once Max and company decide they can no longer run from the fight.

max w
Dig a little deeper below the dusty, oil-soaked surface and you’ll find a multi-layered story of redemption and salvation that is as poignant as anything the Academy has recognized in a decade. It’s a sci-fi packaged treatise on the power of hope and—perhaps more importantly—the quest for peace even when all hope is lost.
The cinematography is breathtaking; the stunts jaw-droppingly innovative (and for the most part, CGI-free). Everything is over the top, but nothing feels out of reach.

max 5

Unlike its peers, Mad Max: Fury Road is more than a film, it is an experience—one that resonates long after the end credits. And despite its unconventionality, it absolutely deserves to be counted among the year’s best.

You’d have to be mad to disagree.

Filed Under: #tbt, DVD, Featured, Oscar Spotlight, Reviews Tagged With: Academy Awards, Best Picture, Charlize Theron, Mad max, Oscars, Tom Hardy

Mad Max Fury Road: No Greater Love

September 1, 2015 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

Mad Max Fury Road MainI was skeptical of George Miller’s sequel to his Road Warrior films after so many years away. Seriously, he made Babe and two Happy Feet movies more recently than he told a Mad Max story. How could Fury Road be any good? But as I admitted here, I thought the film was the best I’d seen this year – and it’s still my favorite after seeing it a second time in high definition at home.

Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) are the coolest one-two punch of heroes we’ve had onscreen all summer, with apologies to the Avengers, and everyone else they smoked on their dusty way through the desert. As two broken, discarded, forgotten individuals, they’ve learned to scrap their way through the post-apocalyptic landscape and to ignore everyone else. But what happens when they discover a task to great to complete on their own, that is, achieving their own escape and the transport of several innocents as they run from Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne)?

While I rarely rewatch a movie this quickly, I was struck by the power of Miller’s narrative, even though I think he could’ve told this story dialogue-free! How amazing would that have been? A completely rabid film with a hard rock soundtrack and no one speaking? But I digress…

Sure, we have the ‘universal blood donor’ in Max, who gives his blood (literally) to save Furiosa at one point, but she’s the one playing ‘Moses’ to lead the innocents, the child-bearing women, to the promised land. She’s already lost an arm, and been discarded, but her broken humanity makes for a great leader. It’s just that her remembrance of the promised land isn’t what she thought it would be… and it’s better to return and face the music.

There’s also the certain matter of the ridiculous crazy and ultimately weak (physically) Joe, who has ruled by fear and intimidation, but is really (kinda) easy to take down. How often do we raise people to a level of leadership, honor, even idolatry, only to recognize that they are merely men/women who we shouldn’t fear or worship?

And ultimately, the film proves to be about two loners who are intent on one thing but choose a greater good over self-preservation. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite verses, but in John 15:13, Jesus says that there is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends. We see that happen in the final third of the film by several characters because Max and Furiosa model it first. Are they ‘Christ figures’? I don’t know. But they definitely model this kind of sacrificial love and service.

Whatever your take on the deeper themes behind this movie (seriously, Furiosa tells Max that she’s looking for “redemption,” a word not outright bandied about many action films), there’s too much action, beauty, magic, and skill to this film not to love it. Check out the special features, enjoy the flick, and then come back and tell us what you thought.

Enter the wasteland and be sure to be amazed.

Filed Under: DVD, Film, Reviews Tagged With: Charlize Theron, Furiosa, George Miller, Mad max, Tom Hardy

Mad Max Fury Road: Baptism By Water, Dust & Fire

May 15, 2015 by Jacob Sahms Leave a Comment

furyroad1stWhen we meet Mad Max (Tom Hardy, for the first time), he is wrestling with a vision of the past. He hears cries for help, and sees those he has lost along the way. We know who he is because we’ve seen the previous films by George Miller (ironically enough, Babe, Happy Feet 1 & 2… and the Mad Max trilogy), but his name isn’t uttered until the closing stanza of the film. Max is a man without a community, a man without hope, a man desperately in need of redemption, even though he’s not proactively seeking any of the three.

Soon, Max has run afoul of Immortal Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and one of his crazy-eyed henchman, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). But Max is not alone: he’s tied to the welfare of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and a band of women who Furiosa is stealing/freeing from Joe. Joe believes that these women are his property (and has impregnated a few of them), controlling his ‘tribe’s’  water, gasoline, and future as well.

Bouncing off of walls and other vehicles of mass destruction, Miller’s script is linear in its own way, but it’s also multilayered. Bombastic visuals make up for a dearth of dialogue, rocketing the audience (especially the 3D one) along through a series of battles, chases, storms, and other calamities, leaving us feeling like we’ve survived a desert storm (war). Elements reflect other post-apocalyptic fare like The Book of Eli and one wonders if the character of Max himself was necessary for the film’s greatness. Could we have been enthralled, enticed, invited in if it had been merely a “world gone bad”? Max himself is not even necessarily the figure we find our eyes riveted to…

Mad Max Fury Road MainFuriosa is herself a stunning character, and not for her beauty or charm. Like other Theron characters before her, she has been stripped of her more feminine nature and held up as an individual ripe with character and strength. She is Miller’s Ripley, the one-armed driver who has a vision for the future, while Max only has visions. She is the moral compass, the driving force, making this Max character seem more like a “reboot” than a sequel storyline. It’s as if he must learn to be human all over again, after the devastating events of Tina Turner’s Thunderdome.

Instead, our heroine is the one who recognizes what it takes to make hope a reality, even if she needs help to see it through. Furiosa believes in the “Green Place,” part-utopia, part-nostalgic past. She’s the one who attempts to intercede on behalf of the Five Wives of Joe, to say that they are not cattle, or property, or baby-producing machines. Initially, and most of the way throughout, Max is merely an additional gunhand, along for the ride.

DSC_3888.JPGA Deeper Discussion: Spoilers Ahead!

But Mad Max: Fury Road is not simply “man bad, woman good” the way that some reviewers have suggested. There is more nuance here, and it may often revert back to an understanding of John Locke/Charles Darwin behavior. Do we take more from our nature or our nurture? Does the fall of technology or ‘civilization’ signal a return  to the animalistic self and the Old Testament understandings of right and wrong? Or is there something higher and more intrinsic about who we are as people?

Max and Furiosa are incomplete people. One lacks a family, while the other lacks an arm (and feminine ‘purpose’ in Joe’s world). But they complete each other (not in a Jerry Maguire way) by being the visionary and the vision fulfilled. Ultimately, the ‘universal blood donor’ saves lives, but he’s not the Christ-figure. He’s the power, the will, the safety net of the Christ-figure, who ultimately proves to be the one who frees the oppressed and comforts the abused.

In the one real dramatic turn of events (spoiler! I told you again), after the group fails to arrive in the perfect world Furiosa was stolen from, Max convinces her that they must return to the land flowing with water and greenery in The Citadel. It is not an image of going away to some other place (a sometimes evangelical view of escape to heaven) but rather a liberating of the ideals, resources, and grace to everyone present in the here and now, already available. [One interesting aside: Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer) tells the liberated wives that once, everyone had enough, and there was no need for war.] Instead of waiting for heaven, what if we lived like we should care for each other today?

FURY ROADThat is a sharp turn from the Valhalla that Joe has Nux and the other War Boys. It’s like (pre-Pan) as if Joe has established himself as the giver of all things to the Lost Boys, and they are predestined to live and die for his glory. Sure, there’s some Middle Eastern thought there about dying in glory, but it’s mixed into a brew that sees the Norse imagery included, along with the elevation of women to objectified status as well. Joe’s Valhalla includes the repression of belief, freedom, and water in the here-and-now, a charge that could be leveled against any organization, from the church of Martin Luther’s day to various world governments. Supply is artificially culled by Joe so that demand is higher, with the understanding that (except for Joe), tomorrow matters more than today. For the Max and Furiosa, much like for the early church sent out to be witnesses in Acts 1:8, they must prove that there is enough of everything (grace, water, gender) for everyone.

The two of them, working in tandem, are baptized by the dust of the storm (we’ve even see Max rise up out of the dust, akin to a baptism or earlier birth in Genesis 2:7). Then, they’re baptized by the fire of the flamethrowers, the bullets, and the grenades of Immortal Joe’s pursuit. And finally, they provide the baptism by freeing the ‘unlimited’ water supply to the villagers waiting below. [Ironically enough, neither one of them is actually ‘baptized’ by the water but they initiate that experience for others.] They make church happen, blasting open the divide between the water and the people, much like Jesus promised the church would in Matthew 16:18: “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it.” In the land of desolate desert, Max and Furiosa make the water flow. They are in the practice of blowing away gates, rocks, impediments to ‘the good.’

Honestly, I’ve never walked away from a film feeling so punched in the face by the weight of it. The 3D work was masterful, and the action was slick. I almost feel like I’m stuck with sand in my teeth, from the immersive experience of such a depressing worldview. This was no beach vacation; this was a war for our future, a warning about who we could become.

It’s a lovely day. Or is it?

Filed Under: Featured, Film, Reviews Tagged With: Book of Eli, Charlize Theron, dystopia, George Miller, grace, heaven, hell, Mad max, nature vs nurture, post-apocalyptic, Thunderdome, Tom Hardy, utopia

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