Tuesday, 22 March 2011
A Night's Work - Shadowrun promo 1990
FASA's 1990 promo video for their Shadowrun RPG. Thrill to the production values! Soak up the 80's ambiance!
Shadowrun - 3rd Shifters
A view of a "CyberPunk" future. Man is hooked on "jackin' in" for a cyber rush. "Modified" humans are commonplace and some even powerbrokers. A barren world where "Cyber Operatives" steal information like bounty hunters. Bypassing physical walls and firewalls alike, this team of misfits works under cover of darkness, and goes strait to the source.
Shot as a 16mm student film in 1992, at Velencia Community College in Central Florida. I was brought in to serve as the DP by my long time friend and Film Dept head Michael Corbett.
We had 2 Arriflex SRII's, and a 10 ton grip and lighting package. This was a feature trailor directed by Greg Hale, and produced by Brian Caine. They both went on to materially participate in "The Blair Witch Project". Every department excelled, especially the Art Dept. For me, it was a very rewarding experience. I am very proud of this piece.
www.scottmumford.com
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Robotrix - Hong Kong Cat III Cyberpunk
The film tells the story of Selina (Chikako Aoyama), a beautiful female cop, who is assigned to bodyguard a middle eastern prince who is staying in Hong Kong. But then, a mad scientist who has transferred his mind into a cyborg which looks human comes and kills Selina, then kidnaps the prince and holds him for ransom. To save the prince and stop the evil scientist-turned killer cyborg, good scientist Dr. Sara (Hui Hiu Dan) and her cyborg assistant Ann (Amy Yip) transfer Selina's mind into the body of a cyborg that looks just like her. Now Selina, Ann, Dr. Sara and Selina's cop fiance (David Wu) (who had been told Selina survived the shooting and doesn't know she's a cyborg now), must team up to defeat the bad guy. (Joy Sales)
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Tsukamoto's The Phantom of Regular Size
Shinya Tsukamoto's debut film from 1986 has finally come to surface via Raro DVD's youtube account.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Wild Palms 1993
Wild Palms is a six-hour mini-series, which first aired in May 1993 on the ABC network in the United States. Written by Bruce Wagner, who (with Oliver Stone) was also the executive producer, Wild Palms was a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing through technology and drugs. It was based on a comic strip written by Wagner and illustrated by Julian Allen first published in 1990 in Details magazine. The mini-series starred James Belushi, Dana Delany, Robert Loggia, and Angie Dickinson. The episodes were directed by four people known more for their feature films: Kathryn Bigelow, Keith Gordon, Peter Hewitt, and Phil Joanou.
Cyberpunk author William Gibson has a cameo appearance as himself. When the author of Neuromancer is introduced as the man who invented the term "Cyberspace", he remarks, "and they won't let me forget it." Oliver Stone also has a cameo, in which he appears as himself - being interviewed on television in 2007 - after the release of files pertinent to the assassination of John F. Kennedy reveal that Stone's film, JFK, was right. Stone also referred to "the late Jack Valenti" in the scene in the 1992 movie. Stone hired musician, body-modification pioneer, and occultist Genesis P-Orridge as a consultant for the series.
Cyberpunk author William Gibson has a cameo appearance as himself. When the author of Neuromancer is introduced as the man who invented the term "Cyberspace", he remarks, "and they won't let me forget it." Oliver Stone also has a cameo, in which he appears as himself - being interviewed on television in 2007 - after the release of files pertinent to the assassination of John F. Kennedy reveal that Stone's film, JFK, was right. Stone also referred to "the late Jack Valenti" in the scene in the 1992 movie. Stone hired musician, body-modification pioneer, and occultist Genesis P-Orridge as a consultant for the series.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
James Cameron's Xenogenesis from 1979
James Cameron's first film, presented as a part of an ongoing series, and with hardly any plot to speak of. It showcases all things Cameron in a 12-minute robot vs. robot low-budget special effects demo.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Protech - Battle of Cybercity
An ultra obscure underground Japanese Cyberpunk film. Not even listed on IMDB. I will try and see if I can dig up some more information on it.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
L'autre Monde aka Black Heaven 2010
Hideo Nakata's disappointing Chatroom is the tale of a group of kids who go online to escape their troubles and who are coerced into taking their own lives by similarly troubled teens. That's playing Cannes in the festival's Un Certain Regard sidebar as part of the official selection.
Also in the official selection, as a midnight screening, is Black Heaven, a tale of a group of kids who go online to escape their troubles and who are coerced into taking their own lives by similarly troubled teens. But while it's French, stars no-one you've heard of and is helmed by a director with little pedigree, don't assume Black Heaven is the also-ran here. For everything Chatroom does wrong, Black Heaven does right. It's a smart and engaging look at internet culture and the pressures, lies and intoxication of a virtual world. It may not be packed to the gills with references to Twitter and Facebook, but it certainly feels more relevant today than Chatroom does. Indeed, the latter seems to have been drawn from a mid-90s online world which exists only in its filmmakers' heads.
And rather than bash us over the head with the specifics of the differences between the online world and the real world – which in Chatroom are both live action elements starring the principal cast – here director Gilles Marchand (whose debut feature was Who Killed Bambi?) smartly chooses a computer-generated noir cityscape to show us his characters' avatars. And because we understand the attraction of the game, and its dark and brooding allure, we understand how his characters become trapped by the film's honey pot.
That honey pot is a woman, Sam (Louise Bourgoin), whose avatar is a singer at an exclusive club within the game. Our protagonist, Gaspard (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) first encounters her in real life, when he saves her from a car quickly filling up with exhaust fumes. Encountering her online he soon realizes she had an escape route from the car, and there may be more to her dark conversations about dying.
Bourgoin, who's currently making waves in France as the star of Luc Besson's new film The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, is suitably intoxicating as Sam and keeps us engaged throughout. Like Gaspard, we want to know what she's about from the moment she appears on screen. Leprince-Riguet, meanwhile, makes curious naivety his own as Gaspard, serving up a young man whose sense of intrigue and overactive libido justifies his relentless obsession with this woman.
Chatroom showed a bright and over-saturated online world that contrasted with a drab, dark real world London. Here, Marchand can be confident enough in his storyline to reverse that entirely. Gaspard and his friends live by the sea and the story seems to be set during summer. They're regularly at the beach, enjoying the sun. And yet the dark, imposing online world of the game is still impossibly attractive to them.
It's a confidently crafted duality, and while the story wavers at times, it succeeds in selling an ending that in weaker hands could have gone awry. That Marchand's sophomore effort as a director can trump the work of much more experienced hands is pretty impressive. Here's hoping Black Heaven makes the rounds in cinemas before Chatroom does.
Find the original article here.
Also in the official selection, as a midnight screening, is Black Heaven, a tale of a group of kids who go online to escape their troubles and who are coerced into taking their own lives by similarly troubled teens. But while it's French, stars no-one you've heard of and is helmed by a director with little pedigree, don't assume Black Heaven is the also-ran here. For everything Chatroom does wrong, Black Heaven does right. It's a smart and engaging look at internet culture and the pressures, lies and intoxication of a virtual world. It may not be packed to the gills with references to Twitter and Facebook, but it certainly feels more relevant today than Chatroom does. Indeed, the latter seems to have been drawn from a mid-90s online world which exists only in its filmmakers' heads.
And rather than bash us over the head with the specifics of the differences between the online world and the real world – which in Chatroom are both live action elements starring the principal cast – here director Gilles Marchand (whose debut feature was Who Killed Bambi?) smartly chooses a computer-generated noir cityscape to show us his characters' avatars. And because we understand the attraction of the game, and its dark and brooding allure, we understand how his characters become trapped by the film's honey pot.
That honey pot is a woman, Sam (Louise Bourgoin), whose avatar is a singer at an exclusive club within the game. Our protagonist, Gaspard (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) first encounters her in real life, when he saves her from a car quickly filling up with exhaust fumes. Encountering her online he soon realizes she had an escape route from the car, and there may be more to her dark conversations about dying.
Bourgoin, who's currently making waves in France as the star of Luc Besson's new film The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, is suitably intoxicating as Sam and keeps us engaged throughout. Like Gaspard, we want to know what she's about from the moment she appears on screen. Leprince-Riguet, meanwhile, makes curious naivety his own as Gaspard, serving up a young man whose sense of intrigue and overactive libido justifies his relentless obsession with this woman.
Chatroom showed a bright and over-saturated online world that contrasted with a drab, dark real world London. Here, Marchand can be confident enough in his storyline to reverse that entirely. Gaspard and his friends live by the sea and the story seems to be set during summer. They're regularly at the beach, enjoying the sun. And yet the dark, imposing online world of the game is still impossibly attractive to them.
It's a confidently crafted duality, and while the story wavers at times, it succeeds in selling an ending that in weaker hands could have gone awry. That Marchand's sophomore effort as a director can trump the work of much more experienced hands is pretty impressive. Here's hoping Black Heaven makes the rounds in cinemas before Chatroom does.
Find the original article here.
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
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