Showing posts with label John Frankenheimer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Frankenheimer. Show all posts

Monday, August 12, 2019

Filmmaking Gone Awry Proves To Be Captivating In Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau

It's a common occurrence in the modern blockbuster landscape to hear stories of a director originally set to helm a splashy high-budget project get taken off the project during pre-production, reshoots or even principal photography due to that age-old excuse of "creative differences". Josh Trank on Fant4stic, Phil Lord & Chris Miller on Solo: A Star Wars Story, Stephen Gaghan on that upcoming Dolittle movie, oh, the list goes on and on. But few of these departures were as chaotic as when Richard Stanley was fired a few days into filming on his passion project, a feature film adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau. What led to Stanley taking this gig in the first place, his firing and the fallout of this decision is chronicled in the documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau.


Thursday, August 8, 2019

The Manchurian Candidate Is The Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Movie I've Ever Known In My Life

SPOILERS FOR THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE AHEAD

Returning home from War is always a difficult process and that couldn't be truer for Korean War veterans Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra). Shaw at least has returned home a hero and with a plush job at a high-profile newspaper to help make his adjustment back to civilian life reasonably easy. Meanwhile, Marco and the other members of the platoon he belonged to begin to have the strangest dreams, ones in which they're all lined up in front a gathering of Communist leaders in order to show off how effectively American soldiers can be brainwashed. In order to demonstrate how deep this brainwashing goes, Shaw kills two of his own men without hesitation as an obedient soldier of enemy forces.