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camwynI was persuaded to watch the trailer last night by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pandoras_closet, despite the screaming of my self-preservation instinct.
I still don't believe in the movie. The problem is not that Keanu is bad. The problem is that he is completely unconvincing. He's the wrong colour, skin and hair and eyes alike. He looks too clean. He dresses wrong (I don't remember seeing anything that qualified as The Coat). He sounds wrong, naturally. He didn't even look like he knew what to do with his cigarette! It was completely impossible to believe that the guy I was looking at was in any way representative of, or even related to, the Right King of All Bastards. You might as well cast Tom Felton as Othello and expect me to believe I was looking at the Moor of Venice.
If you're going to cast an American in the part, and move the story to the States, at least have the decency to translate the atmosphere, too. America can't match the sense of Ancient Dreadfulness that hangs over Constantine's Britain; we shouldn't even try. But the sense of corrosive, pervasive promise-gone-to-rot that can be found in your finer film noir and hardboiled detective stories might just be our analogue. Find an actor who's suited to the part, not someone who got an honourary award for best action movie star at the World Stunt Awards. (I have nothing against action or stunt work, but it's not exactly the same thing as what John does, now is it.) Get a decent writer. Lock the director down in front of The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil and things like that for a fortnight or two. Then let them do it. Translate it properly into the American milieu and it might have a chance.
But don't ask me to believe in Keanu, because it can't be done.
pandoras_closet, despite the screaming of my self-preservation instinct.I still don't believe in the movie. The problem is not that Keanu is bad. The problem is that he is completely unconvincing. He's the wrong colour, skin and hair and eyes alike. He looks too clean. He dresses wrong (I don't remember seeing anything that qualified as The Coat). He sounds wrong, naturally. He didn't even look like he knew what to do with his cigarette! It was completely impossible to believe that the guy I was looking at was in any way representative of, or even related to, the Right King of All Bastards. You might as well cast Tom Felton as Othello and expect me to believe I was looking at the Moor of Venice.
If you're going to cast an American in the part, and move the story to the States, at least have the decency to translate the atmosphere, too. America can't match the sense of Ancient Dreadfulness that hangs over Constantine's Britain; we shouldn't even try. But the sense of corrosive, pervasive promise-gone-to-rot that can be found in your finer film noir and hardboiled detective stories might just be our analogue. Find an actor who's suited to the part, not someone who got an honourary award for best action movie star at the World Stunt Awards. (I have nothing against action or stunt work, but it's not exactly the same thing as what John does, now is it.) Get a decent writer. Lock the director down in front of The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil and things like that for a fortnight or two. Then let them do it. Translate it properly into the American milieu and it might have a chance.
But don't ask me to believe in Keanu, because it can't be done.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-28 07:27 am (UTC)I'm hoping that eventually he'll disappear.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-28 07:51 am (UTC)*drool*
Date: 2004-05-28 09:43 am (UTC)re: Hellblazer Hong Kong
Date: 2010-05-09 10:02 pm (UTC)Fuuuuu, imma from HK and I finally went there last year.
...and spent the whole month there bedridden, in a really run down apartment that truly does inspire horror and instill despair, and even as I continue to whine about it, I knew there were many people way worse of. HK is also both new and old, the city is new but the people is old and so are mountains and the sea.
...but Our Fairies Are Different though. ...but hmmmn, John could visit HK? Possibly while on the run from the law again...
Dish Spirit is certainly spoken enough for John. It's like the ouiija board, but using a soy sauce dish over paper written with words....also, WAAAAY more malevolent. Whereas many ouiija board stories features ppl fooling around and wondering if a ghost really did appear or if they move their hands...
http://www.myweirdstory.com/story/405/the_dish_spirit_aka_ouija_board.html
Almost every dish spirit is very nasty, and if you lift your finger before the spirit leaves, YOU GET POSSESSED.
Also, considering the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong, and you have a lot of pissed off ghosts.
I think ghost stories is totally a very emotional cultural expression, there are dead mothers coming back to watch over their kids, and the wronged seeking vengeance. When I was very little in Hong Kong, there were bomb shelters that was supposingly haunted, because, when the Japanese knew they were losing the war, they took captive women there and things got very...satanic is the word that won't leave my mind.
...and then there is the part where dismemberment and/or submerge in cement is a popular way to dispose of a body. ...and the corpse eating fish at North Point...