‘Fury Road’ Looks Dangerous Even Without CGI

I just found this four-minute clip that shows snippets of the insane chase scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road without CGI enhancement of any kind — and the sequences don’t lose any of their heart-stopping thrills at all!

While it’s true that the final onscreen product was “sweetened” with some visual effects, it’s important to note that so much of the action was done with live-action, practical vehicles and stunt players. The climatic crash of the War Rig, seen in this clip, was obtained in just one take!

In my opinion, MM:FR should have won the Best Picture Oscar for 2015. While Spotlight certainly was the most important and most prestigious film of last year, it was also fairly forgettable. Come next February, just try to find someone who can tell you which movie won the previous year’s top award.

No one will have trouble recalling this R-rated, Charlize Theron/Tom Hardy instant classic. Fury Road drove away with six Oscars in tow, but I believe it was robbed of Best Picture and George Miller deserved Best Director.

But everyone who saw it will remember Fury Road as shiny and chrome for many years to come. It left flaming skid marks across my movie mind, and I was really (really) pulling for Max and Furiosa to pull an upset in L.A. I suppose this near-perfect film will have to be content in the company of so many other indelible movies that didn’t win the big prize.

To paraphrase the narrator of The Road Warrior, It lives now… only in my memory.

Witness an Honest Trailer for ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

Since Mad Max: Fury Road was so shiny and chrome, this Honest Trailer doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot to work with, so this is one of the milder entries in the series.

 

“Tom Hardly in the movie” LOL

Insane Images from ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

It feels like George Miller‘s latest Mad Max sequel, Mad Max: Fury Road was shot so long ago that it’s about time for its sequel to be rolled out, but the truth is it’s been a long and winding road back to Miller’s post-apocalyptic wasteland — and there’s still almost a year to go before the movie unspools on theater screens on May 15, 2015.

Entertainment Weekly came up with a passel of photos that preview what a sun-blasted, sepia-toned world Miller has in store for Tom Hardy when takes over the title role of Max Rockatansky from the aging Mel Gibson. He will be joined by Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa.

The Mad (Max) and the Furious

Look, it’s an official photograph of The Dark Knight Rises’ erstwhile Bane, Tom Hardy, in character as Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road!

I guess it gets pretty cold in the post-apocalyptic desert. Or maybe Max pulls that scarf up over his mouth before he speaks so that no one will understand his mumbling?

George Miller’s long-awaited next installment/reboot of the Mad Max franchise — co-starring Charlize Theron — has no release date yet. But, then again, it’s not even done shooting. Yes, still. Word is, an additional three weeks of production kicks off in Sydney on Nov. 22.

(If the photo looks a little familiar, it is; a version of this image was circulated as a copy of a copy of an autographed photo obtained by a fan a number of months back.)

The New Mad Max Looks Like…

Leave it to Twitter to source the “first look” image of Tom Hardy as the title character from Mad Max: Fury Road, in which he replaces Mel Gibson as former cop Max Rockatansky for the fourth film in the Mad Max franchise. Looks to be an autographed photo for a fan.

Director George Miller has been placating fans with images of the incredible vehicles to be featured in the movie, and while some industrious spies have been able to peep shots of Charlize Theron’s crew-cut hairstyle her character sports, until now, Hardy’s “new look” Max has been kept completely under wraps.

After seeing it, I have to wonder why they bothered. Hardy just looks like a dusty Gibson, with the scarf and the big knife in the holster being the obvious costume differences. Max sill looks to be wearing leathers to me. It’s kinda disappointing, actually. Of course that could be because, honest to Cthulhu, I don’t know what Tom Hardy looks like in real life! This could be his stunt double, for all I know. I do want to know if Hardy will he recite his lines in a muffled, Bane-like mumble?

Here’s the studio synopsis of the flick:

“Mad Max is caught up with a group of people fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by the Imperator Furiosa. This movie is an account of the Road War which follows. It is based on the Word Burgers of the History Men and eyewitness accounts of those who survived.”

Mad Max: Fury Road opens in 2013, but an exact date has not been revealed.

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

It’s not hard to figure out why Snow White and the Huntsman — released on DVD and Blu-ray today — disappointed at the box office earlier this year: It’s a disappointing movie, because it could have been so much more. Whatever it was, it was not the feminist reimagining of the fairy tale that the studio marketing promised.

You should realize your grrrl power movie is in trouble when the biggest change to the well-trod Brothers Grimm story is elevating the male huntsman from a bit player to a leading role. Snow White’s importance still stems from her beauty more than her ability to lug around a sword and her handy knowledge of the castle sewer system. True, she is not as passive as character in the Disney version (no housework for this riot grrrl!), but she still needs rescuing by a strong man — and she’s not exactly a compelling, sympathetic heroine one can easily root for, preferring a sneer to a smile.

Are You in a Frenzy for Mad Max: Fury Road?

If you thought details were sparse for The Wolverine, they are at a downright premium for a much larger, more star-packed production, namely Mad Max: Fury Road.

The long-gestating follow-up to 1985’s Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (and before that, The Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 and Mad Max) is being directed by franchise honcho George Miller, but main character Max Rockatansky — the role that made Mel Gibson an international star — has been taken over by Tom Hardy, lately seen as Bane, the mush-mouthed villain of The Dark Knight Rises and in the current moonshine flick Lawless.

Here is what passes for a story synopsis of Fury Road:

“Mad Max is caught up with a group of people fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by the Imperator Furiosa. This movie is an account of the Road War which follows. It is based on the Word Burgers of the History Men and eyewitness accounts of those who survived.”

Prometheus (2012) (Non-spoiler)

For a long time now, director Ridley Scott and co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof have been preaching that Prometheus has “Alien DNA,” but little did moviegoers suspect just how literal that description would be. I thought it meant the movie would have background elements that related to the 1979 classic’s universe that were not in-your-face; but, like the crew of the vessel Prometheus, I was wrong, so wrong.

The story begins in 2089 with a pair of scientists, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Dr. Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discovering ancient cave paintings that confirm their belief that an alien species (dubbed the Engineers) seeded human life on Earth and left a star map as an invitation to come visit the parent species when we became sufficiently advanced. Enter dying wealthy eccentric Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), who funds Shaw and Holloway’s voyage 35 lightyears (about 205 trillion miles) into deep space because he wants to meet his maker before he dies. When the Prometheus crew arrive at their destination, what they find is nothing they expected.

Latest Prometheus Trailer Ups the Intrigue

The more I see about Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus, the more intrigued I become. I wish I could phrase that “the more I learn about Prometheus,” but we never really seem to learn anything about the storyline of the movie. We get images, but not context. What does it all mean?

Regardless, I am intrigued by what I see here…

Prometheus opens June 8, and stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba and Logan Marshall-Green.