Steady Leak: All Chops, No Brain

Hear, hear.

I remember when Dead End first hit the web, and people were losing their shit over how cool it was, and went on about Warners should hire this guy to relaunch the Batman films. When I finally watched it, I thought that the entire Internet had lost its fucking mind.

Collora keeps saying it's a "70s scifi film homage". Really he means Star Wars. I've seen a lot of 70s scifi films and Star Wars is the only one that at all resembles this film, unless the trailer left out the scenes with red loincloths and flying stone heads.

I have a name for this column: Nick's sandy Vag.

Leave it to you to be blind to true genius.

Good point, Cletus. We need more original ideas, but if they're going to ape cinema's SF past why aren't more aping Silent Running, Logan's Run, or the POTA saga?

No, it always comes back to Star Wars.

And I agree, Nick, this guy would have a brilliant future in Video Games.

I see fan films, and the shitty (but pretty) output of many of my film school compatriots and just think, "oh what I could do with them dollahs..."

EDIT: ...and, pardon my eloquence, that trailer is boring and shitty.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the trailer, but is it really worth this kind of hate from a film-appreciating community? This guy clearly loves movies, and he's worked really hard to do something creative on his own terms. Sure, he's ripping off a lot of the material. So do 90% of the movies that are released these days.

I guess I just don't understand how this affects anyone negatively in any way? And how is a guy producing his own movie outside of a studio any different than a guy who posts comics created outside of a publisher? This kind of thing is exactly what this site should be celebrating. I don't get the hate.

Chud's favourite auteur Guillermo Del Toro seems to think Hunter Prey is a-ok, according to Collora atleast. The guy's known to be quite full of himself, so yeah, take that with a grain of salt.

Scratch, I agree with what you're saying. More power to the guy for getting his film funded and made. It might be deritive as hell and potentially terrible but that's another matter.

Another day, another broad "look at me!" show from Chud as they keep on a'reachin' for that dream of mainstream movie-press legitimacy by morphing into "The Film Geek Site That HATES Film Geeks As Much As You Do."

The guy's put together what looks like a professional-grade genre film on a budget. Is it any good? We'll see, but for my money it already looks better than Transformers 2 or McTerminator. But, no, the guy made his early name with (gasp!) fan-films, so he's gotta get 'taken down.' "Did ya see us, Old Guard Entertainment Press?? Did ya, did ya, huh!? Y'see? We're not like those awful, awful nerds from AICN! We're the COOL guys, see!? Don't lump us in with THEM just cause we're both on the internet! Pretty-please let us sit at the Big People Table!"

Yea, i dont get the hate either. its fun shit. DEAD END was complete fan film fare. It was cool and a fun idea but nothing more nothing less.

this Hunter-Prey thing looks fun too. It seems pretty well shot and should probably be a fun thing also.

I say more power to collora.

I think he would be the PERFECT director for an AVENGERS movie!!!!!!l3333333t!-zors!

Show me a solidly scripted bit of dialogue he's done. Then find me an illustration of how he executes the inciting act in a plot. Then an emotional scene. Then a scene played for laughs, in a new and original way. He's playing house, from Lucas' sand-box to the DC Dress-U-Up In My Fetishes hour.

And I will confess in my state that if he had Batman set up to engage in a fight with werewolves, flying men-bats, or perhaps the angry vegetable god who wants his wife returned to him, I would watch that. But even the basic narrative take s a backseat to showing cool lighting and costumes and shots. It's technically impressive; it's creatively (and maybe career-wise) dangerous.

It's not about hating the effort, or the moxie, or the skill on display. It's about hating a philosophy that's bad for art, and the movement to congratulate and legitimize what they do. That trend is not solid for film.

But. That. Trailer. Is. Shitty.

It's fucking sand. That's what the trailer has... lots of sand. Professional grade? From three knockoff paintball costumes and sub-video game CGI? The matte compositing looks like ILM work circa 1995.

The fucking thing isn't even polished. There's no novel style to any of the shots, barely an attempt at an interesting or cohesive color palette, tritely "dynamic" compositions... The camera is obviously decent, but they aren't putting together anything astounding with it.

So.... it's technically mediocre, and creatively bankrupt. It's represents the worst of what genre can be. It belongs on SyFy.

EDIT: Just watched it again. Eugh, the pretty rocks are doing all the aesthetic work. The sound design is also a hollow shitty imitation of what they're doing with Transformers.

I'm fascinated by fan films. The right ones (notice I didn't say good ones) are earnest and amateur, which I respect a lot. But there's a line between a Sweded type film like this, and a demo reel, which is what Dead End was.

Neither are good, but only one is charming in it's shabbiness. Neither is an actual attempt at telling a story. But only one is pretentious enough to think it is.

From the article linked earlier in the thread.

Fuck this guy and anyone who defends this pretentious cunt. If he's not lying about Del Toro then I am fully prepared to call one of my favorite filmmakers a cunt. You can't talk to someone who says shit like this and not understand what a worthless piece of dick shit you are looking in the face. You'd have to be just as big a twat. It reminds me of film students who try and tell you how revolutionary fucking Casablanca or Citizen Kane is like they are laying some secret truth on you that you might not be smart enough to understand. Like I don't fucking know Casablanca is a masterpiece. This just in... The Beatles. Check them shits out. And I heard the Rolling Stones are pretty good too. The mother fucker is explaining fucking allegory like he came up with the shit. You talk like this fucking guy you better back it up by being the second coming of Martin Scorsese. Either that or you better be nineteen years old and even then I'll still want to kick you in the taint.

Wow. Severe anger management issues on both sides of the argument, I guess.

Yeah, this article comes down to getting huffy about someone making a SciFi Channel Original on their own. Unless it's directed at Dead End, which it almost seems to be, since he's gone on to do something technically original.

I like Nick's writing, but it seems like most of his stuff nowadays is the occasional seething rant about something that annoys him for no reason.

It's a natural frustration at seeing talented writers with original ideas never getting their visions realised, whilst most tried and tested ideas get rehashed.

We criticise many professional directors for the same shortcomings. Amateurs have access to wider circles of writers who produce amazing screenplays for nothing but credit in the film. The internet only helped this.

I don't think he deserves criticism for being unoriginal, there's some technical ability here - he needs encouragement to grow up and evolve his vision. The problem is that he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who thinks he needs to develop.

It's unfortunate.

If we took a team of Chewers out to the Mexican desert we could shoot something technically on-par with this. It's not difficult to make a desert look nice.

Hitchcock summed this up beautifully.

Collora's not taking resources away from those guys. Yeah, it's a crappy, uninspired trailer, but let's not blame it for the next Eternal Sunshine not getting made.

Nick, that was fantastic. I completely agree. Anyone who claimed to read that article and detected only "ranting" either can't read or didn't.

This news irked me yesterday and people defending it today continue to do so. Also, moviebob, and Fazer sound highly suspect.

The thing is that its way easier to practice your skills using established settings/characters etc than it is to actually do the whole thing from scratch.

But at some point with any medium (be it comics, novels or filmmaking) you have to actually make something with your own ideas or else all you become is very good at mimicking other people.

Case in point, I knew I guy once who was studying astrophysics. Now he was very very smart and as a hobby was teaching himself to play the guitar, he picked it up really quickly and in a few months became very good at it so good in fact he joined a college band. But he never once attempted anything new, every solo he did in his band and every song he played was an exact copy of what he had herd on the album.

So in my eyes he didn't really have any talent, just like the guy who made the Batman short.

When somebody here sais something like, "Dammit why do studios keep making crap like 'Blart Mall Cop' or 'Chuck and Larry', it takes away resources from more movies like 'Watchmen' happening, everybody screams, "Shut the fuck up, you idiot, you have no idea what you're talking about".

However, this guy makes what looks like an entertaining piece of fluff at worst, and everybody starts screaming for his head on a pike. It's made outside the system, doesn't appear to impact any other movies made by the established sytem, and this guy might even serve as inspiration to someone who might end up making something worth while?

Where is the line drawn between good indy efforts and bad indy efforts. It seems so subjective. Especially when so many here bemoan the death of the indy film industry.

How is it Chuck and Larry = God's gift to the world , but "Hunter Prey" = the evil death of the movie industry?

So, please now, everybody call me a stupid ignorant cunt and then refuse to explain why this appearent contradiction is actually not.

So jealous.

This seems like a modern day EQUINOX.

What?

At best it looks like another DVD sequel to Screamers, in the vein of flicks like Dracula 3000, Raptor Island, Anaconda 3 or I know what you did last Summer 3. It just seems that one of the main stars hasn't been named yet, someone like Corin Nemec, David Hasselhoff, Coolio, Lorenzo Lamas, Dennis Rodman, David Faustino or Adrian Paul.

Seriously, there is nothing in it promising a new Pitch Black. No Hauser, no Diesel, no cool fx and certainly no cool creature design.

I think you will find that many people in this thread including me have explained just that.

Right on man, I'll love to see more people go out and try and at least be semi orginal then the spawn of satan shit we get with Chuck and Larry...etc

you mean the Nintendo 64 graphics and "alien" in goofy green mask did nothing for you? So is this really a film? it just feels like a bunch of shots for a trailer. Eh, if you're going to copy other peoples works at least make it good. I have no interest in seeing this film, but i give him props for going out there and doing something

I think this leak makes some damn good points. This is coming from someone who likes to make fun of Nick's posts occasionally. Even if there are those that might disagree with him about the potential of Collora's latest genre "exploration", his point still stands. Worse though, it doesn't just stand about random folks who are deciding they want to make movies after seeing how cheap an HVX is, they apply even more so to film students being churned out of schools right now.

First thing. The auteur theory is a myth. Are there directors and producers with strong creative visions who can drive projects and mold what they are? Absolutely. However, the first thing you will learn (from making your own low budget indie films to working on someone else's studio film) is that it takes a lot of talented people to make a film. The folks who read this site probably already realize that. We're the people who can quote who the DP and editor are on a film while our friends stare at us blankly.

I'm willing to guess that the auteur theory has always been a little bit of smoke. Every student and teacher love to point out Orson Welles. Do you think Citizen Kane would be what it was without Toland and Wise?

Second point where Nick is dead on...there are plenty of folks with cameras and degrees. Most of them don't know Daniel Stern's Epic Dick about crafting a story or working with actors. There's a graduate film school locally (I won't name names, but I will say it's founded by a right wing religious fellow) that churns out graduates who get to work with plenty of cameras and equipment, but are absolutely useless if you need them to design something original, work with talent, or even observe basic points of set etiquette. It's an absolute pain in the ass when they somehow finagle their way into something you're working on.

Where I disagree though is that it's necessarily an epidemic. I think the rule of quality being the ultimate gate keeper will continue to sift out the crap. It's just that we all can go to YouTube and Vimeo and see more of the crap now. I'm sure the ratio of good to bad filmmakers is probably still the same.

Sci-fi is the LAST fucking genre where we should be encouraging mimicry.

"Encouraging mimicry".

Encouraging mimicry.

At the core of all this, he's getting attention (positive and negative) for making a film that looks like another film. Let me say that again: The chief merit on display is that THIS FILM LOOKS LIKE ANOTHER FILM YOU LIKE. That's what people are calling for to be "celebrated".

That can work (see Far From Heaven, Grindhouse, don't see Alien Trespass), but if there's nothing on top of or beyond the mimicry, encouraging this is like telling your cousin that his Rush cover band is "awesome" and is "totally going to make it big".

"What is Regent University, Alex?"

Again, I don't know anything about this guy. To be honest, I haven't seen the Batman fan-film he did either. I'm basing this trailer entirely on its own merits.

Does it look like a polished studio film? Absolutely not. It looks like a cross between a cheesy Sci-Fi channel and a home movie that a teenaged wannabe director put together. But there is absolutely a role for crappy Sci-Fi movies. In fact, there's a whole industry behind them. They may be cheap and derivative, but everyone on this board has watched one at one time or another, and there's no other way movies with mansquitos and killer snakehead fish would get made otherwise.

And as for looking like a cheap home movie - that's how every director out there started. They all made cheap home movies on shoestring budgets. And them most of went on to study film, but some of them didn't. Everyone's different, and this guy has clearly chosen a different path.

Movies like Primer and Baghead were made on minimal budgets, but they're celebrated for that fact. This movie may not be high art, but it stands out from both Sci-Fi movies and studio films because this guy put the whole thing together on his own, and I say good for him. Maybe he's a pretentious dick - I haven't read any of the interviews - but I thought we were supposed to separate the art from the artist. This looks like late night C-movie cheese, and if anything, it's an interesting case study.

A movie like this doesn't suppress up-and-coming filmmakers. In fact, it should only encourage them. And it doesn't impact studio films in any way whatsoever. Looking at this in comparison to 12 Colonels Attack just makes the whole article come across as sour grapes.

And finally, all of this conversation is based off of a 2-minute trailer. Shouldn't we wait to see the actual movie until we pass this kind of judgment on exactly how derivative a movie is?

None of which obliges us to like the trailer. Or the finished film.

Primer is celebrated not for its budget, but for being the most thoughtful and original film about time travel in 40 years, and maybe ever. That the filmmaker accomplished THAT for no money is gravy.

EQUINOX has a Criterion edition.

Did I mention EQUINOX yet?

Equinox has an outsider-art type charm, and imagination. As does another Criterion release, Carnival Of Souls. This guy's stuff feels completely lifeless.

And he spent a LOT more money. That just makes it sting a bit more.

Yeah, Jesus. If you can't see that...

Not to mention, Primer didn't look too shabby either. It sure as hell didn't look like a "home movie."

And Shane Caruth did practically EVERYTHING on that film. Practically a one-man crew.

But if Primer featured its protagonist visiting a future where talking apes ruled man, we'd have to be explaining why it's not quite as awesome anymore.

Not saying budget is the ONLY reason why Primer is great. But people always bring up the history and budget behind that film when talking about it.

Also not saying that anything in this trailer should oblige anyone to like the film. But there's also nothing in the trailer that should oblige anyone to hate it. The trailers for the latest Lorenzo Lamas Mega Tarantula VS Super Scorpion don't generate this kind of hate. This movie is hardly any different. In fact, it would be a major victory for this guy if this movie was shown on Sci-Fi. I certainly don't see it being viewed anywhere else, except maybe DVDs that the guy sells himself, or online viewing. But at the very least, it'll earn him some buzz that he can use to jumpstart a career. Beats posting angrily on a message board.

By today's standards, Corrola (sp?) is an outsider. The guys that made EQUINOX hung out at the Ackermansion all the time. They filmed a crappy script simply to produce a bunch of homemade special effects.
Now I'm partial to EQUINOX because it has it's own charm. This may very well lack charm, but the guy is basically coming from the same place. He wants to make cool looking movies and he's doing it. To say he should learn his place and stop pursuing his passion is nothing but sour grapes.

Probably not.
But he succeeded in making a film. Why do you begrudge him that?

Just to clarify, this was all in jest because I KNEW there'd be people with their panties in a twist over the article. (Not you, BC)

It's all so counterfeit-y, it's hard to consider giving him a fair shake. He's squarely in the realm of fan-film; I'm one of the loudest guys saying there's a spectrum there, and you can't dismiss all of it, but wallowing in someone else's creations, even once or twice removed, is tough to defend.

I can see the temptation to call this sour grapes, but this site does get behind new voices and filmmakers who stick their neck out for their craft. I guess it's all subjective, but I'm having trouble understanding the urge to defend the guy. Because while you can't judge from this trailer, Dead End and World's Finest displayed an absolute absence of storytelling ability. It was all "neat" shots and hissed one-liners from the comics. What part are we supposed to be celebrating or encouraging? It sounds like the Kevin Smith "hey, at least he's making movies" defense.

Feh, the whole industry is full of fan-wank. Just look at Wolverine. It just so happens to be licensed product, but there's nothing innovative or even good going on there. Just a string of characters running through special effects. Go after that director. Tell me he should find another job.
Going after someone so low on the ladder seems spiteful to me.

This seems relevant. Particularly BobClark's consistency of opinion.

I'd say there's a decent-sized difference between a heavily-inspired film and a shot-for-shot remake. Although I wouldn't begrudge the kids who shot the Raiders film, either. Seems like harmless fun, and certainly not worth an angry article.

Fuck those kids. I hope Lucas sues their asses.

Yeah, but the difference is they were KIDS. Collora's a 40-year old man working in the industry. To really poke holes in the Collora hate, we should be talking about why Doomsday gets a pass from hypocritical motherfuckers like me.

My defense there would be that while Doomsday is even more shameless in its genre aping than Collora's stuff, Marshall figured out how to smuggle that stuff into a mainstream film, made it entertaining on its own, and didn't take the riffing as seriously as Collora seems to. And no one was dressed as a stormtrooper with a Boba Fett cape.

The day Collora's rip-offs have even a glimmer of the fun on display in Marshall's Fine Young Cannibals scene is the day I'll have his back.

I see two theories behind the criticism here. With apologies for oversimplifying a bit, Phil's theory seems to boil down to "this guy is no good" which is fine. Although if the guy sucks as a filmmaker then it doesn't really matter whether he's ripping off superhero movies or shooting an idea that is 100% original.

But Nick's theory in the article seems to be "guys like this are wasting their potential talent by playing dress-up & act-out in the sandbox with established characters and concepts instead of doing their own thing." To which my first response is to wonder why that criticism doesn't apply to Nolan's Batman movies or Raimi's Spider-Man films.

If the answer is "yes, but Nolan and Raimi brought so much more talent to the respective sandboxes", that circles back to Phil's theory which is fine (subjective, but fine) but Nick's article doesn't make that distinction at all. If instead the answer is that somehow Nolan and Raimi have earned the right to do a sandbox movie or three through their previous, "original" work then I guess someone should explain why that makes a bit of difference. Does a neophyte need to prove his/her talents (to whom? for what?) by working up something original before exercising their skills with established properties and concepts?

The people who shot the Raiders film started at 10 and finished at 17. How retarded do you have to be not to understand the difference between small children making a fan film and a grown man making a fan film? The Hunter Prey guy is nearly 40 years old. If Hunter Prey is the culmination of his artistic devlopment at 40 it seems unlikely that he will ever have much to offer the world artisitically.

If the guy directing Anaconda 4 or Mansquito thinks as much of his "art" as Collora then that guys is a worthless fucking cunt too. The world does not need Sci-Fi Channel original movies. They could play good movies in those time-slots just as easily. The only value this shit has is its value as something for people to belittle and mock and even rant against. This shit exists to be scoffed add. That is its sole worth and purpose in existance.

You don't have to separate the art from the artist until said artist produces great art. Collora has yet to show the world mediocre art. I don't think Collora has earned the right to call himself an artist. Collora can barely claim the title technician.

X-Men: Origins: Wolverine is an accurate representation of the vast majority of the source material. People shouldn't go and see it just like people shouldn't read most X-Men comics. The difference is that Gavin Hood has made good films and will most likely do so again. Gavin Hood probably isn't especially proud of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and I doubt he'll be hailing it as a cinematic revolution in interviews. It is also unlikely that he will explain things like theme and allegory in said interviews as if the people reading the interview are severly retarded peons who must be educated in the basics tools of storytelling so that they can fully apprieciate their new messiah.

Do we really need to try and work out a clear difference between Sam Raimi and Chris Nolan being offered millions of dollars to adapt a comic book property by the companies that hold the rights to that property and then using their skills and talent to create a highly entertaining piece of pop art and a guy making Predator VS The Clone Troopers but calling it something else so he can sell it? I mean that is Collora's big artistic leap. That it finally dawned on him to alter the designs of some shit and change the names so that he can finally make money on it because he will never be hired to make films featuring the original characters. I'll give you this... there is no difference between Hunter Prey and I AM OMEGA on a basic conceptual level. Again I don't think the guys making Transmorphers think that they are creating a new language of cinema that will reshape the face of the industry. I assume Collora jerks off while staring into a mirror. I doubt the Transmorphers guys are doing that. And even if they are its probably because of some other emotional disorder and not because they are the creative powerhouses behing Alien VS Hunter.

I am always stunned that people think everyone who posts on message boards is as passionate, earnest and sincere about the shit that they post. Just because someone uses profanity, hyperbole, takes a negative stance or *GASP* uses the dreaded ALL CAPS does not mean that actually give a shit about anything they've been ranting about. Angry rants are just fun to write. No matter how annoying they may be to you or how juvenile or poorly written it is likely that the person who wrote then did so for their own amusement. It was masturbation. Now... maybe its wrong to rant about shit just for the fun of it and maybe the person who inserts themself into a sincere discussion with inane bullshit about face rape and requesting that certain people commit suicide is a major asshole. Maybe that person should even be banned from a message board community. That doesn't make doing it any less fun for the person who does it.

It makes me sad to think the people defending some of this fanboy bullshit are sincere in their efforts... that they put real thought and feeling into their arguments. People like me just dismiss everything you say offhand and when they get bored they just go about their bussiness being an asshole somewhere else.

Neil Marshall's Doomsday was a fan film of 80's action movies. There was not one original concept in the entire film. Why does that get a free pass?