More on Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow

Geeking Out!

The more I’ve been thinking about Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, the more I’ve been geeking out. And where else will you turn when you can not get enough of geek trivia about the movie, the Internet.

It seem like Harry Knowles has been raving about this movie for a long time.

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=16914

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=16922

Harry is producing Kerry Conran’s next movie, A Princess of Mars,

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/rgs/pmars-table.html

which I have read, and Harry is right in saying that it is not the book itself, that is worth producing, but what it promises to become, when it is put on film. And I can not think of a better guy to put his story on film then Kerry Conran.

Conran is geekiness at its finest. He has a true love for movies that is obvious with his tributes.

The following is a list of tributes that I have noticed in the movie, needless to say there will be spoilers in the following list:

Raiders of the Lost Ark – the plane flying from point to point on the map
Spy Who Loved Me – submarine
King Kong – the log
Wizard Oz – the wizard
Metropolis - robots
Lost Horizon – well, you know
Star Wars – the ledge fights
Hayao Miyazaki – giant robots (Laputa, Castle in The Sky)
Disney – Goofy dogfights (at least that’s the way I remember it)
Dark City
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Lord of the Rings (Shangri-la)
Atlantis – Hearst Castle
Jaws – (I didn’t point this out myself, but someone else did)
The Fifth Element – not really, but Besson was going for the same thing

This follows the trend of Hollywood movies to be referential to things past (Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), which I love and as Tarantino said, it inspires people to dig up the old movies in the first place. (A digression, the reasons why things like movies and books become classics is because people take the time to bring them back in the first place.)

In fact Conran, as the aintitcool links above shows, refers to things that most people would not even dig up. Which kind of freaks me out, because it shows an American obsession to detail, that I do not have but want to learn.

Conran supposedly, worked four years to make 6 minutes of film when he didn’t have the budget. And then it took him around 2 years to make this film, another year to write the script, and by then he had shot the film twice on storyboard and with actor friends before he made the actual movie. According to Premiere, this movie was then 10 years in progress to it’s making. Wow!

Here are more stuff from Premiere, that Conran said the movie was referential to…

Metropolis

By Fritz Lang and movies by Murnau

Flyboy Heroes

David Niven in A Matter of Life and Death
Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings
Harrison Ford (Indiana)
John Wayne (Flying Tigers)

Combative Romantic Comedies

His Girl Friday
The Philadelphia Story

Serial Adventures

Buck Rogers
Flash Gordon

In fact he shot the movie in 20 minutes capsules, and wanted to even put serial-type cliffhanger interludes between each scene, but I think the producers thought that was too much, though I wouldn’t mind seeing those on the DVD.

Superman Cartoons

Which are making a comeback, which I wouldn’t mind seeing.

In fact these movies brought back in me (ego as usual), that I went surfing for swashbuckler classics and came up with this fantastic link with a list of em.

http://www.dealtime.com/xMP-Search_Results~NU-Search_Results~keyword-Swashbuckler~VT-63716

and the real winner was this DVD collection

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00014NF66/qid=1098089507/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl74/102-0013763-9656927?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

the Douglas Fairbanks Collection

with the (The Thief of Bagdad/The Mark of Zorro/The Three Musketeers/Robin Hood/The Black Pirate/Don Q, The Son of Zorro)

See this is what movies like Sky Captain are all about. It’s a movie that makes you watch more movies. Sounds stupid? Perhaps. But to a geek it makes sense. And we are a target market.

And what’s great is these blast from the past movies are back. With The Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean and now this. Long live the swashbuckler and long may he reign, swinging from chandelier to chandelier where he put a smile in our heart.

Oh, and more thing I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this guy

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0229084/

Omid Djalili

Because he’s funny. He’s the only Iranian stand-up comedian and actor in Britain.

Solid