James Cameron Calls Gravity The Best Ever, While Terry Gilliam Craps On Syfy’s 12 Monkeys
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Here in the land of science fiction, fans are often left to take the good with the bad, and the bad with the good. Rarely can we expect perfection, and complete disasters are frequent enough. For instance, we’re really looking forward to Alfonso Cuaron’s upcoming space thriller Gravity, and our anticipation is bolstered by James Cameron praising it as “the best space film ever done,” which is quite a compliment. On the other hand, we’re not really looking forward to Syfy’s proposed pilot for a !2 Monkeys series, and we’re even more down on it now that the original film’s director, Terry Gilliam, called it “a very dumb idea” and claimed he was never contacted about it. Now all we need to do is get Cameron and Gilliam involved on the same flick.
Gravity gained a huge amount of buzz after recently premiering at the Telluride Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival, with the Toronto Film Festival hosting the film soon. It’s one of those movies where it’s harder to find someone complaining about it than declaring it the best film of 2013. Cameron, who was given a personal screening of the film from his pal Cuaron, was as hyperbolic as one can possibly be about a film.
“I was stunned, absolutely floored,” he told Variety. “I think it’s the best space photography ever done. I think it’s the best space film ever done, and it’s the movie I’ve been hungry to see for an awful long time.” And while he does champion the technology Cuaron used to make the film, Cameron was more impressed by the director’s ability to do what he wanted to do without compromising, as well as tell the story he was able to tell within this setting.
“What is interesting is the human dimension,” continued Cameron. “Alfonso and Sandra working together to create an absolutely seamless portrayal of a woman fighting for her life in zero gravity.” The Variety article goes into depth on just how Cuaron was able to achieve his zero gravity, but it’s the kind of article I prefer to read after I’ve seen the finished product.
Meanwhile, in a place where time travel co-exists with terrible ideas, Syfy and Atlas Entertainment are prepping their 12 Monkeys pilot for a November production, with a script written by Terra Nova scribes Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett. But just in case you thought Terry Gilliam was going to follow his upcoming release The Zero Theorem by executive producing the Syfy reboot, think again.
“I know nothing about that,” Gilliam says. “That’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t have anything to do with me and no one has contacted me…It’s a very dumb idea. That’s what I think. If it was going to be any good it would have to be written by David and Janet Peoples, who wrote the film, otherwise it would just be another version of Time Bandits.” To be fair, however, I seriously doubt the Syfy series will be anywhere near as good as Time Bandits either. Though if we get some casting news about a bunch of dwarf actors signing up, we can recoil in fear together.
Gravity opens worldwide on October 4, while Gilliam’s Zero Theorem, which is garnering its own positive reviews, does not yet have a U.S. release date set.
