June 16, 2009
Forbidden Dream
Movie Review By: Mr. Roboto
Year: 2008
Directed by: Mohamed Talaat
Written by: Erden Zikibay
Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: High
Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: High
Key Cast Members:
Overview: Somewhere is a budding Steven Spielberg, Riddley Scott, Cecil B. DeMille, or Laszlo Kovacs sitting in a classroom, secretly (or not-so-secretly) dreaming up the next Blade Runner or Matrix, or some similar mash-up of cyberpunk media. Erden Zikibay and Mohamed Talaat make their case with this cyberpunk short.
The Story: It’s mid-21st century and Earth government begins an ambitious space exploration endeavor, but getting people to join the effort proves difficult… until they revive an old institution: Slavery.
I’m going to stop it there since you are already familiar with Blade Runner (And if you’re not, WHAT THE F&^@ IS WRONG WITH YOU???). Forbidden Dreams draws heavily on Blade Runner, and to a lesser extent, The Matrix (the hunters’ outfits and shades). There’s no Roy Batty speech at the end, but a quote from Phillip K. Dick that makes the connection obvious.
Being a student film, the quality is far from the multi-megadollar Hollywood fare. But for its ten minute run, they use what they had to its best effects.
The Bottom Line: You have to give Erden and Mohamed credit: To make a low-budget version of a legendary movie takes some balls. Hopefully they got A’s for their effort.
For the rest of us, Forbidden Dream would probably be best described as the Cliffs Notes to Blade Runner: It gives you the basic idea behind BR in a ten minute snippet, but you really need to see the full movie, if only for Roy Batty’s death speech.
Comments
June 16, 2009
Anonymous said:
I like
June 17, 2009
chaoseye said:
cool movie. Seems more like the cliff notes of the cliff notes of bladerunner. Ha. I haven’t seen a lot of short films but the blood didn’t look like crap and the effects weren’t bad.
LMXV said:
Pretty good. I’d say they need to work on the acting.
June 19, 2009
DarwinDMG said:
I just couldn’t get past the camera tripod being used as a geiger counter. Believe me, I’m all for maximizing a budget and using what’s available, but you have to try a little harder than that.
June 20, 2009
KBlack said:
Roy Batty’s final speech is WAY overrated. Emo crybaby-droid.
June 23, 2009
Lazy said:
I’ll write it in french… sorry guys, got some difficulties to express myself well in english. So sorry again for those who dont understand french but anyways… I leave my comment here anyways!^^
Les courts métrages amateurs de sci-fi sont vraiment très rares. Honnêtement c’est un bonne essai. Par contre il y a de très grosse lacunes. Première les influences sont selon moi utiliser d’une façon plus ou moin interessante. Elles sont trop envahissante et laisse peut de place pour l’expression artistique du réalisateur. On peine a voir son style. On y vois plutôt juste un amateurisme très élever.
Deuxièmement le scénario est très loin d’être interessant et loin aussi d’aider au dévelloppement de l’univers et de l’esthétique du film lui même. Très peut d’actes interessant et signifiant. Le scénario aurait pu autant être appliquer a un film de gangster ou un western et est très loin d’être spécifique a la science fiction. Les concepts sont interessant, mais très mal exploiter.
Lorsque je parle d’exploitation, le budget n’entre pas en compte. Avec moin d’effets spéciaux, plus de lenteur et plus de maîtrise de l’esthétique le film aurait été d’avantage interessant.
Malheureusement il ressemble a beaucoup trop de courts-métrages amateurs que j’ai vu auparavant et partage trop de lacunes en commun avec ceux-ci.
Il manque encore beaucoup de travail et de compréhension de la science-fiction.
La sci-fi est loin de s’arrêter a des fusils, des pousuites, des lunettes fumées ainsi que des gaz mask…
June 28, 2009
spacebanjo said:
The trouble with being a genrephile,is the similarities between
movies keep jumping out at you,taking away from the escapist experience.Add THX1138, Terminator,Starwars{luke staring into the sun to an uncertain future}Natural City to the list of rip offs.
June 30, 2009
Burnt_lombard said:
for an amateur film with limited resources it’s not that bad. It’s derivative of several sources, but copying is a good way of learning.
July 26, 2009
Yautja said:
Pretty nice. The locations and costumes and such were neat, the idea is good (although not original) and it was good for a low budget film. But the acting and audio were bad (it DEFINITELY needs music!) and I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. The echo on the thoughts was unnecessary in my opinion, and the cuts between scenes didn’t work (had unnecessary fade outs). But apart from these things it was enjoyable, but you need to study more film theory, acting and dramaturgy. I’ve been studying filmmaking in school, and I wish I could do a similar film some time
(can’t find any good locations or actors here…)
September 17, 2009
instig8r said:
Hey, George Lucas’ first student film at USC sucked just as bad with all that I-wanna-be-free voice-over crap. (Of course, some argue his later stuff didn’t/doesn’t look much better.)
January 1, 2010
Tinkelbell said:
Sry, but this sucks.. i hate bad actors
June 30, 2010
Vambot said:
This is probably one of my favorite independent short films I’ve ever seen. They used their available tech and effects in such a way that they deserve recognition for their effort and integrity alone. The story was superb and the surreal, monotonous feel reminds me almost of Serial Experiments Lain. Its definately got a Blade Runner theme to it, and the ending and pre-ending were surprises. At first, you think the slaves are just ordinary humans…