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Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres on Thursday, Feb. 22 and it’s not been regarded as a good adaptation of the original Avatar: The Last Airbender debuted on Nickelodeon in 2005 and ran for three seasons, ending in 2008. It’s been criticized for its emotionally hollow and tonally disconnected themes. The live-action show has also been under severe criticism due to the changes in the innate traits of some characters.

Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender

And at such a time, when fans are utterly disappointed with the new Netflix adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, some fans have an alternate idea. They think, rather than making live-action adaptations of animated series, makers should stick to what they have been usually doing. To make animated versions of a live-action movie.

Suggested“This is what we wanted”: Avatar: The Last Airbender Fans Have a Real Reason...

Seasoned Finnish writer-director-producer Aku Louhimies is plotting multi-season TV drama “Conflict,” a near-future political action thriller that turns on a Finland threatened by an unknown military force.

Comparing the project to high-profile Norwegian TV show “Occupied,” the director said he had the idea for “Conflict” after his war epic “Unknown Soldier,” Finland’s record-breaking movie with over 1 million ticket sales. “I started thinking what if Finland was suddenly threatened by foreign forces. How would we react and how would that affect geopolitics in the Nordic region?” reflected Louhimies, who contemplates building the project as a major international TV drama.

The project is co-penned by actor Andrei Alén, novelist and officer in reserve Helena Immonen, and long-time writing partner Jari Olavi Rantala.

Set on Midsummer’s Eve, the story follows an unknown military unit, as it invades a peaceful sea-side town in Finland. All residents are taken hostage, and civilians, used...

Company will distribute Aku Louhimies’ The Wait in 2021; also developing Marimekko CEO biopic.

A new film development, financing and distribution company is launching in Finland from the team that financed the box-office hit The Unknown Soldier.

Aurora Studios will work on “commercially and artistically ambitious” films and other audiovisual content. The company won’t act as producers on the films.

The new company is owned by private equity professional and CapMan founder Ari Tolppanen, investment banker and Icecapital founder Ari Lahti and Otava Oy, which is Finland’s largest book publisher.

Aurora will exist as an independent company, not a subsidiary of Otava Oy.

Visually sublime and emotionally buoyant, Aki Kaurismaki's black-and-white silent effort "Juha" is a jewel, a beautifully crafted work suffused with the director's deadpan wit, elegantly terse narrative style and bleakly ironic pessimism found in his greatest works ("Ariel", "The Match Factory Girl"). In mood and effect, it summons up a lost art form -- telling its story in images and conveying its depth of feeling in expression and body inflection.

Shown twice at the Berlin Film Festival with a live musical accompaniment by the Anssi Tikanmaki Filmorchestra, "Juha" seems a film intended for limited, highly specialized audiences. Under any circumstances, it remains a free, intensely accessible work. Adapting a 1911 novel by Finnish author Juhani Aho, Kaurismaki creates a startling and imaginative tale of love lost and regained.

At its core, "Juha" is a love triangle of shifting emotional currents and sharp reversals. Deceptively simple couple Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) and Marja (Kati Outinen) watch sinister "outsider" Shemeikka (Andre Wilms) undermine their bond in convincing Marja that the hulking, pleasant Juha is an unworthy mate because of a slight physical impediment. At last giving in to his seedy charm and persistent manner, Marja follows Shemeikka to Helsinki. The balance of the narrative is Juha's uncompromising quest to woo Marja back.

Working with his great cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismaki draws on a deeply elemental physical style, a beautifully rhyming symphony of water, landscape and air that is the ideal visual complement to Anssi Tikanmaki's deeply ambient music. A former film critic with an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Kaurismaki references the gracefully gliding camera work of F.W. Murnau ("The Last Laugh") and the vivid emotional force of D.W. Griffith ("Broken Blossoms").

There is also a very witty tribute to his old friend, the great American director Samuel Fuller, who appeared in his adaptation of "La vie de boheme".

The images in "Juha" sing and soar, such as the quiet, tender moment when Marja drapes Juha's arm over her in bed. There is no more wistful or quietly devastating moment than the sight of the large, ill-fitted Juha stranded on the side of the road. The one time direct sound is heard, of Shemeikka's sister (Elina Salo) performing a French song in a cafe, the moment has a stunning emotional impact, a feeling of time elegantly, dramatically being reborn.

JUHA

A Sputnik Oy production

An Aki Kaurismaki film

Director-producer-writer-editor: Aki Kaurismaki

Based on the novel by: Juhani Aho

Music: Anssi Tikanmaki

Director of photography: Timo Salminen

Production manager: Ilkka Mertsola

Sound: Jouko Lumme

Set design: Markku Patila, Jukka Salmi

Black and white/stereo

Cast:

Juha: Sakari Kuosmanen

Marja: Kati Outinen

Shemeikka: Andre Wilms

Driver: Marku Peltola

Shemeikka's sister: Elina Salo

Running time --78 minutes

No MPAA rating...