Here is a new trailer out for Edward Norton’s The Incredible Hulk (that is what it should be officially marketed as) and I do immediately know that enjoy it more than the first trailer. Still, whereas with Iron Man, I’ve known since the first photo of RDJ popped up that it was going to be something special, with this, I’m still on the edge. While I enjoyed this more than the last trailer, I’m not sure whether I like what I see or not. I’m perplexed. Since outside of The Italian Job there is literally not one movie with Edward Norton I don’t like (I’m even a fan of Death to Smoochy and the admittedly weak The Score), I should probably have a little more faith. I think this is just going to have to be one of those wait and see flicks.
Westcoasters may complain about the weather but ask anyone who has lived in Vancouver for any significant amount of time and they’re likely to agree that moving is out of the question. Sure there’s rain, high living costs, a mediocre transit system but to balance it off there’s the gorgeous mountains, access to world class skiing, kayaking, mountain climbing…all in the “back yard”. It’s no wonder so many folks on this side of the coast are obsessed with the outdoors.
Director Murray Siple was one of those guys. He’d been on the edge, participating in extreme sports and making skateboarding and snowboarding videos until a car accident ten years ago left him unable to walk and removed him not only from partaking in the sports he loved but also from making films. And then he met Big Al.
North Vancouver isn’t exactly slumming it. One of the pricier neighbourhoods in BC, the city is full of prized mansions and million dollar views but hidden amongst those riches is a group of roamers – individuals living on the streets, collecting bottles and participating in the most extreme of extreme sports: shopping cart riding.
Carts of Darkness shares many similarities with extreme sports films: high octane action, loud pounding music, crashes and war stories but there’s a much more intimate story at play here. This isn’t just Siple sharing with us the tragic and sometimes funny stories of some of these ‘free birds’, it’s also a film about himself and his self discovery and re-birth and where some documentaries might fail miserably at incorporating the film maker, Siple’s story feels genuine and all of stories and emotions within the film the culminate into an equally sad, heartwarming and exciting film.
It is poster day here at Row Three, and yes, this one bounced around the web yesterday, and furthermore, personally, I do not have a lot of interest in the continuation/re-branding of the Batman Movie Franchise. But give credit for this particular edgy One-Sheet design that echos 9/11 in both the visual imagery and the ominous tag-line, “Welcome to a World Without Rules“.
If Batman desires to be the comic book mascot of our vigilante/private-enterprise-goes-to-war age, then this is the poster to do it. Co-incidentally the recent War Inc. also makes light of events much more recent. I hesitate to bring up the ‘too soon’ debate that surfaces with so many things in cinema when entertainment and tragedy collide (Batman Begins also has the Heath Ledger factor going for it). I did very much like Spielberg’s holocaust and 9/11 imagery and the edge it injected into the War of the Worlds remake; the 9/11 factor made the most of Cloverfield, not to mention the still unreleased in these parts Spanish horror film [*REC] which took the famous 9-11 documentary as an aesthetic template.
We do like talking about one-sheet design around here. And I’m a few days late with this one (I should really stop by Gus’ Movie Poster Addict more often). But today I saw the black & white One Sheet for Wanted featuring Angelina Jolie as ‘The Thinker’ with a fire-arm. What struck me at first glance was how similar this was to one of Tartan’s designs for the American release of Sympathy For Lady Vengeance. I do not believe the Lady Vengeance was ever used in the final marketing, as Tartan ultimately went with a different design (note Lady Vengeance was tragically unsuccessful at the Box Office, not even getting a quarter of a million dollars in ticket sales) although the image was put out publicly to get fan input on how to market the film.
So, is this a rip off, a homage, or a co-incidence?
Canadian director Deepa Mehta has made a career for herself making films about East Asian women and their struggles within traditional Indian culture. Her Elements Trilogy covered female relationships/love, religion and the treatment of widows within the culture and though over the years other directors have tried to capture some of the essence of life within Indian culture, I’ve never felt quite as close to really understanding it than while watching one of Mehta’s works – though Mira Nair has done a fair job in her own right.
Now Sarah Gavron is stepping into the scene which until recently, has been dominated by these two film makers. In Brick Lane first time director Gavron tackles a story of Nazneem, a woman trapped in a loveless arranged marriage until she meets and falls in love with Karim, a handsome young man who offers her a life of love and passion but at great cost.
The trailer makes the film out to be rich in drama but reviews since the film’s world premiere last year suggest that it’s not quite as dramatic as we’re led to believe yet, there’s the constant note of the performances and beauty of the film. Not quite sure I’ll take more than that from it but I’m certainly curious to make that decision for myself.
The folks at Sony Pictures Classics will be releasing Brick Lane in a limited capacity on June 20th. Sony’s films tend to make an appearance around these parts so lets hope this one fits the usual bill.
Here are some new photos from Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest Burn After Reading, which was just announced to be opening the prestigious Venice Film Festival come late-August. Since the Coen boys rarely ever do anything wrong and this stars John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Frances McDormand (a combined twenty Oscar nominations between these actors and the Coens), this is a guaranteed winner. Firstshowing describes the movie, which “centers on Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), who has hit a bit of rough patch. He was recently fired from the CIA and decides to write his memoirs, naturally documenting government secrets along the way. His wife (Swinton) decides to steal the material to use in their upcoming divorce proceedings, but the CD mistakenly ends up in the hands of two doltish gym employees, Chad (Pitt) and Linda (McDormand). In response to Linda and Chad conspiring to sell the material to help pay for Linda’s plastic surgery, the CIA dispatches Harry (Clooney) to sort it all out at whatever the cost.”
Check out the rest of the pictures after the jump.
Since the contributors have been passing some emails back and forth about the movie I chose fore today, I will ask that they don’t post their guesses and not to discuss this movie until someone has figured it out.
I just watched the movie last night and I was actually somewhat stunned with how dark this one is. I really expected something lighter.
A hamfisted John Cusack vehicle from some of the folks that brought you Grosse Pointe Blank, this second go around with the hitman with a heart of bronze and angsty romantic issues, is more than a bit of a bust. Call it Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine for dummies - it seems like the writers read the book and thought they’d preach the message to the slowest folks in the room. Heck, call it Fierce Creatures, as that Cleese-Palin-Curtis-Kline ‘comedy’ is the modern template of failing to follow up to a fun contemporary classic.
The story follows Brand Hauser, en route from an assassination in the Canadian territories to a small Middle eastern country, recently bombed into submission by the USA, where he has to knock off the local oil baron who is building a pipeline which is not in the economic interest of ex-Vice President and now CEO of a Halliburton/BlackWater-esque corporation (Dan Aykroyd, going for Dick Cheney and displaying none of the peppy charms of GPB’s Grocer. The best War Inc. can come up with for him is a hoary Fat Bastard poop joke). His cover is as the producer of a tradeshow which is inviting American corporations into the rebuilding efforts of the countries infrastructure. This ill conceived high-profile cover puts him in the position on having to deal with the embedded reporters in the Green Zone (that is when they are not doing their reporting from the corporations ‘Disneyland Motion Ride’ virtual war viewer) as well as the trade-show’s razzle-dazzle wedding of an Asian pop-tart (a surprisingly good Hillary Duff in beige-face as Yonica Babyyeah) to the son of the same targeted oil-Baron Hauser is there to terminate. Although running the show does provide an excellent excuse for sister Joan Cusack to reprise her ‘harried secretary’ role albeit this time with none of the charm.
Much like Grosse Pointe Blank, an assassination plot is fused with a romantic comedy, which ends up as the greater focus of the film, expect that this one fizzles out simply because it gives the female lead, Marissa Tomei, precious little to do except confirm to the audience that she is way above this - she almost does for War Inc. what did with the thankless role in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. More embarassing is John Cusack who gets double duty as star and co-writer and giving the impression that he would rather fall back on an old crutch, the sadsack looking-for-something-more hitman. Mr. Cusack has not had a good movie since 2000’s High Fidelity, and if the mediocre 1408 was a badly fumbled attempt to remake Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with a modern sensibility, then War Inc. is an equally failed attempt to update the nihilistic-absurdity of Dr. Strangelove.
Director Joshua Seftel is certainly no George Armitage (who brought the good to GPB and also directed the criminally underseen Alec Baldwin dead-pan comedy Miami Blues). Seftel is more in love with referencing Kubrick, conceptually, visually and musically, than telling any sort of structured or modulated narrative or even a worthwhile character to cling to. Blame the screenplay too, which has trouble finding its own voice amongst the mimicry of better films. For the mayhem of something like Doomsday (a film from earlier this year that re-hashes several other genre noteworthys) that approach can be inspired, for the delicate and precision strikes necessary for good satire, the approach is crippling. Instead of going for Kubrick, perhaps should have watched Wag The Dog or Three Kings a few more times to see how a structured script that eschews ‘big surprise moments’ is perhaps a better approach than cluttered Southland Tales model (a film War Inc. has in common both in advertisement branded tanks and contemporary pop singers in significant roles; and further similarity in going from an intimate and human-scaled first film (Donnie Darko) to an overreaching scope with the second.) Like that film, there are a few genuinely interesting sight-gags such as the disaster capitalist gift-bag or the scramble-screen celebrity-encryption technique for the mysterious Viceroy.
Ben Kingsley makes the most embarassing appearance as Sexy Beast’s Don Logan with a dreadful Yankee accent to provide a backstory for Hauser’s mid-life moral crisis. And daytime talkshow host Montel Williams has the good sense not to show his face replacing Alan Arkin as the beleaguered therapist who in War Inc. is some sort of hybrid of K.I.T.T. and OnStar, existing as a swirl of light that dispenses advice between telling Hauser to make a right at Greenland in his private jet. If I’m belaboring the comparisons to Grosse Pointe Blank here, it is simply because they map so distinctly over top of War Inc. that they are impossible to ignore in the same way That Ivan Reitman’s Evolution was impossible not to compare to the far superior Ghost Busters.
Corporate profiteering in modern warfare is a subject ripe for satire for a smarter film than War Inc. And grafting on background to a romantic comedy of sorts makes the whole affair an ill conceived, gangly beast that deserves its place in the DVD bargain bin of failed John Cusack films (perhaps they should have attempted to loosely re-envision One Crazy Summer?). Go find Gregor Jordan’s Buffalo Soldiers, a modern war satire with similar aims that is more deserving of your attention, and/or read the Naomi Klein tell-all if you are looking for truly depressing tragi-comedy of the modern age. And let War Inc. quietly file for bankruptcy.
It’s a ludicrous situation: one man deciding who will win the election but is it so preposterous that it just might work?
That’s the story behind Swing Vote, the upcoming comedy starring Kevin Costner as a slacker who, by some strange happening, ends up being the deciding vote in the American election. The film also stars Kelsey Grammer as the President (genious!) running for re-election, the fabulous Stanley Tucci as his right hand man, Dennis Hopper as the opponent with Nathan Lane, George Lopez, Judge Reinhold and Paula Patton along for the ride. And let’s not forget guest spots from Bill Maher, Larry King and whoever else I may have missed from the insanely long cast list.
I didn’t laugh-out-loud during the trailer but I did crack a smile and with that cast of actors, you’re bound to get a couple of good laughs in there. Right? I hope so.
I was pretty excited the first time I headed over the official website for The Mutant Chronicles. At the time, there was very little information about the film other than a cast listing, a synopsis and some test video footage and even then it looked fantastic. Now our good friends over at Quiet Earth have outed some great promotional stills for the film which opens in Russia on August 7th.
The Mutant Chronicles stars Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane, John Malkovich and Devon Aoki as a band of warriors assembled by the Megacorporations to destroy the warlord Alakhai, the leader of an alien force of undead Necromutants known as the Dark Legion who are preparing to attack the inhabited Mars. Oh sweet lord that sounds kick-ass.
No clue on when Voltage Pictures will release the film in North America but I hope it’s before August 8th. I want to see this movie now!
Be sure to check out all of the great photos over at QE and the video bits available at the official site.
The kind folks over at Medb Films have provided us with the promo for Ruby Blue, Bob Hoskins’s latest movie from writer and director Jan Dunn. The word-of-mouth is strong so far and the film actually just won Best Film at the London International Film Festival this month. As we speak, it is beginning to make its limited run in theatres across the UK. It’s hard to tell when and if it will make it stateside before a DVD release, but I anxiously await, because Bob Hoskins is a god and just doesn’t have the lead role in as many movies as he should nowadays. The official plot synopsis:
At 65, Jack (Bob Hoskins) is consumed by past guilt and regret. His strained relationship with his son is severed on the death of his wife. Jack is lost and alone in his self loathing, and spirals into decline. Hope arrives in the unlikely form of eight-year-old, Florrie, a soft-natured girl who moves in next door and delights in his long neglected racing pigeon Ruby.
When his glamorous French neighbour, Stephanie (Josiane Balasko) takes pity on him, Jack cannot help but fall for her charms. Encouraged by Stephanie, Jack helps a local hooligan by giving him his prized Ruby. When an innocent friendship with Florrie is thrown into question and Stephanie reveals a well kept secret, Jack’s life is thrown into turmoil once again. Jack finally cracks, consumed with sadness and humiliation, until tragedy forces him to confront his prejudices, face his fears and challenge those around him in a bid to win back Stephanie’s love.
In the meantime, check out the promo for the film below.
While Mel Gibson has kept himself busy over the past few years behind the camera, directing the likes of The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto , it’s a little weird to think that he hasn’t been in front of the camera since Signs and We Were Soldiers in 2002.
I’m certainly never going to make an argument that Gibson is one of the greatest actors ever, but he’s an iconic one and an actor I generally find myself enjoying, which is why I’m pleased to see he’s stepping back in front of the camera for Edge of Darkness, an adaptation of the 1985 BBC Miniseries. Directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, GoldenEye ) and written by William Monahan (The Departed, Kingdom of Heaven ), Variety describes the movie as following “a straitlaced police investigator whose activist daughter is killed. He plunges into the case and uncovers systemic corruption that led to his daughter’s death.”
I love me a good detective movie. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out and how it will be received.
Coming out of Sundance, I had no interest in seeing a movie titled Towelhead but the trailer has been making the rounds and I finally got around to seeing - though only after finding out that the film was the first feature from “Six Feet Under” creator Alan Ball and that it starred Toni Collette, Aaron Eckhart and Maria Bello.
Summer Bishil plays 13 year old Jasira, a tween of Lebanese descent who is passed along by her mother (Maria Bello) to her father. She ends up living in the Houston suburbs with her controlling father, being obsessed over by a creepy neighbour (Eckhart) while herself obsessing about her sexuality.
The film was originally titled Nothing is Private a title which shifted the emphasis of the story from a racial perspective to what Ball felt was a better representation of the story he wanted to tell which, according to an indieWire interview, is “a universal coming-of-age moment in a young person’s life.” I’m surprised at the title change back to Towelhead because it does immediately suggest a film about race relations rather than a Lolita-like sexual coming of age, complete with an ubber creepy Humbert-like character.
Towelhead is scheduled to open in limited release on August 8th. I hope the limited release manages to crawl into my neck of the woods. I have a strange curiosity about odd sexual attractions and what’s creepier than an old guy ‘falling’ for a tween? Necrophilia is only slightly higher on the list.
I was originally going to use the above shot for the screen shot quiz to celebrate Iron Man opening up, but I have this feeling I’m going to be let down by it so instead I’m not going to post a superhero picture. So here is shot from a big blockbuster movie that has nothing to do with superheroes.
Sure, the pretty interesting and heartbreaking Nanking (R3 review) is being released on DVD today; as is the critically acclaimed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (R3 review). But my DVD pick this week is much shorter and much more touching; not to mention nostalgic.
If you remember working your way through the American public school system, chances are you can recall seeing Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon at least once, likely several times, throughout the first years of your curriculum.
The Red Balloon is the heart-warming tale of a young boy walking the streets of Paris who discovers that his big, red, helium-filled balloon somehow has a mind of its own and can follow him around and play games with him all by itself. It’s been probably 25 years since I’ve seen this film, but I remember it quite fondly and vividly.
The film is visually interesting with great cinematography and quite decent special effects (for 1956) that keeps the balloon bobbing and weaving around corners and even “running” up and down alleyways and over buildings. It seems that the balloon can even “see” into windows and interpret certain scenarios as dangerous or playful. The way Lamorisse is able to give something as simple as a balloon the appearance of emotion and a personality is truly magical.
The title is getting its first time (region 1) DVD release today and is being released by Janus Films (”in association with The Criterion Collection”). While this got me fairly excited upon first reading, it turns out that it’s not much of what we have normally come to expect from Criterion. Extras include only a trailer and some English subs (although I don’t really remember much dialogue in the movie at all).
Still, from reviews I’ve read, apparently the new digital transfer is gorgeous; along with a remastered digital mono soundtrack. Though kept at it’s orignal full-screen asspect ratio, a black border surrounding the picture has been added to prevent overscan. Moderately priced at ten bucks, I’m quite anxious to revisit this GREAT little film (my first art film and likely my first foreign language film to boot) in all of its Criterion wonder this week.
So that may be a bit over stated but the simple fact that the Tribeca Film Film Festival has a panel dedicated to a discussion on new media is a step in the right direction.
A few weeks back I had the chance to attend a local discussion on bridging media (we - Colleen, Dale and I, shared our thoughts on the discussion here) at which some of the discussion revolved around creating content specifically for new media - be it websites, phones, iPods or whatever new technology is out there and it looks like this idea of making use of new technology is starting to spread.
The panel at Tribeca was made up of Jaman.com founder Gaurav Dhillon, NBC Universal Executive VP and General Counsel Rick Cott and Sling Media Entertainment Group president Jason Hirschhorn, Isabella Rossellini and The Hollywood Reporter’s Georg Szalai, who moderated the discussion. According to THR, discussion touched on a number of topics including the legality and control of this type of content but it was Rossellini’s comment that really caught my attention:
Are mobile phones only a recycling bin for content or for original content? I agree with David [Lynch] if it’s just a recycling bin, but I don’t think he would be against making art specifically for this new canvas.
I think Rossellini is looking at this in the right way, embracing the changing technology and not simply seeing it as the raping and demise of an old and much loved tradition. I also give the Tribeca organizers huge kudos for enabling such a discussion to take place at a respected festival but I have a problem with the fact that Rossellini was the only artist present on a panel discussing an issue that is of utmost importance to artists. This is either a sign that there aren’t a lot of artists in the film industry willing to embrace changing technology or the discussion could have been aimed more at the business side of new technologies and distribution - reading over the coverage of the panel, the latter sounds like the better answer.
I’m hopeful that this is only the first of many other discussions on the subject. We can’t overlook the reality that technology is shaping the world and rather than fighting it, the industry needs to make a move towards embracing it and though some studios have started to make good use of these technologies, others are still lagging woefully behind.
Here’s hoping we’ll see more talk, involving the artists, on the subject.
It was only a matter of time before Margaret Laurence’s best selling classic “The Stone Angel” made an appearance on the big screen and here it is, over 40 years later.
Adapted and directed by Kari Skogland, The Stone Angel is the story of Hagar Shipley, a strong headed old woman who is fighting against being put in a nursing home, something she sees as a sign of death. The story is intercut with flashbacks to her youth where we see her falling in love with a hot-headed man, thereby separating herself from her family. Sound familiar? I hope Nicholas Sparks paid Laurence a hefty sum - he did, pretty much, take “The Notebook” from Laurence’s vastly superior work.
The film stars a load of Canadian regulars including Ellen Burstyn as the aging Hagar, new comer Christine Horne as the young Hagar, Cole Hauser, up and comer Kevin Zegers, the fabulous Dylan Baker and new Canadian Icon Ellen Page.
I’m quite excited to see what comes of this production. The trailer looks promising and with that cast of talented actors, I’m expecting a good film loaded with strong performances. We’ll have to wait to see if Skogland and crew deliver.
The Stone Angel opens in Toronto and Vancouver on May 9th, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Halifax on May 23rd and in the US on July 11th.
Mike Judge, probably most loved for his comedy cult classic Office Space but also the man behind the likes of King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-Head, is working on another live-action movie titled Extract about “what it’s like to be the boss when everything seems to be shifting around you.”
So, that’s pretty vague, but the most interesting part? According to Variety, Judge is teaming up with actor Jason Bateman, who is continuing his trend of smart moves that are making his TV show-to-movie transition seem easy.
I think Judge and Bateman both have that certain type of sense of humor that will make this work very well. It’s no secret that Judge was screwed over by the studio with his last movie Idiocracy (a movie that I thought had some great ideas and great things to say, but could have been executed better), so hopefully things go a little smoother with this one, especially since Bateman is the leading man, this could help propel his status to a reliable leading man in Hollywood - which I think he will be before long.
Anyone catch the image in which diesel fuel costs $123/gallon? Whoa.
North Vancouver isn’t exactly slumming it. One of the pricier neighbourhoods in BC, the city is full of prized mansions and million dollar views but hidden amongst those riches is a group of roamers – individuals living on the streets, collecting bottles and participating in the most extreme of extreme sports: shopping cart riding.
After the Credits Episode 20 - May Preview [42:22m]: 
Ruby Blue Trailer: 
dangerous or playful. The way Lamorisse is able to give something as simple as a balloon the appearance of emotion and a personality is truly magical.
