Archive for May, 2010

  • 16 May

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    Urban Wolf is Watching You

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    A well-appointed man lands in Paris and stops off in the restroom. He notes a security camera in the corner, innocuously capturing his movements. As he steps back from the sink, it seems as though the camera follows him. Paranoia? Or is he merely one of a million people being silently monitored in our increasingly surveillance-ridden society? As he goes on his way, he becomes more and more aware of pervasive cameras everywhere, unescapable. But are they really singling him out? And if so, for what purpose?

    This is the premise of the new web series Urban Wolf, which started playing on Crackle.com a few days ago. I was able to see a screening of the entire series recently, and it’s quite worth your time. Though the premise sounds like a lot of other paranoia thrillers, this is done tightly and stylishly, with much higher production values than commonly found in web series. It feels very cinematic, and yet director Laurent Touil-Tartour embraces the particular needs of web video, splitting the series up into fifteen segments, each three to four minutes long and all written with that length in mind.

    In an effective artistic choice, there’s essentially no dialogue in the series; rather, everything plays out visually, carried out through a dynamic central performance by Vincent Sze. Touil-Tartour has a nice flair for composition and a good sense of visual storytelling. He also knows how to do good twists and suggest things rather than spell them out, something I really appreciated. I know he’s hoping this series gets him noticed by the film and television industry (getting the series on Sony-owned Crackle.com is probably a nice start), but I’m also glad to see ambitious series like this on the web. Web video is starting to come of age a little, and as much as I love geeky comedy series like The Guild and The Legend of Neil, it’s nice to see some different genres and styles in the mix.

    Urban Wolf screened to good reactions and awards at the ITV Festival, AFI Digifest, and ComicCon over the past year. I’ve embedded the first episode of the series under the seats, and the first six episodes are already available on Crackle. They’re releasing one a day, looks like, which means you won’t have to wait long in between each cliff-hanger.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 16 May

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    New Micmacs Featurette Pops Up on Apple

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    Well, the long-awaited North American release of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest oddity Micmacs is drawing ever closer (it will be released in New York on May 28th, then presumably branch out to other major cities afterwards). A new nugget of promotional material for the film turned up recently on the Apple website in the form of a fun little featurette that shows the construction of one of the sets and cast members’ reactions to the finished product.

    Jeunet fans itching for another peek at the film or simply curious to see director and cast interacting with each other can check it out here.

  • 16 May

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    Review: Robin-B-Hood

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    Director: Benny Chan
    Screenplay: Jackie Chan, Benny Chan & Alan Yuen
    Producers: Benny Chan, Jackie Chan, Willie Chan, Solon So & Zhonglei Wang
    Starring: Jackie Chan, Michael Hui, Louis Koo, Charlene Choi, Biao Yuen
    Year: 2006
    Country: Hong Kong
    BBFC Certification: 15
    Duration: 134 min

    (3/5)

    I wanted to squeeze this review in before I went to Cannes (off tomorrow, can’t wait!) as it’s released next week here in the UK. Robin-B-Hood is marketed as Jackie Chan’s true return to the Hong Kong action comedies he became famous for in the 80′s and 90′s, and for the most part it delivers this, but it’s no Project A or Police Story.

    The film tells the story of three down-on-their-luck thieves (Jackie Chan, Michael Hui & Louis Koo) who take on a well paid job that ends up with them having to take care of a kidnapped baby. Meanwhile the police are on their tail (headed by Jackie’s old friend the great Yuen Biao) as are some bailiffs after Jackie’s debts and the gangsters who are trying to get their hands on the baby to prove it’s heritage as grandson to their boss. Alongside this the characters all have their various relationship problems which are eventually solved through looking after the baby.

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  • 16 May

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    Heartbroken: Soderbergh Moves to the Gimmick of 3D

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    Not inconceivable or even surprising considering recent comments from prolific and respected filmmakers such as Scorsese and Werner Herzog about how great the theater going experience is now that 3D technology is finally “up to par.” On top of that, we’re well aware that Steven Soderbergh is pretty buddy-buddy with the self-proclaimed King of the World, James Cameron. So learning that Soderbergh’s virus infection thriller, Contagion, slated for release in October of 2011, will be screened in glorious 3D. *sigh*

    Soderbergh is notorious (and very adept at) for the experimental film. But he also makes pretty classy, big budget blockbusters as well. While 3D isn’t exactly new, it’s still sort of in the experimental stage in terms of the newest incarnation of the technology. So Contagion, written by Bourne Ultimatum scribe, could be considered sort of a hybrid of a typical, high profile Hollywood flick and the more adventurous sort of filmmaking some of us are accustomed to from Soderbergh.

    The cast is quite epic and includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslett, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Larry Fishburne and Gwyneth Paltrow. Word is that the film isn’t really a big actiony, sci-fi movie but rather more of a dramatic thriller not unlike his 2000 Oscar nominee, Traffic. So why he is choosing to jump on the 3D bandwagon for this particular film is a little odd. Still, as Soderbergh does very little wrong in my eyes I suppose I am at least curious to see what kind of vision he has in mind for the technology.

    And besides, the guy has so many project coming down the pike over the next 12 months, I suppose I can concede one of them to be in 3D – not to mention I bet I can find a theater without the upgrade yet. :)

     
    [via]

  • 16 May

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    More Accusations Thrown at Polanski

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    This time, it’s from Eddie Murphy’s co-star in The Golden Child, Charlotte Lewis. She claims that Polanski “forced himself upon [Lewis] in his apartment in Paris” when she was age 16 in Paris during the making of the Oscar nominated film Pirates.

    At the time, the age of consent for sexual encounters was 15, so the words “forced himself” is really the only factor in determining if a crime actually took place. But Lewis’ attorney says that the age of consent law is “irrelevant.”

    Lewis said she was coming forward now because Polanski’s “legal team is portraying his previous offense against a minor as an isolated incident.”

    With these new accusations arise new questions about Polanski’s fidelity and moral compass I should think. The words “serial rapist” have been thrown about the webs these past few hours with this newest allegation. Will this be similar to the Tiger Woods debacle in which more and more women are now going to come forward with some sort of sexual allegation? I sure hope this stays as close to an isolated incident as possible.

    Lewis and her attorney’s statements to the media can be seen underneath the seats…

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 15 May

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    TCM Film Festival: Picspamming Breathless (1960)

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    (4.5/5)

    I have this thing with Breathless. I think it’s great (though I don’t rate it as highly as some other Godard films, which isn’t an insult because I’m a Godard fangirl), and I enjoy it every time I see it, but even though I’ve seen it four or five times, I somehow manage to forget entire chunks of it exist. Every time I watch it, there are scenes where I’m like, “wait, what is this part? Was this part there the last time I saw it?” This is a phenomenon I’m not entirely sure I can explain, especially since the parts I DO remember are indelibly engraved in my psyche.

    A couple of attempts at explanation: 1) The parts I remember are those parts that are indelibly engraved on the psyche of cinephile culture in general. The parts that get included in montages and retrospectives, the parts that get screencapped in film histories, the parts that get talked about when people talk about the influence of the New Wave. Or 2) The parts I forget are the parts that deal with the narrative plot of Michel’s criminal activities and attempts to get the money he’s owed. Godard tends to bury the actual narrative of his films in general, preferring to focus on the moments that would be incidental or skipped over in straight-forward narratives. So from that perspective, it makes sense that I remember the endless conversations in Patricia’s bedroom, or Michel copying Bogart, or Patricia wearing Michel’s hat, or them driving down the Champs Elysses talking about basically nothing, rather than the scenes where Michel is trying to solve his problems.

    Whichever of those explanations is correct, or even if both of them are to some extent, there’s very little I can say about Breathless that hasn’t already been said. So let this instead stand as tribute to the things about Breathless that I find unforgettable.

    (I should mention that the festival played a brand-new Rialto restoration, which is now touring the US. I’m not sure exactly what was restored; it looked really good, but so did the DVD Criterion put out a few years ago. In any case, keep an eye out for when the print tours near you.)

    “What is your greatest ambition in life?”
    “To become immortal, and then die.”

    Many images after the jump.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 15 May

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    Looper. Bruce Willis. JGL.

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    We are happily following along the progress of Rian Johnson’s time travel thriller, Looper. Todays update involves the casting of Bruce Willis (hopefully it will be the Pulp Fiction, Fast Food Nation, 12 Monkeys Willis and not the Cop Out, Fifth Element, Mercury Rising Willis) and confirms Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who proved a winning combination with Johnson’s sensibility in chic-noir Brick). Either way, according to /Film they are playing the same character at two different ages.

    Maybe we can convince Rian to come back on the cinecast (He talked with us about Where The Wild Things Are, A Serious Man and a bit of Looper on this episode) and spill some more beans, but on second though, time travel movies are almost always better with the element of surprise. Needless to say, we are on board, totally, with this one.

    Looper is a time travel movie, set in a near future where time travel doesn’t exist but will be invented in a few decades. It’s pretty dark in tone, much different from Bloom, and involves a group of killers (called Loopers) who work for a crime syndicate in the future. Their bosses send their targets hogtied and blindfolded back in time to the Loopers, and their job is to simply shoot them in the head and dispose of the body. So the target vanishes from the future and the Loopers dispose of a corpse that doesn’t technically exist, a very clean system. Complications set in from there.

  • 14 May

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    New “Iron Sky” Trailer

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    Doesn’t it feel like we’ve been waiting for this movie for years now? Yes it does. And the reason is because we’ve been waiting for it for years. I first learned of moon Nazis when we posted a link over to Twitchfilm that had some neat concept art and still imagery. Then not two weeks later a trailer was released. That was over two years ago. Then last year some more grumblings of the film about came when the marketing department for the film sluggishly went a little further with a motion poster. Here we are a year later and yet another trailer is released – still without any sense of plot, characters or dialogue. Sigh.

    But nevertheless it is pretty damn awesome!

     

     
    It’s weird that all of this marketing and footage has been floating around for at least two years now and according to the web site, principal photography hasn’t even started yet! The movie will begin shooting this summer with a premier release in August of 2011. The company is still looking for funding however and if you have an extra fifty quid lying around, maybe you can join the war effort.

    Seriously. This looks like loads of wicked fun. Hopefully for my August birthday I’ll be able to gather a group of friends and watch Earth cower in fear of an intergalactic Nazi invasion!

    [via]

     

  • 14 May

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    Bookmarks for May 10-14

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    • The Man Gets Around at 102
      “Ridley Scott, the 72-year-old director of “Robin Hood,” was prevented by his recent knee surgery from making it to the Cannes Film Festival’s festival’s opening night bash Wednesday after the red carpet premiere, but 102-year-old Portuguese director Manoel De Oliveira turned up, circulating among the black-tie first-nighters after just having had an audience with Pope Benedict at the Vatican earlier in the day. ”
    • Minority Report UI designer John Underkoffler talks about the future
      User Interface designer and all around tech god John Underkoffler discusses his work with the UI in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” and how his work on the film fed back into developing a technology that works as well as his experience working with Ang Lee on “Hulk.”
    • Q’orianka Kilcher has rare maturity for a young actress
      “Five years ago, at age 14, Q’orianka Kilcher gave what is regarded as one of the great debut performances ever, playing Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s “The New World,” a film that popped up on more than a few best-of-the-decade lists. So how do you follow that? “
    • Monte Hellman at Cannes
      “If Robert Altman hadn’t had ‘MASH,’ he never would have been able to make all those other movies,” said the journalist and screenwriter Steven Gaydos. “And Monte never had a ‘MASH.’ ”
    • Bunny Dojo – Designs for Replacement DVD Jackets
      Tired of those lame floating heads on your DVD, HD-DVD or BLU-RAY purchases? Bunny Dojo can set you up with some quality replacements to make your collect just a little classier.
    • The Auteurs is now MUBI
      I think they are idiots to give up a classy name like The Auteurs for a Web 2.0 generic name like MUBI, but they are aiming to offer high quality VOD of art films and what not, so I guess I am glad they simply did not cease to exist and only suffered a moniker change.
    • Harmony Korine on his allegorical, sex-with-garbage horror flick
      “When Korine tells stories like this in interviews — presenting the streets of Nashville as a place where elephants float and teenage wastoids drop dead, positioning himself as a kind of frontline reporter on surrealism in action — it’s tempting to call it bullshit. Promoting his last film, the relatively high-budget elegy to celebrity worship Mr. Lonely, Korine claimed he spent part of an eight-year hiatus from directing living with the Malingerers, a South American cult searching for a golden fish”

     

    You can now take a look at RowThree’s bookmarks at any time of your choosing simply by clicking the “delicious” button in the upper right of the page. It looks remarkably similar to this:

  • 14 May

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    Talk Amongst Yourselves (in colour)

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  • 13 May

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    Trailer: Easy A

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    Only having the chance to catch her in Superbad and Zombieland, I’m not yet comfortable saying that she is on the verge of becoming a huge star, but Great Scott! – Emma Stone possesses all of the qualities. Besides being gorgeous, she has a natural confidence balanced out by her girl-next-door vulnerability and quirkiness – and despite not having caught her in a role of substance, she seems to be far more competent of an actress than most of the females in Hollywood these days.

    Her latest film may prove to showcase her talent. Co-starring an impressive cast that includes Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Malcolm McDowell, Thomas Haden Church, Amanda Bynes, and Lisa Kudrow, Easy A is the story of a straight-laced high school girl who embraces the rumors going around that she is just a little more than promiscuous, immediately bolstering her social standing with the popular guys and causing resentment among many of her high school’s girl. While sounding rather cliche, the trailer shows plenty of promise that it will not be just another poorly-written teen sex comedy.

    I’m on board. The film hits theaters on September 17, 2010.

    Note: I hereby call for her casting as Mary Jane in the new Spider-Man reboot.

  • 13 May

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    Trailer: Nowhere Boy

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    Described by IMDb simply as the “chronicle of John Lennon’s childhood,” that would be enough to pique the interest of both music and movie fans, especially considering Nowhere Boy was filmed from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, the dude who penned the slick Ian Curtis biopioc, Control. Starring Kick-Ass leading man Aaron Johnson as the young Lennon, the film looks to follow his early years as he becomes enamored with the idea of using his genius to become a famous musician as popular as Elvis – highlighting the relationship with his mother, an early romance, and his early friendship with future bandmate Paul McCarthy.

    It was nominated for four BAFTAs, including Outstanding British Film, but I’m mostly curious to see it to evaluate whether or not my initial response to Johnson being a hell of a young actor after seeing Kick-Ass is correct. It’ll be released stateside on October 8, 2010 – so I suppose I will find out then.

    Have any of our UK readers out there had a chance to see it yet?

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