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  • 22 May

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    Teaser: The Master

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    Has it been five years since There Will Be Blood? Yes. Thus, with much excitement, the first footage of P.T. Anderson’s latest film, a loose adaptation of the founding of The Church of Scientology called The Master, was screened at the Cannes film festival yesterday, while the rest of us got this brief but very tantalizing teaser. I should say that it is a welcome return from one Joaquin Phoenix who seemed to take a bit of a break from conventional acting during/after the pseudo-doc, I’m Still Here. He is in very fine form indeed.

    No sign of Phillip Seymour Hoffman who is (I believe) playing the L. Ron Hubbard style character. The The Master was shot on 65mm film and is scheduled to hit cinemas (IMAX? Please!) on either October 12 or some time in December of this year – I cannot seem to find a straight answer on this.

  • 18 May

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    Friday One Sheet: PANTS!

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    A minimal, but quite swanky poster for the upcoming Anchorman Sequel prioritizes the importance of the returning characters by the number of legs they get to show off in the image. Either that or the sight gag here is surprisingly subtle…

  • 16 May

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    Is it Oscar Season Already? Won’t Back Down Trailer seems to think so

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    Bait-y school drama, Won’t Back Down has several actors I enjoy watching on the big screen, Viola Davis, Holly Hunter and Maggie Gyllenhaal. But I’ll be promptly skipping this one. Focusing less on fixing the schools and more on starting your own damn school (note this topic was delved into quite a bit in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting For Superman), it amps up every cliche in this sort of ‘genre’ that makes me kick myself for skipping Tony Kaye’s Detachment, which seemed to earn its earnestness rather than flailing it about like a dead cat in an elevator.

    “We have to find a teacher that has the same ideas you do.” – Isn’t this the problem with America in a nutshell, from Fox News to MSNBC? Likewise, school should be neither a ‘shopping trip’ nor an entrepreneurial endeavor. But I digress, it’s not by far the only howler that Maggie has receive or deliver. The last line in this trailer, dares you to vomit on your computer. My Gosh, with dialogue like that who needs plot or story.

  • 16 May

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    Voight-Kampff, Smoight-Kampff – New PROMETHEUS Viral Video

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    I know, I know, you don’t want to spoil any of the mood or surprises of Ridley Scott’s new Alien prequel and you are not watch these. Yea, right.

    You have got to hand it to the web-viral marketing department for Prometheus who have been world-building with this series of videos in a pretty amazing way. First Weyland’s TED Talk, then a commercial for the “David” line of sythentic humans, now we have the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, Noomi Rapace, essaying her Dr. Elizabeth Shaw character’s philosophy for adventure to the Weyland corporation (Ellie Arroway style) as their computer analyzes every square nano-meter of her face for identity, archival, and one assumes, empathy testing.

    Yep, it’s Contact meets Blade Runner in an Alien movie. Yum.

  • 15 May

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    Terrence Malick’s “To The Wonder” gets an R rating

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    Formerly the “Untitled Terrence Malick Project” starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Javier Bardem, Olga Kurylenko, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen and Amanda Peet, the film got both its title, To The Wonder, and its MPAA rating, “R” today. Strange title, it feels like directions to Malick’s awesome yet often obtuse filmmaking style (“This way to the wonder folks! Wonder? Wonder!”) It’s certainly not at Cannes, and who knows if it will come out in 2012, 2013 or whenever. Just passing this along, because, well … Terrence Malick.

    Oh, in cause you were curious, the R was doled out for nudity.

    “To The Wonder is a romantic drama centered on a man who reconnects with a woman from his hometown after his marriage to a European woman falls apart.”

  • 11 May

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    Friday One Sheet: Based on A True Story

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    Take a moment and consider this image. Note the usual ‘based on a true story’ tag associated with these low-budget demon-possession horror movies (this one literally called, The Possession) and now take a look at that image again. It’s OK to laugh, I think the poster designers were, even if they craft a pretty iconic image, that delightfully sways very far from ‘true story.’ MovieLine, recently started up an irregular column (One-Sheet-Wonder) by Dante A. Ciampaglia and he has a lot more to say about this design, here.

    (It appears I will have to step up my game with this weekly column!)

  • 08 May

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    Trailer: Killer Joe

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    One of the hidden delights of TIFF last year was this little southern fried noir featuring cowboy hats, zippo lighters, trailer parks and biker gangs all in orbit of the eponymous dirty cop, Killer Joe (Kurt’s Review). Matthew McConaughey and his very (VERY) game ensemble cast, including Gina Gershon, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Emile Hirsch knock this one out of the park, and the powers that be realize there is only one way to watch this thing: NC-17. William Friedkin used to get away with a lot of subversive behaviour in his 1970s output (The Exorcist, The French Connection and Cruisin’) but sort of petered out after the quite solid To Live and Die in LA. But his collaboration with writer Tracy Letts and very tight budget turned over a new page that really let him indulge in weirdness. Killer Joe is the new Friedkin all the way, and it is really, really good. Don’t bring your mom to the screening though.

    After months of waiting, they’ve finally cut a trailer and damn if it isn’t one of the best ones I’ve seen this year so far. Just watching this one again, reminds me to kick myself for not putting this in my top 10 films of last year. When Pauline Kael said, “Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.” She was talking about Killer Joe.

  • 06 May

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    Hot Docs 2012: LOVE STORY Review

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    An exceptionally tall girl in an orange dress with a piece of red-velvet cake on a plate and a lanky New Zealander with a video camera meet on the subway headed for Coney Island. They chat. They separate. They meet again. Could it be fate? Could it be the romance of both their lives? So begins the premise of Love Story, which is part Rom-Com, part art-experiment, part documentary. The woman is Masha, a Russian beauty who Kiwi filmmaker Florian Habicht hired to be his girlfriend for the making of the film. Their meeting is staged, as is Florian’s quest to find her afterwards. He solicits on-the-street advice from a charming rouges gallery of New Yorkers on how to proceed with his relationship-slash-film with the girl, including at one point climbing right into a taxicab occupied by a lady stock-broker to ask for seduction advice for a possible sex-scene (more on that in a moment.) In one of many fourth wall breaks, you not only get the seduction advice (“play the shy card”) but you also see the stock broker sign the documentary release form from a stack that Habicth carries around. If nothing else, it shows the power of a man and a movie camera and a built in conversation in a city of extroverts – and that even the most guerrilla of filmmaking projects still has a lot of paper work.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 05 May

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    Hot Docs 2012: Indie Game – The Movie Review

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    BThere is a lot of passion, soul baring, and white-knuckle anxiety on display in Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky’s documentary on the world of independent games and their micro-sized design teams. Instead of hundreds of people working on all aspects of a top tier title, in the two case-studies delved into in Indie Game: The Movie the entire team is two people. A mere duo, responsible for doing every aspect of the game, including programming, art design, level construction and managing the business side. Eating well (or shaving) does not factor high on the priority scale. Financially these guys are operating with little safety network other than generously patient parents or girlfriends. Even if the game is actually finished in a relatively bug-free state to allow for release (challenge enough!) it still has to hit traction in the X-Box Arcade (or WiiWare or Steam), direct digital distribution platforms managed by the big boys (Microsoft, Nintendo and Valve) Failure means that two to four years (or more) just went by with no monetary compensation. As one of the designers of Super Meat Boy succinctly puts it, “No Pressure!” Combine the ever present financial pit of spikes with the designers’ passion for making their games fresh, personal and ultimately a form of artistic expression and communication with the eventual gamer and the stakes for soul-crushing failure or triumphant success become even higher. The filmmakers impart a heightened awareness of this by crafting one of the emotionally draining dramas of the year. An eight dollar video game may be trivial in the grand scheme of things, but dig deep enough and there is a well-spring of dramatic tension and suspense. When, Phil Fish, the designer of the novel multi-dimensional platform jumper, Fez, stares into the camera and declares that if he cannot finish or release this game he will kill himself, it is easy to suspend disbelief to the hyperbole, because the dude is indeed on the edge. These guys are committed to their craft as much as the filmmakers are to documenting it.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 May

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    Friday One Sheet: Sitges’ iPocalypse

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    I have long been a fan of how the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya (Sitges) handles its promotion. The ever present spire of the Church of Sant Bartolomeu features in the artwork over the years. This year, adopting the theme of post-apocalyptic cinema has them really step up their game, and because it is 2012, they layer over the aesthetic of high resolution smart-phone video cameras. A very swell poster indeed.

  • 03 May

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    Trailer: Expendables 2

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    We skipped the ‘trailer for the trailer’ earlier this week and waited for the goods on The Expendables 2. If this franchise continues to bring on new and old cast members, I cannot imagine what the 3rd or 4th entries are going to look like. As it stands, this trailer shows you want you want to see: A shot or two of each of the principle cast members, most of them either looking badass or shooting off one liners (or in the case of Jason Statham, both). Also, it seems by bringing in Con Air and Tomb Raider director Simon West, it looks like there is a bigger flair for set-pieces and vehicular carnage.

    Do we know what the movie is about? Hell no. Do we want to see Chuck Norris, JCVD, Sly, Arnie and Bruce Willis (and Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Scott Adkins, Nan Yu, etc. etc!) all in the same movie. Yessum.

  • 02 May

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    WHOA! Beasts of the Southern Wild Trailer Impresses

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    Equal parts Terrence Malick and (early) David Gordon Green, this very buzzed about Sundance hit, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a stunner on the visual and emotional level it seems to be aiming for. I cannot wait to see this on the big screen on late June.

    “Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in “the Bathtub,” a southern Louisiana Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack-temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.”

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