SXSW 2017: Bill Pullman Takes Charge in The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Bill Pullman (Independence Day) thrilled SXSW fans as the title character of The Ballad of Lefty Brown. Director Jared Moshe’s full fledged western adventure was tender, complex and beautifully shot. Lefty is (ironically) the right hand man to the seasoned and confident Senator Johnson (Peter Fonda.) Johnson is the old school John Wayne-esque hero you would expect to take the lead. However, when Lefty becomes the only witness to the Senator’s assassination,
SXSW 2017: Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver Delivers
Edgar Wright's Baby Driver opens with one of the best action set pieces in years. Baby (The Fault in our Stars' Ansel Elgort) sits behind the wheel of a super powered Subaru. We stay with Baby as he listens to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms,” while inside the bank only a few feet away, the crew of bank robbers he’s driving getaway for are doing their work.
Wonder Woman‘s Official Trailer Packs a Mean Punch
Warner Bros. released our first glimpse of baby Wonder Woman and she’s an adorable, pint sized badass. As she is taught the ways of her Amazon culture, baby Diana is told that she’ll never be great, but her smirk reveals she won’t listen to the naysayers. The trailer shows an intense all female battle training that culminates in her first super display of power. Director Patty Jenkins’ and star Gal Gadot are delivering the first major film to feature Wonder Woman,
SXSW 2017: Sam Elliott Shines in The Hero
Last night we caught The Hero, and couldn’t help but feel that the film’s star could be a patron saint to the festival. Even though Sam Elliott was born in California, the lanky, golden-voiced icon oozes the kind of subtle, thoughtful masculinity that seems in short supply these days. And The Hero was written for specifically for him. You can feel the respect that the filmmakers and his fellow costars have for him throughout the movie.
SXSW 2017: Terrence Malick’s Song to Song
Much has been made about writer/director Terrence Malick’s two-decade break from filmmaking. Those years were largely spent in Austin, where his latest stunner, Song to Song, is set. There is no one quite like Malick, from his very first film, Badlands, starring Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen as two young killers on the run, Malick took a story that we’d heard before (a road trip movie with killers—think Bonnie and Clyde),
Michael Fassbender’s Robot Takes Center Stage in New Alien: Covenant Featurette
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus had several things going for it (most crucially, the director’s return to one of his signature franchises), and one of those Michael Fassbender’s robot David. Brilliant, cunning, and programmed for treachery, David was arguably the prime mover in Prometheus, and only one of two characters still standing (sort of) at the film’s end. The last we saw of him, Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw was sipping his severed head (still talking) into a duffel bag as the two take off to find the Engineer’s home planet.
SXSW 2017: 5 Narrative Features We’re Excited About
We’re once again down in Austin for South by Southwest, bringing you news, interviews and reactions. SXSW is arguably the most film geek friendly of all the major fests, giving everyone from auteur-loving AFI grads to horror fans (and everyone in between) something to enjoy. In fact, most of the folks who flock to Austin are polyamorous when it comes to their film tastes, and SXSW’s programming has always been open to high brow,
Game of Thrones Tortures Fans With Teaser, Reveals Premiere Date
Game of Thrones has built up so much good will among its millions of fans, it can ask them to watch a giant block of ice melt. That’s the premise behind their latest, torturous publicity stunt regarding the release of the show’s penultimate 7th season, a hilarious and effective bit of psy-op marketing. A staggering 1.5 million people watched the ice melt on Facebook Live, typing “FIRE” into the comments section in order to make the flames rise and melt the ice block quicker.
Celebrating Reel Women: Directors
From gripping films like The Hurt Locker and Selma to groundbreaking documentaries like 13th and Blackfish, to horror films like XX and The Invitation (their contribution to the genre is staggering), women in film are consistently leading the industry in new and refreshing directions.
Love Actually 2 is Happening—Sort of
We’ve finally gotten what we’ve been asking for after all these years! Director Richard Curtis is reuniting the majority of the Love Actually cast for a short film titled Red Nose Day Actually. As the title suggests, it is made in honor of Red Nose Day, an event started by charitable initiative Comic Relief, which was co-founded by Richard Curtis.
In the short, we will be catching up with one of our favorite film ensembles.
Cutting-Edge Technology Lets Planet Earth II Shoot in the Dark
The BBC’s Planet Earth series has captivated audiences worldwide, stunning viewers with incredible high-quality nature footage. The filmmakers were able to create groundbreaking episodes, showing tidbits of life in the wild we have never been exposed to before. Its sequel, Planet Earth II, has surpassed all expectations. Somehow, they managed to shoot even more dynamic and intimate shots, making most of us wonder: how did they do that?
Game of Thrones Season 7 Poster Teases Battle Between Fire vs. Ice
We’ve been waiting patiently for Game of Thrones news for a while now. The last time we checked in on our Lannisters and Starks, we were writing about their big haul at the Creative Arts Emmys, where the show was the night’s big winner with 9 awards. Since then, there have been a few tidbits here and there, but all’s been quiet on the Westeros front. It’s as if our actual lives here in the real world has become GoT like,
Zack Snyder Teases Aquaman Footage From Justice League
In cased you missed it, a week ago director Zack Snyder teased some footage of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) from Justice League, as a little reverse birthday gift he delivered to fans. The shot is brief but beautiful, showing the superhero in his natural element. In just five seconds, we watch Aquaman swim up to a man on a throne, which most people speculate is Willem Dafoe’s Nuidis Vulko.
How the Kong: Skull Island Cinematographer Channeled Apocalypse Now
From the minute cinematographer Larry Fong walked into Jordan Vogt-Roberts' office to discuss Kong: Skull Island, it became clear that the director wanted to make more than a by-the-numbers monster movie. "The walls in Jordan's office were filled with stills from Apocalypse Now," recalls Fong, citing Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War masterpiece. "We were both interested in capturing this kind of classic '70s look, rather than just taking all our references from other monster movies.
Meet Colleen Wing, the Modern Day Samurai in Marvel’s Iron Fist
Marvel’s Iron First premieres on Netflix on March 17, and our guess is one of your favorite characters will be Jessica Henwick’s Colleen Wing. In the comics, Wing first premiered in “Marvel Premiere #19” in 1974, descended from a family Samurai who meets the superhero Iron Fist while on a quest to avenge her grandfather’s murder.
In Marvel’s new show, the extremely capable Henwick embodies the modern day Samurai,
Death Haunts new Extended Life Clip
Director Daniel Espinosa’s sci-fi thriller Life was written by Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who told us one of their primary sources of inspiration was Ridley Scott’s Alien. This is a long way of saying there will clearly be plenty of death in Life, as this extended clip teases.
The concept is intriguing: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, and Rebecca Ferguson are a few of the scientists aboard the International Space Station who find the discovery of a lifetime—life on Mars.
Tupac Returns in All Eyez on Me Trailer
The likeness between actor Demetrius Shipp Jr. and the late Tupac Shakur is so uncanny, it could be the only thing you focus on while watching the new trailer for the Tupac biopic All Eyez On Me. That would be a mistake. Benny Bloom’s film, which is set to open on June 16, 2017, has a chance to do for Tupac what Straight Outta Compton did for NWA.
Harry Potter Villain Jason Isaacs to Play Captain in Star Trek: Discovery
It was heartening news when we heard that The Walking Dead‘s tough-as-nails Sonequa Martin-Green was going to be playing the lieutenant commander of the U.S.S. Discovery in Star Trek: Discovery. The show’s cast just added another fantastic actor, the great Jason Isaacs, who was so convincingly scary in Netflix’s surprise hit The OA, also a veteran of the Harry Potter franchise.
To millions of fans,
How to Make Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 at Home
One of our favorite running video series if CineFix’s “Homemade Movies,” which shows you how to make your favorite film’s costumes, props and sets at home. You would think this would be nearly impossible for a film like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which takes place on various planets and in space, and involves a huge cast of aliens and otherworldly weirdos, but the gang at CineFix is more than up to the challenge.
Strong Reviews Suggest Kong: Skull Island a Smashing Good Time
We’ve been feeling good about Kong: Skull Island ever since the first teasers and trailers started rolling in. A great ensemble cast set on a rococo primordial island with the largest Kong ever committed to screen? Yeah, we were sold. When Warner Bros. hit us with this wild final trailer, we felt very confident that director Jordan Vogt-Roberts, his crew and his principal cast of Tom Hiddleston,
