The Big Short & the Frenzy of Must-See Films in December
As the year comes to a close, there's a frenzy of films coming out in the next few weeks that are required viewing. I caught a screening last week of Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant (we'll be discussing the film in more detail soon), a brutal, simultaneously gorgeous film that I haven't been able to totally shake since. In a way, the outrageous commitment the film required (you can read all about the production process here) reminded me of what it took for director Tom McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer to pull off
Jennifer Lawrence Brings the Joy, Natalie Portman Brings the Jane
Two distinctinly different clips to share with you this morning. The first, is a short Joy teaser released by 20th Century Fox, the Jennifer Lawrence starring, David O. Russell directed film based on the life of Joy Mangano, the inventor of the Miracle Mop. This is the first time Russell has focused his film solely on a female protagonist (he's had strong women in nearly all his film, however), and Lawrence's performance is already earning raves.
Around the Web: C-3PO Unmasked, Momentum Continues for Spotlight & Mad Max: Fury Road & More
A quick glance at what we're reading around the web.
In a must read for Star Wars fans, Vulture’s Boris Kachka chats with “Star Wars’ most special effect of all,” Anthony Daniels, the man in the golden droid suit.
Speaking of The Force Awakens, Slashfilm’s Peter Sciretta attended the film’s press conference this past weekend (in which there was no footage shown,
From Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth to Orson Welles & Joss Whedon: Directors Love the Bard
Finally ready to meet U.S. audiences is Justin Kurzel’s brutal Macbeth, a modern perspective on the Scottish play starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in two of their most visceral and intense roles to date. It opens today, December 4, and as we've written, it's one of the most impressive Shakespeare adaptations in ages. (You can also read our interview with the film's producer, Iain Canning, here.) Though Macbeth is only Kurzel’s second film after his merciless The Snowtown Murders,
Want to be an Ape in the War for the Planet of the Apes Film? Here’s How…
This new teaser for the upcoming War for the Planet of the Apes shows director Matt Reeves and performance capture legend and star Andy Serkis asking you if you'd like to be an ape in the upcoming film. Serkis stars as Ceasar, the leader of the ape army, and for the motivated fan, you can enlist in Caesar's campaign and get yourself flown to set to actually play an ape in the film.
The Real Locations Used to Bring The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 to Life
To bring the Capitol to life in the final installment of The Hunger Games, director Francis Lawrence and production designer Philip Messina knew they needed to up the ante and look beyond Atlanta, where much of the production had previously taken place. They found locations in France and Germany that provided the unique combination of both futuristic and historic backdrops necessary to create the wartime metropolis that serves as the setting for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 2.
How Quentin Tarantino Protege Zoe Bell Traded Stunts For Acting
It’s not easy to switch from movie “staff” to acting, and Zoe Bell credits being “deluded” or at least “clueless” for her move from stuntwoman to actress. Quentin Tarantino deserves some credit, too. After working with Bell as Uma Thurman’s stunt double in Kill Bill, he went on to cast her in 2007’s Death Proof, her first acting role and one she took reluctantly. This year,
A Conversation with Director & Artist JR About his Film ELLIS
Last night installation artist JR's short film about immigration – Ellis, starring Robert De Niro and written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Eric Roth, premiered in New York. We had a chance to chat with JR about his film, his inspiration and more.
JR’s Background:
For those unacquainted with him, JR is a pseudonym for an artist and photographer who has made the choice to remain anonymous.
Check out the Bonkers Trailer for Gods of Egypt
The ambitious director Alex Proyas (Dark City, I, Robot, Knowing) has assembled quite the cast for his epic, insane-looking Gods of Egypt. There's something wonderfully refreshing about what looks to be a totally gonzo approach to telling the story of Egyptian gods going deity-y-deity in a nation-shaking battle. Starring Gerard Butler(300) as the evil god Set versus Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) as the falcon-headed god Horus, the first trailer for
Around the Web: It’s General Leia, Not Princess, Mad Max: Fury Road & More
Entertainment Weekly’s big Star Wars: The Force Awakens feature, with four separate covers, includes this tiny but not insignificant detail—in the film, Princess Leia is now General Leia. Director J.J. Abrams told EW this: “She’s referred to as General, But … there’s a moment in the movie where a character sort of slips and calls her ‘Princess.’”
Ever wondered why she was referred to as a Princess in the first place?
Talking to Bryan Cranston & Director Jay Roach About Trumbo
Blacklisted in 1950s Hollywood for having been a member of the Communist Party, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo continued to do what he did best: write scripts. He just couldn't do that under his own name, even when he penned two Oscar-winning movies, Roman Holiday and The Brave One. This period in the writer's life is the subject of Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach and with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston in the title role.
The 33 & the Surprisingly Rich Tradition of Mining Movies
Warner Bros’ upcoming release of The 33, which recounts the 2010 rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners and the plight of their families and friends above ground, is part of a long history of movies’ fascination with miners and their way of life. It makes sense: mining is a tradition full of inherent drama and danger; there’s conflict between business and labor interests; as well as generational conflicts. By no means a definitive list,
A New Trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight
One of the films we're really looking forward to this December is Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. After a tortured production process (in that his first script was leaked), Tarantino's film is ready to see the light of day, and this new trailer gives all you Tarantino fans plenty of reasons to be excited. With his muse, Samuel L. Jackson, and a cast that includes Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh (who is so excellent in her voice work in
Check out the First Trailer for Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq
Spike Lee's upcoming film Chi-Raq, whose title was born from the report that homicides in Chicago surpassed the death toll of American Special Forces operations in Iraq, looks at the troubling violence through the lens of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes' comedy "Lysistrata." Written in 411 BC, "Lysistrata" tracked one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Her ingenious plan was to persuade the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their lovers and husbands until they ended the war.
Guns & God Converge in Abigail Disney’s Doc The Armor of Light
To make The Armor of Light, documentarian Abigail Disney followed two people with strong feelings about guns. The Rev. Rob Schenck is a longtime anti-abortion crusader and conservative cleric who has come to question the American right's enthusiasm for firearms. Lucy McBath is the mother of Jordan Davis, an 18-year-old African American who in 2012 was killed by a Florida man who fired into a car because it was the source of loud music.
The First Official Trailer for Charlie Kaufman’s Mind-blowing Anomalisa
We got a chance to see Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) and Duke Johnson's stop-motion masterpiece Anomalisa at the Middleburg Film Festival, and we were floored. The film centers on Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a customer service expert whose giving a speech at a convention in Cincinnati. While there, he meets a shy, insecure woman named Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh),
Watch This New Girls Teaser and Get Excited About Season 5
The trials, tribulations and humiliations of Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) and her closest friends will continue in season five of Dunham's brilliant Girls. In 25 seconds, the new teaser packs a lot of funny into a small package—the package in this case being Hannah's body, as she dances 'as if no one's watching' in a class that includes at least one person she knows very well.
Girls returns for season five on February 21, and Dunham has said that the series will likely end after the sixth season.
Trouble in Paradise: New Trailer for Angelina Jolie’s By the Sea
Talk about a massive shift from one film to the next—Angelina Jolie's third feature as a director, the experimental By the Sea, follows her adaptation of Lauren Hillenbrand's nonfiction bestseller Unbroken. From the WWII set Unbroken, which followed the incredible true story of Olympian, soldier and eventual POW Louis Zamperini, Jolie's tackled a dark, emotionally volatile story about the dissolution of a marriage between two people who happen to be exceedingly good looking and married in real life.
Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is the Most Heartfelt Horror Film Ever Made
The story of Macbeth is certainly no stranger to adaptation. In fact, the Scottish play belongs to an impressive tradition of auteurist variation, including Orson Welles’ notoriously troubled 1948 production, Roman Polanski’s 1971 film and Kurosawa’s well-loved in 1957.
Any Shakespearean adaptation carries with it piles of textual and philosophical baggage, requiring not only a new spin on a well-worn story but a justification for a new iteration.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Director J.J. Abrams Finally Answers a Bunch of Questions
Okay sort of. Abrams was part of Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit in which big, bold names in business, entertainment, technology and politics gathered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to chat about, well, nearly everything. Tesla Motor's Elon Musk, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Girls creator Lena Dunham, former ESPN writer and Grantland found Bill Simmons, photographer Annie Lebovitz and more were on hand.
