Posts Tagged ‘Nicolas-Cage’
Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds in will headline the voice cast for DreamWorks Animation’s 3D computer animated film The Croods. Lilo & Stich helmer Chris Sanders and Space Chimps helmer Kirk DeMicco are co-directing the caveman comedy, which was formerly titled Crood Awakenings when it was set up with Aardman Animation.
The official plot synopsis follows:
“An old school caveman must lead his family across a volatile prehistoric landscape in search of a new home. The outsized flora and fauna are challenge enough, but the real complication arises when the family is joined by an alarmingly modern caveman whose search for “tomorrow” is at odds with our hero’s reliance on the traditions of yesterday.”
Cage will voice the prehistoric patriarch named Crug, while Reynolds will voice the forward-thinking outsider nomad who charms Crug’s family, especially his eldest daughter, a role yet to be cast. Kiefer Sutherland, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Christina Milan, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cleese were all rumored to be part of the voice cast when the project was still being developed at Aardman Animation. It is unclear if any of them are still involved.
Sanders has described the project as: “The idea of having all the modern conveniences and social structures that we’re familiar with gone and being left with just a pure form of people was really fun to imagine working with.” The Croods is now set to hit theaters on March 30th 2012.
source: Variety
Oh, hello there, new international red-band Kick-Ass trailer. Want to know a little more about the world of Matthew Vaughn’s new ‘realistic’ superhero movie, based on the comic of the same name by Mark Millar? This tasty little clip will probably do the trick. It’s a nice combination between the Hit Girl red-band clip and the last story-oriented trailer. Plus, there’s a good dollop of new footage to tide you over until Lionsgate opens the movie in April.
There’s a great gag at the end of this trailer that I really want to spoil, but I won’t do it. I’m nicer than that. I do think this might be the best clip about the movie yet, because it puts everything in perspective: the comedy, the violence, the superhero geekery, and the diminutive Chloe Moretz spouting obscenities. And it’s all summed up in one easy line: “With no power comes no responsibilities.”
What’s the film about? Watch the trailer, or read the handy synopsis.
Kick-Ass tells the story of average teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a comic-book fanboy who decides to take his obsession as inspiration to become a real-life superhero. As any good superhero would, he chooses a new name — Kick-Ass — assembles a suit and mask to wear, and gets to work fighting crime. There’s only one problem standing in his way: Kick-Ass has absolutely no superpowers.
His life is forever changed as he inspires a subculture of copy cats, is hunted by assorted violent and unpleasant characters, and meets up with a pair of crazed vigilantes, including an 11-year-old sword-wielding dynamo, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and her father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage).
Here’s the new trailer, which based on some cussin’ is considered red-band. Guess that means NSFW, depending on where you work. But if a teenage girl saying ‘cock’ isn’t allowed where you work, might want to think about finding a new job. I don’t care how crappy the market is these days.
(Diane Kruger in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, above.)Diane Kruger
The Blockbuster Beauty Goes Indie
[This article originally appeared in 2006 in Venice Magazine. I had lunch with Diane Kruger at the Chateau Marmont, and I remember most distinctly two things: 1. I've never been around anyone in Hollywood who so many guys were trying to get the attention of. Several Hollywood agent types waved to her as they were entering and leaving with greetings like "Hi, beautiful." 2. She was also very polite, much more so than your typical American hot starlet, walking me out afterwards to the valet stand and generally displaying no star attitude whatsoever. She's had a great year with Inglorious Basterds. Nice to see.)
Heads turn when she walks into the restaurant, even in blase L.A. It's a bit redundant to say that she's beautiful, yet the reality is that beautiful might be understating the case. This is a woman who, after all, first came to prominence two years ago when Wolfgang Petersen cast her as Helen of Troy, whose legendary looks were so stunning that nations went to war over her. But once you're past the surface charms of Diane Kruger, what really becomes evident is how seriously she's taking the development of her craft as an actress. After Troy and National Treasure, the easy money would have had her choosing to do another string of Hollywood blockbusters. Not that she's sworn off big budget films by any means, but she's also taken an interesting journey into some high-quality American independents and European films which have tested and stretched her acting chops considerably. First up on these shores is Joyeux Noel, the French feature which is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars this year, in which she plays an opera singer who visits No Man's Land during World War I. She's also recently completed Frankie, a very low-budget film about the downward spiral of a model which she filmed sporadically (and co-produced) over a series of years, and which early reviews have indicated feartures a dynamic tour de force performance by Kruger. The next year will see her in Copying Beethoven, where she stars opposite Ed Harris. The film centers around the relationship between Harris' Beethoven and his assistant, Anna, played by Kruger, which developed during the writing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. She'll also play an anarchist in Les Brigades du Tigre and will interact with a cinematic version of Nelson Mandela in Bille August's Goodbye Bafana. A linguistic dynamo who can master a new accent almost with the ease of an international spy, she already speaks English, French, and German, and even has a number of scenes in Russian in Les Brigades.
(Kruger as Helen of Troy, above.)
It's all a long way from the tiny German town of Algermissen, where Kruger grew up. An early goal of a dance career saw her move to London at a young age to study at the Royal Ballet. But an untimely injury cut short those dreams. At the same time, another door opened, in the form of a modeling career which brought her to live in Paris while still a teenager. Eventually bored with modeling, she made the rare successful segue from the catwalk to the big screen when she took up acting, inspired by time spent at the French art house cinemas where she cites the works of director Francois Truffaut and the late actress Romy Schneider has particular favorites. Kruger made her film debut in The Piano Player, which she credits co-star Dennis Hopper with mentoring her through. She next appeared in the French film Mon Idole and then Wicker Park, opposite Josh Hartnett and Rose Byrne. Troy, of course, followed, and then National Treasure, in which she was a feisty counterpart to Nicolas Cage's obsessed treasure hunter. Kruger made her mark in Treasure by showing that this ethereal European beauty could also play the prototypical strong and sharp American action film heroine, trading quips ably with Cage and dodging on-screen bullets.
Joyeux Noel, directed by Christian Carion, centers around the historical Christmas Truce of WWI, which occurred on the front lines in the No Man's Land of occupied France, where French, Scottish and German soldiers put down their weapons to celebrate Christmas and to bond with their enemies for a brief time. The Truce was reportedly initiated by a German opera tenor who began singing on Christmas, inspiring the opposing soldiers to start singing along. Songs led to handshakes and eventually a football game among the troops. The German tenor is played in the film by Benno Furmann and Diane Kruger plays his wife, a character named Anna Sorensen, who is also an opera singer who lends her voice to life the spirits of No Man's Land.
Had you heard of the Christmas Truce any time prior to being cast in Joyeux Noel?
Diane Kruger: I had heard they played football in No Man's Land, but I certainly didn't learn about the Truce in school. I didn't actually know a lot of the historical background of World War I, really. What happened, who was involved, why it ended, and so forth. So that was really interesting to me, and I think that's what makes the film especially appealing in Europe because a lot of people confuse the two World Wars. The don't really know what happened in World War I.
The film was shot in three languages -- German, French and English -- all of which you speak fluently.
I think I felt like I should have been paid for being the translator. [laughs] I was translating for people all the time, you know? It was interesting because I had never done a movie in German, so that was a little odd in the beginning. I do feel like English is the easiest language to speak and and to act in. I'm in a weird situation in that I have accents in all three languages now [laughs], so I sort of always have to work more than everyone else.
Is it a German accent you have in all three languages?
No, not really. [laughs] I definitely don't have an English accent in French, but I don't think that I have a typical German accent in English, either.
That's true. I didn't pick up on any accent in your English in National Treasure.
Oh, that's good! [laughs]
(Kruger and Nicolas Cage in NATIONAL TREASURE, above.)
Let's talk about the process of shooting the singing sequences in Joyeux Noel. I know that it's [French soprano] Nathalie Dessay's actual voice on the songs, but you really appeared to be singing them.
Well, I was singing them during the shooting. I studied with an opera singer every day for two and a half months. It was a lot of work, actually. Even learning how to hold your breath for that long is really exhausting. So I did sing everything while shooting. They recorded everything before (with Nathalie Dessay) and they played it on those big speakers. I would actually sing it, but people could hear that beautiful voice, rather than mine. [laughs] I thought it looked really good though, particularly in the close-ups.
When you worked with the opera singer, was it the songs from the film that you learned with?
We did breathing exercises [at first]. In the beginning, it would have been impossible to sing the "Ave Maria." That's one of the most difficult songs in opera.
How close do you think you came to mastering it in the end?
The "Ave Maria" I probably massacred. The other song is most close to my natural inclination, so I could actually sing it and not sound terrible. The"Ave Maria" though, that's pretty hard core.
No Man's Land looked appropriately bleak. What was it like shooting there and in the trenches?
We shot it in Romania. They really reconstructed it perfectly. For me, it's not the most inviting country in the world, and it really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. But even though the shooting was not in the easiest circumstances, I don't think that any of us, even if we tried really hard, could imagine how it must have really been. You could hear everything the French would say, as well as the Scots, from the German trenches. You were underground and there's the feeling that somebody's going to throw a bomb at you any second, you know?
Were there little factions amongst the actors, as they were divided up by nationality in these different trenches?
In the beginning, for sure, because the French didn't speak English or German. The Scots tended to hang out together anyway and get drunk on their own. [laughs] But then, after a week or two, everyone started hanging out together.
How did you become involved with the film?
I was the first one they contacted actually, because they were originally going to shoot about a year earlier than they actually did. So I had wanted to do the project for the longest time. On a really personal level, my grandfather's father was in WWI. My grandfather was in WWII. You know, when you're German, you grow up with such a heavy history on your shoulders. And we're never portrayed as the nice guys. I'm not saying that we are in this film, but I thought that it was, for once, a movie that didn't point fingers at anyone. And it is a historical fact that a German tenor was the first one to step out into No Man's Land, which started the Truce. I thought it had more of a gray side, as opposed to the black and white way that Germans are often portrayed in movies.
I want to ask you about Frankie. You started filming it long before you broke as a star.
I was still in drama school when I started. For me, it's definitely my most accomplished film, because I've been involved with the film from the beginning to the end. I used to model, so I was very familiar with the world, even though I didn't have the same experience that Frankie had in the movie. It's a character that was kind of difficult to do, because I had such a positive experience as a model. And I didn't want to make a movie that was such a cliche about the fashion world. I've never really seen a movie about it that was accurate. Even Pret-a-Porter, that's not what it's like. Most people think of models living this glamorous life and making lots of money, and top models do, but really, 95% of the models are barely getting by. So I wanted to show that.
It was shot over a multi-year period, and despite your success in larger arenas, you kept coming back to work on this smaller project.
I felt like I had to. Not only because I loved the story, but I felt very obligated to the director (Fabienne Berthaud). She's a first-time director, and when I was auditioning for the movie, I actually auditioned for a different part. But she had producers and they really wanted this much more well-known actress to play Frankie. And she set up a meeting where she said that she couldn't do the movie with this other actress, because, first of all, she didn't look like a model, and I had so much more to bring to the table that this girl didn't have. And so, they dropped her as a director, saying that they weren't going to make the movie unless she used someone well-known. So she was the first one who said, "Who cares? We're going to make this movie anyway." I felt very obligated for her confidence in me.
Reports have it that the film was the definition of bare-bones shoot.
[We shot] with three people usually. [laughs]
A big change from something like Troy. Was it a nice change when you returned from Hollywood to keep working on it, or had you become more used to amenities like a trailer?
It wasn't really that. You know, all of the other people in Frankie are not professional actors. So the most difficult part of the movie was all on my shoulders. In a big portion of the film, I live in a mental hospital, and the people who play the patients are real patients, and you can't ask them to learn lines. You had to be ready 24 hours a day. We were living in the actual hospital. So, if they came over and talked to me, it was on me to sort of link the story, and feed them lines, and still be in character. That was really hard. So that was not one of the most pleasant times. Especially once you get used to working with great actors, where you can start over if you have to. This was a one-take situation.
How do you think it turned out?
I love it. It's my favorite movie that I've made.
You're choosing a wide range of projects, from the biggest Hollywood blockbusters to, more recently, smaller European productions such as Joyeux Noel. Is that something you intend to keep doing?
Yes, because I started my career the other way around, with blockbusters, and I've only been working for four years. So I don't have a lot of experience, and I really feel the need to show a range of the acting that I can do. I defnitely want to keep working in Europe, but I also want to do more films in America that are more challenging and can show what I can do. So I've been trying to do more independent things during the past year.
On that note, let's talk about Copying Beethoven, in which you star opposite Ed Harris, who plays Beethoven.
They just finished post-production. I think they're going to start showing it soon, but I've seen it and Ed Harris, who's always good, is very impressive. Agnieszka Holland's work is very edgy. I play a very young girl, a 21-year-old who lives in a convent, very innocent, and I've never played a part like that. Usually people cast me because I'm, you know, Helen of Troy. This is much more of a Bridget Jones type of person: innocent and very young. Then, I'm about to start this film Goodbye Bafana, about Nelson Mandela, and in that, I'm sort of the opposite of my character in Copying Beethoven. I play someone with little children. Goodbye Bafana is the true story about Mandela's years in prison. My husband in the film, played by Joe Fiennes, is Mandela's security guard. It's about how society changed during the years Mandela was in prison. How we changed our point of view towards Mandela. So I'm really pleased with the direction I feel my career is going. Even though they're smaller movies, I feel like I'm getting a lot out of it.
Have you been working on that South African accent?
Oh, man. [laughs] Yeah, I'm going to use a light one, but still, it's really different.
Let's go back a bit. Famously, you were cast in Troy from an audition video tape you made yourself while shooting Wicker Park. Did you hear back from the casting directors immediately or was it a much longer process than that?
The whole thing took a while. The process took about four and a half months. They finally said, "Okay" about three weeks before we started shooting.
And now you're Helen of Troy and the pressure is on you to be the face that launches a thousand ships.
It really wasn't though [laughs], because what am I going to do? You can't change the way you look. But no, the pressure was because I felt under-qualified to be amongst all these big movie stars. I had only done a few movies before that. So there were scenes where I had no idea how I was going to pull them off. But it was such a great opportunity to come out and have people take notice. Yet it's not my movie, you know? I play a supporting role. I felt like there was a lot of expectations all of a sudden, but it wasn't the part that was going to make you explode. I felt that was National Treasure, much more so than Troy.
And although there was a lot of action in Troy, your first big action scenes cinematically were really in National Treasure. That must have been a significant change in terms of shooting style for you.
Yeah, you don't make movies like that in Europe. I don't really enjoy action stuff. I like the acting part. I think screaming and hanging off a truck is fun for a day, but after five days, when you're still hanging off some car door, it gets a little boring to me. I actually really like the movie, though. I hope they're doing a sequel, and I think they are.
You and Nic Cage had a very sassy back-and-forth line delivery throughout the entire film that was quite engaging.
I loved him. We got along very well. He screen-tested with me and two other girls, and we hit if off immediately. I thought he was totally the type of guy I connect with. Crazy. Eccentric.
What was the sequence of events that led you from modeling to acting?
I never really watched movies or theater when I was growing up, because nobody in my family has ever done anything in that direction. So Paris really opened my horizons for discovering movies and French cinema and so forth. I had been thinking about it, because I'm not your typical model, as I'm not very tall. People always said I have a very classy face and maybe I should be an actress instead of a model But I didn't even know that you could study acting, or that it was something you could choose. I always thought you had to be born into a family or something. [laughs] Then I met some actors, and I was really bored with modeling after four years. I also had a very unhappy love story in New York, where I was living at the time. I wanted to change my whole life. So I gave up everything and left New York.
You're obviously very good at fitting into alien situations. You left Germany to model in Paris, then you went back to Paris to study acting in French.
And it was Old French, too. [laughs] Like Moliere, classical theater. It's very different than spoken French. That was kind of a nightmare. But at the school in Paris, you had to do one scene in front of the jury and they decide if they're going to take you on or not. And I did and it was really fun and I knew this is what I was going to do right then.
-
We’ve seen a teaser trailer and a violent red-band trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, based on Mark Millar’s comic of the same name, but not a proper story-oriented full-length one.
Now we’ve got that, too, and it’s pretty fantastic. This new trailer uses some of the same footage as the clips we’ve seen before, but puts it all into a story context so there’s a little more than ‘real-world kid heroes’ going on. Only a little, because that’s what the movie is about, obviously, but now you see how it all fits together. This will be the one to sell a broad audience on the film; check it out after the break.
Among other things, this trailer also shows off Mark Strong for the first time. He’s the villain, to some extent, and appears to be a Kingpin-type figure from what we see here. We see more of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) as well, or more of him in costume, beating the hell out of Strong’s thugs.
I’m the one that wasn’t wowed by the Comic Con footage, and the film has yet to really ignite the interest in me that it has in others. But I trust the word of many that came out of BNAT loving the film, and I’m definitely curious. More than anything else, I like Vaughn’s work and would love this to be as good as many say it is. This trailer points in that direction; I expect many of you will love it to death.
Here’s the synopsis, if you’ve missed it before:
Kick-Ass tells the story of average teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a comic-book fanboy who decides to take his obsession as inspiration to become a real-life superhero. As any good superhero would, he chooses a new name — Kick-Ass — assembles a suit and mask to wear, and gets to work fighting crime. There’s only one problem standing in his way: Kick-Ass has absolutely no superpowers.
His life is forever changed as he inspires a subculture of copy cats, is hunted by assorted violent and unpleasant characters, and meets up with a pair of crazed vigilantes, including an 11-year-old sword-wielding dynamo, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and her father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage).
Yahoo provides this trailer and the embed below; head there to see the clip in HD.
There’s a serious backlash building against the Nicolas Cage backlash, as if a whole chunk of film fans simultaneously came to the conclusion that his body of questionable and bad work is actually entertaining as hell. (That it all stands apart from his unquestionably good work isn’t in question.) I’m right there with it; my last viewings of Knowing and The Wicker Man pushed me to the point where I’m actively looking forward to films like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Drive Angry and Hungry Rabbit Jumps. (OK, Cage’s work in Bad Lieutenant and great buzz for Kick-Ass certainly didn’t hurt.)
But it might get out of hand. Since November, Nic Cage has been infecting cinema as a whole, as chronicled on the photoblog Nic Cage as Everyone.
I’m not going to sugar-coat this: a great many of the entries photoshopping Cage into every role from Edward Cullen to Jerry Maguire to Death (in The Seventh Seal) are really quite terrible. Nice tries, sure, but they’re not quite there. But then there are the ones that jump out as being spot-on. How about Steve Jobs and Mo’nique’s character in Precious? Harvey Milk? Yep, that’s good. Tony Stark? Creepy. Bernie Lomax? YES. And I think it’s obvious that any casting problem for the new Conan the Barbarian film is now solved:
It’s not too late, by the way, to get your very own Nicolas Cage Adventure Set, which we featured a month ago. I shot that link to my roommate immediately after Hunter published it, she bought the set for her boyfriend as a Christmas present and the photo below is part of our gleeful first assembly of the set last week. I want expansion packs! With additional fake colorforms, I could put Cage on the cover of every DVD in the house. Or finally have tools to pitch my ‘Nic Cage starring in a mashup of Lost and Scooby-Doo’ project that has been simmering for years.
Janice Wong caught a photo of Nicolas Cage filming a scene for his new film The Hungry Rabbit Jumps. The dramatic thriller tells the story of “a man whose wife is the victim of a brutal crime” and “subsequently becomes entangled with an underground vigilante organization.” Roger Donaldson (Thirteen Days, The Bounty, The Bank Job) is directing, while January Jones and Guy Pearce co-star.
Here is a note from Wong:
On the day I was finally going to go to Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World, I hopped on the free ferry to Algiers on a whim. When I found out that the Mardi Gras World there had been shut down and moved to the other side of the water yrs back, I had half an hour to kill til the ferry could take me back. Wandering around, I stumbled onto a movie shoot with Nicholas Cage BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I spoke to one of the security guards who told me that he’d been on set since 5am that morning (it was 11am) and they were only just BEGINNING to shoot the scene, which consisted of Nic running alongside the river for about 20 seconds. Enthralling, I know!
I know the photos aren’t too exciting, but it’s a slow news day due to Christmas week.
When the Kick-Ass ‘making of’ book hits shelves next February, well ahead of the film’s April release, it may be impossible to resist it’s spoilery goodness. According to Mark Millar, Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie is “incredibly informal” and “actually really frank”, which will make a refreshing change from the truckloads of rather insipid tie-in books I’ve thumbed through for two minutes while having a coffee in Borders - each of them seemingly designed to numb me into considering their subject movie utterly lacking in any kind of controversy or even life and therefore ’safe’ to go see.
Just some examples of the juicy stuff contained within this Kick-Ass tome: concept art for both the comic and the movie, interviews with the talent, candid e-mail exchanges between Millar and director Matthew Vaughn, and some little bits and pieces about versions of the story that we’ll never get to see. For example, Nicolas Cage may have ended up playing Big Daddy but when he signed on, the filmmakers had already talked to both Mark Wahlberg and Daniel Craig about the role; and while Dave Lizewski may well have ended up the key character, initially, Millar was planning to tell the story from the point of view of Hit Girl and Big Daddy.
Millar has been talking to Comic Book Resources about the ‘making of’ book with his characteristic enthusiasm. Asked if there’s more to come after the first comics volume is done and the film is out, he proudly declares that there is:
Are you kidding me? Kick-Ass is the most fun I’ve ever had ever on a project. It’s not only the best response Johnny [Romita Jr., the artist] and I have ever had, but we outsold everybody. Every issue had three, four, five printings. And our overall sales are more than 130,000 per issue. We always saw this as at least a trilogy. There might even be more. I had the whole second series worked out two years ago.
What does he reveal of the second storyline? Nothing much, but for another attention-grabbing name:
The working title is Balls to the Wall, and we’re thinking about launching it round about San Diego time, right around August. But to avoid delays, we’d like to stockpile a few issues, I think.
By that time, the first film should have been sufficiently well received, and hopefully well rewarded in dollars, that Balls to the Wall won’t just be a comics series and will get the big screen treatment too.
The CBR interview with Millar contains some previews of the concept art that will be published in the book. Here’s just one sample piece:
Lionsgate has released a new character poster for Matthew Vaughn’s big screen adaptation of Kick-Ass, revealing our first real look at Nicolas Cage in costume as Big Daddy. I wonder how mainstream audiences will respond to Big Daddy, especially cince the character’s design is a kinda a knock off of Batman. I noticed that they tried to keep the costumed Big Daddy out of the first movie trailer, likely for this reason. Also embedded after the jump is a hilarious red band clip featuring Big Daddy (sans costume) trying to teach his daughter, Hit Girl, what it feels like to get shot with a gun.
Click on over to UGO to see the poster in High Resolution. Watch the clip below:
Official Plot Synopsis:
A twisted, funny, high-octane adventure, director Matthew Vaughn brings KICK-ASS to the big screen. KICK-ASS tells the story of average teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a comic-book fanboy who decides to take his obsession as inspiration to become a real-life superhero. As any good superhero would, he chooses a new name — Kick-Ass — assembles a suit and mask to wear, and gets to work fighting crime. There’s only one problem standing in his way: Kick-Ass has absolutely no superpowers. His life is forever changed as he inspires a subculture of copy cats, meets up with a pair of crazed vigilantes – including an 11-year-old sword-wielding dynamo, Hit Girl (Chloë Moretz) and her father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) – and forges a friendship with another fledgling superhero, Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But thanks to the scheming of a local mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), that new alliance will be put to the test.
Kick-Ass hits theaters on April 16th 2010.
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
Blood Creek Trailer
I don’t even know where to begin.
Look, I may have loved D.C. Cab, The Wiz, and Car Wash, maybe I even loved the video for Inxs’ “Devil Inside” when I was in high school, but, honestly, I don’t know where Joel Schumacher’s mind went after the really good Tigerland in 2000 or Veronica Guerin a few years after that.
I realize a couple of things about this movie that may be true: it represents a contract fulfillment on Schumacher’s part, that it squeaked out in a real limited release in September of this year, and that it received zero support from the studio in terms of promotion. Hell, I didn’t even know about it until this week.
Here’s another thing about this movie that may be true: it could be the best horrible movie you’ll see in 2010. I mean, not only does this thing look bad but it looks like it was done with a budget of food stamps and, even then, I think I’m being generous. Yeah, it would be easy to point and laugh but, all kidding aside, considering the conditions and how much effort was put into this, it may be just the kind of hokey fun to get you through the winter.
I do know that the opening sequence, along with the red band trailer seal of goodness, is pretty solid. You’ve got Nazi’s, some basic historical facts about Hitler’s obsession with the occult, and a mysterious figure that looks back at the camera menacingly like a mummy man wrapped up in dark duct tape.
The background info on the film continues to inform the movie’s contents real well. Any indication that this is a cinematic s-bomb are nowhere to be found. In fact, the plot is played out with great expediency in order to get to the good stuff. The movie has a 40’s quality to it, the colors muted to give it that old time feel, as we’re told a mysterious guy went to a family farm in order to look for something. What’s utterly insane is that once we get this member of the Nazi party turned into mummy man, all sorts of wacky crap starts to happen. The movie shifts to old time cinematography to present day, the colors become more pronounced, and it all feels like a different movie as this monster starts to wreak havoc.
Horses (WTF?) knock down the front door and let themselves in, Dominic Purcell rocks a boom stick in action man fashion, we get a little bit more about the plot and why we’re suddenly in the 21st century, we get a great look at the Nazi monster, the monster drinks the blood of an infidel quite literally, and I’m just amazed this even got made.
My hat is off to you, Mr. Trailer Man, for making what looks like the biggest crap sandwich to be released in 2010 to be a movie I now have to see in order to discover how awful this really is; seriously, you deserve a bump in pay for the lipstick on this pig. I will be renting this movie.
What’s Up Lovely Trailer
There have been a lot of movies that explore the insanity that creeps up into someone afflicted with insomnia.
You have the original Norwegian classic Insomnia, you have a really interesting film that came out in 2006, Cashback that dealt with not being able to sleep, and now you have this film which continues the tradition of trying to define what means to exist in that temporary fugue state where the real world and the world of the subconscious merge. The effects of this genuinely real condition some people have to contend with have been, for the most part, captured fairly well. What has struck me about this movie, however, is that it seems less dependent on distilling the bending of perception than it is just trying to show what it would look like if an insomniac wandered the streets of her metropolis.
Ok, I’ll give you that the opening sequence of this is a little art film shtick-y; you have our protagonist making these rather poetic declarations about smiling to herself, about following strangers and knowing “where they come from” while getting the general vibe this is yet another self-indulgent indie film. I thought that but, pressing forward, and noticing that there is some really gritty camera work at play, not to mention that we’re actually on location instead of some staged interior, there is something genuinely interesting afoot.
The piano score is a delight, the monologue still wanting to veer into the indulgent, the shots of our girl wandering the streets alone is somehow alluring, and when the strings kick in I am wholly into where the story is going once she states, “I can’t sleep.” Making me want to sympathize with your character, finally establishing the plot, and talking to me at my level helps inexorably to do just that.
Our protagonist is shown traipsing all over the city in an effort, no doubt, to alleviate her symptoms of restlessness but there is a blending of the real world and the dream-like fuzziness that no doubt coats her experience. This looks like an indie with the kind of intimacy you don’t normally see in a movie that effectively uses a city as its secondary character but it works for me.
Seven Days (Les 7 Jours De Talion) Trailer
Anyone here enjoy Hard Candy?
Before David Slade decided to slag on Twilight, before the paycheck that cleared the bank that would allow him to make one of the Twilight films, and well before the middling 30 Days of Night, he made a wonderfully thrilling movie that explored some of the darker recesses of perverted human beings. Much credit can go to writer Brain Nelson but the movie, on the whole, was a tightly shot and acted film that really struck a chord with a lot of people. This film looks like it deals with that same part of the sickly, black, decayed part of the brain that sees no problem with walking over to a side of life everyone of us would classify as evil: murder. Not only that, but rape and murder of a little girl.
Watching the opening sequence I was like Alan Eakian in Summer School, taking a long pull off that Laffy Taffy, engrossed in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was glued to this thing as it played out.
The mood is recognizably dark, the cinematography is one that feels like a cloudy winter day all the time, the piano suite is haunting, and the characters we meet are but a few: a dad, a daughter, a mom. Girl is happy, girl walks down the street ostensibly to go somewhere in her nice, suburban neighborhood. Within thirty seconds we go from girl being alive to parents finding out she’s gone to dad holding onto her dead body out in a field where it was left like detritus. It’s awful, painful, and the guitar in the background as we see the guy who gets popped for doing it, smiling to the cameras as he’s being hauled off, we get the sense that this is going somewhere else. Somewhere good.
At about the minute, eight second mark we see the father has the guy in a dungeon of some kind. It’s at this point where you realize that writer Patrick Senécal and director Daniel Grou (Podz) have fashioned a movie that is more about the meditation of revenge on someone like this than it is torture porn but it’s the kind of torture porn, oddly, that I kind of welcome. The synopsis says the dad informs the police (how did he get him out of custody?) that after seven days in which he plans on torturing the man, then killing him, the grieving father will willingly give himself up. I got chills at just the premise. I liked Hard Candy for that reason and there is every indication this could be just as intense.
I could not be more thrilled at the thought of seeing whether this is as good as the trailer makes it out to be.
Obselidia Trailer
On ESPN last month I heard a word that I don’t think will ever be uttered again: opprobrium.
It was from a statement that was released, I believe, from a pack of lawyers or executives but I was so struck by the sound and use of the word I just had to look it up. Once in a while words should drive people, I think, to do things like that, to explore the meaning of our language. Well, it seems like “once in a while” happened today when I scrambled again to look up what “obselidia” meant. Seems like the marriage between obsolete and minutiae was a successful one but the man we meet in this trailer who seems to be a cataloger of such things doesn’t seem to be good with the ladies and, thus, we’re off to the races.
First time feature filmmaker Diane Bell brings what almost seems like a real cerebral romance picture but the trailer got my attention because it’s very quiet, very controlled. One of the familiar faces in this trailer won’t mean anything to those residing outside of Oz. Voted ‘Australia’s Most Dateable Guy’ by Dolly Magazine actor Michael Piccirilli, we hear his character narrate the opening sequence of the trailer.
We get, crafty cerebral alert, images of things that are or becoming obsolete: a phonograph, books on a shelf, typewriter, film projector. He explains, kinda, what he’s all about in that he wants to slow the process of things being forgotten so quickly in our everyday life. He seems like a real throwback himself as he dons a fedora, suit vest, crisp white shirt, pedaling a bicycle down a street.
We get some other characters popping up, explaining what we just figured out but it’s the introduction of the woman that makes things interesting. As she parries his thrusting perception about the obsolescence of things there is an obvious warming between the two. The trailer cleverly syncopates the harshness of the typewriter our beau is hammering on with the lilting rhythms of the score used to push these two lovebirds toward their eventual coupling.
I am not so sure of the four second quick clip that is inserted at the very end after we get the title of the film, it could have worked so much better mixed in with the rest of the trailer, but it’s a mere quibble for a movie that appears to be a sweet gem.
ECiLA Trailer
Shortly after the best Australian film to be imported to the shores of the U.S. of A.was BMX Bandits starring Nicole Kidman there came Baz Luhrmann and his vivid interpretation William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. What made Baz’s movie so fresh and different was that he wanted to play with modernity, to inject life into a play that has been done so many times before. Sometimes you just have to completely rethink a property and get someone to reinterpret it from the ground up.
This interpretation of Alice in Wonderland is unlike that show on Syfy, unlike the polished, emo world of Tim Burton, and most definitely not the version Disney put out. This story has an eye towards degeneracy and the darkened underbelly of a world that is not logical and certainly not safe.
We open up to a fantastical world of hallucinatory colors and of a mustachioed man whipping down a street on a moped. I’ve got no clue who he is, what he’s doing. A lilting string suite plays in the background as our unseen Alice motors down the same road as our scruffy looking moped man and while there is nary a glimpse into the film’s plot.
Alice steps out onto a city block in the middle of the day, smash cut to her running bloodied on the street at night, cut to her inside a bedroom where she buries her head in her hands, weeping. Some guy is getting choked to death (huh?) while someone else starts dancing with a gun a la Batman, the Nicholson Years, as we linger for a long time starting at this guy who is pointing the gun back at the camera. I’m confused and befuddled.
Next scene is a rank nightclub with skanky go-go dancers, pills, wads of cash, violence, more guns, with Alice coming up bloodied even more. Like I said, I don’t know how this all fits together or what it even has to do with the actual Alice in Wonderland story but this has to be the most original interpretation we’re going to see in the next year. The combination of this being an independent production with a limited budget for effects coupled with a genuine sense this movie has something to say and you’ve got yourself a sellable film; the good money may be on Burton but I wouldn’t have a problem spending my cash on this one.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
- Brooklyn’s Finest Trailer - Looks OK. I mean, it looks like it will be a movie I might want to see in the theater or wait until it comes out on DVD but it certainly isn’t a film that sways me one way or the other. Not very inspired.
- The 40 Year Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It Trailer - I’m offended that I even had to sit through that trailer. If a trailer is supposed to make you want to spend your money this thing makes me want to save it for a very, very long time.
- Aoki Trailer - An interesting piece of promotion for a film that looks like it could do well on PBS. It seems to take a learned look at someone who I find myself interested in after having seen this trailer.
- Death at a Funeral Trailer - Look, I understand we love remakes in this country. That said, this is one remake that should not have happened as this looks absolutely insufferable. Waste of some great talent on a tepid looking film with even mediocre jokes stuffed in this thing.
- Spanish Movie Trailer - Every country deserves their own cinematic turd in a punchbowl and this trailer shows you where Spain’s is going to come from. I don’t think there’s a language issue as I believe horrible translates no matter where it is.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer - You know how some people recuse themselves from situations where their opinion might not be valid? That’s what I’m doing here because I’m not a fan of the films as I’m just not into the mythology but I think, technically, this thing looks wicked sharp.
- Saint John of Las Vegas Trailer - I happened to love this trailer. Mixed reviews be damned! Seeing Sarah Silverman playing a ditz, Peter Dinklage as a nutty boss, and Romany Malco as a sidekick who cracks wise? I’m in.
- Youth In Revolt Red Band Trailer - Yes! Finally, a red band that really delivers on being not only funny but smart with how to incorporate its nastiness. The music bed is awful but the performances more than make up for it.
- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Trailer - After seeing this trailer I can’t say for sure which way I stand on this. I think Jay Baruchel is a talent, and it shows, but Nicolas Cage isn’t selling me on this. The effects look pretty standard and it looks like a movie I could take my kids to see. Now, if they would only guarantee a broom sequence…
- Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever Trailer - Call me nutty but this looks like something actually worth my rental cash. I absolutely wouldn’t pay for a full price ticket but, in the world of marketing, this is all about price points and this one has enough gore in the trailer to make a sale.
- The Vicious Kind Trailer - Party Down wouldn’t be the same without Adam Scott and this movie looks like it hinges on his ability to sell the movie. He does wonderfully, by the way. Could not be looking forward to seeing this movie any more after experiencing this solidly put together trailer.
Earlier today, Walt Disney Pictures released the first movie trailer for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (watch it here). We just received another e-mail from the mouse house with three new high resolution photos, a logo treatment and a an official plot synopsis for the film. Check out the photos and the plot info, after the jump.
Release Date: July 16, 2010
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Monica Bellucci, Toby Kebbell
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer
Screen Story by: Matt Lopez and Larry Konner & Mark Rosenthal
Screenplay by: Matt Lopez and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard (writing credits not final)
Walt Disney Studios, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub, the creators of the “National Treasure” franchise, present THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE — an innovative and epic comedy adventure about a sorcerer and his hapless apprentice who are swept into the center of an ancient conflict between good and evil.
Balthazar Blake (NICOLAS CAGE) is a master sorcerer in modern-day Manhattan trying to defend the city from his arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath (ALFRED MOLINA). Balthazar can’t do it alone, so he recruits Dave Stutler (JAY BARUCHEL), a seemingly average guy who demonstrates hidden potential, as his reluctant protégé. The sorcerer gives his unwilling accomplice a crash course in the art and science of magic, and together, these unlikely partners work to stop the forces of darkness. It’ll take all the courage Dave can muster to survive his training, save the city and get the girl as he becomes THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE. . The screenplay is by Matt Lopez and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard from a screen story by Matt Lopez and Larry Konner & Mark Rosenthal.
Notes:
- The motion picture reunites Nicolas Cage, Jerry Bruckheimer and Jon Turteltaub, respectively the star, producer and director of the blockbusters “National Treasure” and “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.”
- “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” marks Nicolas Cage’s seventh collaboration with Jerry Bruckheimer, following “The Rock,” “Con Air,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “National Treasure,” “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” and “G-Force”).
Dave (Jay Baruchel) is just an average college student, or so it appears, until the sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) recruits him as his reluctant protégé and gives him a crash course in the art and science of magic. As he prepares for a battle against the forces of darkness in modern-day Manhattan, Dave finds it is going to take all of the courage he can muster to survive his training, save the city and get the girl as he becomes THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE.
