Archive for September, 2009

Freddy's back!

The trailer for New Line’s remake of Wes Craven’s 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street is now available.

Director: Samuel Bayer – Starring: Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children, The Watchmen)

Bloody-Disgusting.com, we find, offers the best quality of both the normal and HD versions of the trailer. Check them out!

Freddy returns to theaters 4/30/2010.

Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, and Kristen Wiig in "Whip It"

Comingsoon.net has posted a short interview with director of Whip It Drew Barrymore and the film’s stars Ellen Page and Juliette Lewis. Although the article is only a few questions long, they’re interesting because they seem to accurately reveal the tone of the roller derby film. The sport is full of some pretty tough women, and these stars express their admiration for that toughness, along with some other notable characteristics of the “world” of roller derby.

Being that not much is being written about the independent Whip It even though it releases this Friday, this short interview is worth a look if you’re considering seeing the film.

Fun Fact: Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut.

In an article posted by Variety.com it appears that now more than ever – and even more so for the future – movie audiences in the United States rely more on the internet for getting movie reviews, info, and social opinion than anywhere else.

Many of you might consider this conclusion to be confirmation of a suspicion you already had, but for marketing executives it will no doubt prove to be quite useful. The article breaks down the survey, which was conducted by surveying 1,547 moderate-to-heavy moviegoers over eight days in July, with an additional 2,305 questioned by phone or online during the entire month of July. Nielsen NRG managed the research fieldwork, with AOL, Facebook, Fandango, Google, Microsoft, MovieTickets.com and Yahoo agreeing to be enlisted to supply data for the study. Read the rest of this entry »

Forever Enthralled

China’s Film Bureau released yesterday that the People’s Republic of China has elected the film Forever Enthralled, directed by Chen Kaige, to be China’s Academy Award nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film category. The film is a biopic of China’s most famous Peking opera performers, with Beijing-born pop star Leon Lai in the title role as Mei Lanfang. Kaige has directed two other Oscar nominated films from China (Farewell My Concubine and The Promise).

Austria has also submitted their candidate for Best Foreign Language Film category, For a Moment Freedom. Directed by Iranian-Austrian filmmaker

Arash T. Riahi, the movie tells the story of Iranian refugees and their journey to Austria through Turkey. It has garnered a lot of critical momentum on the festival circuit, earning honors like Best Austrian Film at the Vienna Film Festival and first feature kudos in Montreal and Zurich.

Sources: Variety and Hollywood Reporter

Roman Polanski

76-year-old director Roman Polanski (Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby) was arrested yesterday in Switzerland, and could face extradition to the United States for having sex with a 13-year-old girl back in 1977.

Polanski was in Switzerland to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival, but before he could accept it he was apprehended by police at a local airport. Sympathizers for Polanski attest that the arrest was uncalled for, however there has been a warrant for his arrest in countries which abide by U.S. extradition requests since 2005.

To read more about the case against Roman Polanski, click here.

Source: Variety

Short Take: There's much more to it beyond first glance

Director: Jonathon Mostow

Screenwriters: Michael Ferris and John Brancato (The Net, Terminator Salvation)

Cast: Bruce Willis (Live Free or Die Hard), Ving Rhames (M-I:III), Rosamund Pike (Pride and Prejudice), Radha Mitchell (Melinda and Melinda, Silent Hill)

Length: 1h 28m

Synopsis: Set in the future when most Americans, and over 1 billion people worldwide, live their lives by using advanced puppet-like robots called surrogates that allow them to experience the world from the safety of their own homes. Small groups of people are adamantly against the use of surrogates, claiming that doing so robs people of their humanity because experiences are no longer the peoples’, but their robots’. Things get complicated when one of these surrogate-less groups, led by a spiritualist known as The Prophet (Rhames), gets their hands on a weapon that is capable of killing someone through their surrogate. The weapon becomes the key in a web of mysteries that will determine the future of surrogates, as well as the people who use them. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Isaacs

This idea was concocted by a few friends of mine, and I jumped up and down with excitement when they first told it to me. Most of you might recognize Jason Isaacs from his role as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, or the evil Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot (2000). And those who are more aware of his body of work might agree stronger with the notion that Isaacs is terrific at playing a smarmy bad guy.

The script for the next Batman movie is still in the works, but like everyone else we keep a close eye on all of the rumors that float around, one of which has been that director Chris Nolan is toying with the idea of including The Riddler as one of the next villains. Jim Carrey played The Riddler (aka Edward Nigma) in Joel Schumacher’s 1995 box office sensation Batman Forever, and it is pretty safe to say that Carrey is warmly remembered for his performance in that role. His cartoonish brand of comedy fit well with Schumacher’s vision, which attempted to capture the serial-comic flavor of the 1960s. However, being that Nolan sees the world of Gotham as a much darker, more mature place, goofy doesn’t seem likely to be the direction he’ll go if The Riddler is indeed destined to return to the screen. Enter Jason Isaacs. Read the rest of this entry »

Clive Owen with co-stars George MacKay and Nicholas McAnulty

Comingsoon.net released an interview this past Tuesday that they held with director Scott Hicks (No Reservations, Glass: A Portrait in 12 Parts) and actor Clive Owen (Children of Men, Shoot ‘em Up) about their newest film The Boys are Back. The interview is, as it aptly calls itself, intimate, revealing much of the deep feeling that went into making the hardy family drama. Both Hicks and Owen express their strong connections to the story, which centers on fatherhood, and how they believe it will resonate with countless people because of the relationships that are built on screen. Owen plays a single father raising two sons.

This marks the third feature film of Hicks’ that deals directly with the issue of parenting (with Hearts of Atlantis being the first, and his remake of No Reservations being the second), particularly single parenting. The Boys are Back will focus more on this topic than before, which should say a lot about how personal it is to the director.

Hicks has a wife and two girls of his own.

The Boys are Back began a limited release today.

"High" culture meets "low" culture

We here at Movie-Thoughts.com try to offer the most unprejudiced movie criticism available, meaning why try to be as descriptive as possible and as evaluative as little as possible. To elaborate on our chosen critical philosophy in order to help you the readers understand better how we think, we are providing a quick glance at and explanation of what is called Cultural Criticism (which is directly connected to the field of Cultural Studies).

Cultural criticism aims to assess elements of culture (in our case films) in a sort of anthropological way, trying to figure out how a work emerges from and competes with other works, sometimes from other facets, within our general culture. The goal is to understand the social contexts and conditions in which a work was produced, disseminated, read, viewed, and used. Read the rest of this entry »

A still from the newly found and restored "Crossroads of Youth"

The Korea Society would like you to join them for a special screening of Korea’s oldest surviving silent film that is going to be screened at New York Film Festival. It is a digitally restored historic film that is accompanied by live music and narration. We believe this could be a good study for Film and East Asia Studies both. This is a good opportunity to grasp the vivid look of Seoul in 1930s’s as well.

The Korea Society and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will take audiences to a bygone era when they present Korea’s oldest surviving silent film, Crossroads of Youth, accompanied by musicians and live narrators (byeonsa) of the type found in Korean theaters of the 1930s. This special screening event will take place at 11:00 AM on October 3, in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, as part of the 47th New York Film Festival. Read the rest of this entry »