solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

The trailer for the new Friedkin film 'Bug' has finally hit. The film has been finished for about 6 months and was shown to critics at cannes were it gathered a favourable response.

We posted earlier about some clips of the film that had hit the web, but from the footage it was quite unclear what kind of tone the film was trying to set. The trailer is a lot clearer, it show's the film in a much creepier light than before. I'm not bothered by insects, but insects under my skin.. real or imaginary… that's a whole different thing.

Check out the trailer on yahoo here (direct link)

Found over at Twitch 

Ridley Scott is a busy man, he's got 'A Good Year' coming out in October, and he's in the middle of shooting 'American Gangster', both films starring Scott's man of the moment Russell Crowe. Chiwetel Ejiofor, The RZA and John Ortiz have all been named to join the already full cast.

Denzel Washington will play A drug lord that smuggles heroin into Harlem by hiding the stash inside the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam. Ejiofor will play Washington's brother, a partner in his drug empire.

The Rza joins two other rappers already cast; Common and Ti.

'American Gangster' sounds a lot more interesting than 'A Good Year', and it's about time Scott had a critically acclaimed hit again. I for one hope he pulls it out of the bag.

Severance could be set to be the biggest british horror-comedy since 'Shaun of the Dead', writer James Moran was kind enough to lend us his time to chat about the writing of his first feature film, the process of carrying the script through to the screen and his favourite bits from John Carpenter's 'The Thing'.

This is the first original interview we've done here on Solace, let us know what you think in the comments section.

There is a charity screening of 'Severance' this thursday in Leicester Square as the unofficial opening to this years 'Frightfest' (that we will be covering on this site in detail), tickets are still available.

SIC - It's an obvious question, but how did you come up with the idea for Severance? did the idea spawn from anything specifically or did it just pour out of your mind?

JM - I'd been trying to think of a good horror idea, and one day had a really bad commute home - yuppies in pinstripe suits were everywhere, pushing past me, jumping the queue, and generally being the ignorant scumbags that they are. So, in a flash of temper, I decided to kill off some yuppies in a horror - take them to a cabin, and pick them off one by one. Once I'd calmed down, I thought that was a pretty good idea - take some standard, British office types, and throw them into a cabin-in-the-woods horror, see how they react. And it developed from there.

SIC - Hah hah that’s great, so for you it’s less ‘write about what you know’ and more ‘write about what you fantasise’?

JM - Exactly. The office politics part was what I knew, and the yuppie death was what I fantasised about. Take what you know, and give it the old "what if" scenario. If you can come up with something universal that everyone will be able to relate to, then you're on a winner.

SIC - So had you already decided you wanted to write a horror film? Or was it one of many ideas you were throwing around? I mean I've read (and I've no idea if it's true) that a lot of writers and directors often do a horror as their first film, as it's a lot easier to be recognised, than say churning out a low budget drama, plus distributors know the quality tolerance of an audience for horror films is a lot higher, than many other genres

'Old Joy' has only come to my attention becuase I was browsing throught the recently released trailers on the apple site. Two good reasons behind why I really want to see this film; 1. I'm a sucker for these independent Road movies, films like 'Box of Moonlight' or 'Two Lane Blacktop', and 2. It has the folk singer 'Bonnie Prince Billy' in it, he's the balding dude with the awesome beard.

Check out the trailer here 

Normally I would have put this just as a link in the 'Broadcast News' panel to the right, but i'm really looking forward to 300, so reading a review that's says the film is amazing makes me feel good, and these reviews are so positive I just had to write something to keep myself from imploding. A couple of excerts…

"“300” is that rare film which delivers on action, drama and raw emotion"

and

"the test screening of 300 blew me the fuck outta my seat. This film is bloody, hyper-stylized, and absolutely gorgeous to look at (even with incomplete FX). If the studio execs trim a frame from this one, I'm gonna be royally pissed!"

Check out the reviews over at Aintitcool, here and also here 

It must be freakin' 'Happy Poster' day or something here on Solace, either that or just a lot of posters have been released today. CHUD have just dropped a couple of posters for 'Black Snake Moan' the second film from Craig Brewer after his debut 'Hustle and Flow'.  I really like Hustle and Flow reminded me of the kind of films I used to rent on video when I was 14, knowingly trashy, but enjoyable all the same. It'll be interesting to see what Brewer turns out for 'the difficult second film'

The story for 'Black Snake Moan' is as follows…

A blues guitarist abandoned by his wife tries to redeem the soul of a girl addicted to sex in a rural town.

Mmmm complicated.

More news as it arises… 

Nice. This film is going to be brilliant.

Check out the trailer if you haven't seen it already, here, and some pretty pictures here 

Found over at impawards

This is the supposed one sheet for the new Chris Nolan film 'The Prestige' just thrown up over at AICN.

The only thing is it's well… boring. I don't know, It just look's like a good fake to me, the release dates are wrong for starters, but I just can't see them going down the floating heads and smoke route for this.

Check out the trailer if you haven't already and then see if this bad rip-off of the 'Kiss the girls' poster matches it in style. I think not.

Click the poster to see a bigger version

Watch the trailer in quicktime here 

Gondry's next project had me hooked since I first heard about it. It's still in pre-production, but will hopefully start shooting on the 5th of July. It has already been announced that Jack Black will take the lead with Kirsten Dunst possibly backing him up. It's now come out that Danny Glover, Mia Farrow, Melonie Diaz and Mos Def will also star in this tale of video shop destruction.

The synopsis…

A man (Jack Black) whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films, which include Back to the Future, The Lion King, and Robocop.

As I said, it sounds great. Anyone that has seen Rushmore will know how great it is to see a film in high-school play form, so I can't wait to see Jack Black and (hopefully) Danny Glover reenacting the Marty & Doc parts from 'Back to the Future'. Great Scott!

Any thoughts on this story?, please leave a comment… 

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If you haven't seen the first in the epic russian trilogy 'Nightwatch' then you've missed out. Among the most expensive films ever made on russian soil, the 2nd film in the trilogy 'Daywatch' should be released in the UK and over on the otherside of the atlantic in the US sometime in early 2007.

An 'English' trailer has been been thrown up in cruddy embedded flash format over at the FoxAtomic site. When they say 'English trailer' all they really mean is the clip they use has no speaking in it…Still it's worth checking out just to see a car sliding across the side of a building. This action scene alone is better than the last two matrix films put together, but then so is poking something dead with a stick. Go here and click on the little image under 'new stuff' that looks like a car smashing into a building.

Or you could just take a look at the official Russian trailer, in beautiful quicktime format here, and also here

If you're can't be bothered to wait the russian dvd is available on ebay.