solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

This is more of a follow up post to my earlier post about the new video blog from the set of '30 Days of Night'. The first still from the set has appeared online, and out first glimpse of the films stars; Josh Hartnett, and Melissa George.

You know you live in Barrow, Alaska, you grow facial hair to keep your face warm becuause that environment is cold as shit but that crap on Hartnett's face isn't protecting anything… I guess it might scare off some vampires though. I thought my facial hair was lame… but Hartnett's weasel beard makes me feel like Grizzly Adams.

The photo appeared over at Steve Niles's myspace blog (the writer of the original comic book) so you can check it out in a slightly bigger version here

found via slashfilm

Man, when it doesn't rain, it pours. The trailer for 'Live Free or Die Hard' and new 'Grindhouse' pics, all in the same day. I started doing the quick breathing thing like a fat man walking up stairs and nearly passed out.

Entertainment Weekly got the scoop on the new images, some from Tarantino's 'Deathproof' and a couple from Rodriguez's 'Planet Terror'. It's nice to finally get a good look at Kurt Russell as Stuntman mike, and it'll be interesting to see how well he play's a crazed killer, and will he top his performances in movies like 'The Thing', 'Big Trouble in Little China' and 'Overboard'… yeah I said It, I like 'Overboard'

Grindhouse will be making me pass out in April next year.

Check out a gallery of photos at EW here

and if you still haven't seen it check the trailer here

(via bloody-disgusting)

The trailer for 'Die Hard 4' has dropped over at Yahoo movies, or..to give it it's proper title 'Live Free or Die Hard' pfff.. whatever… Die Hard 4.

There's nothing to say, It's a teaser, it's short but it's sweet, shit explodes, car's crash, people fall from buildings. The director Len Wiseman (Underworld, Underworld Evolution) i'm not a big fan of, but hell… it's fucking Die Hard.

Check it out here (link is up and down, yahoo mucking around) or try here (movie-list)

"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."

Role on July 4th

(via CHUD)

'30 days of night' is shooting at the moment in New Zealand, and the set reports have been regular enough for me to actually feel director David Slade's exhaustion. In this short video we get to see small bits of the Barrow sets and the what we can assume is the vampire aftermath, of bloodpools and dismembered limbs.

I just re-read  '30 days of Night' and two of the sequel books 'Return to Barrow' and 'Dark Days', great reads, and if you want to prepare yourself for this film I can recommend checking them out. The two things they capture really well (the fist book at least) is the feeling of isolation, and just a kind of weird sense of reality. The character development appears minimal but before you know it you're really attatched to these people.

Here's hoping David Slade does justice to the books, and serves himself well by following up the great 'Hard Candy' with something worthwhile.

Check out the video diary 'Days to days' here 

I remember seeing the trailer for this movie a while back and generally just being confused by it, a post-modern horror movie, that turns back into a horror movie at certain points? Since then I've seen a new cut of the trailer and heard some of the good things that people have had to say about it. Specifically I recall Todd from Twitch saying it was his favourite film of the After Dark Festival, clever, sharp and wickedly funny. So the one-sheet just got released and it reminded me that I'd never posted anything about it, and thought I should. Here's a quick overview of the plot:

The next great psycho horror slasher has given a documentary crew exclusive access to his life as he plans his reign of terror over the sleepy town of Glen Echo, all the while deconstructing the conventions and archetypes of the horror genre for them.

I've no idea if it'll ever get a proper release over her in the UK, but I'm sure the dvd will be out pretty soon anyway.

check out the trailer on the official site here and a different quictime version here (via filmstalker and obsessedwithfilm)

The Marketing of films can be a difficult thing, the right placement of movies in peoples minds is a tricky thing to get right, and can make or break how a film does at the box office. I don't know where I got the preconceptions that I went into 'Apocalypto' with, but they were all wrong. In my mind the film was somewhere between Braveheart with Mayans, and Baraka, and while that description wasn't a million miles away from what I saw on-screen, I wouldn't say I hit the nail on the head.

It's not an easy thing to describe what Mel Gibson has commited to celluloid, It's an almost basic action movie but with a scope that appears more lofty than the actual plot. I mean it takes some balls to say I want to make a movie with elements of 'Predator', 'Southern Comfort', 'Die Hard' and 'First Blood' but set it in an epic ancient culture, and have all the characters speak Mayan. If anyone was crazy and focused enough to pull it off, it's Gibson and It's that focus that gives the movie it's edge; whole-hearted commitment, no half-measures, no cut aways, ancient culture was brutal and cruel and Gibson want to show you all of it.

The film opens on a group of Mayans in the jungle hunting a tapir, these guys are clever and know the forrest like the backs of their hands, It's their home and their provider. With names like 'Smoke Frog' and 'Flint Sky' we're gradually introduced to the group, including our lead 'Jaguar Paw'. The scene is set, Jaguar Paw and his young family, living in a small peaceful settlement where they live off the land and lead a simple life. Gibson takes his time with these establishing scenes, attatching us to the characters and showing us their routines. Then… shit kicks off, big time. The 'civilised' mayans show-up.

The village is burnt to the ground and the people taken prisoner, Jaguar Paw manages to hide his wife and young child in a dry well and protect them from capture, and thus our hero's impetus is established. The prisoners are marched from their village to 'civilisation' where they're sold as slaves and used as human sacrifices. Visually this is where the film really comes into it's own with so much packed on to the screen it's difficult for your eyes to take it all in. Mayan civilisation is brutal and gorey; hearts are cut-out, heads roll and bodies pile up.

'Warp X' was a new initiative launched back in March by 'Warp Films' the filmic branch of the music label 'Warp'. 'Warp X' is basically a low-budget studio, they plan to make 7 films over the next year, with budgets between £400,000 and £700,000, shooting digitally and hopefully injecting some much needed energy into the british film system. If any of their films are of the same standard as 'Dead Man's Shoes' they're headed in the right direction… but for every Shane Meadows there's a Michael Bassett.

Starting as they hopefully mean to go on, it looks like the first film they're going to drop is a really interesting one. Dominic Hailstone is an ex-creature effects guy (he worked on the uber creepy 'Come to Daddy' video for Aphex Twin) who caused a little bit of fuss with his incredible short 'the eel'. Hailstone is signed up to direct the first feature 'Say you Love Satan' a black comedy about an english death metal band trapped in the backwoods. It sounds perfect, and seeing what Dominic did with just £300 in his short, you can only imagine where this could go.

The death metal scene is ripe for parody (of the dark kind) and and if it comes close the the  genius that is 'Dethklok' we're off to a good start.

Check out Dominic's short 'the Eel' here

I really have to try and put my personal feelings aside when I post about things like this. I liked the first Pirates of the Caribbean, popcorn fluff but Depp was entertaining playing a rolling stone and I managed to block out Orlando Bloom in my mind enough to enjoy it. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 however, soooo boring, on the plus side it had some nice bits of production design, they'd minimised Blando's role and Bill Nighy is good even under layers of CGI tentacles but holy fuck did that movie drag on. Set piece to set piece with some kind of vague plot connecting people and places… where are they now?.. why are they fighting on a water wheel? SNORE.

So much for putting my feelings aside…

Yeah anyway so the teaser poster for POTC 3: At World's End (carrying on where the already bloated 2 dropped the plot(?)) has turned up over at the movie blog. The one saving grace with this series is that they always get good actors to play the villains, Jeffery Rush in 1, Bill Nighy in 2 and Chow Yun Fat is going to crop up in 3. Oh and according to stills from the set that found their way online Captain Barbosa (Rush) is returning at the end, just in time for POTC 4. Kill me now.

For anyone that cares the Chinese characters at the top of the poster translate to "Good luck Captain Jack" (I read that in the comments at the movie blog, I can't read chinese, surprisingly)

Check out a (slightly) bigger version of the poster at the movie blog here

I don’t like to be unfairly negative but does anyone else have a bad feeling about the big budget blue screen adaptation of Frank Millers Sparta graphic novel ‘300’? Probably not (culturalelite obviously disagrees with me :)). On paper it sounds great: a big budget film about the Spartans (those dudes were frikkin awesome!) and their most legendary victory, adapted from the classic graphic novel and made by the guy that somehow didn’t mess up the ‘Dawn of the Dead’ remake. I’m there! Check out the new trailer in the post below (although it’s pretty much the same as the last one).

It looks very impressive I guess, epic and colourful and full of sound sound and fury. There are some mental looking giants (fantasy style) and some innovative looking shots using greenscreen or whatevz. But at the same time it looks like a fucking advert for a car or a bank to me. The modern music in the second half doesn’t help. Maybe that’s the main problem – it all comes together and just looks and feels like some very athletic contemporary actors in a studio, overacting. Another issue I have is the unbelievable amount of slooooo-mo in it. Personally, I think this should be kept to a minimum in action films. A few choice slo-mo shots can be great but if every horse and every woman-writhing-in-a-corn-field is slo it just pulls me out of the film. Total cheese fest. Finally, the acting. Gerald Butler is obviously loving it and might pull it off by shouting constantly. But what we can see of the other performances worries me. They look poor. I hope they aren’t.

I have to be honest, I’ve never read the graphic novel and this might well be a bang on version of it. To me, the similar looking and similarly historical epic ‘Apocalypto’ (just opened number one in the US despite expectations) looks much much cooler. It’s a smaller story I believe, it’s got a stylised look but it’s uses only a few natural colours and most importantly it’s attempting to be an accurate portrayal. I love the fact that they speak Mayan - so much cooler. Couldn’t we have had some Greek?

I don't know what this film is doing to me. My obsession with it is running deep, so much so It's started to affect my everyday life. Yesterday my girlfriend asked me if I wanted a cup of tea, I kicked her in the chest and yelled 'TEA? THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAAA!!!!' tore off my shirt, and walked out of the room. I think I need some help.

The un-tempered masculinity this film unleashes inside me is something I haven't felt before; it makes me want to hurt people, start wars and generally walk around and wrestle everyone I see. Then i'll stop wrestling, high-five and chest-bump everyone around me, then carry on wrestling. Seriously, I need some help.

I'm pretty sure this is the final FINAL trailer for 300, it certainly looks like it. I could waffle on but you're better off just seeing it for yourself.

Check it out here small, medium, large and hi-def(480p)

You can also check out my comic-to-screen comparison here

And see the first '300' trailer here

(thanks to microphenia for the heads-up)